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It didn’t take long for the cyborgs to pick up the nuances of canning, New Eden-style.With their inhuman speed, she guessed that they could preserve a hundred kilos of food a day if they wanted to.As it was, within a few hours, every tomato they had picked that day was accounted for and ready for distribution, either in jars or fresh.
Hannah then showed the cyborgs their chicken coop.There were eight birds in all, including a pair of roosters, none of which could be eaten until their egg-laying days were behind them.
“I think you said you could clone them?”Hannah asked as she lifted a hen to check for eggs.It squawked in protest but didn’t otherwise fight back.
“We can.We also collected the eggs earlier today.”
“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
SP29 gave a very human shrug.“This is too much for one person to do on her own.”
“I’m not always alone.This is just the thing I keep working at more than anyone,” Hannah explained.“I don’t have much in the way of technical skills.”
“We received your SOS,” SP29 said, puzzled.“I would say your skills are adequate in that area.”
“I found an old training manual that someone must’ve forgotten to throw away when they first colonized the planet.It was a lot of trial and error and some sheer dumb luck that I got the SOS out.It was rough.”A small voice in the back of her mind asked her why she was saying this, putting down her skills and achievements when someone had just given her a compliment.She’d received so few of them, even before the quake.“Thank you,” she said hurriedly.“It means a lot to know that someone with your level of experience with everything electric thinks I did okay.”
“You saved both of our people.That’s more than doing okay.”
She felt herself blush at the compliment, but couldn’t resist saying, “It was a group effort.All of us have worked hard to keep ourselves alive.”
“It wasyourSOS that brought us here.We wouldn’t have bothered New Eden if not for your broadcast.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask SP29 about their old home and the ion storm that destroyed it.She caught herself in time, not wanting to dredge up painful memories for him or the other cyborgs, and there was work to be done, besides.“It was a group effort on both sides,” she replied.She looked around the barn.“Where did you put the eggs?”
From a strictly technicalpoint of view, the power station wasn’t in the dire straits Hannah assumed it was.As RH103 toured the facility with his fellow cyborgs, he thought they could probably have the entire facility up and running within the week.
“There’s a lot of corrosion,” he noted as he strode through the pump room.As Hannah had said, the station was powered by a waterfall only a kilometer away, one of dozens surrounding the planet’s lone landmass and the largest.“The earthquake also knocked out a lot of the pipes that carried water into the facility.”
“I’m surprised it hasn’t flooded,” said BE89 from behind him.
“I checked its foundations and safety enhancements.There are watertight bulkheads around the station to keep water out.The early New Eden settlers took precautions against flooding in the event of seismic activity.The barriers worked as they were supposed to, but we have a great deal of cleanup ahead.”
“No one here is worried about a little hard work.”
“I don’t think physical exertion will be the issue,” RH103 said.“We don’t have the means to drain the bulkheads easily.”
“Wouldn’t there be pumps in place to drain the excess water?”
“The bulkheads weren’t designed to hold water for two years, and a lot of the pumping equipment has corroded.”
“Why not suction it out?”BE89 asked.
“Where would we put the water after?”
Color touched BE89’s cheeks.“Good point.”
RH103 suppressed a sigh at BE89’s questions.His fellow cyborg wasn’t stupid; he just didn’t think things through in the way the rest of them did.RH103 wondered what the original BE89 had been, how he had influenced his clone.He hadn’t been someone with scientific knowledge or a military background, that was obvious.
“The water could be repurposed.Maybe they’d like to have swimming pools in their yards,” BE89 added.
Now it was everyone’s turn to stare at BE89.It wasn’t the first time he’d made an inane remark, but RH103 thought this was hardly appropriate.“What?”
BE89 held up his hands.“What?It was a joke.”
Silence answered him.
“One day with humans and you’re already making jokes?”The voice belonged to CW44.It was as rough and creaky as a malfunctioning door from disuse.He rarely spoke outside of their shared broadcast link.
