My eyes darted over the Engineers who were scurrying across the field.
A sigh.
(I probably need to do more reading.)
"And how do I access the manual?" I asked the air, feeling the grass around me.
Hundreds of books appeared around me — from "War for Dummies" to "Expansion Is a Religion."
The chainsaws roared, and birds flew out of the forest with cries as the chains began chewing into the wood.
Stop.
I put down the book "War for Dummies."
(I'm actually alive.)
I touched the grass — cold. I tasted it. Immediately spat it out.
Real grass.
I looked around.
Seven trees felled.
The fort was already two tiers high in half an hour and ten blocks wide, creating a protected perimeter of forty meters, surrounded by razor wire and a moat.
(How fast they work...)
I touched the gray blocks, tightly packed with earth. (Now this is what I call democracy. Not that... bureaucracy.)
The Engineers were sawing logs into pieces, tossing them into the fort, tamping them down with earth, and covering them with stretched tarpaulin.
I walked out of the fort and looked at the lake.
"Hey. Can you somehow arrange water extraction?" I stopped an Engineer and stared into the black void beneath his helmet.
Brr. I looked away. (So creepy — it gives you that uncanny valley feeling.)
The Engineer headed toward a truck with a trailer, which had a tarp stretched over it. A jeep quickly parked by the lake, and the Engineer removed the tarp. There stood a mobile 1500 ROWPU unit.
The diesel generator roared, the trailer vibrating. Other Engineers quickly began stretching HESCO mesh around the pump. And bouncing over the bumps, an HMEE flew up and started loading it with earth.
I stood there in shock. (It suddenly felt frightening.)
Stomping his boots on the trampled ground, the Chief Recon Officer approached me. He held a tablet in his hands, a radio hung on his shoulder, from which the monotonous voices of the Recon troops could be heard.
I looked at him, at the tablet, at the movement of the Engineers around me. And water gurgled from a hose, pouring onto the ground. (So much noise... How loud will it be if I summon the tank battalion?)
"Permission to report, sir," the Chief Recon Officer clicked his boots together and saluted.