would need to be shown to quarters. I never know where they’re going to put me.”
“Understood,” said the voice of the control. Archer smiled and nodded.
They entered the building to find themselves in a rather small plain foyer, three walls of which were dominated by wide door elevators. The center one opened immediately and they went in. When the doors closed, the compartment began to rise and then suddenly turned to the right, moving horizontally along what must have been a curved tunnel, because as they gained speed, they could feel themselves being pushed back toward one wall and then another. Several more S-turns and a short drop to a lower floor and the doors opened, depositing them into a much larger and much more ornate parlor.
Archer gasped when she saw it, which prompted Mathew to look around as if for the first time. He’d been here hundreds of times before, but until now, he’d never bothered to pay attention to his surroundings.
The parlor was perhaps forty feet in diameter with several gatherings of furniture strategically placed to create intimacy and at the same time, a feeling of friendly inclusiveness with the other seating areas. The area directly opposite the elevator door was clear plastisteel, forming a long curve and clear expanse from floor to ceiling some thirty feet above. Beyond was the ever present Vesuvius in the background, but in the foreground, spread out before them perhaps twenty stories below, was a modern industrial complex, all narrow roads and tramways, circular buildings interspersed with square or rectangular ones, and open areas like small parks, filled with trees and benches and each with its own small pool.
“Welcome to our main production facility,” Mathew said, but he noticed that she wasn’t looking at the view out the observation window any more. Her eyes took in the rest of the room, her body turning in a small circle and she grinning, eyes sparkling like a small child’s. Mathew looked around to see what was so fascinating.
A new mural had been installed on the wall of the room. It was a scene of green countryside and rolling hills dotted with Roman ruins and scenes of what would have been the Vatican, if it still existed. The sun was high in the sky and slowly rotated across the wall as if it were real. But none of it was real, and that was obvious from the style of the art. It was all angles and straight lines, garish colors and odd ‘almost shapes’ somewhat similar to the period in the early twentieth century known as Art Nuevo. Sun rays radiated out from the perfectly round sun in widening triangles that resembled long slivers of wood. The countryside in the scene was flat, stacked and lacking true perspective yet hauntingly familiar. Even the rolling hills had flat surfaces along their margin and the clouds in the sky were like a series of crystals with sharp points and edges, giving it a hard quality. Mathew thought it atrocious, but Archer seemed to revel in it.
“I had no idea,” she said in awe.
“Neither had I,” said Mathew with much less enthusiasm. He led her across the room to a small door in the wall and they passed into another short corridor and finally into a wider one lined with conventional doorways. Two of these, side by side and somewhat larger than the others, were blinking in a rose light projected from the ceiling.
“Yours is the far one,” Mathew said. “I’ve got the other one. There’s a connecting door but it can be sealed from your side. I’m afraid I’ve got to get to work, but I’ll be back later. I’ll arrange for a mid day meal to be sent if you want, or you can join me. It’s up to you.”
Archer looked almost wounded. She stared as if stunned for a moment and then asked in a very small voice, “Would you prefer I eat here alone? I don’t want to interfere with what you’re here for.”
Mathew softened and smiled. He shook his head. “I’d rather you eat with me, but I didn’t know if you wanted to. I was just making sure that you knew you didn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to.”
“I’d rather eat with you,” she said with a weak smile.
“Good. Settle in and I’ll be back in about three hours. Is that all right?”
“Perfect”, Archer said. “I need to clean up and change.
That takes three hours?” he thought to himself, and to her, “Good I’ll see you then.”
In engineering, Mathew was met by his chief engineer, Lars Sanburg, who was as robust and sturdy as his name seemed to imply. He was of Scandinavian ancestry, and he looked like an extra in a holo-vid about Vikings. Lars stood at least six foot six inches tall and was broad shoulders with a ruddy complexion and long blond hair. He even sported a bushy mustache; an affectation that only an actor would be expected to have. Lars was in his prime at age fifty three and he was a bachelor. He had two children both of whom he loved dearly, but as he had once explained, he had no time for wives and home and hearth. He called science his religion and engineering his liturgy. When he saw Mathew, he grinned, but his look changed to a frown when he saw the concerned look on his superior’s face.
“Where are we?” Mathew said without greeting.
“We’ve cleared away the wreckage and resurfaced the floor of the facility. All that we now need are the instruction sets for the bots. They can get started as soon as we have those.”
“Estimated time to complete the rebuild?”
Sanburg gave Mathew a worried look. Two days five hours at the outside. My Lord? Are you alright? You don’t seem yourself.”
Mathew looked up from the holo of the now pristine storage floor and realized that he was frowning, almost glaring at his chief engineer. As with Archer he suddenly softened his look, relaxing somewhat and cursing himself for his own intensity. “It’s personal, Lars. Sorry to let it interfere with the work.”
“I just wanted to be sure,” the man said.
“I’ll be fine. I think I’ve found a way to cut about four hours off that construction time, so once the figures are verified, let’s set up a schedule for restocking. Where have you got the finished units now?”
This had probably worried Mathew more than anything else. Producing robotic construction units was a continuous process, one that had to be kept in motion without a break. Just because there was a shortage of storage space did not mean that the plant could shut down. The units would still be produced and that they would have to be stored somewhere. He had confidence that Lars would find a place for them, but the more they stacked up, the more complicated the repairs would become. In addition, once the loading dock area was again available, the completed bots would have to be sent there and quickly. Cargo containers were constantly arriving and leaving the facility with units destined for all the inhabited worlds in the Empire.
“At first we were putting them anywhere we could, including in the parks, but that was only temporary. I pulled five bots off of the line and had them begin construction on temporary housing for the new units. An old transport system no longer in use was brought from the old production building and set up for moving them to the depot when it’s finished.”
Mathew nodded. Sanburg was the best in the business and this was one of the reasons why. They both knew that a matrix program would come up with a similar solution, probably a superior one, but that would take time that they didn’t have, and matrix multi-linearity solutions were usually complicated. It would be weeks before they could be totally integrated.
“What about the shipping containers? Are they piling up too?”
“I’m afraid so,” Sanburg said.
“Okay. Here’s the new programming
