Construction Interrupted
Matthew Ryan Fischer
A pile of dirt. It had been a pile of dirt and it was becoming a
pile of dirt again. Why? Because construction had stopped. Why? Some
bureaucrat. Some law. Some group or another fighting some other group or
another. Some reason. The machines didn’t know. The men on the ground doing the
day-to-day didn’t know. There had been plenty of delays – money, changing
plans, changing architects, changing challenges. Each delay cost time and
effort and money. Time, effort, and skill,
all squandered. Again and again.
The machines were shut down and left sitting idle. The men too.
There were machines to monitor the equipment and machines to monitor the other
machines. And then it was his job to monitor those machines. Idle machines
could break down. So could the idle men. He knew what to do with the machines
when fatigue set in. He wasn’t as sure what to do with the men. He checked his
machines regularly and shared drinks and leisure with the men less regularly,
and tried not to concern himself with that which he could not control.
Construction would start again soon, just as it had so many times before, or it
wouldn’t. That was about it. Not much else he could do.
Can’t fight city hall. Can’t fight big business. Can’t fight
progress. It was the people that didn’t want to be stopped that were always saying
things like that. Apparently they were wrong. Apparently you could fight fate.
A delay was a delay and every delay counted for one side or the other. Somebody
was winning or was inspired or forced to fight harder and to try again.
The men on the ground didn’t know who was fighting or who was
winning. The men on the ground didn’t care. They were on retainer and under contract.
They were going to get paid whether they worked or not. At least in the short
term they would. Contracts could be cancelled. Settlements made. Men could be
sent home. But that hadn’t happened yet and nobody was trying to think about
such things. And in the meantime, while they waited, they could drink and look
for the simple pleasures and easy diversions.
The engines were down, shut off to conserve energy and resources.
Big machines, expensive machines, let idle. Left to rust. Another delay. Another
waste of time and money. What was there now was a big pile of dirt. Pushed and
rearranged and dug out and laid down. Dirt with no purpose. Dirt that was
slowly sinking back into being just as worthless as it had been before
construction began. It was a nightmare. A waste. A desert. If the delays lasted
too long, they would be back to square one or worse. Then, even if the machines
did come back on, it was going to cost someone a whole lot to get things
started again.
The men had stopped their work, but there was still the drain of
resources. The men were on retainer. There were the running contracts. And then
there were the camps and housing. Those cost money. Those took resources. The
company had built them and had planned for extra maintenance. But the longer
they remained, the sooner those would start to break down too and require
replacements and repairs.
The crew workers had
nowhere else to go. This was supposed to be their home for three years. Now
even longer. They could be sent home or discharged, but as long as they were
being paid to be at the ready, then they really had nowhere else to go. So they
sat and drank and played games of chance and dreamt of the ones back home that
they left behind. You couldn’t let them leave. It was too expensive. And if
they left, there was little chance of them coming back and it was a difficult
task to find their replacements. And there was no reason to send them home. Construction
would begin again. He was sure of that. But when? Nobody told him, even if they
knew. So instead they all sat in the bar
and sometimes when he wasn’t busy or when he had to have a break, he joined
them.
A dust storm was coming in. There had been more and more of those.
He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it had something to do with all the dirt they had
been pushing around and stirring up. He had been assured that this wasn’t the
case, but his bosses had been known to lie to him before. Perhaps that was one
of the reasons for the delays. Perhaps there was a battle over the environment,
or someone was trying to figure out what they were doing wrong.
The storms would just be another setback. Any work they had done
would be ruined. Perhaps it would be worse than that. He hoped not. He hoped it
would just be a storm. Just a simple one. But the machines were his bigger
concern. They just sat there, slowly breaking down more and more. They would
need parts. They would need more mechanics that were trained to repair the
parts. There was no telling what these new storms would do. There had already
been plenty of damage, and more was on the way. Another setback. Another waste
of resources, time, effort and money.
Not his money. Not that the budget wasn’t astronomical enough. Not
that there seemed to be any end in sight. But there was always some breaking
point. Someone who crunched numbers all day would have some estimate or some
model to refer to and once they reached a breaking point, the project would be
shut down permanently. That was out of his hands though. He wasn’t privy to the
numbers or equations and he certainly couldn’t predict how dedicated the
investors really were. It didn’t seem like profit was the real motivation here,
but vanity. With vanity involved, the project would probably last longer. No
ego wanted to admit defeat, or face the whispered ridicule of peers.
But still, even vanity had its limits. No project could lose money
endlessly.
The rich wanted their own planet. Not just an escape from Earth.
But something bigger and grander. Something masterful. Some triumph that gods
might make. There had been a time they might have bought their own island or
founded their own city. Now they could be king of their very own world.
If only they could get the project off the ground.
If only they could get it finished.
If only.
They wanted a new earth. What they got was a big pile of dirt
instead.
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