Work Text:
First, we gather for a feast.
We set the hothouses, the cookhouses and the medical stations to thaw. But there are plenty of rations left in our stockpile and we won’t need to be stingy for the foreseeable future.
We party like there’s no tomorrow.
We party because there is a tomorrow.
The first law to go is the child labour one. It was one thing while – I maintain – there was no other choice. It was for a chance of their own survival that those children were sent into the grind. But now we have the numbers both in automatons and adults that we can give them back their freedom.
No work for any child below age fourteen. If it proves possible, sixteen.
Amputees who don’t have their prosthetics yet or who don’t feel up to hard work even while outfitted with one are set to mind and teach them. Speaking of amputees, we can take the time to dedicate the factory to prosthetics production until everyone has all their limbs again.
I’m reluctant to give up my faith related powers just in case. Who says that a month from now we won’t encounter a challenge to our steadfastness and hope that’s even worse? Likewise, the Faith Keepers will keep their positions because we need some kind of policing force. Public penance, however, I plan to reduce to a yearly holy day if at all feasible.
...I remember setting pen to paper for the public executions and shudder. It proved unnecessary in the end, yet I came far too close to – they had to talk me out of – giving the order.
We send the hunters out again. And the scouts. Nobody anticipates finding more survivors after what we just barely lived through, but there is a decent chance to gather old supplies and most of all, steam cores. I make a note to reconsider exploring the ruins of Tesla city. Maybe with more preparation than the initial scout team had it will be less of a death trap.
It’s hard to believe that the hunters will find animals that survived out there. Indeed they don’t, at first. What they do find and bring back is plenty of frozen carcasses that are perfectly preserved for consumption.
And then, after a week, they bring several rabbits with them. Alive. The older tykes are excited to try breeding them. I look forward to a new pair of mittens.
Our immediate survival secured and automatised as much as possible for the moment, we turn to making our lives liveable again. Fighting pits are well and good but I give permission for a theatre to be built. A library. Some are talking about searching for a viable location for a cricket stadium.
Two of the faith keepers side-eye me as I allow these deviations from doctrine. I eye them in return. I needed them, we needed them to keep us on task for survival, but anyone can be turfed out if their fanaticism turns to our detriment.
We expand our industry. We haven’t been here long enough for the fabrics of our clothes to break down even in these extreme conditions, yet the day will come, and I would rather have a stockpile of new garments ready before then.
Leather-works. A new setting in our factory to procure yarn from wool. Children who don’t miss the backbreaking hours but do miss the responsibility of work start knitting and sewing under supervision.
If we find no live sheep or similar we will be hard up once the carcasses run out, but our scientists assure me they can grow cotton in hot houses and also find ways to make fabrics from wood. I bow to their genius and greater expertise.
Still, I make a note to raid Tesla city of leftover fabrics as well.
I pass a law that forbids drinking and going outside alone. So far we haven’t lost anyone from such an error and I’ll be damned if 360 of us survived The Storm only for someone to die from exposure at -40°C.
The man that was found by a faith keeper on patrol was lucky. I won’t prohibit all drink, but I will stack everyone’s deck as much as possible.
The pair that won the license to run our town’s only tavern have so far kept all brawls under control. Having the men sleep it off on the local floor will hopefully also keep any violence where it belongs – in the fighting pits, not their homes.
Unless our scouts discover another settlement that survived as we did there will be no new influx of people to help us grow. This means less stretching our resources further but also a marriage market with strict limits forced upon it. Three hundred and sixty humans is really not a lot.
With all the losses we faced there are few citizens who are closely related. It’s a miracle that as far as we can tell none of the women are pregnant already, but what with the post-storm revelry I expect that to change rather swiftly. We’ll have to make sure to keep close records of lineages from early on.
At least our generator seems stable enough to allow comfortable temperatures for infants.
Eventually I plan to see whether we can expand the range of our generator even further. Our engineers will have to do this carefully, of course, but we should be able to meet the coal requirements from within our crater with a touch of planning – and especially if we manage to dig up the old mining post.
Others are even dreaming of equipping our scouts with a dreadnought. That’s a decade-long project in my opinion but it cannot hurt for the eggheads to have things to strive towards.
Yesterday one of the tykes came to me with a draw-up of a bastardised steam core. If this nets us even one working automaton, even a less effective one if it be fit for unhygenic leather work, I may well declare our youth blessed along with our future.
New London, 1887
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