III #2
"That's good," Nick agreed. "I think that laboratory is exceptionally important for our shelter."
Tomi nodded in agreement, and Nick stopped at the door because he'd remembered something.
"Tomi?"
The man looked at him questioningly. Nick took the phone out of his pants and handed it to him.
"Any chance of fixing this?"
Tomi turned the phone over in his hands, sighed sadly, and replied:
"I doubt it, the processors in phones are very sensitive." He looked at Nick. "Your phone, unfortunately, will never work again."
Nick grew dejected, but accepted the explanation.
"Well, what can you do, you win some, you lose some," he replied pragmatically and set off after Erik down the stairs. Tomi called after them.
"Wait."
Both of them stopped and looked at Tomi, who had appeared in the doorway.
"The phone as a communication device is completely destroyed and useless, but the memory where your data is stored can be saved."
"What do you mean?" Erik spoke up for the first time. Tomi explained.
"Even though the processor is fried, the memory should be undamaged, unless the device suffered a power surge. Everything stored should be perfectly fine and just needs to be transferred to another port — that is, just moved to, say, a tablet or laptop."
Erik reached into his pocket and took out his dead phone. He looked at it.
"You say the photos from my phone can be saved?" he looked at Tomi with hope in his eyes.
Tomi answered him calmly, without emotion: "Most likely."
"Could you please look at my phone first?" Erik was almost begging.
Both of them looked at him in surprise. Erik explained:
"Vlasta is pregnant and we have a video vlog on the phone from the first day of the pregnancy. And our wedding is filmed on the phone too. It would be a big surprise for her." He looked at them, hoping for a positive answer.
Tomi nodded and calmly held out his hand, into which, after a moment's hesitation, Erik placed the phone.
"I'll see what can be done." Taking the phone and nodding in farewell, Tomi returned to the room.
The two of them continued down the staircase toward the elevator.
Nick noticed that Erik's shoulders stood a little straighter and that he walked with a little more vigor.
Hope is a tremendous thing. And there's never enough of it in the current situation.
Sometimes even small things, like photographs from another time, awaken positive memories.
Such things are important, especially now.
Because if hope is lost now, if people stop thinking and acting, if they fall into lethargy, then everything could collapse.
All of this that they were trying to build, Nick thought, was founded on hope.
Hope that they'd have enough supplies to survive until they began growing their own food.
Hope that the ancient shelter systems would withstand the loads and keep functioning as intended.
Hope that this shelter would become a home for all who were within its concrete walls.
All of that swirled in Nick's head as they descended by elevator to the first level.
It somewhat looked like they were wasting time and resources descending just one floor alone on the enormous platform, but the crowd and chaos around them allowed it all to pass fairly unnoticed.
They stepped off the platform on the first floor and, following a few people entering one warehouse, decided to join them.
Here, instead of packages of food, there was an enormous quantity of furniture, neatly stacked in boxes.
Several dozen people moved around, occupied with heavy boxes and hand carts on which they wheeled boxes of furniture toward the elevator and stacked it in a neat pile, waiting its turn for transport.
Nick and Erik, who had just arrived, let them begin loading their cargo onto the wide elevator platform for transport.
The two of them approached a young man who was coordinating it all and who had, hanging from his belt, one of the communication radios. He greeted them when they came near.
"Everything's fine here, it's all going according to plan," he said to Erik.
Erik nodded in confirmation, and Nick asked:
"Furniture? Where's it being transported?"
"Fourth floor, the space is being redone."
"Oh?" Nick grew interested. "Who's running that?"
"Some blonde is directing the work." The guy grinned. "Looks too good, even if she's a pain."
Nick understood who he was talking about.
He didn't feel like bothering with Tina, especially after the little morning clash at the table.
But he didn't understand how work on redoing the space was being prioritized while they were still counting the warehouse inventory and hadn't solved the food supply.
Someone here wasn't doing something right.
He decided to investigate and said goodbye to the supervisor.
He entered the second warehouse and recognized the agricultural material and tools.
There was no one there at the moment, so he took the radio he'd pulled from his inevitable belt pack.
He turned to the previously agreed channel his acquaintances used to talk, which wasn't meant for everyone's ears.
"Ana, come in," he called.
Static was heard, then the familiar voice.
"Nick, you absolute menace. What have you gotten me into?" She sounded a little angry.
Nick looked at Erik, a little confused and taken aback. Erik just shrugged. The radio whined.
"What's going on up there?" Nika spoke up from underground.
"Oh, Nick set me up with the problem of the century and now I don't know what to do," Ana still sounded angry.
"A problem?" Nika's voice seemed worried.
For a moment only static was heard, which raised the tension. Then Ana spoke up:
"Oh yeah. The jerk even told me to bring female security. Really — they melted like butter," Ana complained.
Nick remembered and burst out laughing. Erik looked at him strangely. Then Nick briefly explained the whole situation with the litter of kittens. Erik's face stretched into a grin. Women and kittens. He could only imagine the scene. Ana had meanwhile managed to explain to Nika what it was about.
"Oh, kittens, wonderful," she sounded tenderly moved.
Nick wisely kept quiet and let the girls exchange the news.
Ana didn't have much to report, because she was trying to set up a committee to look after the mother cat and her offspring.
She lamented that there were far too many candidates as the news spread through the shelter.
Nika, in turn, spoke excitedly about the cave system and the laboratory's possibilities.
She claimed she'd be able to begin the process of growing plants as soon as the basic infrastructure was set up.
Even Tomi reported that he was trying to fix one of the laptops.
All of it was excellent news. Finally, Nick asked:
"Who allowed Tina to change the priorities? She's favoring the renovation without our having established a system of food supply from the warehouses."
"What do you mean, renovation?" Ana asked.
"Well, simply, here about twenty people are transporting furniture to the fourth level, and Irena says she'll need at least three days just to finish the inventory," Nick reported.
"God, I'll kill her," Ana sounded furious. "I just wanted to move her aside so she wouldn't be a nuisance, and I asked her to PREPARE a renovation plan, not to start it. Dear mother."
Nick reported, watching the crowd on the elevator platform, where a sizable pile of boxes with disassembled furniture had already accumulated:
"Well, it seems to me you have to resolve this as soon as possible, because her boys are taking up time on the elevator, and it seems the whole process is going to drag on."
"I'm coming right down," Ana sounded harried. Then Nika spoke up.
"Nick, where are you?"
"Here on the first floor, watching this furniture business."
"Great, you can help me so I don't have to run up five floors."
"Go right ahead — if something heavy needs lifting, I've got Erik with me." He grinned at Erik, who just snorted.
"Nothing heavy — can you just confirm that it's compost and, if possible, count the pallets we have?"
"Of course, I'll report back." Nick put the radio in the pack and headed into the warehouse.
The shelves were filled with brown cardboard boxes, and the labels on them spoke of various agricultural tools and machinery.
That didn't interest him, so he just passed through the rows of shelves until he reached a slightly wider and more open section where there were towers of stacked pallets with various sacks.
He approached the nearest one and confirmed that it was indeed compost for flowers. He cheerfully reported over the radio:
"Yes, it's universal compost for flowers."
Nika immediately asked: "Can you estimate how many sacks of compost there are?"
Nick looked at the enormous quantity of stacked pallets and looked at Erik, who just shrugged.
"Oh, I don't know, a lot, dozens of pallets, hundreds of sacks. A lot."
"That's very good news. It means we have quite enough material to start the project," Nika's voice came from the radio.
"Good, do you want me to count the sacks?" Nick offered, though he actually hoped it wouldn't be necessary.
"Not necessary, we don't have the installations yet anyway." A short pause, then the girl came on: "Actually, you can check whether there are seeds in the warehouse."
Nick objected: "Nika, this is an enormous warehouse, and there are two of us. It'll literally take us days to find the seeds."
"You're right, sorry, I'll have to set up a team to help with that."
"Works for me, and now, if it's no problem, I'm going to go down a floor to see how Irena is progressing with the work."
"Go right ahead. By the way, Vlasta sends a kiss to Erik."
Erik smiled and, for the first time, picked up his radio, which until then had hung uselessly on his belt.
"Thank you, Nika. How is she?"
A moment of silence, then the radio whined again. "She says she's still pregnant and needs to pee." Erik nodded as if Vlasta could see him and replied: "Tell her to go pee and not to forget to massage her legs. She hasn't walked this much in a long time, and she's in late pregnancy."
"I will, Erik, and now I'm off to that fridge."