Greenhaus Part 1: A Storm Brews by Bryan Reckelhoff Read Free Book Online

each of the four contact points to give added stability as Jasper moved to place the next piece of steel. 
    The process would have to be repeated again and again for the next three days. Hundreds of tiny triangular shapes were made, before stabilizing cross beams were affixed across the top of t hem and the process was repeated until the entire wedge was finished. 
    As usual, the pair made fast progress, their production far exceeding the daily demand set by the Sustainability Charts. After surveying their work, Jacob and Jasper silently looked at each other and signaled to the cranes for more supplies, then looked beneath them at their fellow workers doing their best to keep up.
    The glass workers were always a level behind the metalworkers. Eventually they would attach panes of glass on both sides of the triangular shapes Jacob and Jasper were building, forming the area where the electricity would safely flow once the annexation was completed.
    Both jobs required great precision. Daydreams and the pranks that occurred at ground level and during dow ntime aside, Jacob knew the importance of his job, and though he sped through the process at times, care was always taken to do the job correctly.
    Jacob had always been that way. He fully believed in the mission the Founding Father laid out in the Green Constitution, inheriting this work ethic from his father. Though he never fully believed the story of his father’s death, Jacob always performed double and triple checks on his harness before ascension. His father’s death scarred him, but also spurred him to follow in his father’s footsteps as an annex builder, believing he too could make a difference for so many.
    It is also why, up to this point, he had not sou ght the thrill aboard the Bullet that he experienced as a child. After he returned home from Newer Orleans with his father, he spent the last six days of his father’s life with him, observing him at work. Or in walks through the Gardens. Trips to Recycling. Where ever his father went, Jacob shadowed his hero.
    Jacob remembered being fast asleep, but ready to join him on day seven, but his father was called away from his usual duties into another emergency job in Newer Orleans. Jacob never forgot the mornin g his father left for the last time. On his way to fix a section in the Newer Orleans colony damaged by an Outsider attack, his father popped his head into the egg-shaped, closet sized sleeping chamber of his only child and said with great enthusiasm, “Hey there bucko, you awake?”
    Jacob rubbed the crust from his eyes and sleepily responded, “ Yeah, um, well, I am now. Are we leaving now?”
    “ Not this time little buddy, there is no room on the Bullet for extra passengers. This is an emergency, a new assignment,” he explained. “But your dear old dad has some free time coming up, and I will take you to any ‘Haus you want, when I return, okay?” The answer broke his heart, but also gave him something for which to look forward. Though the news hurt him, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as the days and nights he waited for his father to return. To this very day, Jacob felt that his father was alive, despite the known information presented to the contrary. He often woke at the slightest noise, hoping, thinking, praying to Mother Earth, that whatever noise disturbed his slumber, was his father finally returning and that finally, they could take their trip together.
    Jacob never understood how a harness could just break. They were so strong and so well designed, it made no sen se. He had never heard of it happening to anyone else in all the years of Greenhaus building and expansion. One of the few times Jasper could be coaxed into talking for an extended period was the mention of his former friend or the circumstances of his death.
    Harvard Niles was a lifer in Zone 3 by choice. He was always using his gredits to help others because he loved his apartment there and had no ambition to move up to another