fandomhigh | Day After Doomsday, Thursday, Per 2

The sim looked exactly the same as it had last week when the students entered the Danger Shop, right down to having Hardison sprawled on the stairs, poking at his laptop. "Hey, y'all," he said, nodding. "Pull up a patch of floor or wall or whatever, a'ight? Normally, the way things are gonna go, the first few minutes of each class is gonna be spent goin' over what y'all've accomplished last week an' then tellin' you a bit about the day's scenario. But this week's gonna be a little bit different cause I think it's kinda important that we make it really clear how this class is gonna work."

He ran a distracted hand over his head. "So, one of the keys of survival in any major situation is communication. It doesn't matter what the problem is, if there are other people around, you gotta find some way of communicatin' with them. You can't all be independent, lone wolves here, doin' your own thing with no interest in what anybody else is doin'. At the very least, there ain't enough supplies an' stuff for you to scavenge to support all your own little projects. Right now, as far as you know, you are it. If there are other people still alive, you don't know about 'em. They certainly ain't in any position to help you. Any person you lose is irreplaceable--not just from a warm an' fuzzy friendship standpoint, but from a manpower, survival standpoint. Whatever they know an' you don't is lost. That's one fewer person to fight off whatever's out there, or to help barricade the door, or do any other task that y'all decide is important to your survival. Any decision you make affects everyone, no matter how innocuous it seems, yo. Everybody's gotta work towards your survival cause otherwise the odds of y'all making this out alive drop. This means talkin' to one another, findin' ways to work together, an' discoverin' one another's strengths an' weaknesses."

Hardison wished he had Nate's gift for this. If he could make four of the most independent and recalcitrant thieves work together to pull off amazing cons, he'd easily be able to convince a class of teens to do so. "So, last week, I got a basic idea of what y'all were gonna do between that class an' this one. Let's see if we can figure out where a bit more communication could be useful. We got one student who made a cold room for all the perishable food so you wouldn't have to rely on the refrigerators. This student can also create fresh, clean water at will, so all your water supplies have been topped up. The rest of the week, they brought plants an' planters inside to see about makin' interior gardens to grow fresh food in. Then we got another student tryna find ways to purify the pool water to make it potable an also thinkin' about makin' a garden an worryin' about food. One student is tryna make your generators work more efficiently an' quietly, while makin' the most of the limited fuel you had left an' another is plannin' on makin' a radio to try to contact the outside world." Yes, he was deliberately not mentioning names or other identifying factors. "Most of you seemed to agree that we needed scouts an' had ideas for what they should do, but nobody was able to give me any more information than that. Buncha y'all thought the scouts should be volunteers, but nobody asked if anyone wanted to go outside. Some of you had lists of things to look for, but didn't know who to give 'em to. Some of you tried to tell me what you wanted other folks to do, but that's the one thing I can't help you with. I ain't in charge of what your classmates do or don't do. You want somethin' done by someone else, that's on you to find the right person an' ask. If they agree, you can come to me an' tell me what's what. Otherwise, nothin's gonna get done, because I'm only programmin' in tasks that I am specifically told to do by the individuals involved."

He clapped his hands and stood up. "So, unlike the way the rest of the class will be run, only 24 hours have elapsed between last class an' this one. Just enough time for y'all to hopefully realize that much of what you wanna do over the week will be better done if you maybe talk to other people." Though he wasn't going to make anyone talk if they didn't want to, just insisting that doing so would be a very good idea. "Let's see if maybe we can't get a little more organized this week, huh?"

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"I was hoping to make a radio," Cecil spoke up. "I'm sure someone has one somewhere for receiving, and if we have the parts, I can make it send out a signal. And I was thinking if we could find instructions or if you know how, we could use it for a sort of sonar thing?"

"To track the attackers?" Hanna asked. She tilted her head. "And if we could manage to find more parts in town, maybe communication radios." She frowned and then said, turning pink, "I didn't check my phone. Are they still working?" She couldn't remember from last week, or if they just worked locally.

"That, too," Cecil agreed. "But I remember from radio, there's some kind of tunnels under the island? If we could find those, it'd be much safer to move around!"

"Oohh." Hanna perked up, looking hopeful. "At least possibly safer from the things Raven saw. Assuming they're not in there too, but why would they be... Do you know where the entrances to those were supposed to be?"

"There was one around the docks," Cecil remembered. "And back a while ago, there was something about people walking through the sewers or something? I don't remember if it's the same place. Or where they got in," he added apologetically.

"Still. We can ask Raven to look for that too. Oh! Or city plans, they should be on those, at City Hall?" She was going to need to make a list soon. "...or wait, would those be in the Library?" That might be easier to get to.

"I was thinking probably the library," Cecil agreed. "If someone can get there."

"It's not safe to go straight outdoors, but maybe..." She considered, frowning, and trying to remember how far apart the dorm and the school were. "Maybe a zipline or something to the roof? If we can rig it up?" Or would that be too much effort for too little reward?

"I don't know how to do that," Cecil confessed. "Do you?"

"I know how. Mostly from setting traps. But if it would actually work..." No, Hanna wasn't as sure about that. "I can not tell if there is a good place to shoot to, from the roof. I think it would be trial and error, and maybe might not accomplish anything. It is very hard to predict this class," she added.

"Well, really, who ever knows the future?" Cecil asked. "Except for time travelers and psychics, I guess."

"Do you think you could make something like walkie-talkies?" Raven asked. "That could be good when we're ready to go scouting."

"I...don't know?" Cecil said dubiously. "Do they work like radios?"

"Exactly like them, only with a more limited broadcast. They just talk to each other."

"I could try, I guess?" Cecil said. "But I don't know how small I could make them."

"Just make what you can. We'll see what we can do with it when you're finished."

"Okay," Cecil agreed. Hm...he wondered if he got smaller entrails and chanted really fast...?

How did people live without comm buoys? Tali suspected she might end up with more of a headache than she'd initially thought, trying to make sense of twenty-first century human technology.

"I can give it a shot at least," she said. "This sonar thing . . . what did you have in mind?"

"There's tunnels under the island, but I don't know where," Cecil said. "But if we could look for them, that would be a much safer way to get around. If those things haven't found them, I guess."

"Like a geological survey?" Tali guessed, and jabbed one finger into the air a few times, like she was trying to think of something. "That could work. I was thinking of building a drone to do some scouting for us, but something less fancy might be a better use of our resources."

Sure, she could use her omni-tool, but that seemed like cheating. Besides, cobbling equipment together from old pieces was fun.

"Really?" Cecil perked up. "Neat!"

Day After Doomsday, Thursday, Per 2

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