The Space
Chapter Eight
“It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.” — David Allan Coe
Macky sat in the FabLab staring deeply into the eyes of a 3D printer. He had spent the previous few weeks programming and running sims to get the perfect design down for his latest drone project, and today was print day… or at least the start of it. He watched patiently as his new rotors were being built out, layer by layer until finally, he got bored and went off to find Cyd.
He wandered through the space, past the main room and the Holo-Desk, and into the kitchen, Cyd definitely wasn’t here, but there was a good deal of important snacks that required his attention. He grabbed a few carrots from the hydro-garden and stared out the window as he washed them off, watching the all ages Tai Chi club in slow-moving-action. He then munched down the hall, quieting his crispy snacks as he peered into the meditation room, no Cyd. Macky checked a number of other spaces, the gardens, Rockwall, and everywhere else he could think to check, with no signs of Cyd. Just as he was about to give in and go back to fabrications to stare at his slowly building rotors he heard a strangely familiar grunt coming from one of the closed offices.
“That’s the sound Cyd makes when she’s trying to do sports!” he laughed to himself as he crept up to the window to take a peek. Sure enough, there was Cyd, goggled in and swinging her arms around, she was either playing some form of baseball or trying to catch a butterfly, each idea was equally humorous as it played through his head. He cracked the door open and crept inside to watch.
Cyd continued to swing her arms, occasionally stopping to point at something. Macky noticed the whiteboards behind her were filled with calculations and trajectories, now he was really curious. He zoned out a bit observing the spectacle and began, once again to munch on his carrots.
Cyd froze, goggles still in place and began to turn her ear towards Macky, who also froze mid-bite. “Who… Macky how did you get in here?” she questioned, removing her goggles to see her friend sitting there like a cartoon rabbit with a veggie cigar.
“You didn’t lock the door,” he giggled, “how did you know it was me?”
“It’s always you,” she laughed placing her tech down and notating a few things on the board. “Check this out, remember in our last quest Felix agreed to join PDX? Well, I was looking into him, and I found this game he put out right around that time for the NFA!”
“You mean Nation’s First Alliance? What’s the game and what’s with all this crazy writing, are you trying to get to the moon or something?” Macky laughed and using his carrot stick to point around the room like a professor with a laser pointer.
“Yeah, that NFA, and it’s a stickball game.” Cyd grabbed her headset and began to goggle back into her sim.
“And…” Macky pointed around the room again, “what’s all this?”
“Well,” Cyd blushed, “on an unrelated note I’m trying out for the lacrosse team so I’m trying to map trajectories to help my chances,” she paused, “but also I think I could totally find something in here that’s related to the quest, I just have to find the connection, there’s gotta be an easter egg in here somewhere!”
“Let me see,” Macky said grabbing Cyd’s headset and pulling it on with one hand. He slipped into a glove then seemed to be scrolling around a metaverse of some kind for a minute.
“Well, thoughts?” Cyd said impatiently waiting to resume her game.
“I’m checking the backdoor,” he continued to snack and scroll around leisurely. “It looks like it was made to go with some sort of cultural hub, there’s a backlink to it here.” He said pointing into space.
“I’m not in there with you, you took my googles remember?” She said flicking the edge of the headset.
“Oh yeah,” he smirked, “well it looks like they were trying to build a new cultural center for the NFA community. It looks like it was to be based on wellness, skills, training, honestly,” He said pulling the glasses off, “it looks a lot like the space.”
“No way! Do you think Archimy and Cinque had something to do with it?” Cyd took the headset back from Macky and began to look for the link he had just found.
“Could be, guess we should go to Mississippi.” He replied casually jumping off his seat and making his way out the door.
“Did you find something else in there?” Cyd peeked out from under her goggles shooting a coy look over at Macky.
“To the Holo-Desk!” Macky shouted throwing his fist into the air.
“Where exactly are we going?” Cyd asked getting herself situated at the desk.
“Well,” Macky explained, “We know that Felix answered that call about working with the team on PDX, and we also know when that call took place. The way I see it, we also know where that call came from, so we just put ourselves on the other end of it and follow the trail!”
“You little genius,” Cyd smiled, “who taught you to think like that?”
“What, you mean deductive reasoning?” Macky laughed, “it’s like anything else around here, you play some games and all of a sudden you’ve learned how to triangulate your distance from the sun.” He raised an eyebrow, gave Cyd a wink and goggled in. “Here we go!”
Archimy and LB stood in front of Cinque's desk, eagerly awaiting the answer on the other end of the phone. As Cinque ended the call, the two of them looked at each other with growing anticipation.
“Well?” Archimy asked, looking to Cinque, and then back to LB.
“Well, the short answer is yes.” Cinque replied, “The full story is that Felix is in the middle of another project at the moment. He likes the idea, but he’d like us to help him out with his project first.
“So what’s the project?” LB asked, sitting down and producing a notebook from one of her oversized jacket pockets.
“He wants us to help build a community, not unlike PDX, but this one is focused on the NFA, and building a center for them to grow and maintain their culture.” Cinque turned to his computer, typed away for a bit, then turned back to his Archimy and LB. “By the way, pack your bags. We’re going to Mississippi.”
The RoTo team arrived in MS to find a summertime NFA cultural fair in full swing. Cinque and Felix were to be keynote speakers during the ongoing hackathon. Bright colors, music, dancers, and the smell of tech was in the air. In the midst of it all, the annual stickball championships were in full swing.
“As you can see,” Felix said leading the team around, “the NFA has made great strides towards becoming tech leaders in the area. We’re really just here to make sure they can continue to grow and maintain their culture.” He walked the group over and introduced them to the Alliance’s COO. “This is Walter, the big man as it were, Walter, this is RoTo.”
“Please, call me Walt,” he laughed, giving everyone a firm handshake and a warm welcome. “I hear you are the architects that are going to make Felix’s world build program a reality.”
“That would be us,” Archimy replied with a modest grin, “we’ve known the basics, but we’d love to hear about what matters most to you in all of this.”
“We’ve got the land,” Walt said, gesturing around himself, “but it’s hard to build. Materials, skilled labor, that stuff is expensive, we want a place that can teach our people to do it for themselves. We want to keep our cultural heritage close, but we also want to move forward, looking to the future, but maintaining our past.”
“I think we can handle that.” Cinque gave Archimy a nudge and the two excused themselves to go absorb everything they could from the fair.
They made their way over to a large building that had been left unfinished. This was to be the site of the new community center. Walt had expressed that he wanted not only for his people to have a place where they could come to learn skills and gain training experience, but a place where they could focus on wellness. Spiritual, cultural, physical, and economic. The team set to work, trying to find the most valuable and versatile use for the space.
“Maybe we should make this larger space a place where people can come and learn to use tools, like a fabrication warehouse.” Cinque pondered aloud as he walked around the main floor of the building.
“It would also be a great space for a basketball court,” Archimy added, plotting the locations of baskets in his mind. “Maybe it could double as a drone racing course!”
“You and your drones, how do drones link to wellness?” Cinque laughed, then it hit him. “What if it’s all three, basketball, drones and a FabLab?”
Archimy thought about this for a moment, a light had gone off. “I wonder how many of the things on this list could be combined. Which ones work together and could be used in a multi-function shared space?” He pulled the list out of his pocket and placed it on the table, the light in his mind had become a lightning storm, and the whole team was sharing in its energy.
“We could also use this space for a convention hall,” Felix chimed in. “and if the tools are already here, they could be fabricating other things too, they could make their own drones.”
“Then,” Archimy’s excitement continued to grow, “they could use those drones to help with civic and environmental work. They could teach others to make them, and then there could be events based around it all. Design, fly, play, race, teach, work… it’s endless! What else could we apply this to?”
“What couldn’t we apply it to?” Cinque asked enthusiastically.
“What about the pool?” Archimy exclaimed, running his finger over the plans, “It could be natural water, we center it around water reclamation, then there is physical wellness, and environmental awareness all wrapped into one! They could even use it as a fish farm.”
“That’s genius,” Felix added, “and we can tie that in with the kitchen, maybe the gardens too.”
“We teach the correlation between growing, harvesting, and cooking,” Archimy continued, “I mean in doing one thing, they’re really learning another.” He paused for a moment, “This is truly a multimodal facility in every sense of the word. I mean, they can teach courses on drone building in the convention center and hold profitable events. They can cook in the kitchen, and sell the food in a cafe, it all works together to build something so much greater than anyone thing could have been on its own.”
“I think you just figured out how to link your drones to holistic wellness.” Cinque laughed, “Well done my friend.”
The team continued to work, the plans began to come together, one thing linking to another until they had a full-scale affinity space design to hand over to Walt. They had done it, a world build with real-world functionality and then some. The only thing standing between the NFA and a center for tech, wellness, and cultural preservation was council approval.
“And that my friends,” Cinque said to the team, “is a job worth remembering.”
“But what do we do while we wait to hear from the council?” Archimy asked, still fired up and ready to design a hundred new worlds, each serving a new valuable purpose.
“Oftentimes in life, we must wait. But in that time, we can still build on what we have learned, and continue to create.”
“The idea of a multimodal space,” Cinque commented, “could mean so much to so many people. I’d love to look into more of its possibilities.”
“I read something recently,” Archimy added, “about neuroscientists creating multimodal brain training games that are actually getting really amazing results.”
“You know,” Cinque said with a sly smile, “I happen to know just such a neuroscientist…”
Continue to Chapter Nine
