Ravens of Eternity

174 Simple Farmhands

The huge combine harvester that was under repairs had been partially disassembled, and some of its pieces were strewn about all around it. Some were put up on shelves where they were catalogued. Others were disassembled further and cleaned thoroughly.

A temporary canopy had been erected above the whole thing, to keep it somewhat sheltered from the sun and weather.

Its fabric roof flapped lightly in the wind.

All around the harvester itself were a number of farmhands and mechanics, all of whom were busy making adjustments, repairing, and cleaning the giant machine. A few climbed up on the monstrosity itself, and worked on its many parts while suspended in the air via hovering harnesses.

Among them was Miko, who hovered around the harvester via one of her cottonball drones. She waved her baton at the huge machine, and downloaded its operator’s manual straight to her brain.

On top of that, she pulled down its schematics, and began to study each of its components in great detail. As she did so, her DI displayed all its relevant statistics and specifications to her. She took her time to absorb the whole thing, to understand how its various parts interacted with each other.

It was one thing for her to know what each system did, and another to understand their purpose.

“The front part,” she said, “what’s that called?”

“Ah, that’s the crop header,” said one of the farmhands assisting her.

.....

She stood just below and a bit to the side and simply observed. She could hardly believe it when Jionna told her to take instructions from such a young girl. But she decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, if Jionna trusted the little girl, then why bother questioning it?

“It, uh, rotates those blades, and feeds what it cuts off into the augur. That then pulls it all deeper into the combine to process further.”

“I see,” replied Miko. “Please explain the rest. I have a good idea of how it works, but need more information to determine its intricacies.”

Her assistant nodded, walked forward, then pointed at the various sections of the combine.

“So after being fed by the augur,” she continued, “the fresh-cut crops go into the separator. There, there’s just a simple mechanism that removes most of the plant from the grain.”

“And what is left is fed into that spinning drum?” asked Miko.

“Exactly. It goes into the rotor drum – we call it the thresher – and the grains are separated even more from the plant surrounding it. Whatever’s left goes straight to the sifter. There, the grains are kinda shaken up real, real fast.

“The heavy grains get sifted through while the light chaff surrounding it gets blown up, and out behind the harvester. What doesn’t get blown out instead gets shuffled up to the storage tank on top. I know it all seems so wasteful just to get a tiny grain, but the majority of it goes back out on the soil.”

Miko nodded in absolute understanding. She pictured stalks of grain getting cut and filtered through the front, imagined how it all got separated over each step, then saw how it was stored in a huge tank above it.

“This combine does not appear to have any operating intelligences, right?” asked Miko. “At least, I do not see any servers or databanks currently installed. Only basic instructions.”

“Yup yup,” replied her assistant. “Little computerization here. This combine is 80% human operated. We’re not big fans of digital intelligences leading our lives. Laertidus believes that working directly with the ground brings us closer to it.”

“I think I understand your philosophy, although I do not exactly agree. Regardless, I believe I’ve found multiple points for improvement and optimization. Give me a moment to put it all together.”

In her DI, Miko gathered what she had found and collected the most important notes together. She bound it all together like a mini digital booklet, and even slapped some random farm graphics on the cover along with the Ravens’ name and logo.

Then she sent it out to every farmhand and engineer and mechanic working on the combine.

“I have a few suggestions for improvements,” Miko told all of them. “If you perform all of the optimizations I have listed out, then you can expect your harvester’s grain processing speed to increase by 16.3 percent. I recommend you do all of them.”

Many of them gawked at the simple brilliance of her proposed changes, and immediately set to work.

~

In another empty, disused field, but much further out, Eva stood in front of a few groups of farmhands with various disciplines. They were an eclectic group filled with every gender and every age between 12 and 100.

Not that any were weak or feeble – a hard farm life made all of them strong and virile. Even the few that were at 100 barely looked older than 60.

It made Eva wonder if she had been guessing everyone’s age incorrectly all this time.

Regardless, in each of their capable hands was another one of their tools – hunting rifles. They certainly didn’t have the lethal potential that a military rifle had, as these were really meant to deal with small animals or pests.

In the right hands, their potential as human-killing machines certainly rose. And that’s exactly why they were all here with Eva – they needed to train their hands better. So a number of them roped her into training them how to fight.

At least, after hearing about her escapades on her ‘Cast.

“Thanks for doing this Miss Freya,” said a farmhand. “I felt so useless after we were attacked. I... All I did was run away. I feel like I shoulda stayed to help and fight, but...”

The farmhand looked down at one of his trembling hands, then tightened it into a fist to steady it.

“Is that why you’re all here?” asked Eva. “‘Coz you feel guilty about the attack?”

A murmur spread all around the crowd in mutual agreement. A few others shamefully nodded at her, unable to speak.

“Okay, look, I know you all feel guilty for what happened,” Eva told them. “But honestly, there’s nothing wrong with running away. If things are way over your head and your paygrade, get the fuck outta there. No shame in doing that.”

“Except, if we had stayed, we could’ve maybe helped,” said another. There was a small chorus of agreement from the crowd.

But Eva shook her head in response.

“Maybe yeah,” she said. “But look at all of you right now. Your hands are shaking and can’t even hold your rifles steady. And we’re all just standing around a field with no-one shooting at you. How do you think you would’ve been back then? In the dark, with bullets flying by your head every second?

“Truth is, you probably just would’ve been killed fast. And you would’ve been in the way of everyone who was out there trying to defend you. So maybe you could have helped, yeah. Honestly though, that’s not what happened, and there’s no point in thinking about what if. Trust me – you’d just be wasting your time.”

Many looked down at the ground in shame and sadness. They were utterly frustrated with their own weakness. A few gripped their rifles harder, or closer, and grimaced at their inabilities.

“But look,” Eva continued, “you’re missing what’s important here. And that’s the fact that you’re here now, trying to learn, trying to change your future. Let’s say you ever get in that situation again, you know not to back away. You know to get in the line of fire, so you can allow others to get away. You saw the sacrifices your family made, and you don’t wanna waste them. That’s seriously amazing of you. All of you.”

A number of them brightened significantly at her words, and pulled their chins up with pride.

“We’ll do our best to honor their lives with our own,” said a farmhand. “And I’ll bet you’ve got all sorts of awesome gun stuff to teach us.”

Eva scratched the back of her head and laughed nervously.

“Well, about that,” she said. “I’m honestly not so good with guns. But I do know what it feels like to be in a real life-or-death fight, and I can definitely teach you what I do to stay alive. The first thing you gotta do is to keep your head straight and your heart pumping. To do that, you simply have to control your breathing. Now, practice with me...”

~

A number of farmhands carried one of their screaming friends through the doors and into the farm’s medical clinic. They raised him up and put him down into a medical bed as gently as they could, even as he thrashed around in pain.

His leg had a huge gash in it that extended from his left inner thigh all the way around to his left upper waist. The wound was so deep that his bone was plainly evident in a few places.

“Out out out!” yelled Amal as she ushered the wounded farmhands’ friends out the door.

Then she ran over to the wounded farmhand himself with her assistant in tow. She quickly brought up her MedGun and scanned her patient quickly. Her brow furrowed as she read through the results.

“Okay, pay attention,” she told her assistant trainee. “And do a deep scan, then tell me your results.”

Amal went and placed a tourniquet around the patient’s upper leg as the trainee fumbled around with her own MedGun. She did her best to cut off blood to the leg, but the wound was too long to contain properly.

While they worked, his blood spilled everywhere – all over his leg, on the bed, and even ended up on Amal and her trainee. To help him calm down, Amal grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

“Look at me,” she said. “Look, look. Take it easy, breathe deep. I know it hurts super bad, but it’ll be fine, I promise. Nod your head. Good. We’ll stitch you up in no time. Until then, try to keep steady, okay?”

Her patient nodded his head, but grimaced wildly from the pain. Tears swelled in his eyes as he suppressed the urge to flail his body.

“Administer hyperopiods locally,” said Amal. “150 ml.”

Her trainee didn’t hesitate and tapped on her MedGun’s display. She adjusted her nanites to produce synthetic hyperopiods, the exact dosage Amal requested, then injected the liquid straight into the patient’s leg, right into the gash itself.

It only took moments for relief to set in, and the patient calmed down a great deal. The gathering tears subsided, and his grimaces softened. There was still a hint of pain, but the drugs had made it far more manageable.

He felt as the intoxicants spread through him, and numbed him. He still felt a twinge of pain in his leg, but it was a far cry from the pain previously.

His grip loosened, but Amal held onto him.

“Better?” she asked.

He responded with a nod, along with a weak smile. Amal smiled back, then turned to her trainee.

“Give us your report,” she said.

“According to my scans,” the trainee replied, “the patient is suffering from three major muscle lacerations – at the vastus medialis, rectus femoris, and tensor fascia latae.”

“And the next step?” Amal asked.

The trainee took her MedGun and loaded it with a fresh biocell ampoule. She quickly set its nanites to perform tissue regeneration, and lowered the tip of the gun close to his torn flesh.

“We heal him,” she replied.

“Not only that,” said Amal, “but you also gotta stay by his side after, watch over his progress, and over his wound. Care doesn’t stop when the emergency surgery’s over, got it?”

Her trainee nodded resolutely, then poured regenerative nanites into her patient’s leg. Together, billions of the little machines stitched his leg back together, cell by cell, hour after hour.