Debbie had to have a brief talk with Steve and we ended up drifting towards different areas while we worked. Since we’d said the group was going to start breaking at lunch, Steve didn’t want to work through and finish off the barn. Apparently he wasn’t opposed to the work so much as the unannounced change to the schedule. We’d made enough progress that everyone had just kind of kept on in the hopes that John would just call things finished. When he started talking about cutting a hole into the wall of the loft and putting in a hoist to load hay bales direct, the rest of us decided we’d hit good enough. After the bitching became widespread, Debbie called a quick voice vote, and we all agreed to dismiss the company until the morning. Debbie pointed out after the motion carried that it left everyone on their own for dinner, and while a couple of people bitched, there were no major complaints.

I tracked down Hunter and Jeri and followed them back towards their tree house, quizzing Hunter on what they had.

“It’s easier to show you than describe it, man. There’s a big old tree with a bunch of horizontal limbs close to the same level where we built the house. Not all the rooms have the floor the same height, but it still looks pretty tight. WIth all the upgrades Jeri bought it’s almost perfect, but the rope ladder up and down kind of sucks. I started a couple different ladders and stairs, but nothing has really worked right feng shui wise.”

“Is feng shui something like krav maga, cause I studied that for a while.”

He gave me a look from the side of his eyes and I waved it off. “Just screwing with you, Hunter. Just show me what you got and I’ll see what I can do to help.”

When we got to the tree, he was right. The place was kind of awesome. Jeri insisted I take the full tour and they walked me through the little structure. They’d built the walls out of bundles of sticks, nothing bigger than my wrist and most of it a lot smaller. Instead of one big treehouse that I was picturing in my head, it was actually three or four of them in the same tree, with often only a short section of wall shared between them. The floor was made out of more substantial stuff, and the roof seemed to be straight thatching. The water tank strapped to the bottom of the structure felt like it was covered in bark on the outside, and I wasn’t sure but it looked kind of like it had grown out of the tree the house was sitting in itself. The part of the structure that was largest and Hunter called the living room had a dutch door with the front half hinged up kind of like an awning, and a rope ladder hanging down about twenty feet from the ground. The door wasn’t anywhere near the trunk and I abandoned the idea of a spiral staircase running around the outside of the central tree like I’d been picturing when they first talked to me.

I came back down the rope ladder and walked in a circle underneath the tree until inspiration struck. I knelt down and started sketching in the dirt, explaining to Hunter as I went.

“You want something sturdy enough to trust, but still light enough you can pull it up after you for security. You could put in a full on staircase on hinges, and some kind of counterweight so you could pull it up off the ground at night kind of like a drawbridge. Problem is to get the length to draw it up high enough to be safe your counterweight would have to drop all the way to the ground. If anyone cuts the rope on your counterweight at ground level, it’ll just drop the stairs right to them. Make sense?”

“Yeah, dude. I’m not dumb, I’ve just never built this kind of stuff before.”

“Easy killer, I’m trying to help. What I was thinking is more like a folding staircase you see in attics. We can do lumber now so you can build it sturdy with some 2 by 6 s and still not have the kind of weight you're talking about with log construction. Attach a kind of porch to the front of your house and tie it back in to that limb over there for stability. Then a straight staircase pitched so it hits on the ground around here. Build a wooden hinge about halfway up, then another right below where it attaches to the porch. Fold up the first section when there's only one of you on the ladder, then both of you fold the whole thing up onto the porch from the top.”

“How do we put the ladder up from down here when we leave, and how do we get it back down when we come back?”

“I was mostly thinking about pulling it up at night. You could just fold the first section from the ground, jump up and pull it back out when you return. Not totally secure but better than what you’ve got going now.”

Hunter looked over at Jeri and she sighed. “Couldn’t we just do counter weights and build like an elevator cage type thing? It would be just as secure as stairs at night if we locked the cage into place, and we wouldn’t have to jump or climb to get it back down if we’d been out. I don’t think any of the animals we’ve seen would be smart enough to chew through the rope.”

“Any of the animals we’ve seen, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some. Plus humans are plenty nasty enough to do it if it comes to that.”

Hunter asked me to give them a minute and they stepped a few feet away and ran a hushed little conversation. I was bored and ready to go help Debbie, but they were back before I got restless enough to leave. Hunter had his serious face on.

“Okay, man. We wanna try the elevator idea. You and John seem to be the building guys, so we wanna know what it would cost to get you to come up with something and put it in for us.”

“You talking me providing the labor, or me providing the labor and materials?”

They looked at each other and it was Jeri who answered. “We’ve got the materials unless you need something really exotic. We’re talking just wooden cage and rope, maybe some rocks for the counterweights. You could build it with no electric motors or anything fancy right?”

I thought about it for a second and nodded at her. “Here’s the deal. I think I can probably do it. I’d need something like 50 or 60 feet of rope, strong stuff too, not clothesline. A whole bunch of small lumber, like 2 by 2’s, and some big ass logs. I’m talking around, they don’t have to be that long. I also need you to run the biggest log you can find through the sawmill sideways a couple of times. Cut me some wooden disks three or four inches thick but with a big diameter. Maybe two or three feet if you can get it, the bigger the better. A couple short pieces of pipe to work as an axle would be ideal, but we could use wood. Definitely gonna need animal fat or vegetable oil or something, and that’ll probably have to be replaced periodically. You get me that stuff and Hunter helps me put it all together and I could build it for you.”

“We could get that stuff together for tomorrow evening. What do you want out of the deal?”

I smiled at them. “Well now, I’ve always believed charity begins at home and ya’ll don’t live at my house. Turns out I got quite a few little projects of my own I could use some help with, but I’m looking for grunt labor not skilled craftsmen. My labor in exchange for both of yours? However long I put in at your place tomorrow evening, ya’ll owe me equal time.”

Jeri shook her head at me, “Two for the price of one, that kind of makes you a dick, Jack.”

Hunter shushed her and offered his hand to me. “We’re trading skilled labor for grunt work like the man said. It’s not worth getting all het up over. I’d trade an evening of work for an elevator and you would to. You’ve got a deal, Jack.”

I stuck my tongue out at Jeri as I shook Hunter’s hand and she called me a child, but was laughing while she did it. I took off then, not quite running but pretty close to a jog as I headed toward Debbie’s greenhouse. I decided I needed more cardio as I came puffing in to the greenhouse enclosure and saw Debbie putting the finishing touches on a big A-frame ladder she’d built while waiting for me. She looked over and smiled at me.

“Wow, just seeing me and it’s already got you breathing hard.”

I took a second to regain my wind before I replied, “Maybe that’s it, or could be I hustled over here so I wouldn’t be late for my shift, boss lady. Maybe you’re too hard on the peons and I’m scared.”

She stood up and took a slow step towards me with a wicked grin in place. “I bet I could make you act terrified, Jack. Whimpering and begging me to be exact.” She stopped with her outstretched hand just inches away and then whirled back around towards her ladder, lifting it upright as she continued over her shoulder, “But then we wouldn’t get any work done. Focus on the task at hand, peon.”

“You’re a cruel woman, Debbie. What’s the plan?”

“Sometimes. You mentioned it yesterday. I’ve got paracord for the bracing. You’re gonna run up the ladder and tie the ends in place.”

I tried getting her to switch jobs without mentioning I had a thing about heights. None of my lame excuses about sending the lightest person up the ladder or how I wasn’t great with knots seemed to sway her and I found myself climbing up while she held the opposite side steady. It was amazing how far I would go to avoid admitting weakness in front of a woman I liked. I got the line secured to the first couple of arches without plummeting to my death, and I got comfortable enough on her ladder to hold my side of the conversation while we worked. She told me of her plan to start sending folks on a regular village run to spend XP instead of us all going at once. It made a lot of sense and would let us improve in increments and keep the place running without having to totally shut down every week or so and I told her so. I told her my idea for building Hunter and Jeri’s elevator tomorrow and she wanted to know if we could eventually rig up something similar to get on top of the cliffs. The distances involved seemed impractical with rope, we’d need steel cable or something to handle the weight over that kind of span, or at least that’s what I thought.

When we anchored each end of the paracord into stakes and I’d run a stick through like a spanish windlass to take up the slack, each of the arches was locked into place and no longer swayed when the wind picked up.

“You know, Jack. I think this is really going to work.”

“That’s because I’m a combat engineer. We don’t build shit that doesn’t work.”

“I kind of thought it was because I am a master craftsman and my super awesome execution filled in the gaps around your shoddy planning, but I guess we can’t know for sure.”

“It’s because I’m awesome but we can’t know for sure” I said in a trembling high falsetto with my hands held out in front of my chest in an exaggerated display mocking her, and her eyes narrowed before I caught the coil of paracord that thumped into my chest.

“Whoops, slipped out of my hands, Jack. Let’s get started on the plastic, shall we?”

“Uh-huh, sure.” I followed her over to the wagon, but warily in case something else happened to slip out of her hands. She pulled what looked like a giant roll of saran wrap out of her pile of gear and held it out to me. The roll was maybe four feet long, and several inches thick, but I still wondered if it would be big enough for the entire structure.

“Debbie, did it say the square footage this thing can cover?”

“Nope. That there is a roll of sturdy transparent plastic, suitable for a large greenhouse. I didn’t want to actually unroll it all to measure it. We’ll do as much as we can and if it’s not enough I guess I’ll have to buy another roll.”

At my doubtfull look she shrugged at me. “What else do you suggest? It did say suitable for a large greenhouse.”

“How you planning on attaching it to the frame?”

“With a staple gun, Jack. You don’t always have to do things the hard way.”

I gave her a level look that she dismissed with a grin, then asked how big she wanted her doors. It turns out she hadn’t really thought about it yet, but after we debated the merits decided to go for a fairly wide double door type arrangement. I sank the first post for the jamb, and she wrapped her roll twice around it before stapling it in place and circling the building. She stopped to straighten and tighten then staple the plastic as she went and I focused on finishing the door frame before she made it back around to me. I got finished before her and was working on some wooden hinges to hang the door once we’d cut some actual boards back at the mill to make them.

“What’s up, slacker? Thought you were gonna join me?”

I held up my chisel and the half finished hinge I was working on. “You looked like you had it, excellent craftsman that you are. I was getting some hinges ready for the door.”

“Wanna run the roll while I run the staple gun? It will make this go a lot faster.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We did another circuit of the building, leaving a good six inches of overlap between the two sheets. After the second lap we quit cutting the sheeting because we’d gone above the height of the door jamb. I stuck a stick up in the center of the plastic roll so she could unreel it above her head, and I started carrying the ladder around with us so I could hop up it and staple when we got to the supports. Before too long the arch was too steep to go around the whole building and moved inside to just run the length of the ceiling. She took pity on me and did the ladder climbing this time. She’d go up with the plastic roll and drop it down to me at ground level. I’d put some tension on it as she stapled it tight and came back down to ground level, then I’d move the ladder and we’d repeat. We did a strip on each side, working back towards the center so each sheet could overlap the one below it a few inches. The final strip was a pain in the ass because she had to staple directly over the top of the ladder and it had her leaning far enough over it made me nervous. I was half convinced I was going to have to try and catch her when she fell and probably cripple us both, but she made it to the end of the building without incident. She pointed to the gap in the top of the arc against both sides.

“I guess just separate pieces stapled up to cover that? It won’t be nearly as strong as the rest.”

“I’d hold off and see what it feels like after a full day of sun or two. I bet you’re probably gonna need the opening as vents to keep from cooking whatever you grow in here. If we need to we can always come back and cover the last bit later.”

“Oh, so we’re a we now are we? I kind of like the sound of that.” She leaned in close and kissed me then before drawing back and grinning up at me. “It’s getting kind of late. The offer for a sleep over still good?”

“Definitely.”

“Well come on then, Jack. By the look of the light I’ve still got at least a half hour of you doing whatever I say.”

She took me by the hand and led me back over the hill to my place.