There was a staffer waving them toward the stairs.
“Go ahead and down the stairs to your floor. The first digit of your room number is the floor. The lower numbers are at this end, and they go up toward the other end of the building.”
They followed the line of people into the rooftop stair enclosure and down into the building. There were lights operating in the stairwell, and they continued down twenty half-flights of the zig-zag stairwell until they got to the fourth floor. People were leaving the stairwell into different floors as they descended, but all the members of the Chen-Jasic group kept on until the fourth floor.
The hallways had lights on, too, but not at normal office levels. They were on at emergency levels, running off the generator. Matt knew diesel fuel would be precious until they had a refinery built. He thought he remembered that a refinery was one of the first projects for the metafactory.
There were multiple hallways, but signs guided them to which hallway had their room numbers. They followed other members of the clan into one of the two rooms, and found the room had five sets of three-high metal bunk bed frames in it. There was almost no other furniture, and the bunk beds were crammed into a room that would have another purpose in the future.
The one other piece of furniture in the room was a single chair, in front of a 3-D display projector mounted on the wall.
The room was bright with light coming in the large windows, and the lights were off. The sliding windows were actually latched open, which didn’t make sense to Matt until he realized the building had been transported from vacuum to a planetary atmosphere. Without the windows being open, they would have blown in.
People were settling into tailor seat on the floor or sitting on one of the bottom-level bed frames.
“Well, we’re here,” Matt said. “Now what?”
“Why don’t we see if there are any announcements on the display?” Peggy asked.
“Would the network even be up yet?” Jonah asked. “And would the display run on the emergency power?”
“One way to find out,” Matt said.
The big nineteen-year-old sat in the chair in front of the display. He tried to slide it back, but it was tack-welded to the metal floor. He shrugged and tried to turn on the display. It remained blank.
“Not up yet, I guess,” Matt said.
“Well, I know there’s work to be done,” Jonah said. “I would just as soon get going on it than to be sitting around.”
“Work is good,” MingWei said. “There is much to be done.”
At that moment, the display came on by itself. It read ‘Announcements’ across the screen.
“Huh,” Matt said. “I guess I was just a bit quick on the draw.
He scrolled down the list.
“Looks like they’re getting mattresses out of the warehouse and distributing them to everyone. They need people for unloading on the dock and then distributing within the hospital. Who’s in?”
Matt took a count of hands, and then signed them up in the display.
“OK, it says to report to the docks in half an hour. They’re still unloading passenger containers.”
“How are they getting mattresses to the docks?” Jonah asked.
“I guess they had electric trucks charging up in the power plant since Earth orbit, and they just called them to auto-drive over to the warehouse. They’re being loaded with containers now.”
“How’d they do that with no roads?” Jonah asked.
Matt shrugged.
“Beats me. I guess there was a clear path from the power plant to the warehouse. It’s only a couple miles. This has all been so well-planned, they wouldn’t have missed a bet there.”
“Makes sense,” Jonah said.
“Let’s get a quick bite to eat first,” Matt said. “We didn’t have any breakfast.”
When the display came on in the next room, Robert Jasic motioned Chen LiQiang to the chair, but Chen demurred.
“Please, Robert. Be seated. Computers are not my skill.”
Jasic sat in the chair and Chen settled into tailor seat alongside the chair to watch.
Jasic scrolled down the announcements.
“They need manpower at the docks,” he said.
“I just came from next door,” Maureen Griffith said. “Matt and MingWei have that covered.”
“OK. Good.”
Jasic kept scrolling.
“They have a sign-up for property here in the town for houses. We can sign up as a group, and we’ll get assigned early because of our size.”
“Is there a map?” Chen asked.
“Yes, I think so,” Jasic said. “Yes. Here it is.”
Jasic selected the map of the colony and Chen studied it closely. It showed the cluster of major buildings in the center, and then a grid of streets around it, with ten blocks to the mile. There were eight or nine square miles around the downtown gridded out for the hundred thousand colonists.
“North is up, yes?” Chen asked.
Jasic looked for the compass indication.
“Um, yes, here it is. North is up.”
“And does the sun rise in the east, as before?”
“I assume they set north in the standard way, which would be the thumb direction when the fingers point in the direction of rotation of the planet.”
Jasic demonstrated with his right hand before continuing.
“So the sun should come up in the east.”
Chen nodded.
“And how much land are we allotted?” Chen asked.
“For sixty people, half a city block. Three acres, more or less.”
Chen raised an eyebrow.
“A bit over a hectare,” Jasic clarified. “One-point-two hectares? Something like that.”
“So much? Just for the houses?”
“Well, that’s twelve thousand people per square mile, so that is a high population density, but yes, that’s how much we get in town. And then
