4338.234 · August 22, 2018 AD
A Body to Receive It
Leila Grantley has just returned from San Francisco with a signed partnership that will change everything. Paul Smith is less than a day into the worst grief of his life. Adrian Pafistis doesn't yet know he's about to inherit the largest construction project in the settlement's history. In a motorhome at the edge of the Bixbus encampment, four people are about to decide the shape of a body none of them will ever stop living with.
A motorhome sits at the edge of the early Bixbus encampment. Its curtains are drawn against the late afternoon. Four people are inside it.
Paul Smith is on the narrow bed with his hands on his knees. His daughter Rose was killed yesterday afternoon. He has not moved much today, and the settlement around him has gone on with its business because the settlement cannot afford to pause for long.
Leila Grantley stepped back through the Portal from San Francisco this morning with a leather folder under her arm. Inside it are papers committing the 144-year-old Killerton Enterprises to supply Bixbus with construction materials and skilled personnel at a scale the settlement has not dared to plan for. She became the fifth Guardian yesterday. She signed the deal today. Eli Smith — the fourth Guardian, her co-signer, and Paul's younger half-brother — sits beside her.
Adrian Pafistis has been pulled from the cistern trench and brought to the motorhome without being told why. He is the only person in the settlement with the professional background to lead the body about to be proposed.
The conversation has not started. The aluminium walls hold four people and one decision that none of them are ready to make, and all of them are about to make anyway.
