Safe to Touch

Adrian Pafistis was the first to arrive at The Learning Grove site, carrying the angle grinder and a set of cutting discs from the Drop Zone supply store. The twenty-foot shipping container sat where it had been positioned the previous day, its window openings and ceiling vents already cut but every edge left raw. The interior was a catalogue of hazards — burrs along each cut-out where the grinder had bitten through corrugated steel, bolt stubs protruding from the floor plates where the container's original cargo tie-downs had been removed, and flashing along the wall seams sharp enough to open skin on passing contact. None of it could be worked in safely until every edge had been dressed smooth.

He started at the far end, running the grinder along the floor rail where the corrugated wall panels met the base. The noise filled the container and carried across the clearing in short, abrasive bursts. Sparks kicked off the steel in bright arcs and died against the opposite wall. Each joint required multiple passes — the manufacturing burrs were thick in places, and the vent holes cut the previous day had left jagged lips that needed grinding back flush before anyone could move through the space without catching an arm or a knee.

Nial Triffett and Marco Ferraro arrived together shortly afterwards. The plan for the morning had been agreed the previous evening: while Adrian made the interior safe, Nial and Marco would work outside preparing the timber battens that would later be fixed to the container walls as the framework for interior panelling. Nial had already sketched a rough plan — batten lengths for each wall, spacing intervals, allowances for the window openings and vent holes. The work required a flat area, a tape measure, a pencil, a handsaw, and enough salvaged timber to make a start.

They set up beside the container on a patch of cleared ground, stacking the available timber in rough piles sorted by length. Nial measured and marked while Marco cut, the two of them falling into an uneven rhythm dictated by the fact that Nial could measure three lengths in the time it took Marco to saw through one. The handsaw was adequate but not sharp, and the timber — a mix of framing-grade pine pulled from Earth-side building supplies — varied in quality. Some pieces were straight and clean. Others had warps or knots that made them unsuitable for anything structural, and these Nial set aside without comment for use as bracing or offcuts.

Marco worked steadily but without confidence. He held the saw too high on the handle and leaned into each stroke rather than letting the blade do the cutting, which tired his arm quickly and produced cuts that wandered off the pencil line. Nial corrected him twice on grip and once on stance, demonstrating each time with a patience that came naturally to a man who had spent years training apprentices in his own fencing business. Marco adjusted, improved slightly, and then reverted to old habits when his concentration drifted. The pile of usable cut battens grew slowly.

Midway through the morning, Marco reached across the timber stack for a fresh length and caught the heel of his left palm on a strip of scrap steel jutting from a pile of offcuts that had been cleared from the container the previous day. The cut was shallow but clean, and it bled freely across his fingers and onto the timber he was holding. The surrounding skin was already grimed with sawdust and metal residue from handling the salvaged wood, and fine steel splinters were visible along the edge of the wound where the scrap had torn rather than sliced.

Nial pulled Marco's hand flat to look at it, saw the debris embedded in the cut, and told him to walk to the medical tent. A rag pressed over it would stop the bleeding, but the steel fragments needed to come out properly and the wound needed cleaning with something better than river water. Marco wrapped his hand in a piece of rag and left the site.

Glenda De Bruyn was at the medical tent when Marco arrived. She sat him down, unwrapped the rag, and examined the laceration under what natural light the tent flap admitted. The cut itself was superficial — no tendon involvement, no deep tissue damage — but the steel splinters were numerous and fine, several of them barely visible against the bloodied skin. She cleaned the wound with boiled water, working methodically along the length of the cut with a pair of tweezers to extract each fragment. Marco flinched at the sharper extractions but held still enough for her to work cleanly.

She dressed the wound with strips of cotton bandage, binding the heel of his palm firmly enough to hold the dressing in place without restricting the movement of his fingers. Supplies were limited and every length of bandage counted, so the dressing was functional rather than generous. She told him to keep the hand dry for the rest of the day and to come back if the skin around the cut started to redden or swell. Marco thanked her and walked back to The Learning Grove site with his left hand held slightly away from his body, the white bandage already picking up dust from the path.

By the time Marco returned, Adrian had finished the last of the grinding work inside the container. The interior edges were smooth, the bolt stubs filed flat, the window and vent openings dressed back to clean lips that could be handled without gloves. A fine layer of steel dust coated every surface inside, but the space was safe to work in. Adrian gathered his tools, exchanged a few words with Nial about the progress on the battens, and left the site to attend to other demands elsewhere in the settlement.

Nial reassigned Marco to stacking and sorting the cut battens by length, keeping his bandaged hand away from the saw. The two of them worked through the remaining timber until the pile of prepared battens was sufficient to make a start on the first two walls. The offcut pile had grown larger than Nial would have liked — between Marco's wandering saw cuts and the warped timber that had been unusable from the start, close to a third of the raw stock had been lost to waste. But there was enough to begin, and the afternoon stretched ahead of them.