Apocalypse: Reborn System

Chapter 9: Inside the trunk, part 1

Heading to the manor, we see that there are flower beds surrounding the building and they are gorgeous. Bright oranges, pale pinks, deep purples all blend seamlessly to make a beautiful and relaxing view.

As we walked up the stairs to the door, we saw outside chairs and love seats around coffee tables. The wrap-around porch is screened in, which reminds me we need to have pollinators brought into here. “That’s a problem for another day,” I think. We head inside and ultimately split into different directions. Newt and Oliver head off together; Newt is probably taking him to the living room, which, if I remember correctly, has the gaming systems. “Boys will be boys,” I think.

I head to the kitchen area and see a homey kitchen inside, cherry wood cabinets, dark-colored appliances, dark speckled marble countertops. I see that there are multiple appliances set up in cooking stations. It looks like six people can cook comfortably in here without running into each other. I see a door on the back wall. When I open it, I see that it is the pantry for room temperature items to the left. To the right are more doors, the kind that immediately makes me think of a cold area. One door is the frozen section; the other seems to be at refrigerator temperature. All rooms seem to have our shopping items in them, but I am curious about the freezer and fridge section. Didn’t Newt say everything was in stasis unless touched by a living person?

While exploring the kitchen area, I see we have a lot of room left to fill in the pantry, freezer, and fridge sections. I would say we probably only filled about 15% of the available room so far. I also realize that the kitchen has all the big kitchen items like stoves, ovens, microwaves, and dishwashers, but it doesn’t have the smaller appliances like toasters, blenders, cooking utensils, silverware, or anything like that. It is added to my never-ending to-do list.

I wander back out of the kitchen and head down the hall. I look in the dining room, which has several large round tables spread throughout the room. There seems to be 14 round tables and each table seats 8 people. A good-sized dining room for a base. If we get more people than this, we can figure out a schedule to accommodate everyone. I wander back out and head to where I am hearing a lot of noise. I found the guys and Lydia in the living room. Newt is explaining how he has electricity running in the trunk. “It’s a simple power symbol that I have inscribed in multiple spots on the inside of the trunk, before I connected it to the pocket dimensions.”

We stared at him in surprise. “You can just make electricity whenever you want? Lydia asks.

“I can and this gives me an idea I want to try for a possible water solution,” Newt says. “Let’s head outside for a minute and see if my idea would work or not.” He was walking to the front door and heading outside before we realized it. We hurried after him. He had already made it down the steps and onto the front path by the time we got to the front door. He walks to the right instead of straight ahead, which makes sense since straight ahead is the fields. The right seems to be where the farm animals' supplies are located. All piled in neat stacks and organized into rows; food was in one section; medicine was in another; care supplies were in another. Building materials were separated from the animals’ stuff but still close by. The boxed-up items were across from the building supplies. The gates and fencing were piled next to the building supplies.

“While Newt does whatever he is going to do, we should set up some of the fencing and gates to hold the different animals. We can get them on Monday and store them in here. We can figure out a temporary water situation for the animals until Newt figures out his problem,” I tell Oliver and Lydia.

We pick up the heavy gate and Oliver holds it in place while we grab the fence pieces and start connecting them together. Once we have three panels of fencing on each side of the gate, it seems to be stable enough for Oliver to help grab fence pieces. We set up 200 fence pieces; each is 12 feet across and 5 feet high. We set up 5 more sets of fencing for all the animals we intend to get. Then we set up 5 50 fence areas for the smaller animals like rabbits and chickens; their fencing was the fine mesh kind to make sure they didn’t escape out of it. It was reinforced against animals that bite.

While we had been working, Newt had dug a small hole with his hands and was writing symbols with a twig. We finished what we were doing and wondered over to watch Newt work. He was muttering to himself while writing symbols that he kept wiping away with his hands. “I’m overcomplicating this. He then wrote two symbols; one at the very bottom and one near the top. We watched in amazement as water started filling the hole. It filled all the way to the top and then stopped at the other symbol. He seemed very satisfied with himself for that accomplishment.

He then explained it to us like he was a teacher, and we were students. “The first symbol at the bottom is water. It will produce an unending stream of water until the water flows back to the symbol, meaning the “container” is full, and there isn’t anywhere else for the water to go. The symbol at the top is essential for creating the container limits. This one is the symbol for halt. When the water touches this symbol, it must stop flowing upwards. I have essentially made an animal watering well. The number of attempts that I made was embarrassing. I started out with a 15-symbol chain that was overly complex and completely unnecessary. As you can see the basics still work, I just needed to think inside the box instead of outside of it.” We all had a good chuckle at his expense.

“We can get the animals tomorrow,” I say, “We now have food and water for the animals. They won’t need the buildings for a while since there won’t be any inclement weather in the trunk. They can be free grazing until we can build the buildings.” I am so excited that I started doing a happy dance which makes the others laugh. We go back to setting up the boxed-up small animal houses and coops. We spread hay on the ground for the small animals and set up their watering and feeding stations. Newt says he will have to go inside to find where his shop stuff is and find his engraving tools, so the animals can have unlimited water.