We Shadows

Chapter 30: like family dinner

Lully was going to need a glass of wine after this meeting. Maybe two glasses of wine. He resisted making a face at Dylan. He had to be an adult; he was in congress and Esperanza would kill him if he made a fool of himself. He could barely keep the want to be ridiculous down. He had forgotten he would be sitting across from his father. Once his mother found out, he would never hear the end of it.

"I have something," Harper mentioned. "I have a short list of candidates who I interviewed for archives. I have three I'd like to add."

"So many?" Ford questioned.

"No reason not to," Harper countered. "We're a small group, especially without Matisse. And I want to have a person in each department who can relay information to my department so we can record what we're doing and the progress we've made." Harper leaned over Cameron to look at Lully. "We could provide the captain and lieutenant with that information to make better decisions about upcoming projects."

"You'll need more than six people to do that," Ibsen snorted.

"I know, but it's a start," Harper pointed out. "I'm still finding my feet, I don't want to be outnumbered. I can send you an outline of what I'm planning; Levi and I are working on it."

"Good, send that," Vertov agreed. "Dashiell, since you're technically the reason we called the meeting."

Dashiell pulled out his holo-rib and send a message. The whole table chimed. Lully looked at the document, scrolling through it briefly. The text was dense and long.

"I just sent you all my draft of the constitution," he said. "I tried to keep it plain, so let me know if anything is convoluted. Earth texts tend to be more...verbose. I think reading it here and now is probably too much, but perhaps everyone could read it, send me notes and we could discuss it at the next meeting?"

"We were going to read it here," Vertov objected.

"It's fifteen pages," Ibsen objected. "We'll be here until evening discussing it. I think that Dashiell might be right and he may have some additions since Lully pointed out some congress shortcomings."

"It's true," Dashiell admitted. "And perhaps, the constitution may be altered by what Madison and this congress decide on partners. That is a large component of the base and societal structural."

"All right, Madison, do you have an update?"

All eyes were on Esperanza's boss. Lully had no idea what anyone was talking about, but was looking forward to finding out.

"People have been amenable to genetic samples," Madison allowed. "I've focused on single members of the base who have already had partners or ones who died in the Canary crash or...Landing Day. The data seems to indicate that this will abate the genetic crisis and we can stop partnering anyone once we get samples from the whole base. We will have to still wake people for genetics, but we need a new strategy for cryo."

"So Louis and I were talking," Rainier cut in. "I think that if we converted a couple berths to be more like bunks from the ship we could wake people in batches. Once they get settled, then they can find their own partners, or someone to live with. I think the new constraint on the base will be how many people we can support in each department. Harper could clearly take more people, but other departments don't need the extra labor."

"Builds will always take people," Edison cut in. "We are always busy. So any person straight out of cryo can work with us, even if they find something else to do on the base after."

Lully had no idea how congress meetings were run, but he hadn't imagined this. This was like a weird family dinner that he didn't have all the information to. They didn't solve things or plan things, as far as he could tell. Each department acted independently; that didn't seem useful.