The first argument in the workshop was over a chair.
A human technician had set it against the wall, beyond the chalk line around the proposed anchor. The dungeon engineer moved it back. He moved it away again before she caught the backrest in one hand and asked him, through the interpreter, whether the person sitting in it was expected to reach the control.
“They won’t need to,” he said. “The operator will be here.”
The engineer looked at Juno.
Eli stopped with the end of a timber against his thigh. He had heard the same assumption spoken in finer rooms. Someone responsible would always be standing close enough. Someone capable would always understand what another person’s silence meant. The chair scraped once across the stone as Juno pulled it inside the line.
“The contributor has to be able to reach it,” she said.
They had not connected a single circuit. Already the drawing had changed.
The workshop belonged to the settlement. Its committee had offered the enclosed work floor after inspecting what the engineers intended to bring inside. Goods still occupied the deeper shelves, covered beneath patched cloth; a resident had hung a strip of warning fabric across the passage to the storage rooms. The ceasefire did not turn every unlocked door into coalition property. Eli and the two workers carrying the timber waited while the local custodian showed them where it could rest.
