The first distributed estimate contained a road that no longer existed.
A volunteer on the surface caught it while describing where her crew could meet the equipment. The old route curved past a retaining wall. Since the tremor, the wall lay across the curve, and the last cart through had returned with one wheel broken. The map showed the road in the neat line it had possessed before anyone tried to travel it.
Juno asked the volunteer to stay on the line. The dungeon engineer turned the map toward her, and together they began finding a route that existed now.
Eli could hear tools being set down at the volunteer’s end. Other people were waiting for her answer. They were not a reserve waiting in a box until someone below discovered a use for them.
“How many can leave?” the engineer asked.
“Four today. Two after their recovery ends. They are different shifts. Don’t write six arriving together.”
Sera repeated the distinction before marking the roster.
One proposed site already had its fitting but lacked an observer willing to take the revised interval. Another had two rested contributors and no calibrated regulator. A third could supply equipment if a cart could pass the broken road. Each message improved one part of the picture and complicated another. Eli found himself longing for the clean column of an old System display, then remembered how much of the world such a column could omit.
