Whatcha Building Up There?

“I’m so tired.” Hugo’s voice strained against the din of inebriated faculty in the crowded bar.

“That’s ironic!” Shouted Jackson, a published author and beloved lecturer. Hugo envied him.

The circle of flushed faces paused, eyes looked up and right as they confirmed to themselves that yes, this was in fact ironic.

“Why?” Hugo tried to convey genuine interest, he feared he sounded defensive.

Jackson gestured wildly with drink in hand and explained emphatically.

“Um, last I checked you were researching and teaching engineering with renewable energy? Yet you seem to have run out?”

Relieved laughter.

“He’s got you there sparky!” someone yelled as the karaoke machine started to screech.

Hugo grinned and held his hands up to show submission. He was surprised anyone knew what he was researching.

By the start of the following semester, Hugo was 1200 miles away. He had paid back his grant and recommended a replacement for the classroom. The reason, he felt, was clear. The reason, everyone else felt, was not.

“I’m so tired.” He repeated to everyone who asked. It became his mantra. Maybe giving a simple reason would convince others it was a good decision. Maybe they would be supportive, realize this was important to him.

The plan was this; he would search for a new home. Somewhere rural, cheap, comfortable. He would ingratiate himself with the locals and enjoy reality. Cold nights on the porch with clear skies above. Town fetes. Saying hello to your neighbors and pitching in. Hopefully, friends and a sense of belonging would follow. Of course he would have to make ends meet without depleting his savings. He planned to offer low price auto repairs from his new home.

He spread the word through selected friends and family. After offering Hugo their deepest condolences on his catastrophic breakdown, they agreed to make inquiries.

Eventually, an Uncle who worked with a large vitamin manufacturer had heard that in South Dakota, a large energy conglomerate was looking for people to buy houses on acreage, then sell the acreage to them, retaining the house, paying almost nothing after the land transfer. It was a sinister sounding proposal but, supposedly legal and transparent.

He had found a family farm on eight acres. Simple, space to breathe.

The outbuildings had been the clincher. He had assumed it was just a huge garage but, after more correspondence, he received photos of a cavernous old bank-barn. Very unusual that far west.

It was blue-grey timber. Paint peeling and ramshackle, but solid enough to be used until recently. It made him feel nostalgic for something that he was sure he had never experienced. Maybe it was in his bones, in his DNA.

He would arrive on the second Monday of September. The date was a line in the sand, a statement of intent.

He arrived mid-morning finding keys in the mailbox and headed straight to the barn.

It was built in to the side of a low mound beside the house. From the driveway you could access the open lower floor. A perfect space to work on cars, though the sliding doors that provided rudimentary security had not moved for years.

He acquainted himself with the space, imagined where he would arrange tools, where he would offer coffee. He looked up at the beams that supported the floor above. Hairline gaps in the floor boards glowed. Hard up against the rear wall was a steep staircase. It creaked with weary, welcoming sighs as he climbed and pushed open the hatch.

The smell washed over Hugo and confirmed this place was where he belonged. He stood in quiet euphoria. He breathed in vanilla and caramel, mildew and grass cuttings, livestock and oil. The floorboards were polished hard through heavy use. Sunlight poured in like syrup through every crack, gap, and hole. He half expected to turn around and find himself in country music video. Jam jar cocktails and fairy lights flashing as he danced.

Never had he been so captivated by different shades of brown. He saw history in the patterns on the floor, he felt awe imagining the energy spent in lifting the heavy beams that supported the sturdy roof.

Someone’s memories littered the floor as sculptures of rust and dust covered boxes. Nature was staking a claim on his property, weeds pushing in the gaps around the heavy sliding door.

He tracked dust falling from ceiling to floor, agitated by his arrival. It bounced between rays of light that crisscrossed the barn. He was drawn by a shine from inside a dull orange cage of abandoned hardware. He moved, slowly and appreciatively, through this happy place. Trying not to become desensitized to those smells.

Hugo pushed aside a hedge of screws and long fence pegs with a clatter. Rust stained his hands. Behind the old was something new. Something stainless and well maintained. Something like an engine.

“Hey up there! You getting to work already?” A booming voice came from below.

By October Hugo was dejected. The real estate agent had been very kind, welcoming him to town with more than a cheap gift basket. He had been invited here and there, given the tour, introduced to those who were interested.

But he had learned, to his horror, that the land buying arrangement he benefited from was drawing many to the area. Along with property benefits, the company had been recruiting contractors with skills from accounting to pipe fitting. He had even heard of a former university lecturer moving to the area to consult. He assumed it was a misunderstanding of his arrival.

Those he rubbed shoulders with in the local bar and diner looked back at him with the same wire rim glasses and $100 plaid shirts he had moved here to escape. The local mechanic had told him they were mostly fixing up European imports and hybrids now, he spent more time diagnosing electrical faults with a laptop than changing brake pads. He offered Hugo a job. Then promised to refer the smaller local jobs to him, he couldn’t afford to spend time on them anymore.

He even tried going to the local chapel in hopes of finding a “real” community. But the collection of cars parked outside and the sermon’s emphasis on the collection plate told him even the lord was gentrifying.

The barn became his refuge, it was the reason he chose this place after all. It still filled him with a wild anemoia that he reveled in. Without altering the structure itself, he began to make slight adjustments. Basic power had been run to the barn, so he set about installing lights and a heater that posed as a wood burner. He ran a few power points to the upper barn, just in case they were needed. He withdrew from the town he had traversed the country to settle in, finding himself content with his barn and the frustrated old car owners who saw him as just another newcomer.

He often thought about the gleaming engine that had been left behind. It wasn’t from any kind of vehicle he knew of. It seemed to be put together inside-out. He decided to set up the area around that engine as a hobby workshop. Perhaps he would learn to start making his own replacement parts, maybe even build something from scratch. The locals who rattled their old diesels in the lower barn would often have to climb the creaking stairs to let him know they had arrived.

“Whatcha building up there?” They would ask.

“Just a bike shop,” he would lie to them, “you ride?”

No one, apparently, rode.

By mid-November it was cold. Work was sporadic but, that was fine by Hugo. He had started buying large quantities of groceries so he wouldn’t need to venture in to the rapidly changing town so often. He felt short-changed to have arrived in the midst of this modernization.

He became enchanted with the abandoned engine, as he whiled away the days in his beautiful old barn. He found it was extremely simple, but theoretically functional…except backwards. Or more accurately, built as if the vehicle would be putting far out more energy than it was capable of taking fuel in. In short, useless.

By December he had installed a real wood burner in the upper barn and blocked up the gaps around the main door and windows.

He was sat by the burner, lost in thought, when he heard a voice calling him. After a few dazed seconds he went to the hatch in the floor and opened it.

The face staring up at him was familiar.

“You look so tired, Hugo.” Jackson grinned up at him.

Hugo came down the stairs.

“What’s wrong buddy? Thought you were the only ex-academic on a rural retreat?”

“Wh-what are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’m consulting out here for you-know-who. You should see my place. Very…authentic,” he chuckled, “Listen a little bird told me you’re working on something special up there. Care to show me around?”

“My bike shop?”

“Bike shop? If you say so.” Jackson looked conspiratorial. Hugo didn’t like it, he thought quickly.

“I was going in to town for a few tongue-looseners if you want to join me?”

“You were going in to town?” Jackson looked doubtful.

“Hey, tis the season.” Hugo approximated a smile.

“Okay. I’ll see you there in an hour? Mind if I bring one of my buddies? We had plans.”

“The more the merrier, bud.” He hoped the ‘bud’ had not oversold it.

Hugo was in the house and on the computer straight away. That out-of-the-blue interaction was making him paranoid. He tried to remember what industry ‘you-know-who’ was in. Vitamins? No, that was his Uncle. Agriculture? No, the land around here had been ‘going to the dogs’, so the grumpy locals had muttered to him. Energy? Yes energy. What kind of energy? Probably not the right question to ask. Why was Jackson sticking his nose in Hugo’s picturesque slice of Americana? To show off obviously, but there had to be more to it. Surely not that engine. How would he even know it existed?

Hugo chewed a pencil and started typing simple descriptions of the object in to a search engine. Results included toys, a musical instrument from the 30s, and innumerable forum discussions.

A pattern emerged. Conspiracy-lite threads on engineering forums. He saw sketches closely resembling the thing in his barn. Supposedly, a perpetual motion machine. The key to clean, inexhaustible energy, or something close to it. Reading the discussions, he couldn’t believe anyone would give credence to the theory, let alone attempt to build one. Yet, a highly paid energy consultant had knocked on his barn door asking about it. A consultant who worked for a company buying up all the land in the area for no apparent reason.

He pulled out paper and began to sketch, calculate, and estimate. He worked for hours. His head felt softer than rotten peach.

He had always been more practical than theoretical. He decided to go and look at the thing again, to prove it was impossible.

Stepping outside, he looked up at the burning stars through the steam of his breath. The cold air ran through him like medicine. It reminded him he had escaped all this. The deadlines, the fudged results, the demands to apply impossible theory. He sighed, shivered, turned back inside. Tomorrow he would return to the barn. Maybe rain would patter on the shingles, maybe sun would throw shapes against the floor as he worked. Maybe he’d have a job, get a local to talk about the old days. Sleep first, then work.

He wasn’t sure he looked tired, but he felt it, and he slept heavily. Too heavily to hear the hybrid vehicles arrive or leave. Too heavily to hear the lick and snap of orange flames nibbling away the blue-grey timber.

Old wood burns hard and long.