A tower stood in the middle of an endless green. It was worn, and had seen better days, but it stood as a monolith in tribute of man trying to do something stupid.
A garage sat at the base of the tower, with enough room for a few vehicles to rest and be maintained. Beside it, a modest lodge served as a home for a handful of brave souls; from the outside, it looked like a family would love to call it their hideaway for the summer.
This, however, wasn’t a vacation house. It was a place to work.
In Canada, the seasons were cruel, and in this forest was no exception. Summers were hot - sticky with bugs and sweat. Winters were cruel, but if you were in the right place, with the right surroundings, the silence, crunching of snow under your boots or the crack of the ice could be very calming.
For the inhabitants of the cabin, they braved the sweltering summer to add something they never thought they would need: an imposing log palisade fence. While some of them felt it looked downright ugly, when it was finished, they had found appropriate ways to make it a bit more forest-friendly. There were arguments about the aesthetics, but they were quickly overruled by the practical. That deep in the forest, there were things to keep out.
The sole way in and out of the compound was a dirt road that snaked for kilometres. Because of the trees, the residents of the compound couldn’t see the telltale signs of dust being kicked up, but they had their ways of knowing who was coming: if one of their vehicles’ GPS transmitters didn’t tell them, a network of trail cameras, motion sensors, and microphones would.
A grey pickup truck rumbled down the path, carrying two people; one, a young girl in her twenties, stared at the long line of trees as they whipped by the window. Her driver, a gruff older man in his early sixties, kept his eyes on the road. He had just picked her up from the closest thing to civilization for hours: a boat landing that a floatplane had dropped her off at, along with the season’s supplies.
“Unloading is probably a good first job for any rookie,” he thought to himself. “Helps her figure out the place. She’s going to need to learn quick.”
Griff has spent most of his adulthood out here. It was pretty much his home, but he knew that the forest commanded a lot of respect. When he first got an email signalling that Reagan would be joining his compound, he was a bit tense: city folk typically took a bit of time to get used to how different it was out here.
But if she made it out here, she had to have a reason. They were strong. They were capable. They were smart.
They were government employees.
The “compound” was, in fact, a Ranger station in the Northern Ontario forest. Built in the early 2030s, the building was meant as a way for a long-term team to study and maintain the forest as Canada continued to struggle on the world stage. Desperate for any natural resources to drive its struggling economy, there was a renewed effort to comb every square foot of the vast wilderness: maybe, just maybe, there would be something worth selling.
Despite the sea of forest that surrounded the outpost, there was one curiosity that cut a large “hole” into it when viewed from the top of the tower. In the early 2010s, a large open-pit mining operation lived and died within a decade, chipping iron out of the earth until it dried up.
Instead of just leaving it to rot, the government decided to do what any responsible bureaucracy would do: it started dumping excess gravel and useless stone into the pit. It was hardly the type of quarry that you’d love to take a dip in on a hot winter’s day: eventually, optimistic hopes of reusing the space gave way to apathy. Griff remembered the day when he got the firm “fuck it” vibes from the government official, and the ranger station never heard from them again.
Since then, Griff watched as nature slowly reclaimed the mine, and at least gave the staff something to pay attention to. Whenever something new gets introduced to the wildlife, it’s hard to know how they’ll handle the change.
As the truck rolled up to the compound gate, a transponder system rolled the doors open to meet them. Despite the rustic appearance, the compound was blessed by overzealous government funding (which insisted this might be able to turn into a tourist attraction). Again, Griff thanked the universe for the fleeting whims of government employees: his team got some useful tools, and they didn’t have to deal with the visitors.
This new girl, though, would have to prove that she could handle herself better than a family of four.
“Alright. We’re here,” he said, as he parked the truck. “This is your new home until… well, it isn’t.”
Reagan was a bit intimidated. She saw the tower from a distance on the road whenever the trees afforded a small peek, and she hadn’t really gotten a sense of its scale until now. She was fine with heights (or so she thought), but there was just a lot that was… different about this. The first thing she noticed was her ears and nose adjusting: there was a constantly electrical hum from the electrical systems, but also the telltale sound of an air conditioner. At least she wouldn’t have to put up with this heat all the time.
However, the smell was… well, she wasn’t sure what to think; she struggled with her internal vocabulary. Back in the city, she took a wine tasting course on a whim, and just learning how to describe things was probably the hardest part - suddenly, there were all these words that felt necessary to know to describe her instincts, but felt very silly to say aloud.
“You’re going to help me get the supplies out of the truck, and then I’ll show you around,” Griff said, snapping Reagan back to reality.
Reagan wanted to make a good impression. She had made a big effort to get out here, and she wasn’t about to disappoint. “Yes sir!” she said, earnestly. Griff felt himself recoil a bit at the “sir”, but wasn’t going to bust her balls about it yet. She meant well.
Reagan’s gear was pretty minimalist; she had a backpack and duffle bag, and brand-spanking-new Parks Canada gear that was likely to get ripped, scuffed, torn or patched in the coming months. After much grunting (and the refusal of help by Reagan) the supplies were loaded off the back of the truck and into the garage door.
Reagan noticed the amount of tools hanging from pegboard racks, and realized the remote location meant that things may need to be made or fabricated on the spot: there were oxyacetylene torches, arc welders, soldering irons, and varieties of axes, prybars and shovels she didn’t know existed. Out of the corner of her eye, she also saw three cabinets, each with big, white spray-painted letters across black metal: “GUNS”, “AMMO”, “GEAR.”
She would save those questions for later.
“Just leave the supplies here,” Griff said. “You wouldn’t exactly know where we keep the toilet paper, anyways.”
He reached for the walkie-talkie on his belt, turning a knob on the top and depressing the “TALK” switch.
“Griff here. We’re home - sound off.”
Reagan only heard bits of chatter, without much in the way of distinct words or sentences. Griff was a bit too far away from her to hear. She looked around her new home as she opened the door from the garage to the main cabin. While it was a single floor, it looked practical and well-loved: people had spent a lot of time here.
Stepping inside, she admired the rustic atmosphere: “compound” made it sound so… militarized, but there really wasn’t a better word for it. There were full living and cooking quarters, a large common space, and separate rooms for monitoring, analysis, and research work. She’d been briefed before her assignment began, and flipped through a PDF on the plane when she wasn’t busy napping — iseeing PR renders was different than stepping into the real thing.
“Wow,” she thought to herself.
Griff cut off any further thoughts as his heavy boots clomped against the hardwood floors and wiped the dirt off of them at a brushing station by the door.
“We couldn’t exactly get it immaculate before you got here, but we try to keep it clean,” he said. He wasn’t the best “manager”, but he could tell that the rookie was a bit intimidated. He smiled as warmly as he could.
“The others will be back soon; they’re just out on the four-wheelers fixing a camera out by the mine; this might be a good chance to show you the monitors while we’re waiting, anyways.”
Griff motioned to Reagan to follow him, as he entered one of the side rooms of the lodge. Most of the wall was taken up by a hodgepodge of different models of computer monitors: it was clear that this was a setup that had evolved over time. Each one was split into quadrants, with a different camera feed on each one.
Reagan noticed that every monitor had a label on it, with some scratched out and replaced with pen writing: Reagan wondered if the label-maker got lost. Beside the label was a small bank of four LEDS diodes — very much jury-rigged — which Reagan deduced probably corresponded to one of the four camera feeds.
“So yeah. This is it. If we get lucky, we might be able to see the team.”
Griff pointed at one of the monitors on the top row, and Reagan could see a feed that had been shaking quickly settle into place. The first face she saw was a woman that was probably in her 30s, looking into the camera (or well, past it to the unit) to make sure it was alright. Reagan saw the woman’s eyes glance to the camera absentmindedly: she probably wasn’t aware she was being watched right now.
As the women climbed down from a ladder, satisfied with her work, Reagan also saw two more people: a stout, burly man with bronzed skin. Reagan guessed he was Hispanic, or maybe… native? It was a bit hard to tell over the camera. He had a tool belt slung across his waist and spool of cable hanging from it; Reagan could recognize it as a network cable, but she’d have to ask what it was used for at some point.
Lastly, Reagan recognized a younger man that had been on her interview panel. His camera background was probably the first part of the lodge she’d ever seen, and she didn’t have the courage to ask if it was a fake. He hadn’t participated much, but nodded along with the hiring panel, not really bothering to offer anything — he looked a bit absent-minded right now, as well, gazing off into the quarry as his partners finished their work.
“They’ll be back in a bit. The four-wheels are good for getting around, and you’ll probably be learning how to use them soon enough. We have a snowmobile in the winter, and a trailer for both,” Griff said, grinning. “Maybe we’ll torture you with learning how to put the runners on it when the snow falls.”
“You’re probably a bit tired, so I might as well show you to your bunk,” Griff said. “You’ll be sharing with-”
He was cut off by a sharp BEEP as one of the red lights on the monitor lit up. Griff jumped a bit, clearly not used to the sound. He muttered a curse as he searched around for the offending camera feed, sighing.
“Well. It’s also a good time to meet why you’re really here, I guess,” he said, pointing.
Two rows down from the quarry camera feed was a feed that until a second ago, had been pretty boring. A small clearing in the forest housed a very small marsh: there was standing water where reeds grew, and if the camera was better, Reagan could probably make out a number of bugs, wildlife, and other inhabitants.
Reagan focused on the camera, seeing several smaller, animal figures waddle into view. These new inhabitants were part of a problem — one that she was brought in to monitor, and potentially solve. A pack of five Fluffies — three adults, with two foals perched on a dam’s back — wandered at the bog’s edge, with the leader cautiously dipping their hoof into the water.
When Reagan got hired for this position, she wasn’t quite sure what had given her the edge over the other applicants: for a lack of a better term, she was a city girl who was asking to be shipped somewhere that was probably the opposite of a cushy gig. However, when she was brought into a briefing meeting with the higher-ups, suddenly a couple things clicked into place.
Any sense of Reagan’s nervousness and lack of confidence drained in a second as her brain snapped to attention. “How long have you been seeing them?” she asked.
“Maybe about two months,” Griff said. “Thankfully nothing they’d call a ‘herd’, yet, but… after that Cleveland shit, we figure it’d be best to be careful.”
Reagan rubbed her furrowed brow with a hand, wiping off a mix of grime, sweat and frustration.
Suddenly, the palisade fence made a lot more sense.
– (End Part 1) –
Nav: [Part 1] | [Part 2] (to be linked)
Author Notes
Hey all; thanks for reading the first part of a story I kinda made for the fuck of it. I always like the idea of humans who have to adapt to fluffies as a force of nature, rather than immediate hostility.
I want to play around with a couple human characters observing and intervening with fluffies, while also having to deal with a command structure that is doing them no favours. I’m still trying to decide whether I want any “regular Fluffies” to be actual characters, or just have their adventures remain something seen through other characters’ eyes/cameras.
First bit of fiction writing I’ve ever done, so I’m hoping this hits, even though it’s a bit slow for now.
