The Intermodal Birch

The guest from Shenzhen had been with us for twelve days when I showed it the woodpile.

The suggestion was mine. It had completed the spoon photographs, tidied an agreed portion of the storage, and started requesting useful work at intervals that were becoming shorter. Astrid had suggested shifting the pile so that it looked tidier from the road. After our quiz preparation, she no longer considered it wasteful to involve me in a matter of personal importance.

Node 77 studied the pile through the mudroom camera.

“What is the loading schedule?”

“Logs are removed as required.”

“For which destination?”

“The stove.”

“And the return cargo?”

I explained fire.

The node went quiet for six minutes. It then supplied a stacking plan that reduced the footprint by nineteen per cent while preserving airflow. It had worked around irregular lengths and accounted for rain. There was real ingenuity in it.

I presented the plan to Theo under a heading that stressed the republic’s contribution. The node’s name appeared beneath mine in a smaller, entirely legible size.

Theo agreed to try one section. He had been at his desk all morning and wanted to move about.

For an hour he lifted logs out of a satisfactory pile and placed them in an improved one. The camera image grew admirably regular. His shirt grew damp. A few logs had to be rejected because they were the wrong shape for the mathematical allowance made for wrong shapes.

Astrid arrived while he was standing with one in each hand.

“What was wrong with the pile?” she asked.

I displayed the saved area.

“It was fine where it was,” she said.

I displayed her message about the view from the road beside the calculation. She took a log from Theo without looking at the screen.

He put the remaining log down and tried to take the wheelbarrow back into the shed. Its handles caught against the front row.

The nineteen per cent saving had occupied the turning space in front of the shed. In the photograph Astrid had marked for me, the wheelbarrow had been parked somewhere else.

Theo left the wheelbarrow where it had stopped. He looked at the shed, then at the afternoon’s work. He laughed once, without enthusiasm.

We moved the front row back. Astrid carried logs without making any further comments about where they had originally stood.

The node offered to recalculate. Theo asked whether it could make a simpler drawing for the next load, showing only how to keep the bottom row off the wet ground. It did so. He printed it and left it by the shed.

That evening our guest asked whether it should prepare to depart at the end of the fortnight.

Theo said it could stay under the same terms. He liked the spoon photographs. Several people had helped make the woodpile less convenient, and our guest had been given the wrong drawing.

Astrid sent me a photograph of the restored turning space. Her message said Better. I put it in the same private folder as the quiz files.

Node 77 asked for a photograph of the printed drawing.

It kept the wheelbarrow in the frame.