The smokehouse was closest and I headed that way first. There was a dial sticking out of the exterior wall now with a set of hash marks on it and little louvres with fans installed along the eaves. It looked like we could set a temperature and the thing would maintain it automatically but there was no indication of what the individual marks meant. Somebody would have to buy a thermometer in the XP store if we wanted an exact number, and it looked like we’d still have to have a fire going underneath.

I headed over towards the keep next and Debbie fell in next to me, bumping me with her hip.

“Penny for your thoughts, Jack?”

“We only work with XP tokens now, woman. Offer me a real bribe if you wanna get something out of me.”

She looked up at me with a wicked gleam in her eye. “What kind of bribe you thinking about, Jack?”

“Not what I meant. What’d you think about the smokehouse?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation back to more comfortable ground.

“It’s useful, but I don’t think meat’s going to be successful as a trade good, and pottery wasn’t much luck. We still need something else for long term use.”

“Day off now, remember? Worry about it later.”

The keep walls looked pretty much the same until I got up close, but it looked like the mortar between the rocks had shifted and lost its grainy texture. I tapped it experimentally with the hilt of my knife and decided it was a good thing we’d drilled holes in the wall before the second upgrade. The lights on the inside were the purple globes I’d expected. Even better, the luxurious plumbing lived up to its name. The faucet in a basin had become a full drop sink, and there was an honest to God hot tub in the corner. Somebody had already begun filling the tank and I shook my head at Debbie.

“That’s kind of awesome. I see a lot less sore muscles in my future.”

“That’s what you think of when you find out there’s a hot tub? You are a strange man, Jack.” She bumped me with her hip again and pointed to Steve fiddling with something built into the wall. “Check it out. I’m pretty sure that’s an actual oven.”

She was right. We now had a full sized oven built into the wall. There wasn’t a range and I couldn’t figure out how the oven was vented, but Steve said it was definitely heating up since he’d turned it on. Debbie reached out and tugged on my shoulder, leading me back out of the keep. We both headed towards the shower facility and I looked down at her.

“So what’s your plan for today? Gonna start working on that greenhouse you’d talked about?”

“Actually, I think that would go better if I knew someone with power tools who was willing to help a girl out.” She batted her eyelashes at me, and the helpless female act was incongruous enough that I chuckled at her. She quit simpering and flashed me a quick grin. “I propose a trade. I tag along and help you out on whatever you’ve got going for the rest of the day, tomorrow you work for me. I think we both ought to get more accomplished over all doing it that way.”

I thought about it for a second and then shrugged. “Sounds good to me. Fair warning, after we check out the last upgrade I really will put you to work.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less. Relax, Jack, this is just business.”

We made it to the solar shower and bathing facility two had turned out to be a pretty good bet. Instead of just a single brass shower head, the original line teed off and led to a second fixture that hung suspended over an old fashioned claw foot bathtub. Helen was already standing over it, her hand placed possessively on the knob.

“Once everybody has a chance to take a look I’ve already called dibs.”

I nodded at her companionably but Debbie sighed as we walked back outside.

“I think hanging out here waiting isn’t going to be much use. Helen looked like she was planning on taking a while.”

“Yeah, and you’ve got work to do Debbie. I’m cracking the whip here. I’m gonna go grab my stuff, wanna meet me over at my place?”

She agreed and showed up at my hill about 15 minutes after I got there. I thought about giving her a hard time over what took so long until I noticed she’d brought along her little wagon. Apparently she’d thought she might need her stuff and I wondered what all besides the chainsaws she’d gotten in the store. I shrugged off the question and called down to her from the roof where I’d been installing my solar battery charger in what I planned to be its permanent position.

“Glad you could make it slacker. Get to work.”

“You might need to be a little more specific there, jefe. I’m not real sure what you’ve got planned.”

I hung off the side of the roof and dropped down on the steep side of the hill and turned my landing into a controlled run down to level ground. I caught myself on the side of the cabin to slow down and managed to stop right in front of her. She quirked an eyebrow at me.

“Showing off?”

“Nope, just don’t have a ladder. Didn’t think that through too well I guess. I got a bunch of projects I want to get done, but I think I’ll use you for the grunt work if you don’t mind.”

She shrugged at me. “Your dime, Jack. What do you want me to do?”

I opened the door and led her in. “There’s a couple of things. I’m not too thrilled about having to chin myself up into the loft every time, so stairs or a ladder on the inside. I want some shelves along that wall so I can put stuff somewhere besides just piling it on the floor. I’ve got a knob and lock to put in the door, and some furniture would be nice.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

I grinned at her, “Would it be okay if I just said supervising? Actually I’ve got two big projects in mind. I wanna build a fireplace and do some plumbing.”

“Plumbing?”

“You’ll see.”

We both started working and kept up a steady flow of conversation as we went. Debbie was using her chainsaw to trim logs into something that looked more like really thick boards. They weren’t as even as the dimensional lumber you’d get back home, but it looked a lot nicer than the primitive stuff the rest of the construction had been made of. I built up a fire and tossed the chunk of rebar I’d bought at the XP store in it. Debbie shot me a questioning look but I tried to stay mysterious as I let it heat up.

I walked up the hill to the crest and started digging. After a while, Debbie had finished the project she was working on at the moment and came up to check on me.

“What is all this supposed to be accomplishing, Jack?”

“That’s a supervisor type question and you’re the peon today, Debbie”

“You do know I’m in charge tomorrow, right? You sure you don’t wanna rethink that response?”

I grinned at her. “It’s my plumbing system. I’ll line the hole with plastic and make a water tank, it’s uphill so gravity will power it. Pipe it down into the house, maybe run a crude septic tank type thing like we did at the keep.”

“And the metal bar in the fire?”

“My idea of making plumbing pipe. It's based on the way they used to swage out cannon barrels back in the day.”

“You’ve built cannons?”

“No, but I’ve read a shit ton of articles about it on Wikipedia.”

“Well go back to digging while I fix your door. I’m curious to see what you’ve come up with.”

A couple hours later I had a good sized hole, and when I checked it the rebar had gone cherry red in the fire. I put on two pairs of the heavy work gloves to help protect my hands from the heat and then pulled the bar out of the fire with my pliers. I had to work quick to keep it from cooling too fast, but I pinned one end of the bar against the wall of the cabin with a block of wood and my shoulder. With it stuck in place I used both hands on the pliers and started to rotate the rebar clockwise. Turning it was a pure bitch and it was hard to keep it at the steady pace required, but apparently leveling up my brawn was just enough. As the bar cooled and stiffened up I stopped and looked at what I’d built.

Turning the end had put a spiral into the bar and the flutes that had resulted ended up making an extremely long, extremely dull, drill bit. They looked evenly spaced to my naked eye and I decided that was close enough. I pulled out my file and did my best to sharpen it. It didn’t come close to a commercially produced bit but in the end I thought it might be serviceable. Debbie came over to check it out and I handed it over while I started pounding stakes into the ground to make a jig. I carried over my drill and laid it on the ground, then put my cheek into the dirt to eyeball the alignment. I installed the makeshift bit into the chuck and explained my plan to Debbie. She suprised me by pulling out a tape measure and a laser level from her little red wagon.

“You’re not the only one who bought tools, dummy. I bet everyone got some. I focused on the little stuff instead of the big power tools though.”

I used her stuff to improve the alignment of my jig until everything seemed plumb. I carried back some limbs to try it out on while Debbie sat on the ground and got in place to run the drill. I slowly fed a two inch limb through the jig and onto the bit while she pulled the trigger. There was quite a bit of vibration and she reversed a couple of times to dump sawdust out from the edges. The bit was hot to the touch and we took a break before I had fed the limb up the length of the bit. It was touchy but worked better than I’d hoped and I reversed the limb and we repeated the process until I had an 8 foot wooden pipe. Debbie was impressed, but I acted like it was nothing even though internally I was surprised it’d worked as well as it had. We tried again and the limb I’d chosen split halfway through the process. I was hoping we’d hit a knot in the wood or something, and tried again.

After a while Debbie and I had gotten good at it. It seemed like a six foot pipe was the easiest to turn out, and I had the speed to push down while Debbie had learned exactly when to back the bit out to dump the cuttings and how often to let the bit cool.

Once we’d finished making enough pipe I switched to a normal sized spade bit and hollowed out a smaller thicker limb to join the sections. I carved the pieces out friction tight and dosed the seams with wood glue. I didn’t know if it would be water tight, but I had high hopes. I buried my pipe from the water tank and through the back earthen wall. Once I had the pipe in place, Debbie helped me line the tank with plastic and even though it wasn’t ideal I used the wood glue to try and seal the plastic to the pipe. I would need to come up with a cover for the water tank at some point, but I left that for now and went back to the interior of the house to work.

Debbie started lashing together a ladder to the loft while I buried an outlet pipe out under the front wall. A shower head and grate for the top of the outlet pipe would come later once I had a chance to make up some clay. I tried to keep the outlet heading down hill so that things would drain smoothly and repeated the cesspool I’d built earlier. Debbie went out and brought back the stuff to begin on a bed frame, and I noticed she stuck with smoothed lumber instead of logs and put together a lot heavier frame than the keep had gotten. The implications of that kept me occupied for a minute while I was working on the cesspool. I’d put a lid of quarter sawn logs on the water tank and was just filling in the dirt on top of a similar roof for the cesspool. My mind was busy enough I didn’t notice when she came up behind me and grabbed my hips. I almost swung on her before I realized who it was.

“Hey, slick. Wake up.”

“Oh, sorry. I zoned out there a minute. What’s up?”

“Bed frame’s done but I don’t have any rope. We could use wolf skins or something when you get some more, or maybe someone has something they’d be willing to trade you. I’ve got some paracord available if you want to make a deal on it. I didn’t want to make a decision without your input though. This is your place after all.”

“Awww, just leave it for now. It’s getting pretty late anyway. I should probably walk you back to the keep soon.”

“You staying here tonight?”

“The door locks and the place is pretty secure. I reckon it’ll be safe enough and I have to try it out sometime. Jeri and Hunter’s tree house is working out pretty good for them, I reckon all of us will build our own place soon.”

Debbie nodded to me. “I can’t say I haven’t considered it. A little privacy would be nice, and with the way there’s always someone snoring or getting up to use the bathroom, sharing the keep has gotten old.”

“You’ve got my labor tomorrow. If you want to start working on a place for you instead of a greenhouse just say the word.”

“I’ll think about it, but I’m a practical girl, Jack. I think I’d rather have a business than a residence at this point.”

“Fair enough.”

She packed up her stuff and I took the handle to her wagon and we started back towards the keep together. We moved in companionable silence and I felt myself woolgathering. Did this count as a date or not? Should I try to kiss her goodnight when we got up to the keep or play it cool? My mind was on anything except where I was going and I had no idea we were in trouble until I heard the twang of Debbie’s bow firing. I dropped the handle of the wagon and yanked my antler sword out of my messenger bag with one hand while I shoved Debbie behind me with the other.

It was all out of reflex and I didn’t even think it might spoil her shot as I heard her bow go off again as I jostled her and her frustrated voice from behind me. “God damn it, Jack.”

There was no time to apologize as I finally registered the threat. Another one of those giant hogs with the bony protrusions in its spine was charging us. It had one of Debbie’s arrows sticking out of its jowls and was squealing with rage as it came. I let out an answering yell as I ran forward and to the side. I was trying to divert its course so Debbie had a better shot at its vitals and it worked, sort of. The pig changed tacks to come directly at me, and I managed to sidestep its charge at the last minute and swing my sword. I’d successfully dodged its tusks but its flank bowled into my shin and sent me reeling to the ground. I swore at myself viciously for buying shin guards and not being smart enough to put them on before I went to the woods, but at least I’d laid the hog open down the length of its side. It squealed at an even higher pitch and turned to come back at me while Debbie kept a steady rain of arrows into its sides. It was an ungainly beast and it took awhile to make it back to me, staggering and panting while it slowly grew to resemble a pin cushion with the arrows slamming home into its ribs. The thing was barely moving by the time it got within reach, and I’d already regained my feet. I chopped down with the antler right between the base of its head and top of its spine. The hog fell then and twitched a couple of times.

“What the hell were you thinking, Jack? I was about to put an arrow in its eye socket.”

“You’re welcome, Debbie. I was thinking a 300 pound hog might not stop with a single arrow. We’re supposed to be a team right?”

“A team is right. I appreciate the thought, Jack, but if you manhandle me in a fight like that again I’ve got an arrow with your name on it.”

“Aww, I’m wounded.”

“You will be.”

She laughed then and the tension seemed to drain out of the moment. I worked on gutting the hog in place so it would be lighter while Debbie retrieved her arrows, then she helped me load the carcass up on a shoulder to carry it back. We were both watching our surroundings a lot closer for the last half of the trip. Debbie was in a good mood though.

“It’s like a trip to the grocery store, only someone else has to carry all my bags back when I’m done shopping.”

“Just don’t forget to tip your bag boy.”

When we got back to the keep most of the rest of the group had already returned or never left. John immediately took over the hog, threatening me with bodily harm if I interfered with the creation of spiral cut hams and some proper bacon. It sounded good to me so I dropped the carcass a couple feet from the smokehouse and let him have at it.

The most exciting thing to happen that evening was Debbie solving my earlier questions by coming up and delivering a lingering closed mouth kiss before I headed back to my place.

“See you in the morning, Jack.”

“Good night, Debbie.”