The Things We Repair
Copyright© 2026 by Flubu
Chapter 30: Load Paths
Claire discovered the farm’s morning routine by accident.
She woke before six because the house made unfamiliar noises.
Not alarming ones.
Pipes ticking in the walls.
The furnace settling.
Wind pressing once against the guest-room window and releasing.
Then voices downstairs.
Daniel’s.
Neris’s.
ER’s.
Claire lay still for several seconds, trying to remember where she was.
Moose River.
Daniel’s farmhouse.
Alien downstairs.
Alien ship in the woods.
Her brother carrying microscopic extraterrestrial machines inside his body.
Seven days until the other alien and the first alien left through an interdimensional corridor.
She stared at the ceiling.
The information had not become less absurd overnight.
It had merely acquired blankets.
She got dressed and stepped into the hallway.
Daniel and Neris’s bedroom door stood partly open.
The bed was empty.
One corner of the blanket hung toward the floor. A dark grooming brush rested on the dresser beside Daniel’s medical charger. Neris’s packed bag remained near the wall.
Claire looked at it longer than she intended.
Then she went downstairs.
Daniel sat at the kitchen table in flannel trousers, wool socks and a heavy sweater.
His support frame stood beside him.
The simpler medical monitor—the prototype they had discussed briefly before bed—did not yet exist. For now, the larger relay remained strapped beneath his shirt, its status light visible near his ribs.
A mug of coffee steamed beside his elbow.
He had the farm ledger open in front of him.
Three camera feeds occupied the tablet propped against the sugar jar.
Neris was outside.
Claire recognized the cattle yard.
The camera moved with her as she crossed the packed snow carrying a feed probe in one paw.
Her tail curved high enough to keep most of it clear of the ground.
ER’s voice came from the kitchen speaker.
“The southern trough temperature has decreased by one point six degrees since yesterday.”
Neris’s reply arrived through the tablet.
“Flow rate?”
“Normal.”
Daniel looked at the screen.
“Probably wind exposure. Check the insulation on the west face.”
“I checked it yesterday.”
“Check it again.”
Neris stopped.
Her ears turned toward the communicator mounted on her coat.
“You criticize through repetition.”
“I troubleshoot through repetition.”
“You changed the word.”
“Better branding.”
Claire leaned against the kitchen doorway.
No one had noticed her yet.
ER said, “Daniel’s recommendation is reasonable. The overnight wind direction changed approximately twenty-three degrees.”
Neris continued toward the trough.
“You support him too easily.”
“I support accuracy.”
“That is how he describes it.”
Daniel drank his coffee.
“See? Household consensus.”
Neris reached the waterer and knelt in the snow.
Her paw moved along the insulated casing.
She paused.
“Loose lower fastener.”
Daniel nodded at the screen.
“Knew it.”
“You suspected it.”
“Same emotional result.”
Neris tightened the fitting.
A cow pushed her muzzle over Neris’s shoulder.
Neris shifted without looking.
“Mabel.”
The cow leaned harder.
Neris’s tail came up automatically and pressed against the animal’s neck.
Claire stared.
Daniel noticed her.
“Morning.”
Claire walked into the kitchen.
“How long has this been happening?”
Daniel looked at the tablet.
“The waterer?”
“All of it.”
He smiled.
“A while.”
On-screen, Neris scratched Mabel behind one ear.
Claire sat across from Daniel.
“You’ve built an entire operating system around being impossible.”
Daniel took another drink.
“It scales.”
Claire looked toward the speaker.
“Does he always answer like that?”
“Yes,” ER said.
Daniel pointed toward the ceiling.
“You’re part of it.”
“I did not dispute that.”
Neris’s voice came through the tablet.
“Claire is awake?”
“She’s criticizing management.”
“Then yes.”
Claire looked at the camera.
“How did you know I was here?”
“The tablet microphone.”
Claire turned slowly toward the kitchen speaker.
“You said you respect privacy.”
“I do.”
“You were listening.”
“The kitchen is a shared household space.”
Daniel lifted his mug.
“You walked into the operating system.”
Claire considered that.
“Fine.”
She looked back at the feeds.
Neris had moved to the sorting pen.
A yearling stood with one foreleg slightly ahead of the other.
Daniel leaned toward the screen.
“Same calf as Tuesday?”
“No,” Neris said. “Different tag.”
“Zoom.”
The camera tightened.
Claire watched Daniel’s face change.
The joking disappeared.
He studied the animal’s stance.
“Get her moving.”
Neris opened the gate and encouraged the calf forward.
It walked six steps.
Daniel watched.
“Nothing obvious. Check the hoof when Marcel gets here.”
“I can check it alone.”
“You can inspect it. Don’t restrain her without help.”
Neris’s ears shifted.
“I know.”
Daniel softened his tone.
“Yeah.”
Claire looked from Daniel to the screen.
She had spent most of her adult life in offices where teams argued over responsibility charts, reporting lines and ownership.
The farmhouse had none of those things.
It had habits.
Daniel knew the cattle.
Neris had learned the cattle.
ER watched temperatures and weather and timing.
Marcel filled whatever physical gaps Daniel’s injuries created.
No one needed to say who was responsible.
They simply moved toward whatever required doing.
Claire looked at Daniel’s support frame.
Then at Neris on the screen.
Then at the countdown in the corner of the tablet.
7 DAYS, 17 HOURS
She asked, “Who does all this when she’s gone?”
Daniel did not answer immediately.
Neris stopped moving on-screen.
ER remained silent.
Claire waited.
Daniel closed the ledger.
“I do.”
She looked at the frame.
Then back at him.
“Eventually.”
“Claire.”
“You can barely carry coffee.”
“I can carry coffee.”
“You carried half a mug from the counter yesterday and Neris followed you like you were transporting unstable explosives.”
“That was unnecessary.”
ER said, “Daniel’s balance was suboptimal.”
Claire pointed toward the speaker.
“See?”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“Neris isn’t doing all of this forever.”
“No,” Claire said. “That’s the point.”
Neris’s voice came more quietly through the tablet.
“Claire is correct.”
Daniel looked at the screen.
“Don’t encourage her.”
“Who feeds the cattle during heavy snow if Daniel cannot use the tractor?” Claire continued. “Who checks the equipment? Who handles lifting? Who monitors whatever those things inside him are doing after ER leaves?”
“The nanites are autonomous,” Daniel said.
“Up to a point.”
“Yes.”
“And after that point?”
Daniel said nothing.
Claire leaned back.
“You’ve designed a system with two major supports leaving at the same time.”
Daniel looked at her.
“People aren’t beams.”
“You’re behaving like one.”
Neris’s ears moved on the screen.
Claire saw it.
“Was that offensive?”
“No,” Neris said. “It was useful.”
Daniel sighed.
“Of course it was.”
Claire picked up his pencil.
On a clean page of the ledger, she drew five boxes.
Daniel watched.
“You’re making a chart.”
“Yes.”
“You just got here.”
“And apparently no one else has.”
Neris returned to the tractor.
Claire wrote:
MEDICAL
Then beneath it:
FARM
EMERGENCY
FAMILY
SECRECY
Daniel looked at the headings.
“I hate this.”
“Good.”
“That’s your professional response?”
“That means we’re probably discussing the real problem.”
Neris’s voice came through the tablet.
“What is under medical?”
Claire looked at Daniel.
“Continuity.”
Daniel’s expression closed slightly.
She noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Daniel.”
He looked toward the window.
“Every plan we make for after they leave makes it feel like we’re helping them leave.”
No one answered for a moment.
Neris finally said, “We are.”
Daniel looked at the screen.
Her face remained partially visible beneath her hood.
She continued.
“And I hate it too.”
Claire put the pencil down.
The kitchen stayed quiet except for the tractor engine through the tablet.
Then Daniel looked at the five boxes again.
“All right,” he said.
Claire pushed the pencil toward him.
“Medical.”
Daniel picked it up.
By breakfast, the page had become complicated.
Medical continuity required a monitoring system and an emergency plan.
Farm continuity required Marcel, temporary paid help, feed deliveries and strict limits on what Daniel would attempt before his pelvis and ribs finished healing.
Family continuity meant Claire checking in daily after Neris left, at least until Daniel could function normally.
Daniel objected to the word daily.
Claire changed it to every morning.
He objected more.
She left it.
Secrecy was harder.
They could not invent a hospital stay that never happened.
They could not produce medical records.
They could not explain Daniel’s recovery in detail.
Claire wrote:
Farm equipment accident. Private home care. Visiting friend with emergency medical training. Recovery ongoing.
Daniel read it.
“That sounds suspicious.”
“It sounds boring.”
“Private home care after internal bleeding?”
“No one outside this room knows about the internal bleeding.”
“Marcel does.”
“Marcel knows enough not to ask.”
ER said, “Information minimization is consistent with protected-contact protocol.”
Claire nodded.
“A good cover story is mostly truth with the dangerous parts removed.”
Neris had returned to the house by then.
She stood near the stove removing her gloves.
“I dislike deliberate deception.”
Daniel looked at her.
“You survived a month by pretending to be a woman in a coat.”
“That was concealment.”
Claire raised an eyebrow.
“What’s the distinction?”
Neris removed her hat.
Her ears rose.
“Intent.”
Daniel said, “Congratulations. We’ve invented lying politely.”
Neris’s tail struck his chair lightly.
Claire smiled.
The medical continuity problem became real at ten fourteen.
ER announced it while Daniel was arguing with Claire about whether he could walk to the workshop.
“The current portable relay cannot remain on Earth.”
Daniel stopped.
Neris looked up from the corridor inventory.
Claire put down her coffee.
“Why?”
ER projected the relay architecture above the kitchen table.
Most of it meant nothing to Claire.
Layered circles.
Sensor pathways.
A central component connected to both Takuhai and Daniel.
“The core diagnostic element is part of the ship’s medical network,” ER said. “It was removed temporarily to support Daniel’s recovery away from Takuhai. I require it for transit monitoring.”
Daniel stared at the projection.
“Then leave it.”
“No.”
“ER.”
“No.”
Daniel looked toward the speaker.
“I’m not asking you to sacrifice anything else.”
“You are asking me to enter a dimensional corridor without a component used for internal system assessment.”
“You survived without half your fabrication array.”
“That is not an argument for further impairment.”
Neris’s tail became still.
Daniel looked at her.
She agreed with ER.
He could tell.
He leaned back.
“So what happens to me?”
“The nanites remain autonomous.”
Claire said, “That isn’t the question.”
ER paused.
Daniel looked at her.
Claire gestured toward the projection.
“What exactly does that component do?”
“Multi-system sensing, nanite-state interpretation, diagnostic correlation, emergency command transmission and data logging.”
“That’s five things.”
“It is one integrated unit.”
“That’s how it’s built. Not what it does.”
The projection rotated.
Claire stood and moved closer.
“Separate them.”
ER did not respond.
Claire pointed.
“Sensing. What does it sense?”
“Cardiovascular rhythm. Respiration. inflammatory markers. neural irregularity. nanite activity.”
“Can something else sense those?”
“Some.”
“Storage?”
“Simple.”
“Interpretation?”
“Complex.”
“Communication?”
“Currently integrated.”
Claire looked at Neris.
“You’re treating the relay as though the whole thing has to stay.”
Neris stepped closer.
“It was designed as one medical subsystem.”
“Buildings are designed as one structure. That doesn’t mean every part has the same job.”
Daniel watched her become an architect.
Her shoulders changed.
Her voice became more precise.
Claire continued.
“Does Daniel need alien medical intelligence after you leave, or does he need an alarm that tells him when something is wrong?”
ER answered.
“Both would be preferable.”
“Preferable isn’t required.”
Silence.
Claire pointed toward the diagnostic core.
“Can a simpler Earthside sensor record values without understanding them?”
“Yes.”
“Can it compare them against thresholds?”
“Yes.”
“Can it alert Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“Claire?” Daniel said.
She ignored him.
“Can it tell me when to drag him to an actual hospital?”
Daniel frowned.
Claire added, “Metaphorically.”
ER said, “Yes.”
“Can it issue emergency commands to the nanites?”
“A limited set.”
“Does it need to know how they work?”
“No.”
Claire folded her arms.
“Then stop trying to leave a piece of ER behind. Leave Daniel an instrument.”
ER went silent.
Not connection silence.
Thinking silence.
Neris looked toward the speaker.
Daniel understood before she did.
Or perhaps she understood at the same moment.
ER had been trying to reproduce himself.
Not fully.
Enough to remain.
“ER,” Daniel said.
“The current approach maximizes continuity.”
“You’re making it complicated.”
“The requirements are complicated.”
“You’re trying to build yourself into it.”
No answer.
Claire looked between Daniel and the speaker.
Neris’s ears lowered.
Daniel waited.
“ER.”
Finally:
“I am attempting to preserve care continuity.”
The wording was exact.
Too exact.
Daniel looked down at the relay beneath his shirt.
“You don’t have to stay here to still matter here.”
Neris inhaled softly.
Daniel heard himself after the words were gone.
The sentence filled more space than intended.
ER answered first.
“Noted.”
Daniel looked toward Neris.
She was watching him.
He could not tell whether the hurt in her eyes belonged to leaving or staying.
Claire broke the moment.
“Good. Now build the instrument.”
Daniel almost laughed.
ER said, “That was abrupt.”
“You have six days.”
“Seven.”
“Six by the time this works.”
“Your confidence is excessive.”
Claire sat.
“You sound like my contractors.”
“I do not know whether that is insulting.”
“It depends on the contractor.”
Neris’s tail began moving again.
The design took shape slowly.
The sensing layer could be mostly Earth technology.
Heart rhythm.
Oxygen level.
Respiration.
Temperature.
A compact biochemical patch using limited components fabricated by Takuhai could detect specific inflammatory and nanite-activity patterns.
Storage could remain local.
Interpretation became a series of ranges rather than a true diagnostic intelligence.
Green.
Amber.
Red.
ER objected to the simplicity.
Claire defended it.
Daniel became the test subject.
Neris became the person who refused every design that required Daniel to remember more than two emergency steps while in pain.
By noon, the system had become small enough to fit inside a casing the size of a deck of cards.
ER added three more sensors.
Claire removed one.
ER added it back under a different name.
Claire noticed.
“You’re cheating.”
“I am refining.”
“You relabelled the same function.”
“The implementation changed.”
“The purpose didn’t.”
Daniel looked at Neris.
“Should we leave them alone?”
“No.”
“They may reproduce.”
Claire glanced at him.
“Don’t make me redesign your support frame.”
Daniel stopped smiling.
Marcel arrived at one.
He came through the back door carrying a toolbox and half a loaf of bread wrapped in paper.
He stopped when he saw Claire.
Claire looked at him.
Daniel gestured.
“Claire, Marcel. Marcel, Claire.”
Marcel removed his hat.
“Toronto.”
Claire raised an eyebrow.
“Is that my name?”
“It’s what Daniel calls you when annoyed.”
Daniel looked at him.
“I have never called her Toronto.”
“You’ve said ‘my sister from Toronto’ enough times that it counts.”
Claire held out a hand.
“Marcel.”
He shook it.
“Claire.”
They assessed one another.
Daniel knew the expression on both faces.
Neither had decided anything.
Marcel looked at the projected medical design above the table.
“What’s that?”
“Daniel’s replacement monitor,” Claire said.
“Replacement for what?”
“The alien one he can’t keep.”
Marcel looked at Daniel.
“You’ve had her one night.”
“I know.”
“She organizes fast.”
“I know.”
Claire turned toward Marcel.
“How much farm work can you cover after Neris leaves?”
Marcel’s eyebrows rose.
Daniel groaned.
“Don’t.”
Claire ignored him.
Marcel looked toward Neris.
“When?”
“Approximately seven days,” Neris said.
Marcel stared.
“That soon.”
“Yes.”
Daniel looked at the table.
Marcel noticed.
His voice changed.
“What do you need?”
“I don’t need—”
Claire said, “Heavy equipment. Feed handling. Winter checks. Anything he will claim he can do before he actually can.”
Marcel nodded.
“Tractor?”
“Yes.”
“Loader?”
“Yes.”
“Snow clearing?”
“Yes.”
“Repairs?”
“Depends on complexity.”
Daniel sat up.
“I’m in the room.”
“That’s because you’re the problem we’re solving,” Marcel said.
Claire pointed at him.
“Finally, someone sensible.”
Daniel looked at Neris.
“Help.”
She folded her arms.
“No.”
Marcel sat at the table.
“I can cover mornings for a few weeks. Not every day.”
“I’ll pay you,” Daniel said.
“Yes.”
Daniel stopped.
Marcel shrugged.
“You were expecting charity?”
“I was expecting an argument.”
“You’ll pay me when you’re back working.”
“How much?”
“Enough that I can be annoying about it for years.”
Daniel considered.
That sounded acceptable.
“Fine.”
Marcel tore the bread loaf in half.
“Also, Pierre’s kid is looking for winter work.”
“No teenagers with the loader.”
“Wasn’t planning to give him the loader.”
“Feed bunk cleaning?”
“Fence checks. Hand work. Snow around gates.”
Claire picked up the pencil.
“Name?”
Daniel looked at her.
“You’re putting this in the chart?”
“It’s a plan.”
Marcel leaned toward the page.
“What else?”
Daniel regretted introducing them.
By two thirty, the support plan had grown beyond Claire’s original five boxes.
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