Continuation of writing promt entry Survey stories
By: LegalGraveRobber
“Could you explain again why we’re out here in the middle of nowhere?” The red dragon grumbled out to his crew of two. A hearty chuckle came from the human, Zachary, if he remembered the name right.
“We’re barely an hour away from town, Isen. Hardly middle of nowhere. As to why, because I’m showing y’all what you can do with some decent tech.” The human replied with enough cheeriness to rival Delos normally.
He could hear Delos shuffling about on his harness as she responded in turn, “We’re out here in the cold because of that human tech you’re carrying. Supposedly it can do a better job at mapping than what we’ve been doing.” She sounded a little muffled through the several layers of coats she was wearing. It didn’t feel all that cold to him, but Delos never liked it if the weather wasn’t perfect.
“We’re not out here to see which is better, only what this stuff can do for you.” Zach countered before muttering something about transects. “Okay, we’re just about done with this pass. Turn to bearing 210 and we can land on Block Mountain in a half hour so I can show you two the other half of how it all works.”
Turning to face the new bearing after mentally converting from degrees to partial turns, Isen settled in for however long this leg of the journey would be. Zachary had been issuing directions almost at random. Calling out turns and directions without referring to landmarks. He was certainly curious how the human tech strapped to his harness was supposed to work with him flying around seemingly at random.
Normally long flights felt boring, usually because they were spent going between islands or circling the same area. Flights in the human world hadn’t felt dull yet. There was always something new to see along the way. Here it was all kinds of hills and mountains with the occasional human structure.
Time seemed to fly by before Zach started calling out a final course correction to come in for a landing. “Alright, the mountain is just off our current bearing. Follow the ‘V’ of the hills leading towards its base.”
The hills in question looked quite strange to him. It was like a straight ridge line had been bent around a single point to form a ‘V’ shape. Each ‘hill’ seemed to have its own set color ranging from an orangish-red, dark brown, to even a very nice white.
Isen circled above the mountain, looking for an area large enough for him to land. It took three passes, but eventually, he found a clearing that was just big enough.
“It’s going to be a bit of a bumpy landing with the wind so hold on.” Isen warned his crew of two before committing to a shallow dive to bleed altitude and speed.
Delos, meanwhile, kept muttering about the damn cold while Zachary seemed to enjoy the view as the ground began to approach. A few quick flaps of his wings mixed with a decent headwind had Isen landing with a bit more turbulence than normal, but with no need to run out his speed on the ground.
“Now that was an excellent landing, Isen. I’ll get to unhooking the module from your harness.” Zach hopped down from his side and immediately got to work.
“It will only take a moment to get it all set up,” the human said reassuringly, as he unlatched several straps that connected the harness to an off-white box with a black sphere.
The dragon watched on as the human spent a few minutes pulling all sorts of things out of a bag and connecting it to the ‘module,’ before tapping away at his phone.
“Okay, everything’s connected and working properly. It’ll take a bit for it to render all the data, but we’ve got quite the view in the meanwhile.” Zach gestured out towards the strange hills and even more mountains off in the distance.
“Do we have to wait here? My old bones aren’t exactly fond of the cold.” Delos grumbled out from her pile of coats, barely listening to the human. “It’s too cold to sit and wait for your doohickey to do whatever.”
“Delos, you’re complaining again.” Isen warned. However, he did give a pleading look towards the human, who was too busy messing with his phone again to notice.
Fortunately, Delos sank back into her nest of coats grumbling away about the day. Breathing a sigh of relief, Isen bent his head down to look at what the human was doing.
Sensing that someone was peering over his shoulder, Zachary looked up before gesturing for him to come closer. The phone had a map on it with a lot of weird lines covering it. Each line had some smaller text next to them that even he couldn’t read.
“So far everything’s syncing up just fine. Just a little bit needs to be stitched together.” The human explained showing more of the map appearing along the lines.
“Ok, how much longer will it take? Delos is getting a little grumpy.” Isen asked earnestly.
“Theoretically, I probably could’ve done this on the flight back.” Zach explained.
“Wait, what?” The dragon questioned.
“Yep. I’m just confirming everything is working and stitching as it should before we head back. Sometimes there’s an issue with the data being processed and having a hardline connection is better for fixing it.”
“Hardline? What do you mean?” Isen tilted his head in curiosity.
“Uh, direct connection. Working with the data directly guarantees any fixes I do actually stick. Wireless stuff has always been finicky at best.” Zach happily explained while tapping away at his phone.
“Huh, wireless. Like those ‘drones’ of yours?”
Zach snapped his fingers, “Right on the money. For something like piloting a drone using wireless is sufficient, but for lots of data that needs to be precise…. Hardline is the way to go.”
“Interesting. How long before your fixes are in?” Even with his curiosity piqued, Isen was still a bit worried about Delos.
“I’ve got everything just about ready for transport again. Double checking the data has been a habit of mine.” Isen leaned back a bit in surprise at how quickly Zachary’s readiness to get back into the sky again.
“That’s awfully quick. You sure we don’t need to do anything else out here?” Isen asked.
“Nah, I just wanted to check the module to make sure everything got recorded properly so that we wouldn’t need to come back out here-” A grumble could be heard from Delos at the mere possibility of returning to the ‘cold’ land. “-Otherwise, I can strap up the module for the trip back to the university.”
The human didn’t seem to be joking about leaving, and Isen wasn’t going to question it. The sooner they got back the sooner he could have some of that wonderful human food called ‘barbeque’.
Zachary stowed away the module and quickly scrambled up and onto his harness before he could lower a wing to help.
Takeoff was actually quite easy with the head wind and sheer drop. Leaping into the void of open air, Isen flapped his wings hard, quickly gaining altitude as Zachary began to call out new bearings to return to the university.
The outskirts of the town came into view before the university did. Zachary had pulled his phone out to let the ground crew know to expect them.
Putting away his phone, Zachary called out to him, “They’ve got the landing spot setup for you, same as takeoff for this morning.”
Isen gave a grunt of acknowledgement before once more diving towards the ground. He flared his wings as he spotted the field-turned-runway and came in for a landing, barely disturbing his passengers as he came to a gentle stop. Being just off campus, it took only a minute for him to walk the rest of the way back to the ‘room’ that had been set aside for him.
Zachary had explained that it had been an old utility building that was being cleared out, but all Isen really cared about were the wonderful human invention known as heat lamps. As soon as Isen made it all the way through the large entry way, he laid down as though he were sunning himself.
“I will say, I could get quite used to this.” He lazily said as Delos’ grumbling was quieted by the sudden warmth. Zachary was quite the opposite, he was a hive of activity connecting the module to so many wires it just about made Isen cross his eyes looking at it.
Eventually, the human started muttering something about a ‘projector’ before practically leaping through a smaller secondary door and returning a minute later with a box overflowing with yet more wires. “If anyone asks, I did not raid the IT closet for this.”
Isen had no clue what he was talking about while Delos started chuckling. “What exactly did you ‘raid’?” Delos asked as she calmed down.
The human had both arms deep in the box looking for something as he replied, “I wanted to show y’all what we did today on the big screen, and IT usually has older stuff lying about…if I can just find the right cords I can power this thing up.”
“So you’re using someone else’s garbage to show us the day’s work. Fantastic.” She said with more than a dash of sarcasm.
Zachary just shrugged his shoulders, “It ain’t trash if it works, and- hey, those are the cords I need.”
The human quickly pulled a smaller box out of all the wires and set it on the ground before pulling a pair of wires out of the box. He quickly connected it to something mixed in with the wires, and then to his phone.
A large square of blue light and blinking symbols suddenly appeared on the blank wall in front of Zachary before quickly changing to what looked like a blank map of sorts. “Any questions before I start showing off?”
“Uhh.” Isen and Delos said in unison at the sudden light show.
Seeing the unspoken question for once, Zachary answered. “A projector can be used to display stuff onto a surface. In this case, I figured displaying today’s map would be helpful for understanding what we did.”
The projected image swiftly changed to show a map of the state of ‘Nontana’, Isen still couldn’t pronounce it right even in his head. There was a small dot on the map that he hadn’t noticed before which Zachary zoomed in on, presumably using his phone to control the thing.
Zooming in quickly revealed the lines and the numbers that followed the. “Each of these lines represents the path we flew today, within a small margin of error. Y’all still following me?” Zachary asked looking between Isen and Delos, neither of whom looked certain of anything.
“Vaguely, uh, how does the map know where we flew?” Delos asked, trying her best to remain attentive under the heat lamps.
Zachary gestured to the lines being displayed, “A combination of GPS and accelerometers, basically a whole lot of math to figure out exactly where the sensor module was.”
The module in question sat rather inconspicuously on the ground nearby.
Isen looked between the module and the map before asking, “But how does math, like one plus one, equal following my flight?”
“Much in the same way taxes and death are constants, there are certain natural constants the module took advantage of to measure where it was with a fair bit of accuracy. The margin of error was within a few centimeters which is quite good.” Zachary explained with his own brand of excitement.
The map quickly changed to a nearly exact copy of the original, but with only a few small differences between them. “The first map was made years ago with a camera on a plane, this map we made today took a bit more time but with greater detail. I don’t know the exact technical specs, but being much closer to the ground is way better for the image quality.”
Isen perked up at being compared to a plane. “So we did a better job than one of you planes. The same planes that can fly faster than sound?” His disbelief slowly turned into a pride of sorts.
“You would be correct. In this case, maneuverability was more important than speed and the balance came out in your favor. That and feeding you is way cheaper than buying fuel for the plane.” The human replied.
Isen’s head dipped as his ego took a little hit for being the cheaper option. For once, however, Zachary noticed. “That was a joke big guy. Don’t worry too much, if you head down south and order the good stuff you’ll match the planes in price real quick.”
An annoyed groan came out of Isen. “Even in another world I can’t escape that nickname. Delos, did you put him up to this?” He said with an annoyed smile, glancing back towards the dragonette in question.
She gently shook her head, “Nope, and you’re keeping that nickname.” Delos lasted all of a few moments before she smiled and then started laughing. Isen simply shook his head in exasperation before looking back at the projected map.
Sensing the return of his audience’s attention, Zachary quickly gestured along the lines. “The path we flew today covered a lot of elevation changes, and near as I can tell the LIDAR got all of it.”
He tapped something on his phone, causing the entire map to subtly change. The hills and mountains seemed to rise above the rest of the map before everything seemed to rotate until they were looking at the map from an angle rather than straight down.
“I know a few guys who deal with data like this for a living and they’d probably kill to get this level of detail. Don’t worry about the competition, you’ll never be out of work with stuff like this.” Zachary said with a genuine smile on his face.
Seeming somewhat mollified, Isen let out a sigh before chuckling. “Well, if I’m never going to be out of work then I’d love to get my claws on some of that barbeque. Sooner rather than later.”
“I can’t argue with that. Barbeque now, lecture later. I’ll call them and see how it’s going.” Zachary turned off the projector before calling presumably whoever the head cook was.
“How’s it going? Yeah, just have them wheel it over. Nah, it’ll be alright” Turning back to the dragon, Zachary answered, “They’ll be bringing it over now.”
Isen’s scales reflected the evening light in a near kaleidoscope of red around the old utility room as Zachary cleaned up. Giving the equivalent of a feast to a dragon necessitated a lot of dishes and what not to hold the food, and Isen had been a bit too eager to taste the barbeque. The mess wasn’t too bad with only a little mopping being necessary.
Delos hadn’t been much better. For as much of a grumpy mood she’d been in, the barbeque cut right through it with little difficulty. And now Zachary was quickly cleaning up after while glancing at the two of them napping away the feast. “Huh, I wonder….”
He pulled out his phone and started making calls.
The morning sun came through the windows situated near the ceiling, but all the warmth in the room came from the heat lamps on the ceiling. Beneath them a dragon and dragonette slept peacefully as the human watched on.
Eventually Delos began to move a little, slowly waking up. The sight of Zachary calmly watching her didn’t quite startle her, but it certainly had her more awake now. “Good morning Zachary.”
“Morning.” He said with nary a hint of tiredness.
“Is there any reason in particular you’re up this early?”
“I had a bit of an idea I wanted to run by you, and it ain’t that early.” Chuckling, he gestured over to a desk in the corner that had a computer on it.
“You got me thinking yesterday. Isen’s nickname of ‘big guy’, and I made a few calls to double check things and…” He quickly brought the computer over for her to see.
“As it turns out, you can register a callsign to a plane. And while Isen isn’t a plane, a certain amount of rules would apply.” It took Delos a moment before she understood the implications.
“Oh. Oooh. Now that could be a great deal of fun right there.”
“It would need, and pardon the pun, the big guy’s approval for the call sign.” Zachary chuckled while pointing a thumb back towards the food coma dragon.
“He’s going to be asleep for a bit. In the meanwhile, what exactly did you mean by never being out of work.” Her curiosity had been delayed by the veritable feast, but now had the chance to be answered.
“Approval for the next job won’t be coming through anytime soon, so we’ve got a bit. Have you ever heard of data density or land management before?” Soon enough Delos’ questions were answered and new ones raised as the human began explaining.
Several hours later, and after many educational conversations on government contracts the dragon in the room began to stir. Opening a single eye only to shut it at the brightness of the room.
“Urgh, how long was I asleep?” The dragon grumbled out while trying to blink away the brightness.
“Oh, not too long. By the way, did you know that humans have ‘callsigns’ for their aircraft sometimes?” Delos asked smugly from across the room.
Isen stared at her in confusion as the human walked back into the room holding a box filled with various odds and ends. Zachary just glanced at him before shrugging his shoulders and setting the box down by a pile of other boxes that hadn’t been there before. Pulling something from another box, Zachary began speaking into it.
“This is Zachary DeLaine speaking for flight D-025 with Big Guy checking in.” A quiet but tinny voice responded from the device he held.
“Check in confirmed for Big Guy. You are cleared for any maneuvers today within reason.”
Isen seemed to freeze in place. Almost as if he was desperately praying his ears had deceived him. He began to look frantically between the two members of his crew, hoping for an explanation. One which he promptly received as Delos began laughing hysterically while Zachary cracked a smile.
“What was that?” The, now very annoyed, dragon asked the room.
“Don’t worry. I took an idea from Delos and made it practical. You can do a lot of things with recording stuff nowadays.” To prove his point, he fiddled with the device again to repeat the lines precisely the same way as the first time. A genuine laugh bubbled its way out of the dragon.
“Okay, now that was a good one! I’ll need to think of something in return.” Isen said with a grin directed firmly at the human who seemed less than perturbed. If anything, the human seemed interested in the prospect of being the subject of pranks from a dragon.
Hunter or Huntress 
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