Play@YSDC

"I think I have enough for my report", says Harry, wishing he'd brought a clipboard with him. "It would be best to get the back to the camp asap. Don't want to get lost do we?".

"Yeah, I think we're done here," says Stanley. "I can carry him."

Ravello and State Trooper Kramer wrap up Bill Scott's earthly remains in the tarp. The process is time-consuming and nerve-wrecking. Rigor mortis had already set in a long time ago. Scott's powerful muscles are now cramped up, solidified, almost like the trees they used to fell while the man was alive. His body is fixated in the unnatural, broken position, and when you try to "straighten" him out, for ease of transportation, there is an audible crackling - his fragmented bones shifting around inside...

Wruter and Mister Ginge,Roll [b][color=#FF0000]Sanity (1/1d3)[/color][/b]! This is too much for you...

Mr. Handy,The broken body and the jumbled tarp makes [b]Stanley Kramer[/b] recall an old memory, back from his Pilot training days. He took up a group of parachute jumpers. Stanley observed as their parachutes opened one by one, like flowers in the sky... Only that for one of the jumpers, the strings were all jumbled up, and he deployed his chute only a few hundred yards above ground. Way too late. Stanley saw the body - the amount of brutally broken bones were like the damage to Bill Scott.

The fog and the drizzle change the forest. You are not a group of investigators and surveyors. You are a funeral procession. Instead of an ornate coffin, you carry a dirty blue tarp. There is no funeral band. Moreover, you notice that almost all sounds are gone: no mosquitoes buzzing, no birds. There is only the wind in the trees, whistling, lamenting - or mocking? - the death of Bill Scott.

Finally, you reach camp. You see Arthur Antal standing by the fire. He has a huge, full backpack lying by him.

"This place gives me the creeps," Jeff mutters, still feeling a little sickened by the gruesome corpse. "Ah, Mr. Antal! How about that coffee?"

"Going somewhere Arthur?"

"If Scott did fall, it had to be from very high up," says Stanley. "I remember when I was taking men up for parachute training, there was one guy...The parachutes had two chutes, a main one and a reserve one, in case something goes wrong with the main one. He waited until he was only a few hundred yards to deploy his chute, and when it didn't open right away, he must have panicked and pulled the cord for his reserve chute. Both chutes deployed, and the strings tangled together...After he hit the ground, he looked kind of like that."

"I want to go back with you," Arthur Antal says. "There must be an extra place in the plane. I don't want to stay here any more."

Jeff sniffs the air and there is the distinct smell of hot coffee, but then he notices that it emanates from a dark puddle on the ground next to an upset enamel coffee pot.

"Hey, hey, come on now," Jeff says firmly, irritated by the waste of good company-supplied coffee. "There's still a lot of work that needs doing here. You can't just take off suddenly. May I remind you that you signed a contract with Arctic Construction?"

"I don't care. I don't care about the money. I don't care about Arctic. I want to go back. I've had enough of this goddamned wilderness."

"Take it easy now, boy," says Ravello and steps closer. Antal grabs his bag. His hands are trembling.

"There's no need to escalate this. We're all worked up about Bill's death."

"Stay calm," says Stanley to Antal, making a soothing gesture in an effort to deescalate the situation before it gets out of hand. "It's up to your boss whether or not you can go, but if he approves it, there is room on my plane. Might get a little tight, of course, and you may have to sit next to Mr. Scott."

Harry wonders if there any regulations against flying with corpse passengers but decides not to press the matter.

"Let's all just take a breather guys" he says, picking up the coffeepot. "I'll brew us some more coffee and maybe we can talk about what's been happening here." Harry is keen to know why the work has been delayed from the beginning. The men are obviously shook up about something. Can't just be the weather, can it?

Antal hesitates for some time. His body language mirrors his inner turmoil, a psychological conflict. Then, eventually, he sits down next to the fire. Ravello and Kennedy too take their places: it is clear that these men have developed a traditional seating plan during the months of working together. There is an aching, gaping emptiness where Scott used to sit.

Harry finds a small water barrel and a tin of coffee by the fire and starts brewing a new pot.

The drizzle continues. The survey team doesn't seem to care much - they just pull up the hoods of their parkas and sit in silence by the fire.

Privately, Jeff doesn't blame Antal for wanting to get out of here. He turns to the Chief Surveyor. "I'll go back to the company with a request to get you guys some more help to get the pipeline finished on time," he promises. "Nothing I can do about the weather, though. Especially not a storm big enough to send a man flying through the air. I take it there's no one else out here? Besides the bears, I mean, ha ha."

"We're lucky the weather cleared up," says Stanley. "It wouldn't have been safe to fly under those conditions."

"So guys, what's the story? I've got to say you look like you've been havin' a tough time of it."

Harry examines the men closely, wondering if they have any spare sleeping bags. "Tell me about the working conditions.."

The coffee is ready, and the hot steaming brew provides at least the illusion of comfort.

"The weather never really 'clears up' around here," says Ravello, looking up at the sky. Low lead-grey clouds chase each other.

"So conditions are tough. Sometimes we have to re-do whole sections. We even thought that there might be some hippy activists lurking around, destroying our markings, but we haven't seen any signs of people."

"Or maybe there is," mutters Antal between his teeth.

"Well, that's coming from a man who cannot tell the difference between the silhouette of a bear and Ray squatting in the bushes," cuts in Ravello almost instantly, raising his voice.

The two men stiffen, and eye each other for a few seconds over the campfire.

"Hey, listen, buddy," Jeff says to Antal in his most trustworthy voice. "I don't blame you for getting jittery out here. Heck, I'd probably mistake Mr. Kennedy for a bear in poor light, too. No offence," he adds to Mr. Kennedy.

"Can't imagine who else would be out here," says Stanley. "If it weren't for the pipeline, none of us would be. Has anyone been protesting the pipeline?"

OOC,Thanks for the heads up, Mister Ginge!

"There were protests in other areas, affected by the Native Claims Settlement Act, a few years ago," Ravello says. "I don't know any details. Things were settled in court, the company had to modify the route or something similar in the end."

"But this area here is no man's land, not of special interest to anyone, as far as I know."