May 6, 2440
By seven in the morning, the Leta crossing sounded like a sawmill had declared war on a forest.
Ellis Chakrobarty stood beside his pickup with yesterday’s map folded against the hood while twelve commercial tree cutters unloaded along the road.
Ravi, thirteen and already dirty despite having done almost nothing, watched the first machine crawl toward the tree line.
“Twelve of them are going in there?”
“Not beside each other.”
“There isn’t room.”
“That would be why.”
The machines spread out instead.
Two started widening the entrance from the road. Three worked deeper into what would become the shuttle strip. Others opened parallel bites into the woods, staggered far enough apart that falling trees, booms, and processing heads stayed out of one another’s way. As one machine cleared forward, another shifted into the space behind or beside it.
The goal was brutally simple.
Forty meters wide.
Five hundred meters long.
Clear enough that a shuttle could eventually land, settle, unload, and leave again.
At the road, they also needed enough space for a truck and trailer coming through the Leta crossing to pull completely off the pavement, turn, wait, unload equipment, and get back out without blocking traffic.
Nothing inside those areas was staying because it happened to be pretty.
Yesterday’s markings meant something different.
Ellis pointed as one of the cutters approached a large walnut marked with bright tape.
“That one gets handled carefully.”
The operator slowed, positioned the cutting head low, took the trunk cleanly, and laid it away from the general pile.
Ravi watched it come down.
“So walnut is good.”
“Very.”
“What about that?”
He pointed toward a huge cottonwood farther down the line.
“Useful.”
“But not walnut useful.”
“Exactly.”
The cottonwood would still become lumber, panels, crates, furniture stock, pulp, or whatever somebody eventually decided it was best suited for. A big gum tree was the same. Sound wood was sound wood.
Oak and walnut simply earned more attention.
Everything else still had value until somebody proved otherwise.
By nine, the neat categories were becoming visible behind the cutters.
The best oak and walnut trunks were being laid separately for future milling. Other large sound logs went into broader stacks. Small trees, crooked trunks, limbs, brush, and damaged material accumulated in another stream for processing later.
The cutters did not stop every time a tree changed category. They kept eating.
A machine would disappear behind a wall of young trees, and minutes later there would be open sky where the woods had been.
Caleb Morrow came walking up from the crossing and pointed back toward the road.
“We can get a truck off now.”
Ellis looked.
They had opened enough ground that a tractor with a long trailer could turn out of traffic and sit fully clear of the road.
“Can it turn around?”
“Not comfortably.”
“Then keep cutting.”
Caleb nodded and headed back.
Ravi leaned against the pickup.
“How much do they have to clear today?”
“As much as they can.”
“That’s not a number.”
“No.”
Ravi looked down the growing corridor.
Yesterday it had been woodland.
Now sunlight reached the ground hundreds of meters farther than it had that morning. The twelve machines were scattered through the opening, never in a clean line, each taking whatever piece of the job made sense from where it stood.
Some were cutting valuable timber.
Some were chewing through scrub.
Some were simply making room for the others.
Ellis’s phone rang shortly before noon.
Matt.
“How’s Leta?”
“Getting less wooded.”
“Landing area?”
“Taking shape.”
“Truck access?”
“Enough to get one off the road. I want more turning room.”
“Good.”
Ellis watched another large oak settle gently onto the ground while fifty meters away a cutter tore through a patch of low-value growth almost without slowing.
“You really planning to put a shuttle down here?”
“Not today.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Matt laughed.
“Keep cutting, Ellis.”
The call ended.
Ravi looked at his father.
“Well?”
Ellis slipped the phone into his pocket.
“Apparently we keep cutting.”
Ravi looked toward the machines.
“That part I had figured out.”
