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Russian Orthodox Bishop's House, Dutch Harbor, Alaska, 2025.

A 19th century example of modular construction, The house was built in San Francisco, disassembled and then reconstructed on the remote island in the Aleutians.

#urban landscape #house #historic #religion #durch harbor #unalaska #alaska #2025 #pacific northwest #pnw

Grumman J2F Ducks and two Consolidated PBY-4 Catalina patrol bombers sitting on the airfield at Dutch Harbor Naval Operating Base, Amaknak Island, Unalaska, Alaska.

Date: 1940s

Alaska State Library: ASL-P338-0529

Having figured out what plugs went into what sockets and gotten the power switched on, Skye settles in to the standard issue office chair in front of the monitor. The words "Hewlett Packard" shine like a searchlight in the dimly lit command office. It skips the login screen because of the ID card she found in one of the crew lockers and inserted into the slot in front of the machine, its lanyard hanging down almost to the carpeted floor. The army decamped in enough of a hurry that there are random personal items all over the base.

Next comes a barrage of error messages. She used the same set of bolt cutters that she'd brought to deal with the padlock on the front gate on the conduit that runs to the satellite comms unit on the roof, so this is hardly a surprise. Letting this thing connect to the mainland would have been an extremely bad idea given the circumstances.

Despite the complaining a window appears titled "Mission Planner". The window contains, on the left, a map with satellite imagery, centered on her location, and on the right, a list of "effectors". Most "effectors" are flying drones, but some of them are rovers with wheels or tank treads. Effectors are given names by the troops that install them, usually based on a theme. Some name them after star wars characters, some after characters from the bible. These seem to have been named after Disney princesses. Skye clicks on the list item labeled "Tinkerbell", and from the context menu that appears selects "Activate".

A dot appears on the map, and after a few seconds a window with a video feed. Tinkerbell is still in its cubbyhole so the video feed is completely black. It also shows the battery state of charge (100%).

From her current position the coast is to the south, the cannery is to the southeast, and her sailboat, the Portobello, anchored off the coast to the south of that. Not wanting to reveal her presence quite yet she decides to go around the cannery and check on the boat. With a dozen or so clicks on the map she chooses a set of waypoints for Tinkerbell to follow. A series of lines appears between them on the map. The line is green, indicating that there should be enough battery capacity to make it there, take video, and then return home. Satisfied, she clicks "Execute". Then she realizes she needs to piss.

It's been almost 24 hours since she figured out what Scott and Arnold were doing at the cannery and she hasn't attended to any bodily functions since then, and since the adrenaline wore off a couple of hours ago she's gone through almost the entire six pack of rip its she found in a mini fridge in the office, so it's kind of amazing she's lasted this long. It's probably going to take the better part of an hour for the mission she just kicked off to finish executing so that's plenty of time to find a washroom.

The base is laid out as a set of rooms branching off of a single central corridor. The office she's currently in is, she thinks she remembers, the seventh room on the right. One of the other rooms must be a bathroom. She gets out of the chair, walks across the office, and out the door into the hall.

The building is constructed essentially as a basement. A big trench with a wall two cinder blocks high on top of its sides, with just enough windows to let the dawn light in, and an armadillo hide of steel arches over top of that. This form of construction is not only good at withstanding missile attacks but its use of the earth as thermal mass and the amazing ability of the arches to handle snow load make it perfectly suited to the Alaska climate. The base has two sets of diesel generators, a main one and an auxiliary, and Skye had only activated the auxiliary, so the circuits that power functions critical to the base's mission (like the drones) are powered but not such luxuries as lights. This gives everything an ochre tinge and makes shadows cast about five times longer than they seem like they should. Linoleum floors, clinic-white drywall.

She walks down the hallway, past the generator room, past three other doors guarding she knows not what, until she finds one with a toilet sign, turns the handle and enters into pitch darkness. She takes out her phone and turns on the flashlight, revealing a perfectly ordinary single toilet and sink. Once on the throne she checks her phone. There's a meshtastic message. Cell service hasn't worked on the island since it became the DMZ it is now, so everyone uses "meshtastic nodes", which are a kind of long range wireless pager that connects to your phone and works without cell towers. The message is from Max.

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