Chapter 8 — The Star Growers

An Cu took the boat out to the lagoon during low water hours and did not call it a survey trip. He said he was just going to check the pump and look at the fish. Lam went along because he wanted to place three passive receiver boxes on the deck, not transmitting signals, just holding air and dust samples.

“If it doesn't play, isn't it a seed?” Cu asked when he saw her packing the box.

“It is a control sample.”

“The people on shore call everything what it is.”

“Why don't you make it fly?”

Mien stood at the bow of the ship, wearing a seat belt. She didn't hear the engine start but felt the vibration through the floor. Ha does not go; I have to stay at the station to monitor people with respiratory diseases. Kha stayed behind to adjust the strings. Thao Nhi sent along a paper map with old buoys marked.

Van Suong Lagoon is not an open sea. It has oyster beds, water inlets, small boat channels and black wooden pillars. In the distance, Thin Cloud's reflective roof lies on the water's surface in many interconnected panels, a dazzling silver color.

“Why did they put it here?” Lam asked.

“Reducing water surface heat for the pond,” Cu replied. “That's what they said.”

“What do you think?”

"I don't think about them. I look at the phone."

He opened the engine cover on the ship. The revs are lower than normal, the engine sounds heavy. Mien touched the camera body, indicating uneven vibration.

“You see silver bullets?” Lam asked.

Mien shook her head, pointing to the water.

The water in the area near the reflective roof is colder than the surface in the lagoon, but not uniformly. Cu used a handheld thermometer and Lam recorded each point. Two sample boxes are placed on the deck, one in the bright area, one in the shadow area of the reflector.

“Don't call it impact,” Lam said. “Just state the difference.”

“Are you talking to everyone or to yourself?” Cu asked.

"Both."

Mien pointed to the water. A school of small fish changed direction at the same time the ship passed. Cu turned off the engine and let the ship drift. There is no more propeller sound, the water surface is flatter. The fish drifted east, avoiding the area under the roof.

“Fish don't read bulletin boards,” Cu said.

“Fish can also react to heat, light, salinity.”

"I know. That's why I wrote it down."

He used a pen to mark the map, but did not take photos. Lam asked why he didn't use a camera. Cu said the camera's battery might run out, but people still remember the way.

On the communication channel, Bach asked for the ship's location. Lam sent coordinates, stating only passive sample. Bach replied: "Do not approach the Thin Cloud structure without permission. There is an anchor rope system."

“We were 200 meters away,” Lam said.

“The wind is pulling in that direction.”

Cu looked at the ship's anchor rope. It really pulls askew. The wind direction on the lagoon surface is southeast, but on the ship's auxiliary sensor mast, the northwest wind blows in the opposite direction. The two levels of wind here are clearer than on shore.

Mien put his hand on the ship's wall and tapped the rhythm. I realized that the auxiliary pump was vibrating steadily from a structure in the water, not from the ship.

“There's a machine under the roof,” Cu said after looking at her signaling.

Lam opened the binoculars. Under a reflector there are technical buoys, ventilation pipes and flashing lights. It's not clear if it's the water pump or the surface conditioner.

“We don't measure ourselves there,” Lam said.

"It's been measured. With her ears."

“Continuous vibration, unknown source.”

Mien wrote: "Don't know. But repeating."

They placed the last sample box 500 meters from the roof, then returned. On the way, Cu received news that a small boat from an eastern village had changed channel and had to detour for another hour. There was no damage, but the driver said the water under the roof was "so quiet".

“Being quiet is not bad,” Lam said.

“But mariners know when the water is unusually calm.”

“I wrote it.”

“You always write down.”

“Because you always talk.”

Cu laughed. This is the first time he pokes without thorns.

Returning to shore, Ha welcomed them with a list of people with symptoms. Nine people had eye irritation, two people coughed. Dust samples from Choi station have high salinity, but the composition has not been tested.

Thao Nhi placed the Thin Cloud map next to the fish change direction map. The intersecting points form an arc.

“This round could be due to the roof,” Lam said.

“Or because of the situation,” Cu replied.

“Don't make it a single cause.”

"I didn't change. I said look."

Bach sent documents to May Mong. The program uses reflective panels to regulate water surface heat, does not spray chemicals, and does not directly change atmospheric composition. Each panel has an air exchange fan to avoid heat accumulation under the membrane. Bach said the operating parameters are public, but the microclimate data in the lagoon area is not enough.

Lam read the “insufficient” line and asked: “Who decides lack of data means no impact?”

Bach replied: "No one decides like that. The model just can't be conclusive."

“But the project is still running.”

“The project has a different safety threshold.”

“Is the threshold for the reflective roof or for the people living around it?”

Bach did not answer immediately. “I would suggest checking out the lagoon.”

“Written proposal.”

“You don't believe what I say?”

“I once deleted a string of data because words weren't enough.”

Bach submits an electronic form. Lam wants to get the printed copy, but the internet is unstable. Mien pointed to the line of code on the screen, saying the appendix could not be downloaded.

“The system does not allow downloading unpublished data,” Bach said.

“You are sharing with us.”

“I'm sharing what's allowed.”

“So where is the unauthorized part?”

“In the program's database.”

Cu crossed his arms. “Who is allowed?”

Bach stopped for a moment. “Operating unit and supervisory authority.”

“There are no villagers.”

"Not yet."

The word “not yet” makes the room more uncomfortable than “no”.

In the afternoon, Lam and Mien sampled dust. Samples need to be sent to the district laboratory, but the car will only run tomorrow. Ha said that if the seaside is closed every time dust increases, the medical station will spend twice as much eyewash. She wants a temporary threshold.

“There's not enough data,” Lam said.

“Patients don't wait enough.”

They agreed on an action threshold, not called the danger threshold: when two or more stations increase salinity and someone has symptoms, the health station opens the filtration room, not closing the village. Ha clearly noted who turned on the fan, who distributed the sign, and who called the group of people who did not use phones.

Mien designed a vibration strip placed at the medical station. When the signal meets the conditions, the vibration strip runs one long beat and two short beats. Deaf people can put their hands on it.

“I made my system,” Lam said.

Mien wrote: "Not mine. It belongs to someone in need."

At night, Cu took Lam to the factory and showed his brother's machine model. An old pressure line, a heat line and a noise line. He once wrote in the margin: "I don't understand."

“I have lived with this incomprehension for six years,” Cu said. “It doesn't make me an expert. It just makes me less confident.”

Lam placed the memory card into the community data box. “That's a good step.”

“Don't I want to be a grower?”

“I turned the ship into a model station.”

“I just took you away.”

“A sample station does not need to know itself as a station.”

Cu smiled, then looked towards the reflective roof. “If that thing changes the wind, will the operator know?”

"We can know at a large scale. We don't know at a village scale."

“So who told them?”

Lam looked at the series of dots on the screen. “Data.”

“Data has no legs.”

“You have.”

Bright The next day, a convoy from the meteorological center arrived at Van Suong. Bach stepped down first, holding a box of reference equipment and a recall list. He looked at the dome, the workshop, the medical station, then looked up at the star particles that were not allowed to fly.

“I came to get a grain,” he said.

Lam did not ask why. She knew the next debate wouldn't be over a screen.

Before Bach arrived, Lam and Cu checked the stretch of shore where the May Mong vehicle usually stops. There is a new row of stakes, each has a code sticker but no explanation board. Cu took photos from outside the boundary, while Lam noted that they did not step over. Community data also needs to respect boundaries, otherwise it will turn itself into what it is asking others not to do.

Ha took samples of artificial tears and eyewash solution and tested them on a dust-covered glass plate. She doesn't want to call people with stinging eyes victims of Thin Cloud without knowing the dust's composition. She wanted a guide: which symptoms could be monitored at home, which symptoms needed to go to the clinic, and which symptoms required calling an ambulance. Cu said a map cannot save people if there is no clean water nearby. Ha wrote that sentence into the plan.

While waiting, Mien watched the video on the boat again. I stopped at the frames that Cu didn't pay attention to: the light streaks reflected on the water surface did not coincide with the direction of the wind, a school of small fish avoided the turbid area, and the sound of the camera outside the frame decreased for twelve seconds. I cannot conclude the cause. I marked the frames to compare with the operating time of the reflector roof.

Cu asked: "Why do you watch fish?"

Mien wrote: "The fish doesn't know how to open the data table. But it also doesn't move randomly."

Lam thinks of people who live through their eyes, nose, skin and experience. They don't replace the sensor, but can show it where it needs to be placed. Star Garden will never have enough equipment to cover every square meter. It needs to learn how to combine measurements with the memory of people who traverse the terrain every day.

Late in the afternoon, Bach texted that he would go to the village by bus, not by video call. Cu read the news, took off his engine oil cap and wiped it again. Lam saved the original video to three memory cards. Mien prepared a list of questions, the first of which was not about Thin Cloud but: “Who has the right to see the data before it is called data?”

Outside the lagoon, the light strips on the roof reflect off in patches. The horizon darkened, but on Star Garden's screen the low wind layer remained a thin streak. No one knows whether tomorrow's debate will make it clearer or just make people look more closely at the ambiguity.