“Out of curiosity,” I said. “Where are people? I’m trying to figure out where you guys are situated and what locations might work.”

“I’m from Norwalk Station,” Kenzie said.

Norwalk Station would be off to the west end of Norfair, where we had the community center incident. The ‘Nor’ part of Norfair. It was a nice-ish area. I’d passed through it a few times. “And you’re in school? Are you in the morning or afternoon block?”

“Morning. I joined the study block for afternoons, I keep good grades so they let me, and I have paperwork from before that says they’re not supposed to give me too much homework, so I don’t have too much to do in the afternoons.”

“They might expect you to check in,” I said.

“They might.”

“Weld and I are in Stratford, so is Ashley,” Sveta said. “Chris lives somewhere around here. Tristan is close to here.”

Here being Fairfield.

“Bridgeport span, here,” I said. “I’m closer to you guys in Stratford than not.”

“Of course I’m the furthest out,” Kenzie said.

“Almost,” Rain said.

“Almost,” Kenzie echoed him.

“Where are you situated?” I asked Rain.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

“Uh huh. That’s starting to sound like a catchphrase.”

“I hate saying it as much as people hate hearing it. Locationwise, I’ve always liked saying I’m from everywhere that isn’t anywhere.”

I gave him a look.

“Stop being vague and teasing Victoria,” Sveta said.

“I’m not teasing. I’m in the middle of nowhere, it’s hard to pin down. North of Greenwich. It’s a trip to get here.”

That put Tristan, Byron and Chris close to center, Kenzie out west, Rain out to the far northwest, me a bit to the east, and Sveta and Ashley a bit further to the east. With the trains I was figuring it might take about four or five hours for Kenzie to get to where Sveta and Ashley were situated. It would take Rain another couple of hours, depending on how far north he was.

“That’s a pretty significant logistics problem,” I said. “Even in the best case scenario, if we found a place close to here, that’s a two hour or more trip for people to get here?”

“I could build something,” Kenzie said. “I can’t make promises.”

“How confident are you?” I asked.

“Kind of confident,” she said, sounding anything but. “I haven’t done teleportation or breaking movement devices before, but if I made it a series of emplacements and built them big, then if I traveled once a week or so to visit the send-receives and make sure they don’t break down, it might work.”

“Tinker stuff breaks,” I said.

“It does,” Kenzie said.

“It would also be liable to break or break down when you needed it to work the most. During disasters, or times when there aren’t a lot of downtime.”