wearing one whenever he walked around the site.
He was a huge man, just about two meters tall, but also, at first glance, something of a comical figure. When he was onsite, he was almost invariably clad in blue or green overalls whose pant legs were generally about ten centimeters too short for a man of his height and stature. His rather unorthodox choice of attire also tended to emphasize his very significantly protruding gut which stood in stark contrast to the rest of his physique, which, aside from a fairly bullish neck, was rather lean. The massive neck and a shiny bald head atop his stature did their part as well, lending him the appearance of a large but jovial upright tortoise.
“Hardhats are little more than some supplemental protection for the skull,” Fulcrum reckoned and reassured himself that there was probably little on the face of the entire worldmonde.Planet that rivaled the firmness of his own skull, the logical consequence of this knowledge being that he remained absolutely convinced that he, for one, didn’t require this superfluous protection. So, while everyone else seemed by and large to abide by these rules, at least on this particular point, he could not really recall anyone ever having come up with the nutty idea of actually challenging him because of his own refusal to do so.
So while the cap did nothing whatsoever to protect the structural integrity of Fulcrum’s boney skull, his scalp was an entirely different story. The cap was in fact an indispensible accessoire for him because it alone served to protect his hairless pate from the savage power of the sun. Fulcrum was completely bald and nearly without eyebrows. In fact, there was likely more hair to be found on the skin of an average market apple than on his head.
Fulcrum was always finding himself to be at odds with the climate. Today, it was the heat which he detested. He wasn’t absolutely sure, but to him it felt as though this might very likely be the hottest day of the year so far. He dabbed randomly and erratically at the streams of perspiration that gushed down his face with his customary wrinkled blue-checkered cloth handkerchief. Watched from afar, it was an odd manner in which he battled this inconvenience; instead of wiping the sweat from his brow, one could see his handkerchief appearing to peck at the individual drops of water running down his face in much the same fashion as a barnyard rooster might peck at a bouncing kernel.
And it wasn’t only the climate. Inwardly, Fulcrum loathed everything else about this place as well. In fact, deep inside he loathed almost all construction sites, despite the sense of camaraderie he often enjoyed with many of the men, bound together because of the hard work, the challenges, the dirt or even the noise and any one of a number of other inconveniences associated with the downside of construction activities. But, ultimately, there was little he could do to avoid coming out here to work on-site. After all, he was the 4.MΔN, or the Head Managing Project Supervisor, as his job description titled it. To many of the workers who toiled on the projects out here, he was actually known, with a tangible blend of respect and jest, simply as “da HeadHoncho.”
In fact, that was the logo emblazoned on the baseball cap that he wore to shade his shiny scalp from the sun. He had once received it as a gift from Barnz. The logo on it said, in bold silver lettering: DΔ HΞADHΩNCHΩ.
Of course it was all a bit of a tease, but that was just how the guys were in this job. He got on quite well with the entire group. It was rough and tumble out here and he knew fully well that, while they were a team, they were also far from being chivalrous musketeers amongst themselves. But they nonetheless worked hard, they worked fast and they watched out for one another. The work, building PowerCranks out here, or anywhere else for that matter, was always difficult and it could sometimes even be dangerous.
Fulcrum decided that it was both the light and the nearly unbearable heat which he despised today. And, additionally, he found himself to be at loggerheads with the humidity.
This was in addition to his revulsion of the hordes of mosquitoes that were apt to rise when the sun began to sink toward the horizon. It seemed that, aside from the force of the wind itself, there was nothing on the face of this Earth that was capable of keeping these clouds of monstrous little bloodsuckers at bay once evening began to set in.
But more than anything else, at least at this particular moment and on this particular day, he especially loathed this sun-soaked place because there was not the least bit of respite for him from the glare of the sun’s rays. Not even the tiniest sliver of shade was anywhere to be found out here.
Glowing liquid light seemed to saturate the molecules of the air around him even now as evening was just about to set in. While he was a person endowed with a penchant for grumbling about the weather anywhere and anytime, it was bright sunlight that proved particularly excruciating for Fulcrum. Even under otherwise normal circumstances, it could well be considered arduous enough for anyone forced to work out here in the open, day in and day out. For Fulcrum, however, it was in fact torturous, in the literal sense, simply because he possessed the unhappy certainty that he was very near to going blind now, his vision seeming to grow a bit worse with every single passing day. In the intense light of the day, contours dissolved before him under the whitish glare of the afternoon sun. Strong light, he observed lately, was now washing away the last boundaries that were still visible to him, rendering him progressively more helpless and leaving him with the disquieting knowledge that his eyesight was somehow being bleached out in a starkly luminescent osmotic hellfire which, while it was directly detrimental to his well-being, he was nonetheless required to subject himself to in order to continue earning his modest living.
Of course he had immediately attempted to get professional medical help once it dawned upon him what was happening. Not a single doctor he had visited thus far could help him, though, except to ultimately repeat the usual list of precautions and warnings to him–urging him, for instance, to do his utmost to avoid direct light or to wear dark shades whenever possible. His condition was in the meantime so serious that, despite his wearing the blackest of inky black sunglasses, he would often find himself spending a substantial portion of the day walking about with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. These days, if he opened them in the light of the afternoon, and if circumstances were extremely favorable, he now considered himself fortunate if he could see vaguely for even two or three meters at the most.
In recent times, he had gained an enormous appreciation for the abilities of bats, moles and even earthworms, and sometimes even jested with Barnz, the only person to whom he had shared his concern over this affliction, about the vast brotherhood of blindness that–what irony!–reigned invisibly around those who could see. He often referred to himself as being what he termed the third link, maintaining his rightful place in the oddly hierarchic ranks of those sightless species above, below and upon this earth.
The saline air parched his lips and his almost unseeing eyes burned slightly again whenever another miniscule trickle of perspiration streamed into them. He withdrew his handkerchief and began his tapping and pecking ritual again.
This, too, was just another part of his daily routine.
He stood still for a moment, dabbing erratically at the beads of perspiration on his face and, at the same time, listening attentively to the sounds of various heavy machinery that filled the air around him.
To be sure, there was at most times plenty of noise to be heard at the site. But, through experience over time, Fulcrum had acquired the ability to reliably differentiate between various pieces of equipment operating in the often tumultuous bustle of a construction site–his site–simply on the basis of the sound or the vibrations. Actually, clamor would likely be a more apt description for the noise which the various pieces and types of machinery produced.
He would listen for a certain rattle or clatter, for example, or a distinct roar.
At this particular moment, though, he was listening for one particular piece of machinery, one certain bulldozer that he was certain had to be operating around here somewhere.
He sighed to himself in quiet frustration amid the heat and din of the construction site. Out here in the open, in this blazing light, he found it impossible to open his eyes wide enough to see anything anymore. And even though he navigated his way around the site as though it were the back of his hand, he had to admit to himself that it was getting tougher to find anything or anyone lately.
Even