He shakes her hand in a boisterous and friendly manner. "Glad to have you here. I have to get back to work, but don't let Tils overwhelm you with too much stuff on your first day." He leans in conspiratorially, speaking in a stage whisper that Morrison can obviously hear. "Don't tell her I said this, but she likes showing off." He lets go and returns to his normal voice. "We're on for cards on Tuesday still, right?" he asks Morrison. 

A ghost of a smile can be seen on the corners of Morrisons lips. "We are. Barring unforeseen developments, of course." 

"You're just trying to get out of me winning back what you took from me last week," he says, turning to head back to his work. "See you there. And see you around, April." 

Imagine that. There's at least one person on this island who doesn't talk like a PowerPoint presentation.

"See you," she agrees, proceeing toward the hydroponics lab in a slightly improved mood. Actually, how do you get to the hydroponics lab from here?

There's a big sort of cargo elevator in the back, which Morrison leads the both of them to, presses a button, and waits. "They used it for moving heavy-duty equipment around," she says, by way of explanation as they wait. "We do too sometimes, too, for that matter. My point is it was installed quite some time ago, and it had to work, not be fast. So it may take a minute." 

"Sure." She doesn't really mind waiting. She can look back at the kitchen and think about the people chopping vegetables and how they probably don't talk like PowerPoint presentations either.

After a minute or two, the elevator does finally show. It's large, and padded inside, as cargo elevators are wont to be. Morrison leads them inside, and presses the button for the bottom floor, and the elevator begins its slow descent. "We needed a big room to put all the hydroponics in," she says, by way of explanation, "and the biggest we could find was the shooting range where they tested experimental weaponry. And that room is at the bottom of the base to keep it as far away as possible from people in case something went wrong." 

"Makes sense, I guess."

"It'll still be a bit of a walk when we get down there, unfortunately. We tried to put the canteen in a sensible place, since it wanted to be near to the place where we get supplies from elsewhere, near where most people work, and near where we locally source food, such as the fish and the hydroponics lab. Unfortunately this meant it meant it ended up somewhere equally inconvenient to all of them." She smirks a little at the joke. 

"Heh. Yeah. I don't know, it doesn't seem so bad."

"Well, I'm glad," Morrison responds. 

The elevator makes the elevator dink noise each time the ancient elevator goes down another floor. It is not fast. 

At the bottom, the door opens to a slightly craggy hallway, with the edges and shadows thrown into stark relief by the bare fluorescent bulbs with wires strung between them, one leading to the next to the next, off into the distance. "Not the prettiest place down here," Morrison admits, "but there hasn't been any good reason to upgrade. Even if it's slightly spooky." She grins a little, and starts walking down the hall, with only the tiniest glance to make sure April is following. 

"Low budget horror movie vibes," April agrees, following. "Couldn't afford a haunted house so they settled for a shitty basement."

Morrison chuckles in agreement and says nothing further, leading her down the halls past a number of heavy-duty doors, the kind you might see on a submarine. Or at a bank vault. "They did weapons testing down here, back in the day," Morrison said by way of explanation. "They wanted to make sure they could keep the labs sealed when they needed to. Sorry about the long walk, but the biggest firing range was at the end of the hall, and that's where we ended up putting most of hydroponics. It was the biggest room we could find." 

"The walk is fine." ...you know what, she's gonna say it. "You kinda come across like the only people you ever talk to are incredibly busy assholes who hate to spend a single second of their life waiting for anything."

The hydroponics lab is in sight, but Morrison stops short in the hall well short of the lab. And stands there for a moment. "That's... huh." she says, finally. "I suppose I see what you're talking about. I do work with some people with strong personalities, but..." She purses her lips in thought, then shakes her head and sighs. "Alright. Point taken. There's no need to treat you like..." she trails off again and shakes her head again. "Let's go to hydroponics," she says finally, and starts walking again. 

Those were sure some blatant omissions, but April will mercifully decline to care about whatever's going on there. She keeps following.

Morrison leads her the rest of the way down the hall, turning right near the end, to a door that's nearly but not quite closed. A harsh pink light is coming out of the doorway. Morrison opens the door the rest of the way. 

Inside is an enormous room, the size of a football field, or larger, which is full of rows and rows of shelving like you might find in a warehouse, from floor to ceiling, and all the shelves are full of plants. Some of the shelves are very far apart vertically, for things like the tomatoes, where the plants grow tall, others are much closer together for things like the cabbage or spinach. There are pipes leading to all of the shelves, and each plant has its own roots visible in the tanks of water underneath the shelf for each plant -- including among other things the carrots and turnips, whose roots are starkly visible in their unusually large tanks, growing tall and hairy in the clear plastic containers of water. Some look quite ready to harvest. 

In fact, if April takes a closer look, she'll notice that ones that look closest to harvest are next to ones that look not quite ready to harvest, and even less ready to harvest a little further back... and so on. There's a sharp delineation between the newest plants and oldest which are often adjacent to one another, though where in the racks that happens depends on the plant. 

Oh, and everything is bathed in an extremely pink light, making the green leaves that are everywhere to be seen look nearly black. 

"This is the magenta-est goddamn warehouse I've ever seen," she says, laughing incredulously.

Morrison smiles and laughs a little along with her. "It's something to do with helping the plants grow better," Morrision says. "Samantha can explain it once we run into her, she's somewhere around here." 

Speaking of Samantha, a very short round woman peeks around one of the shelves to see what the noise is all about, and squeaks in surprise at the sight of them. She's wearing a labcoat made of some sort of plasticky substance designed to repel water and other substances, along with a hairnet made of a similar substance and a large pair of thick round glasses. "Ms. Morrison," she squeaks as she rounds the corner. "I'm sorry, I know the squash is running behind but I promise--" 

"I'm not here about any of that," Morrison cuts her off, "and please, as I've told you before, you don't need to address me so formally." 

"But I know that things haven't been producing as much produce in the past six weeks and the new equipment is--" 

"Going to produce 70% more yield for half as much water once you get it up and running, I saw the charts you sent me," Morrison tells her gently. "I know things are running behind, but they always do. We take the long view here. We can supplement with produce from the mainland until the new equipment is up and running. I'm not here to fire you, I promise." 

"Oh. Sorry." Samantha pauses, not quite sure what to do next. "73%, actually, to be specific, but that's not important. But then what are are you doing here, Ms. Morrison, if it's not about the squash or the tomatoes or the stubborn spinach? And who's that?" 

"That," Morrison says with a smile, "Is our new boss."