The Republic of ARMY

7. No Man's Land

There were a lot of rules in Bir Tawil.

No guns.

No loitering alone.

No crazy and loud parties. Seriously, who would hear us in this great expanse of desert? Satellites?

No hooking up with the soldiers. Did that mean Curtis and I were a no-no? Well, with Ryan around, we'd probably end up with more problems.

Always stay indoors in case there was a dust storm. There was even a siren for that sort of thing.

I wondered how our little plants would brave dust storms. I had a tiny moment of self doubt. Was my dad perhaps right?

I looked around while making tiny notes on the sides of my notebook. Things looked great. I wondered if we could tap into the wind energy during sand storms.

My brother was second in command, with gorgeous Curtis being first in command of the troops. Ryan came to help me settle down as soon as he heard we had arrived. I was comfortably settled into my bunker as he talked about our parents.

My father had become richer, no shocker.

My mum had gone on holiday in Switzerland. Dad had felt like it was a good thing for her to do. Even then, he wondered who would run the household in her absence.

"That's why we have a butler, duh," I replied, making Ryan bellow out loudly. He was introduced to the rest of the team. He smiled at Mercy and Richard, winked at Leila and Sharon, and did bro fists with Chris, Martin, and Matano.

I made sure to feed well and rehydrate too. Since I was exhausted, I quickly went to bed and slept well in the nice, toasty warm bed. Deserts tended to get cold at night. Perhaps that was why they felt putting up actual structures would be better than having tents.

On the next day, I woke up early, around half past five, and took a nice shower then sat down to update my journal and work diary. At half past six, we went to have breakfast. The soldiers had done a sort of rota and we were the biggest beneficiaries of their services.

Ryan made sure I was comfortable before going to oversee the training soldiers. They tended to start early due to the high desert temperature. We had seen a few troops jogging through the establishment in either very light vests or shirtless and man, we had been unable to look away.

Muscles had that effect I guess.

The next agenda of the day was inspection. We saw a lot of things in place to make our lives much better. There were a lot of solar panels installed which converted the sun's heat into energy.

We all wondered if it would be doable to have windmills which could in turn pump water to the surface for us. We started discussing the merits and demerits of such and agreed to find out more about the wind patterns of Bir Tawil.

Our drivers took us around, and we drove through sand and some rocky areas to see the extent of the Nubian and Sahara desert to this little place. We figured that since it was uninhabited, remote and desolate, we wouldn't see much of anything.

That idea changed once we started spotting a few trees here and there. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a little eco system we could establish around these little islets of the desert.

Lunch was a little too warm and dusty for my liking, but I still enjoyed it, nevertheless.

We went back early, and that was just before wind speeds started picking up. Though we didn't get a sand storm, I wondered how bad it could get if I got caught in one. Would it uproot our tiny village? Would it turn over our vehicle? Would we get stuck in the wilderness?

Was there anything I could be certain of in this scenario? Apart from Mercy and her new beau flirting in front of us all and making us jealous?

Despite how discarded we felt as third wheels, work went on. For the next few days, we gathered soil samples from every corner of Bir Tawil, rode the chopper to see how the land looked like from an aerial view, went to places where we speculated there could be water, and then compared topography and cost of digging channels of water.

In short, we only had time to ogle the soldiers in the mornings.

While I was almost always in the field, a few of my team members stayed back to carry out more research. Before I could protest it, the first week was coming to an end and we needed to send our first complete report to headquarters.

The night before the presentation, we were suddenly attacked by some scorpions. I was one of the few who escaped. Sandra, a vet, speculated they had come to our place due to a sand storm somewhere in the desert.

"Or some sort of disturbance," she managed before hissing from pain.

Luckily, everyone got the medical attention they needed, and then very few of us actually worked that night. We were too busy looking after each other. I woke up very early, completed the editing and then waited for the first Skype call I would be getting from Dr. Li in Bir Tawil.

When it came, we aced it.