Noah's fingers rested on the two quarter-turn fasteners. The aluminum cap sat dull and obedient on the tool head. Bix watched through the gate chain as if patience were a sport.
"Pop it," Bix said. "Five seconds, we're friends."
"Cap stays," Noah said. "Enclosure is the guard. If you want a show, you can watch boring through the window like everyone else."
"Trade secrets?" Bix smiled. "Cute."
"Compliance," Noah said. "Cuter."
The utility truck had gone; the county sedan was a memory. Morning sat clean on the yard. Noah kept the door half-open with his shoulder and the hand parked behind the lip like a quiet bouncer.
Bix tapped the chain with the back of a knuckle. "You know I bring business. Folks out here like men who say yes."
"Men out here like men who don't lie about what the word 'neighbor' means," Noah said.
A crisp tick sounded at the fence post, subtle as a cricket learning a new note.
[External RF source: new.][Location estimate: east post, inside gate plane, 0.9 m above grade.]
Noah didn't bother looking for the skinny man. He spoke to the room. "Hand. Two steps, right of the hinge. Reach."
The hand rolled to the door, slipped its wrist through the opening, and patted the post with a blind surgeon's confidence. Fingers found a wafer stuck to paint. It came away with a stringy sound that should have been private.
Bix's grin thinned. "Careful, you'll break your toy."
"I'm good at not breaking what's mine," Noah said. He passed the wafer into the hand's palm, took it with needle-noses, and dropped it into the coffee can labeled bad ideas.
[Beacon signal lost.]
"Cute," Bix said again, voice flatter.
"Boring," Noah said. "And we love boring."
He closed the door until only a polite slice remained. "I'm going to buy from people who bring paper. If you need sand work, call Elliott's cousin. The real one."
"Already do," Bix lied.
Noah thumbed his phone and dialed the number on Elliott's card. A woman answered with the musical exhaustion of someone who has run trucks for twenty years.
"Gravel and media," Noah said. "Metric sizes. Delivery inside the hour if you can."
"We've got coarse and fine," she said. "Pre-filter rolls too. Cash or invoice?"
"Invoice," Noah said, and gave the address. She asked two clean questions and didn't sell a hole. He liked her.
Bix heard enough to hate all of it. "You'll come around," he said. "People always do when the right truck shows up."
"Your truck is lost," Noah said.
He shut the door and dropped the bar, then set his palm on the enclosure lid until his own pulse calmed. The room took him back.
[Status: conditional operation approved.][Suggestion: compile pattern library for repeatable output.]
"Yes," he said. "Library."
He opened the notebook to a page circled three times: BRACKET A (12x); RAIL JOINER (4x); Belt Guard (2x). He translated the pencil lines into coordinates, then into the choreography editor the HUD had been waiting for him to discover as something other than a shiny icon.
"Program one," he said. "Nesting allowed. Material: thin-gauge mild steel. Thermal under ten."
[Program P-001 created.][Tool choreography: Hand—hold; Cutter—slot/pilot; Emitter—seam.][Simulate?]
"Dry first."
The hand shuttled to clamp edges; the cutter danced its millimeter-high rehearsal; the capped emitter trailed cleanly behind like an instrument that had learned humility. He watched the arcs for stutter points and dropped the traverse at two tight corners until the ghost-line obeyed without drama.
"Run."
[Thermal: 9%. Vent capture: good.][Cycle time estimate: 14 minutes per sheet.]
The cap's stupidity became a comfort. Through the frosted shield, the world inside the box was all discipline and no spectacle. Heat bloomed as rumor and vanished as requirement. The hood's lip pulled a tight stream; when the first bracket fell free with a relieved clink, he felt the room change temperature in his head.
He checked kerf width and found it exactly where he'd promised himself it would be. The hand flicked the still-warm piece into a metal tray like a waiter sliding checks, then steadied the next edge. He loved the sound: machine tempo, not the boring beat of a saw.
He did not notice he was smiling until his face got in the way of the next note.
Two more brackets, then two joiners. He paused, checked the burr that wasn't there, tuned the feed a fraction, and let the program walk.
Out at the lane, a horn spoke in the grammar of a reverse alarm. A flatbed appeared in the gate's mouth with the confidence of a vehicle that had not been invited. The driver leaned out with a friendly wave that had a threat hidden behind it like a loose screw.
Bix stepped out of the pickup behind it and spread his arms in a parody of welcome. "Sand delivery," he called. "On the house."
Noah killed the program after the next piece and let the hand keep holding while the box cooled.
[Cycle paused.][Thermal residual: safe in 2 minutes.]
He set the hand to clamp the sheet so the lid could stay down without lying to anyone, should anyone become anyone with a badge again. He walked to the door and opened it a palm's width.
"Not mine," he said.
"Gift," Bix said. He walked backwards into the flatbed's frame of view and clapped twice. The driver began to back through the gate like a deliberate accident.
Noah stepped into the lane and lifted his hand at shoulder height. "Stop."
The driver glanced at Bix, not Noah, and kept grinding. Gravel protested. The bolted hasp creaked.
Noah raised his voice without changing his tone. "Driver, if you come inside this gate without a work order with my name on it, you're trespassing. If you dump on my property without consent, you're littering. If you block my gate, you're obstructing egress. You want those three words on your day?"
The driver hesitated. Bix filled the hesitation with his grin. "We're neighbors," he said, soft enough to be heard and loud enough to be a dare. "Let us be generous."
The flatbed edged closer, tires grinding old concrete. Noah could see the load shift in its straps—coarse sand under plastic that had been patched twice too often. The truck's beeper pecked at the air.
He looked up the lane and did not see the county sedan that had saved him yesterday. He looked at the bolted hasp; it flexed and held. He looked at the driver's eyes, then at his mirrors.
His phone sat cold in his pocket. The bar sat warm under his palm in memory. The box behind him breathed a slow, honest breath.
He kept his hand up and set his boots at the end of the gate rails.
The flatbed kept coming. The driver's face said he had been told that the word stop would get edited in post.