Engineered Magic

Todd

“You made it out of the debris?” Todd asked again. He really couldn’t get his head around Grandmother's description of where the bench frame came from.

“Yes,” Grandmother responded. “I fiddled with the pieces until they all fit,” she said again. She gave a longer explanation earlier, but his thoughts drifted off somewhere in the middle of it. He put his weight against the back of it. It felt very secure. There was no rust or erosion anywhere on it.

“Do you think it will go back to being debris?” Todd asked.

“Yes…” Grandmother said slowly. Even though she said yes, Todd could tell she was uncertain. “Eventually, yes, definitely yes,” she added.

“But in the short term?” he said, allowing his statement to trail off into the form of a question.

“I think it will last long enough for me to do the others,” Grandmother replied.

“You mean the chairs and table?” Todd responded. “Are we doing that?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Grandmother responded. “I shouldn’t have used the other pieces as fuel for the first set. Now I can’t tell which piece went with which position. Plus they are all so short it would take a lot longer.”

“So what is the purpose?” Todd asked. He really hoped she had a theory, because he didn’t.

“I think it is a Narrative,” Grandmother responded. “Something like, repair the rest and you get some reward. Remember how you suggested we may have to do something in a ruined gallery to spawn a crystal? I think this is ‘something’.”

“There is already a crystal here,” Todd noted.

“Yes,” Grandmother replied. “But that glass wall looks a lot like the surface access above the odd square. Maybe a door will spawn if we complete the task or something else entirely. I admit the reason why I think it is part of a quest, is because I can think of no other reason for it.”

Todd turned and looked at the window-wall. It did look like the surface access, but it also looked like the glass walls against greens that some rests possessed. Todd had seen them with and without doors. He wasn’t certain if that supported Grandmother’s theory or not. He turned and looked at the frame.

“Growing those snub ends back up to usable parts might take too long, but what if we just collected new components like Alex does? We might have trouble finding undamaged components this close to the exit, but we can run back to the grand staircase fast enough,” Todd proposed. The area below the grand staircase was noticeably less damaged than these outer reaches. Grandmother called it the start of tier two space. Home Square was located on the other end of that space, where tier two transitioned into tier three space.

“I thought about it,” Grandmother admitted, “but I am not certain I want to waste too much time on this. If we get back late, the rest of the team might decide to come and find us. It could be a complete waste of time if starting with the debris is a requirement.”

“We made good time getting here. No one is going to notice if we spend two or three days on this,” Todd responded. He didn’t mention that he told everyone not to worry about them until they were at least twelve days late. Grandmother was always getting carried away with something on the Speedwell. She would start by changing the oil on some piece of equipment and the next thing you knew she was doing a complete rebuild. “You admit you don’t remember which of these remnants came from each location. We can’t do the careful slow process, so I think we should just switch out to the quick version.”

“Hmm…” Grandmother murmured in thought. “If we were only tier one or two, growing the fragments might be the ‘safe’ option. Traveling deeper into the structure to get replacements could be viewed as more dangerous.”

“If we spend a couple days on it, there should be no danger of the heal unraveling when we head out,” Todd said as an added persuasion. He knew Grandmother wanted to do this. He expected that if they didn’t do it now, it would eat at her the whole time they were at the Speedwell and she would have persuaded herself to try it on the way back. Which would really be more of a waste of time, since they would just sit around for a day or two now. Keeping himself busy and not thinking about spotted fur charging out at him from shadowed trunks, was a bonus.

“I did wonder what would happen if you upgraded to steel or wood,” Grandmother commented. Todd started packing for the trip, certain now that they would do this.

“Alex put together a chair with a steel frame and a wooden seat and backrest,” Todd replied.

“Yes, I saw it,” Grandmother responded, as she secured her gathering bags to her pack. “That seat is really rare, although I have seen the wooden backrest before.”

They packed everything up, still discussing furniture construction options, and headed out. They traveled down and westward in the direction of the nearest grand stairway.

They cleared out about forty rooms at the bottom of the stairs. It was ridiculously easy for them. The occupied rooms contained only rats. Most of the rooms were empty of any kind of animal at all. Todd got a crash course in what a building component looked like, as they went through the rooms sorting out the contents. All components were set in the hallway. Todd noticed Grandmother picked up all the scrap so he started doing it too. It was mostly iron scrap with the occasional rare steel. There was no fiber scrap of any kind, although there was wood debris that with a prize altar could be converted to scrap. Somewhere around their thirtieth room they found an altar.

Todd remembered how on his first trip out of the structure they stopped at a set of rooms very close to the entrance that included a prize altar. At the time he thought nothing of it, he saw prize altars all his life. Now he realized just how rare they were in dark space. It was a little too convenient that there was one right by the entrance.

“I wonder if that altar is still in the room by the entrance,” Todd said to Grandmother.

“I’ve thought about it a couple times over the years, but I always forget to check when we are heading out. We should look this time,” Grandmother responded. Grandmother started converting all the non-component debris to scrap at the altar, by dropping it into her inventory. When Todd questioned her about it she responded. “I need to replace all the material I gave out over the tour. It will take runs deeper in the structure to replace my stock of bronze, copper and fiber.”

“Didn’t you say you found glass scrap around the top of ruined green?” Todd asked. “Maybe we should spend a couple days on the way back scavenging there.” Grandmother admitted she liked that idea, even while mentioning that they needed to find a source for stone.

They gathered up all the components into piles outside the room with the altar. The biggest pile was black iron, with steel second and wood coming a distant third. There were tubes, sheets, planks and little complex pieces that Grandmother explained were often used to mount the sheets to form table tops and shelves.

“Can we use these sheets to make seats and backrests?” Todd asked. “I know it wouldn’t be comfortable, but it would be more functional.”

“Hmm…” Grandmother murmured. She dived into the pile of black iron. In a matter of minutes she built two chairs and a stool. One chair was equipped with armrests, while the other wasn’t. She started setting the sheets onto the chairs to see how they fit. Todd helped out by sorting all the sheets out by length. He did the same with the planks of wood.

“What do you think?” Grandmother asked. Todd looked at her constructions. He had seen these three models of chairs before, although without the iron plate seats. He sat on each one. The plate flexed under him when he sat in the two chairs but held firm on the stool, even though on it the two plates Grandmother used hung over on each side.

“I like the chair with hand rests best,” Todd reported to Grandmother. “It reminds me of the chairs in the gallery. I have seen chairs without armrests before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stool in a rest area. Rests usually have a table, maybe we can use the stool for that?”

“We are short a few pieces from making another chair with arms,” Grandmother warned. She turned and looked at the pile of components. “I can do a table. I know four types. I actually can’t remember if it was three or four debris piles,” she said. “I think except for the sofa, the other piles were about the same size.”

Todd closed his eyes and tried to visualize the rest when they first came upon it. He was so tired at the time, nothing came to him. Instead he thought about intact rests he had seen farther in. There was a simple version with a sofa and chair separated by a small low table. There was also a deluxe version furnished with two chairs with a small low table in between them that was opposite a sofa. The sofa could have a high long table behind it, much like the display table they used in Seagrass, or a low wide table in front of it.

“I can’t remember either,” Todd replied. He went on to describe the different furniture pieces he could remember seeing in rests.

“Hmm...” Grandmother murmured. She pulled another set of components out of the pile while his eyes were shut. This time she was using steel. She snapped them all together to produce something that looked like the small table that appeared between chairs. She topped it off with two short wooden planks they found. A few minutes later she built the tall long Seagrass display table, made entirely out of steel. She used two of the shorter steel plates they found end to end for the top.

“We don’t have the plate or mounting brackets for the other two types of tables I know, but they are both considerably larger. One is the dining table in an inn. I think I would remember if there was a debris pile that large,” Grandmother commented.

“What about the sofa?” Todd asked. “Should we take the extra plate along for that?”

“I forgot about it,” Grandmother admitted. She chewed her lip as she started going through what was left. She set out iron plates in a pattern on the floor like it was the seat of the sofa. She rearranged the pieces several times but couldn’t get it to cover the space. She switched to steel and finally tried wood. The closest she came was wood. There were many one and a half inch sticks of wood which she laid out parallel to each other with a one inch gap between them. There was enough for the seat, but not the back. She didn’t have enough mounting brackets for even half of the wood present, let alone all she would need to finish. They didn't have wood boards anywhere near long enough to run the other direction.

“It looks like you're short,” Todd observed.

“Yeah,” Grandmother admitted.

“I like the wood version,” Todd commented. He picked up his spear. “I bet we can find enough.” Grandmother looked up at him, breaking out of her fixation on getting it done with what was in the piles.

“There are always more rooms, right?” Grandmother said, getting up off the floor. They went down the hall to where they stopped and started clearing rooms again. Todd spent most of his time on his hands and knees looking for those small mounting clips. There were several types. Finding enough of the correct ones was time consuming.

When Grandmother declared they had enough, they went back to the staging area outside the prize altar room. Grandmother broke down the two chairs and table, making three bundles of components. Todd volunteered his gathering bag to hold all the small clips. He noticed that Grandmother packed all of them, not just the number she thought they needed.

That left them with the wood battens they planned to use on the sofa/bench. Bundled together they were bulky. Grandmother didn’t see how they could carry them along with chair and table bundles.

“Alex has that cart,” Todd commented, “I didn’t see any wheels anywhere. What if we made a kind of sled and dragged it behind us. We could put all these bundles on it. If we run into trouble we can just drop the sled.”

“Not a bad idea,” Grandmother agreed. “I’ve done something similar before. We will have to carry it up the stairs, so it will need a handle on both the front and back.” After some experimentation, they ended up with a strange construction that was more litter than sled. There were wooden runners under it because they started with the sled concept. At either end were long handles they could drop and step away from quickly if they ran into trouble. Grandmother cast muffle over it to help reduce any sound it, or its cargo would make. Now able to transport a lot more, Grandmother couldn’t stop herself from throwing on an assortment of other components, ‘just in case’.

The journey back up to the rest was much slower than the trip down, but they still made it before sunset. The rest changed in their absence. The remnant pieces of components and debris under the sofa were slightly smaller. There were three spots along the floor that were now littered with an accumulation of dirt. Todd thought the frame might have moved slightly as well, but he didn’t mark the exact location before they left.

“These changes were quick,” Todd observed.

“They were,” Grandmother responded. “Rests revert back faster than normal rooms. I haven’t ever measured it. In just a few days the original debris piles will be back. That was how it was described to me.” Grandmother was inspecting the frame. She knelt down to run a hand across the floor underneath it. “I don’t see any changes here, not even dust on the floor. That is proof of something.”

“I think it is two chairs and a table,” Todd said as he studied the dust patterns on the floor. Grandmother joined him in studying the patterns in the dust.

“Let’s mark these locations somehow before I mindlessly cast a clean and lose them,” Grandmother commented.

“You can outline them with your ‘just in case’ components,” Todd suggested. Grandmother did as he suggested before carefully looking over the rest of the floor looking for any indication of dust. Todd crossed the rest in a different pattern also checking for dust. Eventually agreed there were no others.

Grandmother put together the chairs and small table and set them down into the patterns in the dust. Todd helped her sort out the correct clips from his gathering bag. Adding the wooden battens to the bench took the longest amount of time. When they were done, nothing happened.

“That is a disappointment,” Grandmother remarked. “I guess you do need to use the debris.” Todd looked around at the little furniture setting. They didn’t pick up the debris under the bench, the components outlining the chair locations or the extra clips spread out on the floor. It looked like a construction site.

“What if Control isn’t certain if we are done?” Todd asked. “We still have a pile of extra components, including that other table option. Maybe we should clean up. We can stash all these extras into a room.”

“Changes do tend to occur when you leave an area,” Grandmother commented. She looked at their makeshift litter with the last bundle of components. “I am going to put that last table behind the back of the sofa,” she said. “Then let's try your idea and clean everything up. If nothing happens while we are away stashing the extras, I will remove the table and try it that way.”

Todd began gathering the extras and putting them on the litter, even as Grandmother assembled the last table. She set it just behind the sofa in a configuration represented in other rests. She finished in time to help Todd put the last of the clips into their bag. Grandmother noticed Todd already stacked the remaining debris onto a corner of their sled. She reached down and cast clean on the floor to clear the dust from below the chairs.

A blurred wave crossed the room. That was not the usual animation for clean. A spark of light high above their heads caught Todd’s attention. The protection crystal glinted in the light. It looked bigger than before. When Grandmother finally found it, it was a tiny chip of crystal. Now it was the size of a coin. He remembered Companion’s assertion that the true god paid in time. He realized, with some embarrassment that he didn’t figure it out before this, that the small size of the crystal in a rest was why they disappeared and respawned someplace else so often.

“The crystal is bigger. Do you see any other changes?” Grandmother asked. She was also looking up at the crystal above their heads. They both looked around. Todd paced the length of the area, trying to pick out any other changes. Were there less missing tiles in the floor? he wondered. Were more of the light panels working?

“No,” Todd replied after his careful inspection. “It looks the same to me.”

“Same here, although I did notice the furniture is fixed to the floor,” Grandmother said. She pushed on the closest chair. It now appeared to be welded in place. Todd tried the sofa and found it was the same. Curious he tried the extra table, it too was stuck.

“The bench table too,” Todd commented, “and that wasn’t part of the debris pattern.”

“The furniture in open rests is always fixed in place, while the debris in ruined rests can be moved. I’ve noted that before. I thought it was so you could move it out of the way and use the entire space, now I think it is so you can do this,” Grandmother observed. “It does make me wonder though, what if I changed my mind and wanted a short table in front of the sofa instead of the one behind. Is there no way to change it?”