Engineered Magic

Todd

“The trip went really well,” Todd offered. He was sitting on one of the chairs in the queen’s suite in Home Square’s inn. Grandmother was pacing back and forth in front of the glass windows that looked out over the square’s courtyard. It was late, or rather really early. The overhead light panels in the courtyard were in night mode. The courtyard was illuminated by a series of lamps on the outer edge and the lights spilling from a handful of shops. Two of those shops were Alex’s furniture shop and Ellen and Sarah magic shop.

Alex was working on assembling replacement furniture for the pieces that were sold in his absence. He was using his existing inventory of components at the moment. Todd agreed to go out with him at first light to help refill his component stock.

Ellen and Sarah were placing their books onto their shop's shelves. They’d packed most of it for the trip to Seagrass. Enchanter expressed her desire to see the shop in the morning and Sarah did not want to disappoint the old selkie. Todd wasn’t certain what Companion was doing, although he may have gotten cornered by one or more of their selkie visitors.

Grandmother paid for a room for each of them at the inn for the night. A trip though the structure’s transportation system left a person feeling well fed and rested. So well rested the entire team was now wide awake. But two trips, especially long ones, back to back could leave you weak and nauseous. Todd suffered from the quick trips he made to the gallery to pick up Harry and Joe. When he did a quick turnaround between the gallery and Home Square when they first discovered the transportation system, it was much worse. The selkie were obviously aware of this as they chose to stay in Home Square for a day or two before heading home.

“That’s what I am worried about,” Grandmother confided. For all her obvious distress, Todd didn’t feel anything in his bones. She was doing better at keeping her emotions from leaking through the structure’s nanobots. The last time she slipped up was when Enchanter agreed to a deal that gave them pretty much everything they wanted to accomplish on their trip to Seagrass plus some more. Todd knew the deal worried Grandmother because she saw it as the start of a new Narrative by Control.

“I think Control likes the selkie,” Todd said suddenly. “They have been in the structure for so long they are like old friends to it.”

“What do you mean?” Grandmother asked. She stopped pacing and turned to look at him. Todd saw that as a good sign.

“They are players. I think there can be no question of that, but their biology limits their use of magic. Their use of song bridges some of the gap, but not all of it,” Todd explained. “They have stagnated. I think Control drew humans west in order to make contact with them. Control wanted interaction with us to revitalize the selkie and drive them forward in the game. Instead Control got war, but that is not what it wanted. It is helping us in subtle ways, like sending us to a different transportation room, to try and fix that mistake. Have you ever asked Sarah why she cast all those cloaking spells on us right before we ran into that selkie by Fishtown?”

“No,” Grandmother replied. “I assumed she heard or saw something.”

“She told me she heard a voice in her head that told her to hide,” Todd explained. “She has convinced herself it was her unconscious mind talking to her, but I think it was Control. Control didn’t think we were ready yet to meet the selkie. Instead it sent us Companion, who is a perfectly average selkie. So average in fact that I overheard multiple conversations in Seagrass where his fellow selkie tried to figure out how he could have lived, when his companion, who appears to have been some sort of prodigy, didn’t. Companion should have bled to death in that hallway, but Control stopped the bleeding and kept his brain oxygenated. The bears chasing his group didn’t finish him off, because Control didn’t allow them to see him. You should ask Companion why he wanted to go with us when we left the hidden room.”

“We were deep in bear country, getting out on his own would have been very difficult,” Grandmother observed.

“Going with a group of your species' latest enemy led by a lesser god that can kill you with a thought doesn’t seem like a better choice to me,” Todd countered. “If Sarah is integrated enough to hear Control’s voice, how much clearer must it be for Companion?”

“I can’t kill him with a thought,” Grandmother countered.

“Try to convince Companion of that,” Todd shot back.

“Have you ever heard this voice?” Grandmother asked Todd.

“No,” Todd responded. “I am thankful for that.” Grandmother sat down on the sofa.

“It is an interesting Narrative,” she observed. “It does explain some of the odder events that have happened recently. I don’t like the idea of Control transmitting messages to Sarah’s brain. It seems rather close to the control methods it uses on animal populations. If Companion heard it too, that would take some of the sting out of it.” Grandmother put on her thinking face. Todd knew better than to interrupt her. He leaned back in his chair and waited.

“What if it wasn’t really a voice in her head? Actually simulating brain impulses so that a person ‘heard’ a voice seems rather difficult. A set of nanobots ‘whispering’ directly into your ear canal would be much easier. If it was soft enough and omnidirectional, perhaps it would feel like a voice in your head,” Grandmother said aloud as she worked her way through the problem. “We know Control uses sound canceling for spells like muffle, adding sound in can’t be any more difficult. Although there is the language problem,” Grandmother mused.

“Aren’t we past thinking Control doesn’t speak our language?” Todd asked innocently.

“Yeah,” Grandmother said with a sigh. “I just really hate the idea of Control listening in on us.”

“It’s a big structure, maybe it doesn’t always pay attention,” Todd said trying to reassure her.

“It's a machine. If it listens at all, it listens everywhere all the time,” Grandmother replied.

“And it always has,” Todd concluded. “It seems like our knowledge of it listening in doesn’t necessitate a change in our behavior. Although it makes me wonder. Did Control produce the odd square with its access to the surface because Muriel wanted to be a farmer? Or is the surface the next step of the game?”

“Can it be both?” Grandmother countered. “Perhaps Control is tuning the game content to what it thinks will engage us. It is more than just Muriel. Control must know we keep going back out the exit, even if it can’t quite see the Speedwell. If Control wants the selkie to play, it must want us to play too.”

“True,” Todd responded. “So, what do we have on the schedule?”

“I still want to finish the human squares,” Grandmother responded. “I think we will leave any additional selkie settlements until next season. The selkie have good communication between their squares with their system of transportation room keepers. I want to let the news of us travel before we try another square.”

“Don’t forget the coliseum,” Todd offered. “If we don’t investigate it, someone else undoubtably will.”

“I know,” Grandmother responded. “Which reminds me we need to ask the selkie if they know how it works. I’ll see if Companion can do that. I told Harry and Joe to recommend a team of six, but I keep thinking what if I am wrong. What if it makes you fight each other? In that case everyone should challenge it alone.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Todd responded. “There was only one skeleton in the pit. Is that an indication that only one person should enter, or does it mean a single person is bound to fail? It is hard to say.” Todd thought about going down and trying it himself. If it was a single player event in tier three space, his own tier four rank should make it survivable for him. That would stop Grandmother from sneaking off to try it on her own. The problem was if it killed him, who would watch Grandmother’s back after that? Everyone else in the group was only tier three, and although Todd knew he could trust them to try, he wasn’t certain they could do it as well as him.

“One of the last squares on my list is in the far north. We should ask there if anyone remembers when the Blacksmith’s sister’s spouse’s uncle found the glass armor,” Grandmother commented. Todd hoped that meant Grandmother would hold off trying the coliseum until they heard what the northerners had to say.

“I would go try it now,” Grandmother admitted, “but I owe Enchanter the means to learn our language. Companion sat through the early childhood teaching packages on the Speedwell that are mostly audio with images. I don’t think we will get Enchanter out to the ship, but the teaching system has an option to print out childhood books to help teach reading. With a tutor at her side they may also help her learn the spoken language.”

“How long will they last in the structure?” Todd asked.

“I don’t know,” Grandmother admitted. “The rate something from the outside degrades seems to be related to how high tech it is. A book should be fairly low tech.” Grandmother pulled the knife from her belt and inspected the blade. “As long as I handle a knife everyday, it lasts a season easily enough. I’ve carried the same blade two or three seasons before. I dropped a self charging flashlight out of a tree about a week into my first trip and I swear it was completely gone in the morning.” Grandmother slipped the knife back into its sheath.

“What about your staff?” Todd asked. He wondered about that before. He saw her replace her leathers, her pack, her knife and even her boots, (a cobbler made them for her out in the eastern villages), but he never saw her change staves.

Grandmother looked startled. She looked over at her walking staff where it rested in the weapon rack next to Todd’s spear. It started life as a broom handle in a cleaning closet on the Speedwell. Made of carbon fiber it was incredibly tough. Most of the broom handles on the Speedwell were made of a cheap plastic that was an inflight replacement. Grandmother once told them that the carbon fiber versions were made on far away Earth before launch. This little fact was where Alex got his title Wielder of the Earthen Quarterstaff for Grandmother.

“I never thought about it before,” Grandmother replied. “It’s the same one,” she said in a puzzled voice. “I have no idea why it is different.” They both sat there for several minutes thinking about it. No easy solution appeared. Todd made a note to tell Alex. His Earthen Quarterstaff title might be the winner after all.

“Do you want to pick up the books for Enchanter during the maintenance cycle, or make a separate trip out and back to pick them up?” Todd asked, when he gave up trying to come up with an explanation for the walking staff.

“A separate trip,” Grandmother decided. “I don’t want Enchanter to have to wait that long. We will do a couple squares and see where Sarah is with her new books. When she is getting close to completing Enchanter’s first set, we’ll run out to the Speedwell.”

“Just the two of us could go,” Todd offered. The wording she used made him think of the running survey she took him on. “We could try running the whole trip to make it faster.”

“There’s another thing,” Grandmother said. “When we first entered the structure there were a lot of ruined galleries in dark space. I didn’t pay too much attention to them. I recorded the inscriptions and moved on. Most of them disappeared after a while, as the rooms were remodeled. Now that we know a Gallery can be accessed through the transportation system, I’d like to see if we can find one near the entrance. A working transportation room closer to the Speedwell would be very useful.”

“Were any of the locations of the galleries mapped?” Todd asked. “There must be a lot of fixed architecture in the walls to support a transportation room. I would expect galleries to reappear in the same places over and over, like prize altars.”

“I don’t think so,” Grandmother responded. “Although we may be able to get a rough idea by processing some of the old recordings. They were ‘ruined’ galleries so they may never have been part of the transportation system.”

“We won’t know until we find one,” Todd responded. He was accustomed to Grandmother second guessing herself, even though her first guess was usually accurate. “Didn’t you tell me there is a ruined gallery in Chicago?”

“Yes,” Grandmother replied. “It is one of Chicago’s entrances, so it is not a good candidate for clandestine travel. Besides, it is farther from the entrance than Londontown. I am pretty certain no one has ever found a crystal there.”

“We can still see if it has a transportation room. Maybe it takes a quest of some type to spawn the crystal,” Todd hypothesized, “or we can only leave from there.”

“Like a potential square?” Grandmother commented. “That makes a lot of sense. It is still too far. If we can’t find one closer to the Speedwell we can go back to it. I’ve always meant to visit Chicago last.”

The lights in the square beyond the windows brightened a notch. It was the first indication the structure was beginning its day cycle.

“I told Alex I would go on a salvage run with him this morning,” Todd said, getting to his feet. “He was saying something about how he wanted to get a workbench back in stock for the selkie to see.”

“I want to go with you, but I think I better stay in the square today and keep everyone on their best behavior,” Grandmother replied.

“You could go around to the shops and ask all the crafters about patterns,” Todd suggested. “Maybe one of them knows something about glass.” Grandmother agreed that that sounded like a good idea. It would keep her presence public knowledge while the selkie wandered around and it was information she wanted to know.

Todd retrieved his spear from the weapons rack and went down into the courtyard. He looked up above the entrance as he stepped out of the inn even though he knew the windows were opaque from this side. On his way across to Alex’s shop he decided to go up to his apartment first and retrieve his pack and gathering bags, just in case he came across something interesting he wanted for himself.

When he got back down to the courtyard he found Alex pacing anxiously in front of his shop. The courtyard light ticked up another increment in intensity, but it still wasn’t at daytime levels. There was a push cart next to Alex that looked remarkably like something off the Speedwell, only the wheels were tiny.

“Are you ready then?” Todd said, trying to preempt Alex from accusing him of being late.

“Let's get going,” Alex said, with obvious excitement in his voice. “I want to fetch the workbenches first. If Grandmother’s numbers are right they respawned days ago.”

Alex led Todd directly to a room off to the right of the back door. Alex parked his cart a way down the hall, where it wouldn’t get in the way, if fighting spilled out into the halls.

“Grandmother cleared out a nasty nest of spiders in this room,” Alex commented as they got ready for entry. “She did it in a couple minutes, but I thought at the time it would be a hard fight for me.”

“You want to go in together,” Todd asked, “or pull them to the hall?”

“Pull to the hall,” Alex responded, as he drew his sword.

The room was full of badgers. They pulled them in sets of four or five into the hall and slaughtered them. Both Alex and Todd were forced to use more magic than their usual style. Todd thought it was good training for the two of them. They both usually took the front position, using physical skills and weapon imbuement to hold the animals away from the party. They relied on the casters to do the heavy damage.

They went about it methodically, pausing to recover between pulls. They piled up the dead animals to the side, where they wouldn’t hinder their footwork. It took three times as long for just the two of them, but eventually the room was empty. Neither one of them were ever in any real danger. After a quick scan of the suite for any animals hidden in the other rooms, Alex began digging through the piles of debris. Todd was a little surprised, since he could see one of Alex’s workbenches just sitting there.

“Can you load this top onto the cart?” Alex asked. Todd walked over and saw that a second thick ceramic bench top was mingled in with a pile of junk near Alex.

“Sure,” Todd said. He secured his spear and leaned down to pick up the slab of ceramic. The top was surprisingly heavy. Todd carried it out into the hall where he realized he should have moved the cart closer. He set the top down on the cart and pushed the load closer to the door. The cart slid forward with ease. Todd was impressed the small little wheels could take that kind of load.

“That cart is really nice,” Todd commented as he stepped back into the room. “I’ve only seen wheels like that on mop buckets in the Speedwell. I am surprised they can carry the weight of that top.”

Alex was across the room. In the few minutes Todd was in the hallway, he detached the top from the second workbench. He was working on reducing the leg structure down to a neat stack of dark iron tubes.

“That reminds me,” Alex said as he straightened up from his work. He rushed off into one of the smaller rooms in the suite. He returned with the remnants of an actual mop bucket. He flipped the bucket over revealing four more of the same tiny wheels.

“I almost forgot them,” Alex explained as he worked to detach the wheels from the bucket remains. “Grandmother told me they are really rare.”

Leaving Alex to his wheels, Todd picked up the next top and carried it out to the cart. On his way back in to get the stack of iron, Alex was back to gathering another set of iron, along with vellum and notebooks.

“What is that stack for?” Todd asked, curious.

“Grandmother found a complete second workbench in pieces. It is going to be hard to find all the parts this time. She warned me the smaller parts are debris and respawn on the debris timer. I think it has only been eleven days and not twelve, since I last cleared this room. I should wait until tomorrow, but I really want the selkie to see it. Hopefully we can pick up some of the smaller pieces in fresh rooms,” Alex replied. “Oh, Ellen mentioned that she is still interested in all the vellum and notebooks we can find. I guess they are running short after their success in Seagrass.”

“They want the loose sheets of vellum too?” Todd asked to confirm.

“Yeah, Sarah found a tool that binds them together into a notebook. When they run out of notebooks they are going to bind their own. I guess it takes a kind of extra thick vellum or thin leather for the covers, so if you see anything like that, she wants it too,” Alex reported.

After Alex made his picks they headed back to the square to drop this load off before they started their full run. They made one stop at a room closer to the back door. Where Alex retrieved a slightly scorched wooden chair. Alex tapped out the clean spell on the chair. Cleaned it looked much better than when Alex pulled it from the pile. Alex studied the chair closely before looking over at Todd.

“Would you mind?” Alex asked.

“Mind what?” Todd asked not understanding what the younger warrior wanted.

“When Grandmother cleaned it, it turned into a work of art. You're a tier higher than me, can you give it a try?” Alex asked.

“Sure,” Todd agreed, “but I don’t expect art.” He walked over and tapped the spell out. Since Alex already cleaned it once, Todd wasn’t really expecting any change. The clean wave traveled across the wood. It did look a little brighter afterwards. Curious Todd cast it again. The improvement was even less this time around, but it was still detectable. Clean was a tier one spell. Todd wondered if there was a tier two version of it someplace.