“Kimber, you’re late.”

“Sorry Doctor, I uh, had a big meeting this morning and I got side tracked.” I make myself small and pitiful while apologizing.

“Bigger than your life? Kimber, this is important you know.”

“I do! Please don’t tell Marcella. Got level eight last night, and I haven’t selected a module or anything. I have been jamming aether to help me with production, so I would definitely appreciate a scan.”

She sighs, then asks me to get naked. I swear, maybe all doctors are pervs. I climb into the diagnostic suit and lie still for half an hour while she asks me health questions.

“No, I haven’t gotten my period, yes, I can feel the disparity between my aether content and the food I’m eating. Yes, I think you and Marcie are ridiculous. Doc! I would never! Don’t make me shoot you!” Pervy doc asking pervy questions. I may or may not overreact because her stupid voice is sexy, and my hormones are kicking in.

“Kimber, you must tell me when you become sexually active. It could impact your partner as well, and after therapy and your initialization, it may be a trigger for your feminine development.”

“Doc, I swear, one of you needs to travel so you two can figure this out. Neither of you can live vicariously through me as I am a workaholic. Oh! Can you start testing my skin durability? I’ve been experiencing explosions lately and I’d like to test exposure immunity.”

She stabs me with a calibrated needle and moves on. “Okay, read your menu and accept your mods.”

You have gained 2 module points.

Please Chose from the following:

Alchemic Primer

2

Gun Fu!

2

Spell anchors

2

Enchanting Basics

1

Tova!! Why did I make promises! Spell anchors and Gun fu would be sooooooooo great. She doesn’t answer, so I do as I agreed and pick alchemy this mod juncture. Tova pulls the data upload into the back of my brain and Daniella records the results as she always does.

The flood of info is more like a tide: The data isn’t coming fast, but it is inevitable and heavy in its approach. Ten minutes of drooling on myself and a few of Tova pestering me, I can finally focus on the knowledge that the module sent me. My virtual Alchemy tome now has two hundred recipes from a corrosive cleaner to wood polish. Funny enough, some of the ingredients are parts of my smokeless powder recipe.

I’ve been briefed enough that unless I am in dire need of a boost, I should not take the level 8 gift. Since I took some long-term contracts that have given me the boosts I want, I have no good reason to ask for the gift early. “I’m uploading and I deferred doc. I think that’s the end of my options?”

She nods and types into her interface. She stares at the data, manifests a stylus, chews on the end a second then writes a few notes on the side of whatever text she’s looking at. “Fairly standard response, much higher aether flux, but consistent with starting levels. User is at 40% aether saturation, assumably for crafting concerns. Contemplating loaning User research suit for daily monitoring”

She continues making notes as she stares at the readout on the little cart-based monitoring device. In my boredom, I change out into my civilian clothes and wait until she comes back to reality. Much to my dismay, she wants me to don the suit every week for an aether scan, but honestly, it’s not that big of a hassle, and I like the chills her voice gives me. Marcella, you need to lock that down so I can cozy up between the both of you and purr in my contentment. Just don’t try to pet me, or I’ll bite you. Probably not though.

***

Back in the lab, I have resins running through my brain and it’s starting to bother me. Why would I need to know the recipe for thirty different resins!? One of them is based on the nitrocellulose that I imbue and make for my powder but treated with sulfuric acid and left to set with about 12% moisture content.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

While I’m waiting for my deliveries from Astoria, I order some scrap wood shavings from an aether-average world for a Mark and then create a gallon of sulfuric acid from base components for the steeping. Just like the smokeless powder, ethanol is a solvent for the resultant product, and when I over apply ethanol and strain it, I get this, thick liquid that sets hard given enough time. Looking between my new vacuum chamber and my beaker full of bullshit, my brain decides to see what happens when I finely crush my accelerant granules to powder and mix it with the resin in a slurry. I decide to suspend a glass rod in the center of the can that I put this slurry in, I place it in the corner of the large vacuum chamber, to wait for my large order.

The order comes in after dinner, and by that time I am frantically trying to occupy my mind while I impatiently wait to start a make or break project. During that time, Tova tells me that Miss Mercer arranged an expense account to start my first batch, which she would take out of my delivery funds. Mighty thoughtful of her, and it also means that she stands to make a ton from the deal she wants me to rush for. I just want the promised guns, and I don’t get them until I start sending my part of the bargain. The wood product I get seems to be a pre-pulped shred in a paper making process. I’m not sure how the natural inclusions are going to act, but the aether content is much higher than rough paper.

I end up infusing both the resultant guncotton/nitrocellulose before the solvent phase, and then have to prep the hundreds of gallons of ethanol for imbuement. I’m not sure what state the recovered ethanol will be in when I collect from the vacuum chamber, but I hope that a portion of the imbuement lasts so that I don’t have to spend hours imparting aether to it again.

The alarm I asked Tova to set blazes about one in the morning and it’s time to transfer the slurry to the mold and form the first part of my explosive crackers. I make sure the remaining slurry is pressurized and contained so that it doesn’t dry inside the tank while this first set dries. I drag myself back to my junior suite and crash into my fluffy bed and pass out on top of the covers.

The next morning, I have a bunch of book-keeping messages from the crafting I engaged in the previous night that I mechanically read through while I slog down to the Canteen and sit down with a coffee and my meal and ask if Tova minded giving me condensed versions while I wake up.

The biggest item is that you now have Citizen rights and an aether-based ration that you can order, for free, from the Exchange. Second, you didn’t have to pay delivery fees last night and I have no idea why.

It’s hard to believe I met with Miss Mercer and set up a production line last night. Didn’t we get a message from the System that said a 50% discount was applied to Citizen transfers? Does the preferred vendor thing cover the other 50%?

I thought you would be more excited by the extra food, but I don’t know. It’s more likely that the fees are being taken from the expense account until we deliver the first batch. Oh, well, we have a new Mission from Medvedev Senior. Yep, we knew this was coming, they want you to create an infusion for Cocaine.

Hells. ‘Welcome to the family, start making drugs.’ I return a message that said that Carlos was indelicate in warning me against infringing his market, and that I needed a recipe as it is not included in the Alchemic primer I just uploaded via module.

“Alright, let us try this ration thing.” I walk over to the kiosk in the canteen and order my breakfast ration. Infused omelet and raptor sausage? Alright, looks decent. I dig in and find that the aether content is agreeable and sustaining. The taste is consistent with the Summer Farms products I’ve ordered before, and I know for a fact I have had this sausage that tastes like bacon before.

After the discoveries of my first day as a business owner and a listed supplier for the Empire, I failed so much I got bored. My gunpowder is in the first stage of drying, I don’t have any standing orders for chews or balm, so I’ve really got research or tinkering left in my day.

That is of course until one of Medvedev’s assistants send me a two-sided photo of a napkin with a recipe on it. Now, as foolish as I am, I’m not willing to trust pen marks on a disposable sanitation product. I do some research through the satellite network info-banks and find that the recipe I have shouldn’t be hazardous, but also, there’s no solid, maximized recipe for what I’m trying to make, ‘cause why would there be. Profits would suffer.

Turns out, the farmer’s recipe for making coke cakes requires more intuitive knowledge than the writer of said recipe conveyed. ‘Rest in gasoline for a while’ is not specific, nor is gasoline cheap these days. This ‘recipe’ must be a hundred years old. I’ve read dozens of accounts of coca infusions, residual cocaine effects in those herbal infusions and I’m having trouble reconciling what mechanisms are transferring or dissolving the right chemicals.

I must have zoned out, because the head of Warram’s Organized Crime wanders into my lab and starts yelling at me.

“It can’t be that fucking hard, Novarro! People in Columbia do this in huts!”

“Then nab me a Columbian to question, boss! Right now, I can somewhat replicate the gasoline process with a lower efficiency because the precipitate stage isn’t working right. But I can also get a cleaner product with alcohol extraction but at a much lower extraction rate. I can make your drugs, but not at the cost you’re aking! Or at least not yet.”

Medvedev gets closer with his meat mitts clenching near my face. “I’m willing to invest the money, but you need to show me better results next month or there will be consequences.”

“Boss, I’m not pushing back. My solution right now is nab me a Columbian or get a spy to watch the process. I’m missing a step that is crucial to extraction, and my current skill isn’t filling the gaps. I should be getting two to three times the product I’m getting from the kilos of leaves I’ve been experimenting with. I’m not a chemist, boss. I understand infusions more than the various chemical processes that are happening.”

“I’m limiting your access to the Canteen until you figure this out.” He storms out.

I want to shout at him and throw my contract in his face, but that’s the wrong way to attack that problem. Instead, I decide to rely on the tingle of wrongness niggling at the base of my brain. I don’t think the system will let him unless I want to breach this contract. Let us see what happens shall we? Worse come, I have those nifty new rations to eat.