Most businesses remained closed and only a few cars and buses cautiously moved around under the watchful gaze of the army and police. Considering that from some areas of the city, a looming, cloud-wrapped mountain range could be seen far to the north from the city, I did not blame them for that.
I followed the directions and soon found a local fish’n’chips shop that also had a morning menu.
I ordered a cheese bagel and a cup of coffee, trying to blend in with the local early morning patrons. I easily located the broker, a man with a traditional ‘grandfather’ look consisting of beard, cane and newspaper, and took a seat at his corner table. He had an unlit pipe in his hand, that seemed to be more of a fidget toy than addiction.
After a short talk, he exchanged some of my gold into pounds. I had no idea how that was going to work, but he guaranteed that all the mail and deliveries will arrive right to my door from now on.
I also spent some time looking around. Most of the customers were elderly regulars who appeared to care more about their daily routine than the headlines in the newspapers they were holding.
Considering that most of the articles had provocative titles like “God’s Wrath or Natural Entropy?”, “The End of the World is Near”, “Britain grows - the world does the same”, “50,000 missing people confirmed”, “Confirmed - rural areas losing contact”, “Weather anomalies continue - what is coming next?”, “ISS crew returning - or not”, I had to admire their dedication to their daily bagels. One reason might be because these were not half bad. The coffee, however, could only attract someone with suicidal tendencies with its smell alone.
---
Now that I had proper money and documents, I had an opportunity to get the things I wanted.
Although the map function in the phone could no longer find GPS coordinates, it was still helpful enough in finding directions. Despite being a capital city, Edinburgh turned out to be somewhat lacking in giant shopping malls and superstores. That meant, that with public transport in disarray, I had to do some walking.
After spending most of the day moving around, I had organized the home deliveries for a number of diesel generators, reels of cables, oil drums, computers and accessories including hundreds of Millenial Blue-Ray recordable discs. Considering the total costs reaching tens of thousands of pounds, that shopping spree put a serious dent into my finances.
On my way back, I tried calling my family again. However, despite the fact that the storm that had kept the planes and ships from departing seemed to have passed, the call did not get through. “The person you are calling is not available blahblahblah” - thing. Just in case, I tried online messaging functions, email and chat apps, but nothing. Must be the result of the geographic changes last night - I was sure of that.
I deliberated over the option to discard my current plans and hurry to Norway. In theory, even with my increased mass, I could reach sufficient running speed to run over water.
The distance between UK and Norway is around five hundred kilometers? Sound barrier, that I had broken during fights, is around one thousand thirty-four kilometers per hour, so I will get there in zero point four hours, or twenty-four minutes…
I shook my head. Too risky, considering the unknown processes the world was going through. Who could guarantee that the changes were only on land? Perhaps there were already thousands of kilometers of ocean between Britain and Scandinavia. With Krakens lurking beneath the surface.
---
When I returned back to Manor, I found Matthew, grey from all the dust, standing still like a statue in one of the corners. He was squeezed in there by the homunculi that had cornered him in their effort to clean up the dust that fell off every time he dared to move. Magical AI turned out to be as prone to bugs as electronic ones.
Pushing aside an expressionless homunculus, I pulled out Matthew from the siege and gave him a good, strong shake. While the homunculi were busy using their feather dusters, I handed him a takeout bag and pushed him towards a nearby armchair. After the aroma of hot grease coming from the bag reached his nose, life returned to his eyes and he clearly regained some of his energy.
Leaving him be, I skirted around the congregation of homunculi and checked what had been done while I was gone. What was most obvious, was the extreme cleanness of the surfaces. Whatever the issues homunculi had, being lazy was not one of those.
And as I could judge from the scattered papers filled with barely legible scribbles, Matthew had also worked hard. I picked up a paper, trying to make sense of the first thing in the long list. It read ‘Psychal undertone glass harmonica, circa 1800 - suspicious’.
I put the paper back.
---
After Matthew had refuelled, we returned to Akadem. Once there, I told him to rest and decided to finally have a look at the library.
Following the directions that I had gotten in advance, I returned to the grand cavern that was the social and business hub of the Akadem.
The library was a prominent structure, as long as one knew what to look for. It occupied the thickest tower that looked like it supported the ceiling of the whole cavern. Due to the size, it took a while to reach it, but once there, the man-high letters DEPOSITORY next to the entrance became rather easy to notice.
I felt my watch vibrate as I stepped in through the large double doors that were sufficient for an elephant to effortlessly pass through. Perhaps even enough for those huge mammoths, steppe mammoths or something, to squeeze through - I estimated as I raised my head.
That is going to take some time - was the second thought I had.
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The inside of the tower was sufficient to fit in at least two football fields. And from the central spiral staircase, possibly hundreds of walkways led towards the bookshelves and tall book stands that were lining the walls, all the way towards the ceiling above.
A glowing orb approached me from above, looking a lot like the simulacra Arthur Wiseman had used before.
“Mentor Victor Ward, I am number two-hundred five. This is your first time in Depository, You may access the levels from one to one hundred forty-nine and storages from Red to Green. Storages from Blue to Violet require joint access. Enquire me for directions, reference data and time.” - I heard monotone genderless voice from the orb.
Cool, they got Siri. Or Cortana? I had never used those AI assistants, so it was a bit difficult for me to estimate the advantages and disadvantages of such things.
“Species, materials, races.” - I decided to start from neutral stuff, in case I was being monitored.
I followed the simulacrum No.205 while thinking about how the magical version of programming was done. Did they use some kind of consoles or compilers in the first place? I already understood that most simple magic objects worked like electric circuits with transistors or vacuum tubes, but some stuff was too abstract to analyze. In the first place, what was the basis for the direct human-created magic phenomena?
---
The night flowed by while I was slowly moving from one thick tome to another. I chuckled when I read the description of magic-polarizing silver alloy that contained star crystals, as next to the paragraph somebody had scribbled ‘Mithril! Don’t dig too deep!’ on the margins.
When the morning came, I had only gone through a few dozens of bookshelves. I knew I could dedicate myself to one task and go non-stop until I finished the whole Depository, but the risks were too big. Other mothers taught their sons not to pull girls’ hair and play well together. My mom used to repeat to always prepare a backup plan and never fully rely on anyone. Father’s task was to protect me from overexposure to cruel reality. He also taught me how to bake cannoli (he did not like the fried ones).
Therefore, I decided to divide the whole 24 hours in the day into parts. Nights were going to be spent on information gathering and research, days on preparing for the worst. The thing that annoyed me to no end were the questions “When?” and “What?”. What was going to happen when the pressure on the World will reach the limit and when that should be expected. For all I knew, a bing bang could happen tomorrow, with black screen and credits coming afterwards.
---
“Ah, Mentor Ward, I preshume?” - I was leaving Depository when when a short man, whose curly dark beard covered most of his front, approached me. He looked a bit like a dwarf from Lord of the Rings, but was definitely a human. One that was relying on two leg prosthetics and a cane to walk.
I nodded politely: “You are definitely correct. May I help you…?”.
“Nothing much, nothing much,” - the man shook the loose ends of his wide sleeve. The expensive-looking dark green fabric of his… dress? robe? made a dramatic flap while he paused before continuing: “Myshelf just came to greet the new Mentor, who had caught the eye of our Headmashter. It ish rare for one to get the poshition without Ush having a chanshe to appreciate the talent, you shee.”
“Us?” - I hoped that I was not speaking to a sentient piece of furniture.
“Ah,” - the man smiled: “Myshelf ish Douglash, but myself prefersh to be called Doug. By the grache of great ancheshtorsh, ish blesshed to work for the good of Akadem ash a member of Committee.”
Not sure how to react, I nodded again: “And so, sir Doug, anything else I can help you with?” - I had no idea when the ordered items were going to be delivered to the Manor.
Douglas reached with his free hand into the other sleeve and pulled out a scrolled up paper: “Myshelf was consherned that you were not allocated the offishe and time shlots. Committee hopesh that you will like to work here.”
When Douglas had left, I sourly looked at the paper he gave me. Luckily, no student was going to take a course that suddenly popped up in the middle of the semester. But different from schools and universities, summer was also study time in Akadem.
Another thing was - Committee’s interest in me was it ordinary or with some malicious intent? Logically speaking, the whole world was going through a supernatural restructure, while several people had been killed within Akadem, so they should not have spare resources to care about me. Or was I overthinking things a bit, and they were simply observing a new person to ensure that nothing happens?
---
Back in the Manor, I wandered around the now-clean rooms. Homunculi were quite efficient, I had to admit. Their gardening skills were nonexistent, pity about that. After a bit of trial and error, I managed to turn my weapon into a passable scythe and spent a while cutting the grass in the front garden. Different from scythe-weapons in fantasy, a proper scythe was a tricky thing to make and use. The centuries of know-how could not be underestimated. That was surprisingly fun too, as I had never had an opportunity to try that before.
After an hour or so, arrived Mattea. I left her to continue cataloguing the mess of the things and continued my work in the garden. Uncontrollably overgrown bushes needed to be removed, some old trees had to be urgently cut down and there were tons of variously sized stones scattered everywhere, likely originating from the cliff above.
The ordered items began arriving when now-Matthew left to the city to grab something to eat. Judging from the fact that he remembered about food, he had finished looking through the books and moved on to the rest of the stuff.
A minivan stopped on the road in front of the hidden gate. When I approached, two silent middle aged men in grey overalls came out, and began to unload the things from it. When done, they handed me a paper with the list and set off. I would have thought their silence weird, but they were not living humans. At least, I could not observe any regular energy inside of them. Including thermal, by the way.
I spent a while getting the boxes into the garden while thinking about zombies, puppets and homunculi. But as soon as I finished, came another van. Same thing was repeated, but with different workers.
Not willing to discuss suspicious activity with already anxious police and army patrols, I did my best to move the boxes, crates and packages into the magically shielded area. And again. And again. It took a while before my mental checklist matched the huge pile on the freshly mown lawn.
It became obvious, that my “official address” led to some kind of storage, from where the responsible people took over the delivery for all sorts of administratively delicate locations. Simple, but efficient, I had to admit. Possibly also required some special ‘greasing’ to keep the operation running.
---
For a while, I stood still, trying to decide what I should start with. Afterwards I kept praising my limitless stamina when I was carrying everything in. Additional motivation came from some muffled claps that echoed from somewhere in the city, suspiciously sounding like the gunfire.
The size and mass of the generators made them quite unwieldy, especially in the twisted cave passages. And only when I had finally brought these as far as the core area where was the garden and everything, I remembered about the exhaust.
Matthew found me sitting and reading through the instruction manuals. He was polishing an old magnifying glass with the hem of her sweater and looked curiously at the pile of things that were surrounding me.
“Sir, is something wrong?” - he bent down, trying to read the markings on the boxes.
I nodded: “I do not trust the ventilation here to run a diesel generator as it is.”
“Well,” - he stood up and scratched his hair while he looked around, before stopping and pointing with his hand at the carved stone grates surrounding the hole in the middle of the floor: “What about making use of that shaft there? Isn’t it now simply letting the hot air go up?”