Evan spent most of his day doing maintenance, and even wished he could dismantle the work the others had done, as it would break down faster than if he had done the work himself. He could see why they didn’t have any interest in becoming composition architects – it was harsher on how much talent one needed, something he hadn’t considered before.
Once that was done, he finally got a good look at his workshop. He didn’t like the lengthy trip up the stairs, but the workshop was serviceable. He had been worried they would skimp on it just as they had his residence, but that thankfully hadn’t turned out to be true.
It was actually somewhat spacious, considering he had it all to himself, and he could see the appeal of just leaving things where they were, and coming back to them as he pleased.
He wouldn’t do that, though, as his master had taught him that a cluttered workshop made for a cluttered mind, and he believed Isaac.
The workshop was entirely open, but for one small room off to the side that was locked and even had formations protecting it – the storage room the Substance he kept around.
It was nice to have one again – it had been a pain needing to go fetch all the Substance he needed, and it reminded him of the time Isaac had first introduced the room, telling them they couldn’t yet have a key.
Good times.
Once he was familiar with the workshop, he left to go place some orders for Substance he would commonly be needing – such as the kind for his beams and called it a day at that. He still needed to figure out the cooking situation – he hadn’t eaten since he arrived yesterday and was starving.
While he was at it, he decided to order some Substance for improving his stove – that should make things a little more bearable.
He considered doing the same in order to make some kitchen equipment – a knife, really – but decided against it. There was always his dagger, and his funds were still low after his last splurge on cultivation.
Once that was settled, he asked Alison about how he could get some food delivered, along with some wood to work his stove until he could improve it – he would design it tonight, as he didn’t imagine it would be too complicated.
“Well, you order it just like you do Substance. Here,” she passed him a list, “this has all the different kinds of food we have right here on it. If you want something else, you’ll have to go to another level and hope they have it, or I can put an order in for it here, but you’ll have to wait if you do that.”
He studied the list, and decided on a couple of things that didn’t seem too difficult to prepare. First, though, he had to ask.
“Is there anywhere I can get pre-cooked, ready-to-eat meals? I’m very busy, as Theo and Rory have told you, and it will be hard to find the time to cook.” He gave her a look that said this was perfectly ordinary. Yesterday, he had asked a similar question, but he realized he may have given up too easily – and he now had the perfect excuse – it was something he spent a little while thinking about.
Alison gave him a strange look. “Well, yes, but not on this level. Nobody around here has the money to splurge like that, but you could try heading a couple levels further down and try your luck there.”
What’s that look for? He decided he’d do that. If it was only a level or two down, that was close enough for him. Still, he decided to go ahead and purchase a few things on the list just in case.
Once that was done, he headed for the lifts and started heading deeper. As he didn’t have any pre-planned list of lifts, it took a little longer, but he eventually managed.
As he went lower, the flow of people decreased, and there were fewer and fewer people on the lifts. On each level, he found the nearest person who seemed to be residing on the level and asked them about any places to eat. He got some strange looks, but most people didn’t think too hard about it.
Eventually, he got a different answer on the 26th level – 2600 meters below the ground. It seemed that level 26 had a higher population than most, and that the stone and ore was rich enough in Substance that a restaurant was a profitable enough affair for someone to have set up.
That was eleven levels deeper, which took him a fair amount of time to travel, but not so long he was unwilling to consider it. Could he get the food delivered? Part of him was a little embarrassed, as the community on level 15 was quite small, and it seemed like he was quite a bit wealthier than they were, or at least more willing to spend his money.
It was strange, and downright weird, for him to be the richest person in any social circle. At this point, he was used to having the income of a talented formations master, but he was also constantly surrounded by people as rich or richer than himself, and it felt strange for that to not hold true.
He was also unadjusted to such a small community – usually, there were so many people he interacted with each day he didn’t pay them much mind, nor did they him.
While he ate, he thought about the conversation he and Illiana had held at that restaurant shortly before the attack. She had seemed frustrated by his talent, but he had never thought that was the case.
It wasn’t talent that got him where he was, it was hard work, day after day, to better himself and increase his worth. He had that massive debt looming over him, and the twelve years of service would inevitably contain many moments where if he wasn’t strong enough, he could – or would – die.
Twelve years was a long time, and it was a great motivator for him to kick himself into high gear. He wasn’t loyal to Starspire, and even now, after having just been let out on his own and given his first posting, he was chafing at the bonds the military held him under.
He didn’t like the small community of level 15, and he didn’t like that he had to learn to operate where they posted him – what the guy on the lift had said yesterday struck a chord in him, and he yearned for that kind of freedom.
Even Theo and Rory had more than he did – they weren’t with the military, and only stuck around because they wanted to. They were less fortunate than he was, but they had a choice, which he lacked.
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While he was being trained under Master Isaac, he hadn’t really felt it – he had thought himself to be quite free, even if he didn’t get to choose where they went or stayed.
Now, it was different, though.
All of this was to say that Evan hadn’t found himself to be particularly outstanding, just motivated and hardworking, but perhaps that was wrong. His talent wasn’t anything crazy or particularly outstanding, but he was talented.
More than that, he had an interest in making and iterating on his own designs, as well as working as a compositions architect – neither of which seemed to be popular among other formation masters, if he understood correctly.
Everything seemed to come together to make his current life a reality, and he wondered how different things would be if any one of those things were different. Theo and Rory hadn’t been all that motivated to learn – if he wasn’t as talented, as successful, would he be the same?
***
Once he finished eating, he enquired about having more meals made to go or delivered. The restaurant had no problem with making him some meals to take home, but delivery was out, at least when it came to having the restaurant do it directly.
At some point in the history of the shaft, there was a lot of congestion on the lifts because of all the interlevel traffic, so there were now harsh limits on how much businesses were allowed to operate between levels.
That was a shame, but the logistics of the place had thus far amazed him, so he kept his complaints to himself. He ended up not ordering anything to take with him, instead eating with gusto before he left, but decided to figure out some sort of device he could use to preserve his food so that in the future, he could leave with some and keep it fresh at home.
He wouldn’t be able to bring much with him, of course, but every bit helped. Perhaps he could eat dinner here each night – or whatever passed for it here – and bring the following days lunch with him.
Yeah. That’s a good idea. I can even keep up appearances that way, though I should still improve the stove for the times I do end up cooking.
Mind made up, he paid his bill with a generous tip and made his way back up to level 15, though he noticed the prices were higher than ever. Why couldn’t he have been posted to level 26? He had paid attention to everyone there, and they were all also at the first Collapse, though they might have been at its peak – he did see a few at the second, but they were a rare bunch.
Once he was back he made his way to the office where he picked up his order of Substance – everything he needed was the sorts of Substance they kept around anyway – and chatted with Alison for long enough to not appear rude.
Truly, she should try and get transferred to somewhere with a higher population – she seemed much too social for such a small community as this. He had yet to find anyone else in the office with her.
He dropped off the Substance at his workshop, storing them securely in the appropriate room before getting to work. It hadn’t been that long of a day, and most of his labor was simple maintenance that didn’t require much thought – he had enough energy to work on some designs.
First, he decided to work on the preservation device. This was simple enough, though he would like a better method than simply cooling a box down. He hadn’t ever gotten around to designing the preservation room for his first contract, so all he had were the same ideas he’d had then.
Well, he did have the methods the military had taught him for creating sanitary spaces, but he wasn’t sure that would work like it should. Was keeping the food sterile enough to keep it from going bad?
It might help, but it also might ruin the food. He didn’t think sterilizing it was enough, and that it would be unnecessary if he was cooling it down already.
Evan pondered on this for a couple minutes before deciding that cooling the food down would be fine. He could just heat it back up with his improved stove.
A couple hours passed after he found some paper and pens in the workshop to start making his notes with, and it was truly night by the time he managed to pull himself away from his work, tidy everything up, and head home for bed.
Sleep came easily.
***
It was in this manner that his first two weeks passed on level 15 of the shaft, and he had grown comfortable in his daily routine. Each day, he would do his rounds, ensuring nothing needed his attention and repairing it if it did, before heading back to his workshop to work further on his designs.
The military didn’t pay him very much for doing this, so after spending a couple hours working on his designs, he would switch tracks and work on making some more beams.
Since they were his main source of income now, he ended up putting off everything else and finished the redesign of his beams first.
It helped that down here, they were selling like hotcakes – something he let fade to the back of his mind, given his surroundings, was that the shaft was massive, and not just in how deep it went into the ground. The large diameter meant that were countless small communities just like level 15, which was itself not the level 15, but the one he was familiar with.
At the same depth, there could be dozens or even hundreds of small communities where a group of miners had started digging into the earth where ore was visibly located before the built lifts and open invitation of Starspire drew even more into the location, and then before one knew it, there was a small community there as others moved in to take up the needs of the miners in return for their coin.
Theo and Rory were good examples of this – they had no obligations to Starspire to be here, they had simply arrived to meet the needed demands of maintenance for steady pay and to have easy access to the rich market that only got richer the deeper one went.
It really put the small community here into perspective and helped him realized the massive market he was sitting on top of, waiting for his products.
His new beams weren’t that much different from the older ones, though he now incorporated a small light much the same as the ones he saw upon first entering that detailed the maintenance needed. Green for none, yellow for non-urgent, and red for panic.
Part of him had wanted to make them less heavy, maybe even weightless, so that they could more easily be transported – there were a couple movers that came by to pick them up, and they seemed to struggle a little – but he eventually decided to instead increase the strength of its primary purpose as much as possible.
Once that was done, he had sold some at a discounted price to one of the miners of level 15 to take notice of how well it performed and let him know.
Unlike when he had first designed them, he needed more assurance that they worked properly than the very simple tests he’d done before and some rough estimates for their sale. He needed people to swear by his product, that it worked and could save their lives.
The first miner had done a good job, and he was able to rest assured that the beam did its job as it should, though he cautioned his buyers against getting careless – it could still fail, as his cultivation was nothing spectacular, and there was a lot of heavy stone above them.
Ever since, he’d had no trouble finding buyers, and while the lifts were somewhat slow, they still allowed news to travel quickly enough that he had no problems, even if the beams couldn’t handle much deeper depths than he was at already.
Whatever limits there were on the transportation of goods he managed to avoid, as nobody gave him any trouble – though he supposed that technically, he was just providing his labor to the military, and they were the ones who sold it.
Getting all of this done hadn’t even taken him a week, and so by the time the second week was out, he had completed his designs for both the cold box and the stove.
Both had been fairly simple to design, especially considering all the experience he was starting to accumulate. The sensation of progress in his designing skills filled him with pride.
The stove, though, had been more complex, but still manageable. While the cold box would always keep its contents cold, no adjustment necessary, the stove required controls.
He wasn’t a cook and had only operated a stove a couple times in his life, even as an orphan, so he decided to keep things simple – there was a switch to turn the stove off and on, and a slider to set the temperature.
Both controls featured a simple light as a gauge, with the light being on if the stove was on, and the light changing hue from blue to red as the temperature increased.
At least, for what it was set too. There were no sensors or anything – he didn’t think he’d need them.