3:002 on the 18th day of Winter

I was drunk. Well maybe only a little drunk. It was actually helping with the magic pains which were getting steadily worse. Hroadant had dragged me out after work. He reminded me that I owed him a beer and the story of how I ended up naked in the mine. We found a bar in the pit district that was nice enough. Hroadant seemed to know the proprietors.

I drank a few beers to give myself time to make up a convincing lie but ended up telling him the whole story, only changing it so that I was getting ready to swim in the lake before the monsters showed up and I couldn't find my clothes again after they were gone. I'm not sure if he believed me but he laughed so much at the mental image of me running from the monsters that I think he'll let it go.

"I wish I had gone with you." said Hroadant. "I would have burned those filthy murdering demons." He had a grim set to his jaw. It made me pause and try to see through my beer goggles to recall his history.

"You're from Pinnacle right?" I asked. He nodded. After a mark he explained.

"The real irony is that my family was worried about sending me here. They thought that the trip was too dangerous and that Cinder was too close to the front lines." he said. He took another drink and seemed to be lost in thought. Pinnacle had fallen just last year when the demons bypassed front lines and came in from the underground directly. The city held out for a few tendays and a lot of folks made it out but it burned in the end. We didn't say anything for a bit. After a while he came back to himself and turned to me.

"So, I've been meaning to ask, why are you in Flood's workshop anyway? Family like yours, I bet you had your pick of masters." he said. His tone was light. He wasn't accusing me of anything but seemed curious.

"My family had nothing to do with it." I said. "It's not all that complicated. When I started in item craft, I had fanciful dreams of fixing all the world's problems." I took a sip of my drink to gather my thoughts together. "There were openings in only three or four groups that first year. Flood was the only one working on new devices rather than marginal improvements on the ones that everyone has. He seemed ambitious, driven, focused, and most of all effective. It turned out he was all those things and a narcissistic, magist, demagogue who still can't be bothered to remember my name."

Hroadant let out a laugh at that. Then he got a thoughtful expression. "What kind of dreams did you have?" he asked. At my skeptical expression he clarified. "I swear I won't laugh. Tell you what, I'll talk about my dream first." He finished his drink and ordered another before going on.

"My dream is to make a weapon that could wipe out all the demons someday." he said with a smile. "That's why I keep trying to get onto one of the war machine projects or even the Colossi." That was ambitious, and also crazy. The war had been going on for thirty years now but that followed hundreds of years of history with the demons. They have language and some sort of family structure. I think we traded with many of them before the war. Even if we don't know much about them now it's clear that they are not a monolith. Sure I want the war to end, but genocide is beyond the pale for me.

"I just want to feel safe again." I said quietly.

"I don't know, I guess I thought I could solve a bunch of different problems with magic." I said louder. "Like growing crops faster with life mana, or making a shield with water mana, or simply heating water with fire mana for more than the super wealthy." I paused to take a drink. "Now that I know what it takes to make magic items and their limitations, I have let all that go."

Hroadant was surprised. "That's a great dream." he said. "Don't give up on it. Just because nobody has figured it out yet doesn't mean it's impossible." He gave me a reassuring smile. I actually felt a little of his optimism. Then of course I remembered my current situation. I just shrugged noncommittally. His smile faded.

"We'll work on that." he said. He patted me on the shoulder and got up to use the bathroom. After that I was left alone with my thoughts. I finished the last of my beer and ordered another. I wasn't in any hurry. I just started stirring the drink with my finger to get rid of some of the foam. I'm so afraid of dying. I’ve done my duty for humanity but the fear never went away. Earth was such a safe place, at least it felt that way. Until the end. I wish I could feel a fraction of that safety here.

But there are worse things than dying. Friends or family could die first. Then of course there is what would happen if I used death magic. I would be the cause of a slow death of my friends and family. I couldn't do that. If it came down to it then I would take a shorter path out. My thoughts trailed to how I would take my own life before snapping back to the moment. A surge of adrenaline swept through me as I realized what I was thinking.

At that moment I was pulled back into the vision of the gray desert. This time though the ground was churning and bubbling chaotically. I'd never seen it like this so I tried to look at it more closely when things expanded in every direction until all I could see was a single bubble. Then it looked as if I was standing on the surface of the bubble and it was a vast plain stretching out from horizon to horizon. I looked again and the surface was still moving. This time I could see tiny blurry grains of sand flowing past each other. I got the strange impression that the grains were all made up of something heavier joined with something lighter.

"What am I looking at?" I said to myself.

"That's your beer Theod.'' said Hroadant, who had returned to the bar.

Like a bolt of lightning I realized how much of an idiot I was for not seeing it sooner. It was my beer! I was looking at a super closeup view of my beer. How close? I was pretty sure those flowing grains of sand were individual water molecules. This mental projection seemed to be giving me some information about them as I could tell that there were two smaller lighter parts attached to a bigger heavier part. Also, if this was what I'm seeing then, yep, there is the ethanol. One grain in twenty had more lighter parts and two parts that were in-between the two in weight. Those would be extra hydrogen and the two carbon atoms which are just a bit lighter than oxygen.

"Theod?" asked Hroadant. I pulled myself back to the larger world and looked at him.

"Thank you Hroadant." I said. "You helped me answer a question that has been bugging me for a while."

"Happy to help?" he said a bit awkwardly.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

My mind was still spinning at the implications. This answer just led to more questions. Like, how was I a walking electron microscope? How did that even work?!? Also, what do I do with it? It's not like an electron microscope is going to help me fight monsters or demons.

"Hey, it's getting late and I should probably get going.” he said. “But this was fun and we should do it again sometime. Maybe we can meet up for the Winter Festival this year and share some spiced mead." I thought about the festival. The whole city would put out light crystals and large spontaneous parades would carry songs through the streets. It reminded me a lot of Christmas from Earth. The math came slowly in my addled state of mind but I realized that I probably wouldn't live that long.

Starting tomorrow I’d become something of a reawakening time bomb. A dirty-nuke at that. The study I read had accounts from the participants and they all described several days of intense bouts of pain leading up reawakening so I knew I still had some time. Maybe this new sense would give me opinions I couldn't see yet. There was still hope. I just had to look for it.

"Ya Hroadant, I'd like that. Let's plan to meet up for the festival." I said.

***

0:094 on the 20th day of Winter

It took all day yesterday but I think I got the radiation detector to work. The last main hurdle was getting the dang ratchet gear to work. The first two the watchmaker sent me had too large of teeth and never moved. Now the watch dial, mounted with the can of argon on top of the battery, spun very slowly. About 1/10th of a mark per mark. That's super confusing. But I have no idea how this measurement relates to the Earth units of radiation dosage the sievert or rad.

Instead of using Earth units, maybe I can just make up units that make sense for my current situation. So, what would a reasonable unit be and what should I call it? Let's say the watch face on the detector spinning at a normal speed for a watch is one unit. As this is radiation, and I am making all this up anyway, I’ll call it a vault boy (VB) in reference to that video game I used to play.

So, back in the workshop where it was experiencing about 1/10th of a VB. How bad is that? I vaguely remember hearing that it takes about ten or twenty times ‘normal’ radiation levels for a year to start to get an elevated risk of cancer. So that would be one or two VB. With that baseline established I had to get this thing down to the underground lake where I first awakened.

That was a pain. The damn battery must have weighed almost forty kilograms. I made a few thick leather carrying straps for it and that helped me get it to the trolley stop. The box smelled strongly of sulfur so folks actually gave me more room than usual. I made it to the pit, down the lift, and into the mine without issue. Then came the long trek down to the lake. I had to take a lot of breaks on the walk, setting the detector down every few measures to rest. My back was horribly sore and cramped by the time I dragged it into the cavern where I awakened.

I had taken readings a few times on the way down to get a better measurement of background radiation. It was elevated underground but still only a few tenths of a VB. I took another reading at the cavern entrance and was glad to see that levels were still in the normal range. Then I had to get the detector down to the lake shore where I had stowed my clothing. I had procured some rope and pulleys for the task so, with only a bit of rope burn and a pulled back muscle, I had the detector set up next to my discarded clothing. They were caked in dust from sitting here since I had left.

I switched the detector on and sure enough the clock moved a lot faster. I let out a long sigh and settled in to record the measurement. I managed to determine that the detector was picking up about four VB or about forty times background radiation. That sounds like a lot but I am actually fairly encouraged by how low it is. It would take about a season or two of standing next to these clothes to start to impact my health. Well, maybe not my health. Again, I should be dead a hundred times over based on my initial dosage in the lake.

Next I tested the water. I dipped the detector in the water, being careful to not put it in so deep as to short the battery. I found a bit less than one VB so about three or four times my baseline in the cave. So, elevated for sure but probably not very dangerous. Drinking it for a decade might give you cancer but I honestly find myself not so worried about that kind of hazard in the world. People here face the very real threat of being eaten by monsters every day. And that book said that life mages could heal radiation damage anyway.

The last thing to test was if I was radioactive. For this I dried off the detector and then covered it with my body. The watch stopped moving entirely. I adjusted the sensitivity a few times and found that rather than being radioactive, my body seemed to be blocking the background radiation. I moved over to the clothing again so the effect was more pronounced and found that if covering about half the surface area of the detector cut the radiation by about half. That would make sense if it was alpha radiation as that will be stopped by a piece of paper but that tends to come from really heavy elements. Elements like plutonium throw off part of their nucleus consisting of two protons and two neutrons called an alpha particle. This is basically helium without all those pesky electrons. Alpha particles are big, heavy, and positively charged making them really easy to stop.

My clothing is probably putting out beta radiation from high levels of carbon isotopes. Beta radiation comes from the weak nuclear force. Basically, a neutron can randomly turn into a proton by ejecting a negatively charged electron like a rock from a slingshot. Fast electrons are also called beta particles and they can move much deeper into things than alpha particles. Both types could cause the detector to show radiation.

That thought made me pause. Could I use my electron microscope to figure out which kind of radiation? Only one way to find out. I sat down next to the pile and picked up my canvas jacket. I closed my eyes and focused, I was getting better at triggering the microscope but it still took me a few measures. Eventually the gray desert and black sky came into my mind's eye. The fabric was made of long narrow fibers that crossed and intertwined each other. Looking more closely brought my perspective to a level where I could see a dizzying array of complex molecules making up the surface of each fiber. All I could tell was that most of it was made up of what I suspected was carbon, as it felt just a bit lighter than what I knew to be nitrogen in air. I couldn't see any kind of emissions from the surface. As I couldn't seem to perceive the electrons that bind materials together nor could I see light that meant that it was probably either beta or gamma radiation respectively. I felt that if the material was throwing off helium nuclei or neutrons that I would be able to see them in this space so I could rule out alpha and neutron radiation.

Just then I felt my body get impacted by something large. I was abruptly torn from my mind's eye and a sharp pain shot up my arm. My eyes opened to find a cave rat the size of a large dog sitting on my chest. It had my left arm in its mouth and it was thrashing its head back and forth trying to tear something loose. The coat I had been inspecting had also gotten caught up in the monster's bite which was the only thing that saved my arm. I screamed in terror but my right arm came up and I jammed my thumb into its eye. A thrum went through my whole being at that moment and I felt the need to lash out with raw magic. I squashed the feeling with a force of will that sent a flash of white hot pain through my chest. The rat really didn't like my thumb in its eye and it let go of my arm to scramble away. It circled around to my left looking for another opening.

I grabbed for the closest thing I could reach and just as the rat leaped at me again I jammed the radiation detector in its mouth. It bit and gnawed at the metal can for a mark before there was a loud snapping sound and it went limp. The smell of burnt hair wafted up from its face. By a stroke of luck the battery's wires had crossed to either side of its head and the resulting electric arc must have passed through its brain.

I was hyperventilating at this point. I dropped the now crushed detector and looked around frantically. There was nothing that could be seen in the magic light but that didn't mean something wasn't waiting out there for me to turn my back. I checked my arm next. It would bruise but the coat and my own canvas sleeves had kept the rat's teeth from breaking skin. In the lengthening silence my heart began to slow. It was hard to hear past my heavy breathing but I strained to listen for any signs of more monsters beyond the light.