GRANDMOTHER

The small maintenance robot held a gray structure stylus and ran it across the surface of a sheet of white almost plastic. The sheet was vellum when it was in the structure. Nothing happened when the two items touched. Watching closely, Grandmother was convinced the robot was writing the text she downloaded to it. When the robot reached the end of the page it lifted the stylus free and signaled a second robot. The second robot picked up the 'written on' sheet and dropped it onto the finished pile, before pulling a sheet off the supply stack and placing it in the writing position.

This was not the most efficient solution to this problem. A custom printer would have done the job more efficiently. There were even plans in the database for a printer that used pens and not jets or ink dust. The stylus would not fit into that printer without modifications, not to mention the octagonal sheets of vellum. She put modifying those plans in her long term goals. In the meantime she made this quick and dirty solution.

The two maintenance robots were standard, fresh off the automated manufacturing line. The only thing unique was the flat surface the sheets were sitting on. A series of pegs mounted to it held the stacks and the sheet being written on. It was so simple Irene drew the plans and ran it out of the manufactory in less than an hour. The rest of this solution was software alone.

Now she needed to take it down to the edge of the structure's area of influence and see if it worked there. She didn’t know if the stylus would write without a living hand on it, even under the structure's influence. Something as complex as the robots might not function more than a few minutes under the assault of the structure's nanobots. She knew she couldn’t turn her back on them. A leash was attached to each robot that she planned to tie to her body in order to keep contact with the machines. It was the technique the mother used in the upper halls of Londontown to keep her possessions from vanishing in the night.

Grandmother also needed more vellum. The handful of sheets she was using were from a pile of ‘stuff’ she brought back from the structure over the years. Most of them were already marked with writing, where she made notes in the structure about things she needed to do when she got back to the Speedwell. This wasn't all the vellum she ever brought back, but the other pieces all contained notes she still wanted to keep.

She set the robots to their travel configuration. They contracted down to look very similar to small travel cases. She clipped the sheets to the holding plate and the holding plate to the side of one of the robot cases. She slipped the stylus into a pocket. She carried the cases out of the workshop to the main ship elevator. She went down to the terrace level and left the robots in the ship hall, before heading back up to the exercise room on level eighteen.

Todd was inside, running through a set of stick fighting exercises. His brush with death made him much more interested in mastering the old methods of fighting. Stick fighting was the closest technique to sword fighting that was programmed into the exercise room computers. The wall screens would show an animated version of each move. After the trainee tried it, the computer would playback a recording of the trainee, with the model scaled and superimposed on top. The trainee could see where they matched or missed the move.

This single person training was considered inferior to group training. So far Grandmother was impressed with Todd’s mastery of the art. She didn’t do half so well when she took the in-person lessons. She suspected her results were partly because of her own lack of motivation at the time and the poor quality of the instruction. Her instructors must have learned the art from this self study method just days before they taught the group.

“I am going to go out to the boundary and run a quick test,” Grandmother told Todd. “Do you want to ride along?”

“Yes,” Todd replied. “I want to check the boundary markers and see if anything has happened.” On their exit out of the structure, Todd carried ten short lengths of iron tubing with him. He found out the material was weak after it transformed into its gray version. He ended up only getting six of them pounded into the soil spaced along the edge of the path. The first one he set appeared to be dark iron. The second possessed only traces of dark coloring. The next four were all the flat gray of the almost plastic integrated items turned into outside the influence of the structure.

“Let me go grab my spear, I’ll meet you at the carts,” Todd said as he returned the wooden training stick to the rack on the wall. Grandmother agreed. They both headed to the elevators. Todd took one up to their quarters while Grandmother went back down to the terrace level. She picked up the maintenance robots and carried them out of the Speedwell, across the terrace to the garage. She opened the back of the construction cart she always used and loaded the robots into it. Carts of every size and description were parked in the garage. Everything from heavy construction vehicles to little supervisor relays. Grandmother always drove this same maintenance cart. For the last decade, every time she needed one of the others for a job, she had to fix it first before she could use it.

Todd showed up still wearing the standard work overalls of the Speedwell engineering team, but carrying his spear. A large knife was strapped to his belt. It was the closest default pattern in the manufacturing system to a sword. Todd’s spear was a flat gray, but the knife was solid steel.

Grandmother carried an explorer's knife on her own belt. She forgot to grab a bottle of water on the way out, but she saw Todd carrying his flask. Since they weren’t going into the structure that should hold them. They loaded into the cart and headed out. Todd spent the first ten minutes of the ride shifting the knife on his belt around as he tried to get comfortable in the seat.

“What kind of test are you running?” Todd asked.

“I programmed a couple maintenance bots to write with a stylus. I want to see if the stylus still works when not held by a living hand,” Grandmother explained.

“I thought you decided to just print the language primers,” Todd asked.

“I did,” Grandmother explained. “They should be ready by now. This is for something different.”

“What is that?” Todd asked.

“I have a record, a kind of log, on Speedwell's computer of everything I’ve discovered about how the structure works. It has stuff in there like how your magic color is determined to what the spawn rates of the different item classes are. It is kind of an advanced version of the little magic introduction in the magic books. I could just print it off, but I thought it would be nice if it was written on vellum so it could be copied for sale. I am kind of lazy and don’t want to copy it all over myself,” Grandmother explained.

“Can I get a copy?” Todd asked.

“You should already have most of it. I sent everyone the appropriate section when we talked about it,” Grandmother responded. "I tried to make it into a series of lessons for you. I’ll send you the link to the finished product when we get back. I added some sections when someone on the team asked. If you see anything that needs updating go ahead and do it.” They rode along in companionable silence for a while.

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“If this works, you should think about printing out a human history,” Todd commented. “A book with a brief history of Earth and the Speedwell’s journey might help future generations remember where we came from.” There were a lot of books Grandmother wanted to print. Everything from the reading primers to advanced astrophysics, but even integrated products wore out. She didn’t see anyone in this generation, either in the structure or the eastern villages, being interested in any of the advanced subjects. Maybe she would print out the reading primers and basic math books.

Grandmother drove past the storage hut on the top of the ridge and worked her way down the narrow trail beyond. She remembered when this was a road wide enough for a construction cart to drive down. Trees and brush were slowly reclaiming it. She made a note to herself to put clearing the road all the way down on the maintenance cycle. She was surprised when she caught sight of Todd’s marker posts and realized she managed to drive all the way down to the border.

Grandmother stopped the vehicle and carefully surveyed their surroundings before opening the cart’s door. Todd stepped out on high alert, pulling his spear up from where he stored it for the ride.

Grandmother pulled the two cases and tied the leashes to her wrist. She walked down past the last marker. The marker looked a little worn. It was only three days since Todd planted it. Its worn state was enough for Grandmother to be certain Control could reach it. Grandmother started by using the stylus to remove the existing writing off the sheets of vellum. The stylus worked perfectly in her hand. Some of the integrated ink was on these vellum sheets for forty years. As she touched the back of the stylus to the surface the ink on the page raced across the vellum and back into the pen, leaving a pristine surface behind.

As she cleaned the last sheet, she did a quick test of writing. A pure black line was left behind. It cleaned up just as easily as the old ink did. Satisfied she set the vellum into the source stack. She activated the two robots. They unfolded and stood at the ready. Using the small built in control unit, she gave them orders to get into position. She set up the writer with the stylus. Finally she hit go. The robot began to write. No ink appeared.

“I guess that would have been too easy,” Grandmother commented. Todd came over from where he was inspecting the markers.

“What happens if you touch the stylus?” Todd asked.

Grandmother reset the robot and started it again. This time she reached down and just lightly placed one finger on the top of the stylus. Pure black ink flowed from the stylus. The robot was writing a nonsense passage. Each line of text was smaller than the last. It was a test of how small a stylus could write and still be legible.

The robot reached the end of the page and withdrew the stylus. Grandmother retrieved her finger quickly, not wanting it to get caught in the movement. The second robot moved the sheets perfectly. The writer began the second test pattern. Once more, Grandmother added her finger to the top of the pen. By the time the robots finished the test patterns, she knew this method was never going to work. She knew her back should be killing her, although the active nanobots in her blood didn’t allow that to happen.

“Well that worked,” Grandmother said. “I don’t see anyone standing by for a hundred pages.”

“You need to design a system where the pen stays still and the page moves. That way you could sit on it and read a good book while you wait,” Todd joked.

“Hmm…” Grandmother said as she thought about that. She considered the design for a printer with a pen that was in the database. It didn’t seem that hard to change which side moved.

“That’s not a bad idea,” she said to Todd. She picked everything up and packed it back into the cart.

“Are we really not going down?” Todd said, his eyes looking down the trail in the direction of the structure.

“That feeling of strength and calm is calling you down,” Grandmother told him. “It is the nanobots in your blood powering up. The structure is addictive in that way. Going back to the Speedwell will build your willpower.”

“You don’t even feel it,” Todd said.

“No, not anymore. I felt it for years. The weakness and anxiety when I stepped away. I wish I still felt it, then I would be certain that I am still not Control’s creature,” Grandmother said to him. Todd turned with a surprised look on his face. He took ten very deliberate steps up the path past the markers. He slipped his spear into the cart and put his hand on his new knife. He got into the cart. Grandmother quickly turned the cart around and headed back to the ship.

“Is that in your log?” Todd asked.

“No,” Grandmother said. She looked thoughtful. “You can add it.”

After several minutes of driving in silence, Todd asked, “Did you add what we learned about rebuilding rests?”

“I was working on that when I thought maybe I should be selling the log as a book. That led me to trying this method for producing it,” Grandmother said.

They spent five days in the structure after Todd’s injury. On the sixth morning Todd was finally able to step out of the structure's boundary without any visible change to his skin. When he stepped back in and Grandmother cast a heal on him, he experienced no pain. It was a clear indication that his nanobots didn’t think there was anything wrong with him.

Grandmother originally intended to spend six days at the Speedwell before heading back. Since they’d lost five days waiting for Todd’s injury to heal and playing with the rest, she thought they probably should head back tomorrow.

“I don’t want to be too late getting back,” Grandmother told Todd. “I think we should head back tomorrow. We can check the rest one last time on the way out.”

“Lets stop on the way in and see if that prize… inventory access is still close to the entrance. You can check to see if you have another portable stove,” Todd commented.

When they built the second set of furniture they didn’t remove Todd’s portable stove with its makeshift spit system before casting the final restore. The stove became part of the rest, fixed to the floor. At least the spit was removable from the frame so that new meat could be threaded on it. Todd seemed very concerned about having to make the trip back without hot food. Grandmother told him she thought she might have another stove in her inventory. Truthfully Grandmother thought there were probably a hundred. When she transferred the larger crafting equipment to Ellen and Sarah’s store, she didn’t include the stoves. There were between fifty and a hundred of all the other large pieces so she didn’t see why stoves would be any different.

The next day when they returned to the rest after another gathering run, they found the rest expanded again, with a new set of ruined furniture behind the first added set. This set faced away from the first two sets. It was facing a blank wall across the width of a hall. At first Grandmother thought the room punched through into another hallway, it didn’t. Instead the empty section was a kind of foyer into a side room. The side room was accessed through an open doorway with no door. Inside was Todd’s portable stove and spit.

“This is a lot like the food preparation area in the galleries,” Todd said, “only empty.” Grandmother looked around the space. It seemed about the right size.

“You're right. Maybe we are supposed to fit it out?” Grandmother offered. “We could add a tall table for a counter. I can make that sofa table wider easily enough. We can build shelves too.” Todd seemed inspired by this idea. He started talking about racks to hang equipment on and equipment itself.

On their last day in the structure they spend more time gathering kitchen equipment than the components they needed for the most recent set of furniture. They used up most of the small brackets they’d gathered over the proceeding days putting together the counters and shelves for the kitchen. They didn’t stay to see the result, instead leaving as soon as the morning test showed that Todd was truly healed. Grandmother was looking forward to seeing the results.