“It pains me to admit it,” Grandmother told the group, “but I am running low on coins. We’ve visited all the squares Ray-Do-So recommended to me, plus a couple extra. I am going to call a stop on squares until I manage to refresh my finances.” It was just the party members in the apartment at Seagrass tonight. They were resting after completing a visit to a selkie square during the day.
“We can help out,” Sarah said. “We’ve made a lot of money on book sales in the selkie markets. I’m willing to donate my half to the cause.”
“Me too,” Ellen assured Grandmother.
“I can donate furniture sales too,” Alex added. “Well a rough guess at it. I didn’t keep that good of records.” Ellen gave Alex a look that said that was completely unacceptable for a shopkeeper. Alex promised himself to do better in the future.
“I don’t think that is necessary,” Grandmother said. “You should have the profits for all your work. What I want to do is go back down to the industrial area. Scavenging down there should bring in a good income, even if we sell to the vendor.” Everyone agreed to go without question, even Companion. Grandmother thought the selkie wasn’t thinking about the fact that he would have to climb down from the high platform. She decided not to mention it yet.
“When are we heading out?” Todd asked.
“The first Challenge day is in four days,” Grandmother said. “I think a lot of selkie will be in Home Square for that event. I want to go over to the south gallery in the morning and gather as many porcupines as we can carry through the transit system. They should sell for a high price under the demand, and our selkie visitors will like them. After Challenge day, we’ll make a trip to the Speedwell to download all our video and get new cameras. I want to scan the symbols on the amulet I got from the coliseum too. When we return from the Speedwell, we can go back to scavenging the industrial area.”
“I keep forgetting about the camera,” Ellen said when she agreed to this plan. “I really want to see the images from Tinkerer’s visit.”
“I warned Enchanter that I needed to take a break from squares in order to gather up more funds. She also offered to make a donation for the cause. Ellen, tell Jeweler that we will be away for a while,” Grandmother commented. Ellen nodded her understanding.
The group spent most of the night tidying up projects in the apartment and packing items they wanted to go back to Home Square for Challenge day.
Ellen purchased an advanced smelter and a glass furnace from the Seagrass vendor and asked Grandmother to pack them into two of Alex’s bags.
“What do you want them for?” Grandmother asked.
“I want to see if we can convert physical iron into ingots,” Ellen said. “The large smelter will be able to take bigger pieces without trying to break them apart. I hope that will speed it up. If we can convert it to ingots someplace close to where we salvage it, we can sell it in a square for a lot more profit. That should help with your finances.”
“I assume you plan to do the same with the glass furnace,” Grandmother commented.
“I do. I’d like to teach Sarah how to run it so we can work in parallel,” Ellen observed.
“Teach us all how to run both of them,” Grandmother said. “Including Companion.” Ellen looked surprised. “It doesn’t have to be done on this trip, but after the Speedwell I think that should be the goal. Include in that your magic based method of tanning leather. We leave a lot of skins to be absorbed behind us.” Ellen nodded her head in agreement.
“What we really need is a shared inventory,” Sarah commented, from where she was working. “Something like a shop inventory, but with no shop.”
“A long time ago I wanted to keep the coins I received from selling items separate from reward coins. I never figured out how to do that,” Grandmother commented.
“That is like how you can tag different suppliers in a shop and keep the sales proceeds separated.” Alex commented.
“Alex,” Todd asked from the doorway to the cooking area, “what is the literal meaning of the selkie word for a gallery?”
“An association hall,” Alex replied.
“Companion, what is an association?” Todd asked.
“A pod of warriors who work together to conquer the challenges of the true god. They adventure out into wildspaces to gather resources for the group. They work and train together to strengthen the individuals,” Companion said. Everyone in the room worked to translate Companion's reply literally. Normally they translated things like ‘true god’ to Control, 'pod' to team, without even thinking about it.
“It seems like an association of adventurers would need a shared inventory,” Todd observed.
“There is an inventory access in the gallery,” Grandmother observed. “Has anyone noticed anything different between that access and others?” Everyone shook their heads in denial.
“I don’t use it much,” Todd admitted, “only to convert debris into scrap.”
“Remind me to look at it tomorrow,” Grandmother commented.
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When they arrived at the gallery, Ellen set up a little processing area opposite a sitting area closest to the doors on one end. She set out the glass furnace, a hide stretcher and the shop smelter. She pulled the anvil and blacksmith tools out of storage that they used to break the glass furniture into small pieces on the last trip. It reminded her of their first visit to the gallery when she laid out all their found tools in an effort to communicate with Companion.
The group went out and cleared rooms until they killed more porcupines than they could carry. Companion and Todd gutted and skinned the animals so they would fit tighter into their gathering bags. The two of them went on to work on skinning the rest of the animals they killed for the hides. For once Grandmother didn’t have to pack every bag, since her perk didn’t work on the organic items.
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Alex and Grandmother hauled back glass and metal furniture for Ellen and Sarah to experiment with. The shop-sized smelter accepted most of the larger metal pieces. Sarah produced ingots of steel, bronze and copper, since that was the most common materials in the area.
When the piles around the two crafters became large, Alex switched to breaking the glass into small sections. Grandmother went to study the inventory access.
She ran through every action she knew how to do with one. She could not detect any difference in this interface from any other inventory access she visited.
There was a limited vendor in the food preparation area. They usually ate the fresh meat from kills in the halls and carried their own fruits and grains, so they didn’t use it much. She bought salt from the one in the north gallery before.
She left the inventory access and went to check the vendor. The list of available items was presented as icons. As far as she could tell they were all food, or closely related products, like the salt. She did discover that it would buy from her.
It was willing to buy all the same items that the full service vendors in squares would buy. This included the stacks of scrap she was carrying, crafting tools, integrated clothing and a bunch of the random things she picked up over the years and put into her inventory just to see if she could. She saw an icon that looked a lot like one of Muriel’s planters. She really had no idea how long that had been in there.
If they were in danger of flooding the markets in Home Square and OpenSky, they could just sell it all to this vendor. The prices each square’s vendor used varied depending on what was bought and sold from it. Grandmother wondered how selling to this vendor items it didn’t offer would affect the prices.
She stepped away from the vendor and went to look at the transportation control. They unlocked this system two years ago. They managed to figure out the basic function of it by experimentation. Me-So-Ray, Seagrass’ portal keeper taught them some other functions, including ‘return to last address’ which they used to send selkie visitors home.
Grandmother came out of the transportation room to find Ellen teaching Todd how to melt glass, while Ellen was instructing Companion on how to smelt metal. Alex was still snapping glass into smaller pieces while being entertained by his non-crafter companions trying to learn the most basic steps. Grandmother thought he might want to rethink some of his comments, since that glass wasn’t going to last forever, and then it would be his turn to learn.
Ellen and Sarah seemed busy enough, without adding another beginner to the mix. Grandmother sat on the sofa in the central furniture cluster. She tried to think of another interface in the space. The only thing left was the protection crystal.
It was floating in the air over the small round rock garden in front of the inscription wall. The rock garden was Companion’s favorite place to sleep. In the northern gallery the area was a pond with fish in it. To touch that crystal you had to get wet.
Grandmother walked over to the crystal and put her hand on it. Color began to flood it. The animation looked like her hand was leaking a dark violet ink into the crystal. As she watched the ink swirled through the solid and darkened. Was it getting darker, or did she just hold the contact longer? The crystal was very nearly black, with just a hint of violet in the cut edges. She watched the display with such intensity that her interface light was blinking in a corner of her vision. Then she realized there were two lights.
Todd taught her how a parent could see the interface of a child, by holding the child’s hand. The child’s interface appeared as a second twinkling light just on the edge of your vision. Grandmother was not holding anyone’s hand. Her hand was on the crystal.
She herded the second light to the center of her vision with her off hand. A completely new interface opened. A series of icons ran down the right side of the console. On the left was a series of numbers. The bottom line read, 6 4 42 924. Grandmother scrolled up the list. She noticed the number sequence repeated over and over mixed in with others. The list wasn’t that long. It ended with the same number.
She considered the list. The starting number was always six, four, three or two. There were only a couple two entries. There was no zero, one or five. There were entries for one through six in the second column. The only value of four was in the first number pattern. The record with six in the second spot also seemed unique. The entry read, 3 6 23 and then a number so large Grandmother wasn’t going to even try to figure out its value. She never did internalize base six numbers. That same number pattern appeared over and over, but six never appeared in any other set.
When she moved to look at the third column she saw how special that six number pattern was. It was the only line that had twenty three in the third position. Every other line read forty two.
Grandmother realized what this was. This was a record of everyone who touched the crystal. She was 6 4 42 924, while Companion was 3 6 23 and a number too large to compute. The first number was tier. The second was the color of your magic. The third number must be your species. Grandmother considered what the fourth number could be. Her own number of 924 was the absolute smallest value in the entire list. Ignoring Companion’s for a moment, all the others were under the value of twice six raised to the sixth power.
The second largest number, after Companion’s, was part of the line 3 1 42. Tier three, magic color yellow, human, that was Sarah. That line appeared over and over. There was another that read 2 1 42 with a number just slightly smaller. That must be Kai.
A chill ran down Grandmother's spine as she realized this must be an index number. Each person was indexed as they entered, or were born, into the structure. Kai must be a little older than Sarah. Companion’s number was so large because his people lived and died in the structure for millennia. His species number of twenty three as opposed to the human forty two was another clear indication of it.
There were forty two different player species in the structure.
Grandmother took a breath. There was no proof all forty two still existed. It was more accurate to say forty two different player species entered the structure.
Actually Grandmother’s number of 924 seemed too small. She remembered there were a couple thousand people in the suburbs of Chicago on her first trip, and that didn’t include the people living in Londontown.
She thought about those early days. Although she didn’t travel through the structure until then, she did visit the entry courtyard before that. She remembered throwing her first light spell against the training inscription located there before there were nanobots in her cornea to show her the animation. Control must have tagged her then.
Grandmother let go of the crystal and shook herself. Several times she heard references to the fact that touching a crystal told the owner things. This must be the data it told. Seagrass’ Elder came out of the inn after Grandmother touched the crystal there. Ray-Do-So assumed Grandmother was there to Challenge her for the square. Grandmother wondered if that was possible. Now she suspected it was.
All those icons on the right side of the interface indicated there was a lot more functionality to explore. She wondered before who inherited a crystal when the owner died. She suspected, from the challenge comment, that if you killed a crystal owner, you inherited it. What if the owner died in a different manner, from old age or animal attack? Perhaps there was a way to name a successor. Ray-Do-So knew Grandmother touched the crystal without having to touch it herself. There must be a way to set alerts or forward the data to the owner's personal interface.
Grandmother settled down onto the gravel, trying to make herself comfortable. This time she set her off-hand on the crystal so she could use her main-hand to navigate the interface. She didn’t know if she needed to contact the crystal the entire time or not. As the two interface lights began to flash on the edges of her vision, she decided that was the first thing she would test.