OOCS
Chapter 45 : Road Hazards / Waterway
In fact, the spoons where so unprepared for this not medium show, that they were crafted out of raw ingot bars from storage. At least of what little metal storage was still left after creating this monster of a resource dump of a train. Karl was happy, he could get away with making the rail tracks out of stone and just ignore that issue of making them out of metal, by making them ledges in the corner of the stone, instead of iron beams.
Whilst 5 of the T-Benchers dove into learning and training the skill of shaping things whit their minds or Mana or Axiom, as he had learned from the HUD that still plagued his vision, he was still very busy with continuing to craft the tracks they where riding on.
The trip was speeding along at a guesstimated 16 or 20 kilometers per hour. The walls and ceiling where still shaking and the wind of driving that fast was almost a constant forward and backwards. New room opened up and got filled with air and then directly pushed thru by the train driving into that space.
Karl-Heinz did learn from the gas fuck up and continued to install ventilation holes every now and again when he felt like it. Lucky for them, they where pulling in so much fresh air with the carving of new tunnel sections, that the air didn´t run out or get stale.
Karl also did miss his failure tank, the beast just had to much metal to not be turned into a section of the train. But at least he could reforge it some time else, he still had that fleeting urge to make a proper gear box to get more than a crawling speed out of a ridiculous strong yet slow electric, magic engine he somehow could make.
Knowing himself, he didn´t get his hopes to high on that project, as the needs of the harem, in his mind, went above his own plans or desires.
Karl-Heinz also did a slow course correction to go northwards again, his compass was still working and he would make sure it did until they reached the mystery land of pushover civilians.
The T-Benchers moved their training exercise up and next to him in the front. “Have a picture in your mind, of how the current thing you are holding gets pressed into the shape you are thinking of. Off how the atoms or molecules or cells in wood or grids in the metal flow.” He tried to teach, with no success.
They managed to reshape the metal they where working with, but it was much slower than how Karl was doing it and the end result was an approximation of the image they had held in their head and not 100 percent accurate.
“What is a molecule?” came from one.
“What is a cell?” from another.
“What is a grid?” came from Tris who was bored out of her mind, yet unable to relax. The tunnel was still shaking in irregular intervals and no one was brave or special enough to try and claim that the earth gods where trying to send Morse code or binary signals to communicate.
As the questions came all rather close to each other and the mighty teacher still was distracted with making the tunnel grow longer, the answer was a bit lacking. “The cell is what you and plants and organics are made of. Every eye, bone and skin is made of cells that got made and then specialized to be what is needed in the spot they got dumped at.”
A short talking break as he checked the compass and expanded the tunnel some more. “The grid is a structure that is an orderly section in metals. When metal goes from liquid to solid, the atoms try to be all structured and tightly packed together, but they all start their own system all over the metal and then meet eventually. So the grid is one part of order that stands out in all the other differently oriented lumps of order.”
Earning a forced head turn, to face forwards out the window. But the intervention from Sara was not fast enough as the tunnel cracked and then burst in, followed by a torrent of water poring down into and towards them.
Yet the intervention was fast enough to give them a chance.
Karl-Heinz acted the fastest, as he only had his reaction speed as his limiting factor, physics selectively got placed in time out when he used his crafting ability. He made a mighty wall of stone in their way to crash against rather than to drown.
The next to act was a the current one manning the train controls and hitting the breaks, reverse motion and praying to have a soft ish crash.
This got followed up by yells of distress going around and people rushing to the mechanical manual breaks of each trailer, whilst the rest hunkered down and trying to prevent getting thrown around too harshly in the coming crash.
Lastly Karl got dog piled by the closest women around to soften his part in the disaster.
As they where not a high speed bullet train, they had enough seconds to do all these things before the slowing train harshly bumped into the Stone wall. Everyone got flung forward a few centie meters and earned themselves some scraping wounds.
Karl-Heinz himself didn´t feel much happen to him aside from the lump of protective flesh around him rolling forward and over, lifting him half out of his seat.
Still no matter how underwhelming crashes look that don´t happen in movies or action stories, there was a lot of groaning to be heard and most likely a lot of minor damages to fix.
Conveniently laying on top of the mound of protective women, he could get up and start walking around with no issue. Laka had an almost similar fate as she was the first inner protective layer. So they both ignored the clearly not critically injured women in favor of seeing how the rest of the train has done. While they where at it, they could also go and see what Sarsa had to say.
As it turns out, Sarsa had a lot to say, and a lot of it was questions to random passer by women on how bad they ended up crashed, crippled or crumbled.
They all had a not to gentle reminder of Newtons laws on motion, in so far that they wanted to move on. But the subtle placed wall and all its gentle leniency, had convinced them to attempt their continued forward motion without the connection to their current vehicle. This in turn caused many to gain a differing forward speed than their chosen position on the flat bed, which ended in some falling into the cracks of the system.
So now the unlucky few, who became lower positioned individuals, moaned out thru the gaps between the train carts, safely secured against self rescue attempts by the joined clutter, that had no arms, clothe, skin, scales or other obstacles to eat up the forward facing motion energy.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The upper class was in various states of disarray and damage, ranging from abrasion and bruises to mild states of shock and confusion. But non had any splinters lodged in them, at least no splinters from the train as Karl-Heinz had been diligent in his work to leave no chance of splinters or cuts from ridges.
He, as every German who goes thru an apprentice ship in any metal working job, had spend months with file in hand, ever removing ridges over and over and over. The result could be compared to him fearing the critic of his training master of craft, like a soldier fearing his boot camp drill Sargent.
So doc was busy cleaning up and bandaging some minor wounds of inconvenient timed actions or positions.
Sarsa quickly got the whole situation in perspective and was able to mostly lean back and observe, whilst Vaskra ran up and down the train organizing the rescue and re-securing of cargo work.
Tris was helping out with most others.
Laka was guarding Karl.
The Man of the Harem was interested in helping securing the cargo better than just stacking it nicely onto the flat bed.
The ground was still shaking, thus the train got set into motion the moment it was single checked that no one and nothing was laying on the tracks anymore.
From somewhere in the pile of stuff, deep in a box of intel, that Sarsa had once in the past insisted to also plunder, a battle map was pulled out. A massive folded beast of paper that took up the space of a table for 8 people meals. Human people meals, the Harem women mostly ate the equivalent of a snickers or a small bowl of soup and called it a fulfilling meal.
The table the map was fixed on with clamps, got crafted by the passing by Karl-Heinz installing Railing on all carts and some mesh or planks on the posts of the railing, to prevent further unplanned rapid stop dismounting.
As the chaos was sorting itself out again on the moving machine, the inner circle was gathering around the spread out map and trying to figure out where they were in relations to every other body of surface visible body of water. Karl was kept there and stopped from wandering off by Laka, as a sort of excuse of a break.
“Any of you have an idea on how to keep track of where we are, without needing to go above ground?” Sarsa asked the group after having tried and failed to guesstimate that same question.
A turning visible grinning Scavera broke thru the crowd of blank or in case of Tris bored expressions. “You all would rather stay save with lover boy down here, well I can go and scout.”
To witch Tris took offense and blurted out. “Ohy! I can go up and do what I want up there for hours! They can´t shoot me, let alone try and touch me! I can even live up there with Karl save in a nice house when I get a few more Cannidor wives organized!”
But before they could really get going, Sarsa cut in with a slight sigh of frustration. “So you two and who ever else feels brave will go up there and at least scout, maybe do some raiding. But we will have to back track until the rain stops. I doubt that we want to open our tunnel up to the fires from the sky.”
This got Sarsa approving nods from a fully visible, still bruised Scavera, a still not fully healed Tris and blank looks from everyone else, this included the walking past bystanders.
As the moral was not even half as enthusiastic as Tris wanted it to be, she grabbed Karl, lifted him above her head like one might a cat and declared “To adventure! And more women for the family.”
But as there where no exit tunnels nearby or crafted yet and Laka and most other women near by where focusing in on the very bad feeling idea with death glares, Tris put Karl back down, patted his head a bit and sat down on her ass a bit sheepish.
The train was making a bit of a different noise suddenly, which a quick check turned out was that the Rails where wet as water was trickling down the air vents. Slowly puddles of muck water were forming.
“Fuuuck, I hate the double rain!” came from somewhere in the crowd.
Tris had to react and thus yelled as reply. “At least down hear the floor isn´t muddy!”
This gave Karl-Heinz an idea. The rumbling of the shaking walls was getting weaker it seemed, so he told the others around him. “Maybe the orbital bombardment is following the ventilation shafts I had made?”
Which did provoke a lot of thinking faces on a good amount of wives.
Doc piped up with her own idea. “So can we test it with you making fake air vents away from the tunnel we are using? At least that might earn us enough time that you could rest up some more.”
This got the ball rolling and Vaskra but in her idea. “Can we make fresh air somehow? That way we could distract the rain and then slip away without the needs for ventilation.”
Sarsa picked this up and looked at the most educated person in regards to science in the Family, so she looked at Karl-Heinz. He in turn then just looked back blankly at her and answered. “We could turn water into oxygen, but it would also produce Hydrogen as a byproduct, which is flammable and I don´t know how to deal with carbondioxide in the air.”
“I am going to call that oxygen from water making plan B.” Shifting her gaze over to two women, that by now have taken over the attempts of trying to read the maps. “Any progress on where we are ?”
“We are currently guessing that we reached this big lake here when the tunnel got breached by water.” She pointed at a part of the lake in question at the north edge of the map. The assumption if correct, sadly for them mean that they would need to either travel west or east for a day. That was the time that the trip would take a marching army in that area, according to the advice Scavera was inserting.
Lucky for them, the train ride was faster than walking and mostly saver against the usual hazards.
Not having any time to waist. The train changed Direction again and this time they drove with the hopeful feeling of not crossing another tunnel danger, be it gas, liquid or monster. The tunnel got no air vents and they did manage to sort of leave the orbital bombardment behind.
Laka was very worried about this trip, the lack of giving Karl a break, the slow speed at which the others were learning the skill to try and replace Karl-Heinz, the general moral on the train and something else that she couldn´t quite pinpoint but had the feeling that something else was also amiss.
Also being a perfectionist still, They were not traveling at a uneven angle.
No!
They where going straight east, at a as perfect as Karl-Heinz could read it 90 degrees east. In his mind it was to more easily read the map. In his heart he knew it was to please his inner gamer with most games having squared grid structures.
But lucky for Karl, his mood was good enough right now, oddly enough the exhaustion, the looming threats, the fast and eager access to sex, even if he didn´t want that right now, the feeling of being needed and the gentle fussing over his well being was making him feel great.
He was wanted, it was urgent, he was only very hard to replace, they were all working on a better future, others had made the plan and would take the blame if the plan went wrong and most of all, he felt like he was doing meaningful work as part of a community. A community that knew his social ineptitude and appointed a constant liaison to help him be happy.
Also because of the distraction and slowly building exhaustion, he was to mentally bound to go down sarcastic, masochistic, pessimistic rabbit holes.
“This feels like chilling playing rimworld!” he realized and confused everyone around him. “No not rimworld, the game and background audio books or music. Yeah!”
“What is rimworld?” came from a wife siting in the corner of the front bunker.
“Oh just a PC game. You control a group of people and try to build up a small village and to slowly make their lives better and leave the planet they got stranded on.”
In the small lull the next question got raised. “What is a PC?”
“Personal Computer, a thinking machine that can do all kinds of stuff. Like play games for you to have fun, show movies, store data.”
“Can you make one?” Came from Laka.
“How much Data?” Came from Sarsa hearing something interesting and investigating.
The distraction air-vents got completely neglected thus far so this conversation didn´t change much on the routine Karl-Heinz was doing when he extended the tunnels at an again not fast speed of small stack almost running.
“The better the PC tech, the more data it can store or process. Eeeehhhh … I think my last Pc was able to store terabytes of data and 1 terabytes is 1024 gigabytes, which is 1024 megabytes and then kilobytes and that ends you by bytes that are ones and zeros that encode everything from pictures to sound to symbols.”
Confusing his audience mostly, Karl sits a bit in silence. Yet Sarsa doesn´t take long to recover from that confusion and tries a new angle of understanding. “How many Books can you store on your PC and how many maps?”
This one got Karl-Heinz thinking, some attempts at quick head math and then getting confused on to many zeros in the calculation to often, he gives up on trying an honest answer and instead goes, “More books than physically exist in this world and at the same time all maps that ever existed in this world can be stored on my home PC back on earth. I think.”
“Can you make a PC?”
“Nope, no idea how they work in detail.”
“Well husband, could you please write down what you know of how they work, so that maybe one of our wives can try and make one.”
“Yeah I can try that” He shrugs as that excursion into tech that would be nice to have ends.
The rest of their days trip then is rather calm. They manage to flee the rain. The new Cavern is blocked off from the rest of the tunnels ,to protect against possible flooding. The new quick air-vents don´t seem to gain that unwanted attention. Also Karl is as usual milked for all he is worth in the night.