“Duck!” Kaleb shouted mere seconds before his workbench exploded again.
Daivor threw himself off the table as Kaleb flung himself backwards onto the floor. The short but bright reaction quickly died out and left another large scorch mark on the top of Kaleb’s work table. The various alloys and metals he was working with scattered everywhere, and the table’s holo-emitter shuddered ominously. Waiting a beat before getting back up, Kaleb listened and looked around for any other problems the explosion had caused. But it seemed they were in the clear.
“That’s a no for the purple-blue alloy of unknown origin.”
“You can just say Non-Terrestrial metals, boss.”
Kaleb waved some leftover smoke out of the air as he re-obtained his seat. “I prefer the color-coded naming system I have now. Besides, we don’t even know the proper names for these things.”
He picked up a small two by three-inch tablet of metal that was an inch and a half thick. He examined the break in the middle from his experiments and sighed. They had picked up more batches of K-Tech’s prototype metals again. Kaleb wasn’t sure what the company was trying to accomplish with the alloys, but it supplied him with interesting stuff. Most of which reacted poorly with various energies.
“So Purple-Blue reacts poorly with high amounts of electricity. Noted.” Daivor deadpanned as he swung himself back up to the workbench.
“Apparently. How many kilowatts were we at before it blew?”
“Barely seven hundred, boss. I think we are going to have to nix Purple-Blue for any technological upgrades. Maybe it could be used in armor? We haven’t tested the toughness.”
Kaleb prodded the center of the broken metal with his robotic finger. A flaky layer of dust fell away, and the metal cracked further under his fingers’ light pressure. Sighing again, Kaleb tossed the metal into a nearby bin and turned to the next ingot. He doubted the metal was good for anything, but waste not, want not.
“Next entry,” Kaleb started. “We have an ingot a foot in size and two and a half inches wide. Appears to be a rose-silver mixture of Non-terrestrial metal. Daivor?”
“Confirmed. It is Non-terrestrial. I take it you want to label this one Rose-Silver?”
“No reason not to go with what’s working.”
Kaleb placed the ingot flat on his workbench and got to his feet. Daivor backed up to the edge of the table and took notes as Kaleb flexed his fingers.
“Magical capacity testing, attempt number one. Clear?”
“I’m clear.”
Kaleb closed his eyes and looked inwardly at his pool of magic. With a breath, he allowed his power to flow up from his core and into his fingertips. With caution, he attempted to place a small drop of his magic into the metal. He felt his magic leave his hand and dip into the metal as he opened his eyes. Red-Silver continued to look inert, but Kaleb could feel his magic settle into the ingot. Quickly, he pulled his hand away and took a step back, checking his MP.
MP: 305/310
“Five mana spent. No visible reactions.”
“Noted. Did this one repel or try to vacuum up your power like some of the others?” Daivor asked.
“Neither. The mana settled into it and stayed there.” Kaleb answered as he switched to his Mana Vision. “In fact…”
Kaleb stared down at the ingot, his eyes alight with Mana. He could see the ebb and flow of his magic as it rested within the metal. It wasn’t the first ingot to do this, but most of the others had quickly dispersed the mana as soon as the connection was cut. He waved Daivor closer as he kept an eye on the swirling mass of magic now residing in the Rose-Silver ingot.
“It’s not dissipating.”
Daivor’s eyes quickly lit up green, and he joined Kaleb in examining the metal. They both sat in silence as they waited to see if anything happened. Seconds ticked by as the noise from the Hangar’s nocturnal crew drifted over the walls of the workshop. The others had all logged off or gone home and, once again; it was just Kaleb and Daivor testing things in his shop. Just a lizard and his gnome.
“It’s diffusing now. But slowly.”
Kaleb stared harder as his eyes watered a bit. He was almost sure the mass of Mana was slowly growing smaller as he watched. But he couldn’t be sure. Soon Kaleb was forced to blink and rub his eyes as holding the vision was getting to be too much. But Daivor kept on watching and then raised a finger when the Mana was completely gone. Kaleb marked the time on a nearby datapad and then looked up to the gnome.
“1:04 am.” Kaleb stated.
“You started infusing around 12:58 and probably finished at that same minute. So call it six minutes of magical retention?”
“Five before it started to go?”
“Thereabouts. I think we can call Red-Silver as having sufficient Mana-holding capabilities. It’ll need further testing, though. Do you wanna test if it can hold a charge as well or move on to the next Ingot?”
Kaleb stretched his back before looking at the pile of prototype ingots that still needed testing. Placing Red-Silver in a bin marked ‘Mana-capable,’ he shook his head.
“I think we need to move about a bit. We’ve been documenting these ingots for the past couple of hours. How about we grab some coffee and start actually making stuff?”
Daivor gave him a pitying look. “Boss, it’s one in the morning. Do you really want to start a new project half-asleep?”
Kaleb glanced around the workshop. Marie’s workbench was alive with movement as he’d set it to scan their meager library of books and data-files into a larger server. To his left, beyond Terrance’s workbench, the large forge was roaring away, melting junk metal into ingots and disposing of the slag. Terrance’s bench was currently sitting idle, a fact that was slowly driving a bit of Kaleb’s brain mad. There was so much junk to process and catalogue. The tall boy’s bench could’ve been doing some of it.
Kaleb shook the errant thoughts from his head and looked down at Daivor. “Come on. I just need some caffeine in me and I can start work on something. My fingers need to be moving, and my workbench needs to repair itself from all the explosions. Why don’t we work on the scanner portion of my new field scanner?”
The gnome huffed in annoyance before looking at the bin of Mana-capable ingots. “I don’t know, doc. You want to jump straight into combining magic and technology? I mean, in order to get the scanner to work how you want it too, you’ll need a general understanding of Alchemy. At least the dissolution spells.”
“Which we have down in Jar-lock’s library. I don’t need the identification or the prospectus spells. Because that can be handled by the device or our growing database. All I need is a spell to break down components to their separate parts. Combine that with the scanner and BAM! The first part is done.”
“Somehow, I don’t think it’ll be that easy.”
“Probably not. But let me try. Afterward, I can go back to almost blowing us up.”
The gnome stroked his beard and glared up at Kaleb for a full minute before finally relenting with a nod. Kaleb grinned and hurriedly left his workshop for a cup of coffee. On his way back, he waved at some of the NPCs manning their terminals. They paid him little mind and went about their business as he entered his workshop again. Mostly, the night crew was scouting and collecting information that was gone over in the mornings. They weren’t exactly sociable people, but they did their jobs just fine. As far as Kaleb could see.
Stolen story; please report.
Chugging his coffee, Kaleb sat back at his workbench and saw Daivor looking over the hand scanner. He prodded at its plastic case and flipped it over to get a better look at its power supply. Kaleb sat down and set his coffee to the side as he summoned his tools to his workbench.
“Everything has to go. You need the analyses chamber and the micro-computer. Maybe. Everything else can be scrapped.”
Kaleb nodded as he got to work. The goal was to take the device apart and add it to the K-Tech brand wrist computer he had… procured from a K-Tech patrol. The computer would scan what he pointed it at and give him a read-out of what he was looking at. A good idea in practice, but the handheld device wasn’t designed to do that. Instead, it scanned what was put into it and spat out an ion count. Which is where the Alchemy came in. Within the school of Alchemy, there were spells designed to reduce materials down to their base parts.
All he had to do was get the spell to activate as soon as his scanner came on and then deactivate when it turned off. Everything apart from that would be mechanical. He would need a portion of a Mana-capable metal around the scanning portion of his wrist computer to hold the spell. Of course, he would have to build a scanner into the slim computer. But that could come later. For now, he just needed to prepare the pieces.
Kaleb looked down at what his hands had wrought. Breaking out of his thoughtfulness. Daivor was moving bits and pieces to the edge of the table as Kaleb glanced at the two small bits of tech. The analyses chamber was circular in design. Made to hold small vials for the scanner to read. It then fed that data into the micro-computer. Kaleb picked up the tiny bit of square PCB that made up the device’s brain. It appeared to be in perfect condition and ready to install into his new wrist computer.
“But first…” Kaleb smiled to himself and moved to grab a Mana-capable ingot.
But Daivor was already bringing one up to the table. It was a grey ingot that shined with an eerie green-yellow color as it passed under the light. Kaleb grimaced.
“Green-Yellow? Why not one of the blue ones?”
“This one can hold the spell just as well. You don’t need it to hold mana forever. You can feed mana into it when you scan something.”
“But the whole point of using the Mana-capable metal was to save on my Mana expenditure. That way I won’t ever run out.”
“Use a lot of Mana while you’re out crime fighting, do you?” Daivor asked as he gave Kaleb a pointed look.
“I could… you know… sometimes… Alright! Fine! I don’t use that much Mana while crime-fighting.”
“So you have enough to power this thing a few times. Get to forging the piece we need and I’ll find the micro-table. You’re going to be forging runes at an ultra-small scale. I hope your hand is ready for it.”
Kaleb reflexes flexed his fingers and winced. Yeah, that part would not be fun. But he was still riding the high of creativity. So for now, he went about his business. He needed to measure the edge of his wrist computer so he knew how big to forge the metal. But once he had everything in place, he paused the Forge’s current job and started his own. It took many hours of melting and lathe work to get the thing the way he wanted it. But by then, Daivor had already prepared for the next steps.
“We’ve got several digital scanners from some of the robots you and Roy picked up. Pick one that’ll fit and crack open that wrist computer.”
Kaleb detached the wrist computer from his arm and carefully put its Moldi-Screen face up on his workbench. The device’s flexible nature was going to suffer somewhat with the upgrades. But that was worth it, in Kaleb’s opinion. Besides, after wearing it for so long, it already conformed to his arm well enough.
Cracking the case open was a dangerous and time-consuming job, but once done, Kaleb found it pretty easy to install a robot’s visor scanner to the side of his computer. It was horizontal and slim enough to not make the computer bulge too much. Wiring the thing to the computer’s motherboard brought up another issue, though.
“This thing is going to overheat.” Kaleb groaned as he looked down at the pieces before him.
Daivor didn’t even look up from the pile of parts he was submerged in as he gave the answer. “Magic!”
Kaleb slapped his forehead and got out a black marker. But then a thought occurred to him. Putting the marker down, he went and got his small soldering iron. With great care and a giant magnifying glass, Kaleb etched the magical runes into the PCB itself. He was extra careful not to go too deep into the conformal coating, and once he was done, Kaleb was more than satisfied with his work. The wrist computer’s floppy, thin motherboard was now the proud owner of several Heat Dispersion runes. He had even thrown in a few Concentration Runes to help speed up the system. When he showed his work to Daivor, the gnome puffed out a large plume of smoke and widened his eyes.
“Did you need three of them?”
Kaleb shrugged. “Does the transfer of magic generate heat that is dangerous to electronics?”
This time, the gnome shrugged. “We’re diving deep into muddy waters on this one, boss. Magi-tech is a fringe science at the best of times and magical horror stories at its worse. We need to take every precaution.”
Kaleb nodded as Daivor glanced back and forth between the runes and the pile of equipment still left to be installed. With a shudder, the Builder Gnome waved for Kaleb to grab his soldering iron again.
“Maybe you should add a few more protection runes and maybe an Anti-Fae ward.”
“What?”
“Gremlins are a pain in the ass, kid.”
Kaleb went to ask more questions, but Daivor simply shook his head and pointed at the PCB. Kaleb rolled his eyes and got to work. They added several protection Runes as well as a few for general toughness for the board. By the end, the slim PCB was a horrible menagerie of tiny electronic components and Kaleb’s magical scrawling. He was just about done with Rune writing when Daivor brought over his forged bit of Mana-capable metal. The builder gnome grinned up at him, face large through the magnifying glass, and waved at the slim rectangle of metal.
“Time for this one. Now remember, Alchemic Runes are a little trickier. They are smaller and, some would say, easier, but they still require a steady hand.”
Kaleb drained the last of his coffee and rolled his eyes as he gripped his soldering iron again. But Daivor shook his head sagely.
“These are going to have to be written with your magic. Straight-up.”
“What?”
Daivor waved the slim bit of metal around in Kaleb’s face. “This stuff holds magic easier than other metals, right? Well, what you need to do is imprint the Runes you want with your mind. Force your will down into the metal until it takes physical form.”
“That seems more violent than just writing the crap down, doesn’t it?”
“Just close your eyes, ya damn punk!”
Kaleb did as instructed and set his soldering iron down. After he did, he felt Daivor take one of his hands and place it on the metal. Kaleb brought his other hand up and felt the slim rectangle under his fingers. The metal hummed in his hands, although Kaleb didn’t know if that was the metal or just his multiple coffees. He felt Daivor’s small hand place itself on top of his own and slowly move it across the metal.
“Now, focus your magic down into the metal. Picture the runes you want and imagine them getting deeper and deeper ingrained within the metal. Have you got it?”
“Yes. It’s like inscribing the Runes normally. Visualization…”
“And intention. Right. Except now you are forcing your intention onto the metal itself.”
Kaleb did as instructed and focused his magic onto the metal repeatedly in his mind. He kept the elementary Alchemic Runes at the front of his mind as he worked. In his mind he could see the words slow indenting on the metal as he continually poured his magic over them. The metal absorbed his magic like a sponge and seemingly spread it out across his fingertips. It was when Kaleb developed a headache that he finally opened his eyes and looked down. The greenish yellow bit of metal was aglow with magic as the Alchemic Runes appeared across its surface. Daivor moved the magnifying glass around so Kaleb could check his work. He had done over half of the rune work with his meager amount of mana. He could tell where the imprint wasn’t quite as deep and he would need to reinforce it. But for now, he needed a break.
Sitting back in his chair, Kaleb rubbed a hand through his eyes and checked the time.
“It’s already 3 in the morning!? When the hell did that happen?!”
Daivor rolled his eyes and simply puffed at his pipe a few times before he asked his own question. “Will we be sleeping tonight or should I go kiss my nice warm bed goodbye?”
Kaleb stretched and stood as he answered. “Let me just finish this. Is Roy’s cot still set up?”
“Yes. But you know, you have a bed as well, right?”
“Don’t judge me, Daivor. I know you're just as excited about this as I am.”
“I am. But a sleep deprived mind makes mistakes. Leave it, Professor. We can tackle the rest in the morning.”
Kaleb stared down at the bit of metal in his hands, then at the pile of components and parts he still needed to work on. The sight made his eyes hurt, and he finally sighed to himself. He gave his familiar a nod and started for Roy’s cot. He heard the gnome grumble something about more comfortable beds, but he ignored it as he took his lab coat off and put his head down. The lights of the hangar seemed to dim as Kaleb eye’s closed. His last thoughts about how his latest plan for magic and technology was going to pan out. Would he succeed or would he wind up blowing his entire workshop into a crater? Either way, he was excited.