Chapter 68 - Praise the Standard

I needed to clear my head and work on something sane for a while. I left the noblins to their own devices, for now, taking a few of the less scribbled-on sheets of paper as a peace offering for the engineers. As I walked through the village I could already see goblins alone or in pairs, tucked into corners, squawking over little paper pamphlets with crude drawings. Just how early had the canoneers started working? Couldn’t find fault with that ethic, at least.

I found Sally embedded with her fellow engineers, assembling the first test crank case for a primitive rotary engine out of ceramic parts. I wasn’t sure how well it would hold up to tests, but since every scrap of iron we had went into musket barrels, this was our second resort. I could have those guns melted down, and part of me still wanted to. But keeping them for the next time a threat faced us was a no-brainer, even if it did put a strain on raw iron.

Huntsville was producing about 22 chooms of raw iron a day, which melted down into about 13 chooms of bar steel at the furnaces and anvils. Not a lot, by industrial measure. We didn’t even need wagons for it, yet. It could be brought on the backs of cliffords (as long as they didn’t stay after nightfall). But just the fact that we had it was nothing short of a monumental leap. That the pigs had forced me to divert almost everything we had into weapons of war just…

Ugh. Damage done. Neil’s hunters at least were very fond of those rifles. I could hear the pop pop of them test firing even over the noise of igni hammering away at a rotor on the other side of the bluff. I’m just glad the piggies didn’t know about Huntsville, because hitting that would have really crippled our progress, not just our food supply.

Huntsville also supplied us with fuel. The icky-slicky oil I’d used to fry a few boglins and escape King Ringo’s island didn’t burn quite as cleanly as kerosene, but rotary engines are notoriously robust when it comes to burning even the worst bunker fuel sludge. It would do. The boglins were eager to trade it for meat that didn’t taste like the bog until we could get well pumps up and running, and with the Canaveral goblins going back to retake the bluff to the southeast, we should have steady lizard meat again.

Between that and the leftovers from the battle, we’d bought some wiggle room to address the looming food shortage. Ideally we’d get agriculture going—and we’d already started planting some fruit and nut seeds to form orchards near the base of the bluff. But that would take years to pay off. Livestock and herd animals, that was the fast solution. But we needed the tools for it. And that… was proving to be an obstacle.

Sally’s engineers held up the two halves of the engine case and tried to get the uneven parts to marry up. I sighed. I’d measured them both before they’d gone into the kiln, and they’d both had molds. Yet, the Goblin Tech Tree made them come out uneven. How would this thing ever run if it didn’t even have a sealed combustion chamber?

I came closer an inspected the joining as the engineers chittered excitedly. If the shapes were at least similar, we maybe could have sealed the gaps and re-fired it in the kiln. But I could see daylight through gaps that shouldn’t have even been there, and it was beyond fixing. That meant another firing, another waste of clay and charcoal. Even this was frustrating me this morning.

Trying to explain standards and tolerances to the goblins was like speaking to a brick wall. I just don’t think their brains were wired that way. And non-verbal as they were, most of them couldn’t ask questions to better understand. Sure, they could grasp the basic technology—and the variants had an even better understanding where their specialities were concerned—but your average forest goblin learned primarily by osmosis and experimentation, not lecture.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“Sorry,” I said, letting the engine prototype tip over. “Won’t work. Let’s iterate and try again. Maybe check the molds and see if we can’t get the ratios closer.

Sally’s goblins all sighed with dejected slumps to their shoulders, until Sally started laying into them with angry chirps and flying fists. Then, they hopped-to.

The timer may have been ticking slower, but it still ticked. We needed to figure this out.

I ran my hands through the fur on my face. The system provides.

I grabbed the nearest goblin. “Go get me the canoneers.”

It jumped and chittered, and took off in the direction of the central pavilion. I watched the blue furry streak disappear around a bend and then set to work helping Sally’s team with the molds until the noblins arrived. It took them a while. Apparently, they weren’t exactly coordinated, and bumped into a lot on the way over. I made a mental note to invent spectacles once we got some high quality silica.

The taskmaster came up to me with an armful of papers wedged against his side. “Boss! We chronicled your escape from King Ringo, want to see it?”

“How?” I asked. “The only witness to that event is a dead scrapper.”

“We might have, um, filled in some blanks,” he said. He stuck the back end of his charcoal pencil up his nose and scratched it around. “Ya know, where details was light.”

“You know what? No.” I shook my head. “I won’t be deified. I’m not God, I don’t speak to any gods, and I certainly don’t want to risk being smited if this world has one that’s a little more active than the one I’m used to.”

The taskmaster nudged one of the others. “Write that down!”

I snapped my fingers to turn his attention back towards me. “Doesn’t mean I ain’t the boss. Now, I need something to call you.” I didn’t add that I’d be damned before I named him after an astronaut like the other taskmasters. Well, work with what you know. “Luther. Your name is Luther. We’re going to set some ground rules.”

Seems equal parts blasphemous and appropriate.

Luther nodded. “I like it. So then, king, what’s your decree?”

I considered. System, how does codification of goblin religion work?

Ok, I get the picture. But how best to use this to my advantage.

“Let’s start with some commandments,” I said.

Luther and the other canoneers listened raptly.

“First, thou shalt be excellent to each other.”

I considered, running a hand through my fur. Religion was hard.

“Thou shalt maintain proper version control.”

The canoneers started scribbling—doodling, I should say. Written language was still a foreign concept, it seemed, despite my attempts to introduce it. The goblin tech tree simply had no place for syllabic language, as far as I could tell. Which made a certain sort of sense, since non-variant goblins couldn’t speak. Symbols and representational symbology was a different story.

“The scientific method is this: Question, research, hypothesize, experiment, analyze, and communicate.”

We’d started to draw a crowd as goblins gathered to listen to our new religious edicts.

“Uh… To measure twice before cutting once is holy.”

It’s important!

“When in doubt, thou shalt iterate and try again.”

I looked around at the goblins nodding and chittering to each other. I was good at this. I held up my hands.

“Questioning work hours or safety standards is heresy.”

The goblins cheered.

I briefly entertained the idea of introducing a paradoxical commandment just for fun. But I didn’t want to cause little blue heads to explode. That was enough for now.

I clapped my hands and grinned at Luther. “Alright. Let’s start thinking about some religious iconography. Bring over that engine case and some paper.