“Ready!” Jerith commanded.

“Ready!” We all answered. I held my rope like the fuse of something that could detonate - which it was.

“Fire!”

I yanked the rope, abruptly pulling the locking pin out of the release mechanism. The massive counterweight dropped, and the sixty-foot arm of the launcher wrenched skyward, whipping around the attached sling and releasing its hundred-pound missile. Just as Jerith had designed, the release point was a perfect 45 degrees. This was a big fucking rock, but it flew almost out of sight, I could still barely see where it landed. Mission: success. The SUBAS was officially lethal!

Our crew was a gaggle of randoms from the forging and carpentry classes. There were about a dozen of us, and we needed every single person to operate this god damn monstrosity. It had taken at least twice that many volunteers to assemble the thing once all of the parts had been manufactured - actual adults from the Castellan engineering corps. Not me. Despite my best efforts at torturing my body into progress, I was still made of toothpicks. I could barely even lift the stone that this weapon of mass transportation had just casually yeeted out of sight. I scowled at it enviously.

Don’t look so smug. You’re just a glorified teeter-totter.

A cheer of celebration went up from the builders. We’d all put our blood, sweat, and weekends into constructing this behemoth, and our efforts were finally yielding phat stacks. Not of money, though… This was an unpaid internship.

Jerith cheered and clapped right along with the rest of us. He was unquestionably the leader of the group. All design decisions, progress reports, and manpower scheduling went through him.

He’d make a fine project manager…

“Great job everybody!” Jerith announced. “It’s been a privilege working with you all - but the work isn’t over yet! The SUBAS is built - now we need to calibrate it! Testing starts tomorrow. Be here bright and early!”

Basically, we were going to fire rocks all over the place and see where they went. Unloading… reloading… It was gonna be absolutely exhausting - but completely kick-ass! In the forging class, I’d gotten to witness a lot of the work that went into fabricating the launcher’s components - the metal fasteners, axles, bushings… and I’d even studied the diagrams that the blacksmiths used to create them. It was a grind - sometimes literally - but it was all necessary to realize a new goal I’d set for myself. A new dream.

I’d learned almost everything I needed to manufacture a barbell.

And then… my pursuit of rapid muscular expansion could truly begin.

----------------------------------------

“Man, it took forever to make all those parts… but once we had them, the assembly went pretty quick!” I commented.

Jerith nodded. We were walking down the stone path leading from the city with a hand cart in tow behind us, to gather the rocks that we’d just been launching. The sun was low on the horizon. We’d only had time for a few volleys to allow plenty of time for cleanup before it got too dark. You didn’t want to be anywhere near the killing field after dark.

“Well, the chassis was just a copy of the Castellan military trebuchets, so any major assembly issues would have already been taken care of. The new part of this design is the rotating base, and that was a nightmare to get right.”

“Don’t forget my thing.” I pouted.

“I wasn’t going to, I swear! The adjustable release point - excellent work!”

On a normal trebuchet, you can change the distance it fires rocks by changing the amount of mass in the counterweight. Meaning, somebody has to get up there and chuck a bunch of ballast out of the container. For a siege, this works just fine. But for the SUBAS, we wanted to be able to aim and fire quickly, so we made a number of minor changes to make that process go faster. It was like a science fair - everyone came up with proposals, and we incorporated the ones that made sense. My big contribution to the SUBAS was a hinged beam in the back of the thing that allowed the height of the locking mechanism, and therefore the range of the sling, to be quickly adjusted.

Was it the best design? Probably not. But watching it in action as we tested various ranges was going to be exciting. I never got to play with toys this expensive growing up - that would have eaten into my sisters’ clothing budget.

“I’m surprised the base was still able to rotate after assembly… I figured it would lock up or something from all the weight.” I said.

Jerith shook his head. “Nope. We tested the gears early on by piling a whole bunch of rocks on top of the base beams. The first time we tried it they wouldn’t turn, but a few innovations later…” he waved towards the craters in front of us where the rocks had landed - still somehow intact. We got to work, picking up the rocks together and lugging them over to the cart.

“Hmm…” Jerith frowned. “We didn’t make any adjustments to the SUBAS today, right?”

“Nope. Same angle and power for every shot.”

“Then why haven’t all these rocks landed in the exact same place?”

“Variable rock geometry, and how the SUBAS shakes during the launch.” I shrugged.

Of course, Jerith already knew that. This was just how Jerith liked to think through problems - by asking the stupidest question possible. The questions that nobody else would ask, out of fear that they would be branded an idiot. Which is too bad, because the answer to this stupid question was really quite important. We were trying to build a machine that could launch rocks as consistently as possible.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“This isn’t good enough.” Jerith said, standing in the center of the group of impact craters. “If I was the target, all of these would have missed me.”

“Not if you were the size of a building.”

“Yeah…” Jerith agreed, obviously not satisfied. “I’m sure we can do better…”

Working together, Jerith and I lugged the rocks into the handcart. As we piled them in, one after another, I had an idea.

“How about firing a cluster of rocks instead of just one? If all of our eggs are going to be in one basket, then we might as well have more eggs.” I suggested.

“Not bad… we’ll have to test that out.” Jerith pondered. “Bradley, what are you going to do after you graduate?”

“Become an adventurer, probably.”

Jerith frowned. “Really? That’s it?”

“Yeah… why?”

“People who score what you did on the Advanced Mathematics exam don’t tend to become adventurers.”

“The life chose me.” I said, tugging at my metal collar. I’d been holding onto hope that somebody in the forging class knew how to work with mythril, but to no avail. The library held no answers for me either.

“I suppose…” Jerith relented. “Well… if you ever change your mind, would you want to work for Castella as an engineer? I’m hoping to convince the King to order a few more SUBAS, once we get all the kinks worked out.”

“That’s a whole lot of bad ass.”

“That’s the plan, at least.” Jerith smiled. “And if it pans out, we’ll need more people to help build them.”

With all the rocks loaded into the cart, we set back towards the safety of the walls - night was falling fast, though they weren’t as cold these days. Spring was definitely right around the corner.

“Tempting. You gonna be meeting with the King any time soon?”

“Apparently, he’ll be in attendance at my wedding, right after our graduation. I’ll ask him then - which is why we need to work quickly to optimize this thing.”

An audience with the King…

“Shall I be in attendance at your wedding as well?” I asked, batting my eyelashes. It was bold, but I needed this. Something changed in the wind. The rocks in the hand cart were heavy, but with Jerith and I working the cart in tandem, we were almost back to the walls. I was on the right track.

“Of course! You can even pull the pin.”

“The pin?”

“The pin! I’d like to fire off a volley in celebration.”

“Of course you would, you freaking nerd.”

“Is it that weird?”

“Nope, it actually sounds like a great thing to do. Weddings bore the hell out of me.”

Jerith frowned.

“I’m glad you think so… Arrabella disagrees. She doesn’t want to come all the way out here from the Cathedral…”

“Is there anything silly that she wants? You could do it in exchange.” I offered, all suave and politican-like.

“I could make a list of all the silly things she wants…” Jerith grumbled.

First time with a woman, eh?

“What is the actual ceremony like?”

“It’s pretty simple - we go to the Cathedral, exchange some vows in front of the high priest, then head to the community center to feast with our guests.”

“Just like Earth… and then they play the macarena, and a whole bunch of other songs about infidelity, and someone’s aunt does the funky chicken.”

“Your home world is strange.”

“Of course it was. We were bombarded every hour of every day with unnatural visions that were designed by committees of amoral actors to drive us insane.”

“Visions of what?”

I hesitated for a second. Didn’t want to spill too many beans here. My mind is like a game of minesweeper. Click with care…

Or not. Fuck it, let’s do this.

“How many girls have you ever seen naked?” I asked finally.

Jerith started counting on his fingers, bless his soul.

“Just a few. Sometimes they get marched through town as punishment for indecent behavior.”

“...and your fiancee, I guess.” I speculated aloud.

“Of course not! We aren’t married yet!” Jerith said, flushing red.

“Really? Why not? You’re already sleeping in the same bed with her every night.”

“Yes, and that’s all! It’s a Castellan custom! It helps the couple grow closer together.” Jerith insisted.

“Right, and I’m sure every couple follows the code of conduct.”

“Some don’t…” Jerith admitted. “But not me! I want to adhere to the tradition - it’s a discipline thing.”

“How long have you been encaged to your financee again?” I asked, hyukking and double slapping my knee.

“About half a year now.”

“Long time to be disciplined.”

“That’s just because we wanted to do it after the school year! Anyway, it’s your turn. How many girls… have you seen? I’m sure you’re going somewhere with this.”

I laughed aloud. What a tough question to answer. But I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it. “Thousands? Nah… tens of thousands. But not hundreds of thousands - it’s not like I was addicted or anything.”

Jerith’s eyes went wide in horror. “That… that’s…” he stammered, probably trying to picture an entire Coliseum full of wet’n’wild hotties. Or was that scene from Coed Spring Break 4?

“I could wake up every day and scope out ten new naked chicks before breakfast. And again before bed - It helped me sleep.” I boasted.

“How were you able to do this?” Jerith eventually asked. “Did clothing not exist on Earth?”

“No, we had clothes! But we also had these magic boxes that let you see anything you wanted. We spent most of our waking lives staring at them.”

It took another long moment for that doozy to sink in.

“...maybe I don’t want to hear more about where you came from.”

“You really don’t.” I grinned.

“Arrabella seems to like listening to your friend Stella talk about it. You two are from the same world, right?”

“Yep, that’s right…” I said gruffly.

She’d better not be filling this poor kid’s fiancee with anything too destructive…

“She’s been visiting Stella often, sometimes late into the night, so her stories must be quite captivating.”

“Late into the…” I started, before trailing off. My gut was starting to hurt. A hernia that I didn’t have started playing whack-a-mole with my pancreas.

You poor, poor, naive, brilliant kid…

This was my cue to say something speculative, scummy, and deeply offensive. To ruin the one friendship that I needed to cultivate above all others, with a person that I’d grown to deeply respect.

But I wasn’t ready to go down that road yet - so instead, I did something unprecedented.

I held my fucking tongue.