The Reptile Builds

  As he lay in his new pile of scrap, he wondered how he had known what was in the pile. He had no eyes, and yet he had felt like he had seen the hoarding rat’s junk. Perhaps some kind of synergistic effect between all his senses? But even still, it didn’t seem like it would’ve been enough.

  He clicked his tongue in annoyance and came to a sudden realization. The change must have given him some form of echolocation because the sound of his tongue let him see. The room seemed to solidify around him. With his senses, he could feel the room, but it was blurry in comparison to the echolocation.

  With this new method of sight, a whole new avenue of possibilities became open to him. With both the biosonar and all these pieces of tech around him, he could build.

  The first thing has to be something to make the water safe to drink. Either he needs to put together a Bunsen burner, to boil the parasites and bacteria out of the water, or create some kind of filter to remove the harmful aspects out of the water. Either way, it would set him up. Better to drink water than blood, at least.

  He began by sorting through the heap, looking for treasure in all this trash. He sorted all the proper parts together, putting assorted pipes here, an unusually large collection of metal teeth there, and so on. He found a busted hot plate, which would have been perfect if it hadn’t been cleaved in half somehow. On the plus side, he could still use some of the coil and conductible parts to make the burner, with a few more pieces.

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  Finally, after what felt like an hour, the Reptile had sorted through the mess that was a packrat’s living space. He absentmindedly wondered if the rat had some kind of superpower, considering its strange hoarding tendencies. Oh well, it’s much too late to figure out now. He felt confident that he could build something out of all these parts, he just hoped he had enough to make something that could create heat. He was fortunate that he wouldn’t need a battery, considering the power unit affixed to the wall, probably once used by maintenance staff.

  He had half of a hot plate, three feet of conducting coil, a spark plug, an engraved lighter, parts of a heater, and a surprisingly large roll of silver duct tape. He blessed his lucky stars that he wouldn’t have to make his own adhesive because that would’ve been almost impossible and fairly disgusting.

  The Reptile got to work. In lieu of a soldering iron, he discovered that his saliva could melt metal, allowing him to melt parts together. In little more than an hour, he had his own personal boiler. Most people would mistake it as either modern art or a pile of junk, but to him, it was his salvation. It certainly wasn’t the prettiest salvation, but it would do. It had to.