Beyond directing farmers, I also have to direct our new stonemason Sossu.

I go to the town hall so I can have quick access to documents regarding the island while drafting up a plan for Sossu to follow. A stonemason requires materials to work, especially given what I want him to do. Whatever maps there are of the island are incomplete and imprecise and beyond that, there’s only a lot of written records describing the terrain and resources of the island.

This is how surveying was done back in old times, with no standards at all. Cartographers often times had no tools beyond parchment and charcoal, in richer countries, like ancient Egypt, they had some standard measurement tools and were able to correctly map a lot of stuff with scary accuracy. Back in the time of the Roman Republic, the Egyptians had already correctly measured the length of the Egyptian kingdom in stadia, their own standard measure.

This world has its own measurements, of course. In Aedhag the most commonly used measure for length is the feet, which is described as the average length of a grown adult human male's foot. Same as was done in medieval Europe back on Earth. Of course, once again, there is no accepted international or even local standard. In Aedhag the use of many other length measures like forthings, halfdans, quiplings and others I forgot the name of are also very common. In addition, without standardization, the conversion between them is very arbitrary. Forthings are commonly used for very long distances, and around 45.6 feet equal a single forthing, such a confusing conversion is not very good for accurate measurements.

Was it NASA that had an accident because of having to convert metrics into the confusing imperial system? If this world just had a logical decimal system, everything would be much easier.

Even within a measurement, it is hard to find any consistency. As I said, a forthing is AROUND 45.6 feet, because there is no accurate measurement of how long exactly a foot should be right now, it should be around 26 Earth centimeters, from what I understood, but it varies from place to place, person to person.

Going back to the issue of tools, too. Ancient Egypt was a rich country while Lull is not. Our surveyors set out with just enough to draw a map and no measures beyond their own understanding of what feet and forthings are. There are incomplete measurements for how big the island is, but there is no way they are even close to accurate.

The glorious metric system is something we take for granted back in Earth, and right now I'm really feeling its absence, the best I can do is look at the written records about unexploited resources here and take the measured length to Algatolla with a very, very large pinch of salt.

Anyway, going back to the issue of resources. If nothing else, Lull is blessed with a fair amount of resources. There is limestone in the hills along the shore between Algatolla and Tristan. The beaches there very quickly give way to sharp hills that immediately jut out from sea level up some twenty meters; these hills apparently have a lot of clay in them.

Stolen novel; please report.

Those are the two main ingredients for making cement.

Of course, beyond that, I also need to create enough heat for the calcining process to take effect. Otherwise combining the two just creates useless slurry.

Thankfully my interest in useless history gives an answer, there were many types of kilns used to make cement historically. As production ramped up in the 19th century, there was a quick burst of innovation and new types of kiln would be created almost every decade.

I can't recall the more complicated later designs, which is a shame as they obviously were more efficient, but I can recall the early beehive kilns and the later Johnson chamber kilns that replaced them. It will be a bit of a bother to create the bricks necessary, given the lack of infrastructure here, but with a chamber kiln we should be able to make cement.

I joyfully start describing a chamber kiln, pouring out my mind into paper in preparation for explaining it all to Sossu, only to remember Sossu can't read.

That's right! That's right! That's not a problem I'd ever have back in Earth, I could just assume people were literate, at the very least. Here though, in this island of some six-thousand inhabitants, you can count the number of literate people with just your fingers.

I really need to think about education too...

Well, I should focus on this for now. I already have too much stuff to do and I'm rushing things as is. For now, just sweep that thought under the rug and come back to it later, that kind of thinking has never failed me, yup! Never.

I go ahead and start drawing a diagram of a chamber kiln that I can show to Sossu, if he doesn't understand writing, then drawings will have to suffice.

"Hm, you are a pretty good artist."

Casteddu looks over my shoulder, probably curious at what I was doing, "Is this some sort of kiln?"

"Yeah, it is a new design from Aedhag," I lie, no way I can explain to him where I actually learned this. "See here, the beehive shape at the bottom lets a lot of material burn at once, and the chamber above with a single exhaust on the opposite end lets the heat simmer and build up. This allows the heat to accumulate and become very high over a long period of time."

"Drawing well makes sense for an idle member of the nobility, but why do you know so much about kilns?" Casteddu prods me, god, can’t he be a little bit less suspicious? Having a skeptical person who always thinks rationally is pretty useful, but it's also very infuriating, we aren't compatible at all.

"You didn't have many friends back in Tatari, did you?" I say what's on my mind, with some contempt.

"What's that got to do with anything?" He's actually taken aback by what I said, wow, I was right wasn't I? That's a bit sad.

Not that I can shame him for it, I was a loner on Earth too for different reasons, maybe we are more alike than I want to admit.

I sigh to give me a couple more seconds to think of an excuse, "I saw the new prototype kilns while visiting family in Oisin a while back. I was interested in them so I talked to the supervising masons and bought a few books on the subject before coming back. It was just my passing fancy, that's all."

"You were so interested in them, but you didn't think to hire one of the masons and have it built before now?"

"Uhh," Is having this guy around the right call? He might actually find out I'm lying eventually from all this prodding. "It... Wouldn't be very nice to just pilfer craftsmen from my relatives, right? Besides, I had to take time to read up on the subject to grasp it fully, I couldn't have brought a stonemason from elsewhere that hadn't seen that type of kiln until I fully understood it myself."

"Ah, I suppose that's true. And Sossu just happened to show up at the right time."

"Yeah, yeah, a lucky coincidence, I'm glad I don't need to look for a stonemason now." Phew, dodged that bullet.

"Anyway, we both have work to do, please let me finish drawing this; I'd like Sossu to get started on this as soon as possible," I say and Casteddu finally lumbers back to his own desk, satisfied with my answers.