Calvin cracked his undead knuckles.

Alright, let’s do this.

Calvinian summoning

Atom ant

47/54 Bent remaining

Calvin created a swarm of thumb-sized Knick-knacks, which were as small as he could make them. Each of them had the strength of…forty-five thumb-sized knick-knacks.

Which honestly wasn’t a lot, but it made them able to carry and manipulate larger components than they had any right to.

Calvin assigned the swarm to dismantle, clean and polish everything. If nothing else, when Calvin let the Ooze weavers back in, Mother hagfish would be shinier than ever.

He carefully relayed Elliot’s instructions to the Knick-knack, which amounted to seperating all the parts of the ‘computers’ by type and testing them to make sure they worked before cobbling the working parts into a single, mostly working computer.

When he turned it on, the screen flashed blue and asked for a password in ancient malkenrovian. Elliot instructed him to hit some buttons on the keyboard, and the screen went black with white text scrolling past.

After that, Elliot called out things to type in a seemingly nonsensical pattern, until finally, the screen went white, hurting Calvin’s eyes with the sudden change in brightness.

On the screen were several buttons. None of which he could read.

Bottom left.

Following the complicated instructions, Calvin wielded the ‘mouse’ like a confused farm animal, nudging the tiny little arrow on the screen over the button. It seemed to follow his motion, but only if the tail of this ‘mouse’ was facing north.

Okay, now double click.

Calvin clicked down on the mouse’s butt with his index finger, then did it again.

Nothing happened.

C’mon, faster! You’re not a goddamn geriatric.

Calvin clicked as fast as he could, the plastic vermin giving way under his finger with a crunch.

Son of a…nevermind, this is fine. Get another mouse and we’ll try again. I’ll be more specific. I need to you click gently, twice in about half a second.

His Knick-knacks brought him another salvaged ‘mouse’ and plugged it in for him, replacing the broken one.

This time, Calvin got it on the first try, the button expanded with a flicker, opening up into another series of buttons.

And boom goes the dynamite. Nice. Okay, stare at the screen for a minute so I can read all of them….

That one right there. Third row down, second column on the left.

Calvin ‘clicked’ on that button, and a confusing jumble of words and pictures formed.

At Elliot’s behest, he ‘scrolled’ down through the data, pausing occasionally for Elliot to read.

Calvin tried his best, but even though Karen had taught him to speak Malkenrovian, the text was so packed with jargon that he could only pick out words like ‘the’ ‘a’ and ‘and’

Calvin committed them to memory, with the intention of someday unpackaging the dense information.

There it is! Elliot shouted. There’s the problem!

You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Calvin said.

“Okay, this right here is the metalloprotein responsible for responding to the Emitter’s signals and changing the slime into a plastic and back again.

Those tiny strands right there are the metal ion cofactor that allows the protein to do its business. Normally it’s inert, but the Emitter wakes it up, so to speak.

To Calvin it just looked like a snarl of squiggles, so he nodded his head.

Now what Todd figured out was that the plastic had rare earth elements in it. In the protein that causes the transformation, more specifically. Not only are they capable of stacking and unstacking the long-chain polymers, they can also take commands, in a manner of speaking.

The Lanthanide in the dark grey bit will excite in the presence of an emitter’s signal. This excitement produces the energy that the protein uses to do its work. It also dictates what kind of work it will do. Too much energy will turn the plastic into sludge, while a little bit less hardens it up.

This makes no sense to me, Calvin replied honestly.

Yeah, I figured that might be the case. Anyway, what I’m getting at is this. The crab-people you’re chummy with have a diet deficiency.

What can I do about it?

Right now? Not much. Experiment with introducing new foods and see which ones raise productivity. Other than that, you could always try mining for rare-earth metals, but fat chance of doing that with your current level of…technology.

You just thought of something, didn’t you? Calvin asked.

I sure did. Rare earth metals are commonly used in advanced circuitry, things like cell phones, datapads, holo-tvs…construction bots.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Knick knacks… Calvin frowned. Pull up their description.

Fields industries Micro Construction Bot (Modified): one of the Tech-races formerly enslaved by humans, Knick-Knacks live underground. They are mercantile, peaceful masters of mining and metallurgy.

Masters of mining and metallurgy.

If anyone has rare earth elements, it’s these guys. They would need them to make more of themselves any other way than simply scavenging parts. And let me tell you something. They’re gonna want plastic.

Maybe I’ll have to pay them a visit, Calvin thought. There was another leg of his trading empire that he hadn’t yet established, ignored simply by virtue of their inaccessibility.

Out of sight, out of mind.

If he could get the materials he needed to bring plastic production up to ninety percent or higher, he could easily part with a fraction of that bounty in exchange.

Anything else we need?

Nope, just gotta get the wiring fixed up and this place will be good as new.

The plan went off without a hitch. Calvin had been dreading some horrible setback, but everything had been rather…mundane.

When they left the temple of Mother Hagfish, all the flickering lights had been repaired and now each and every specimen shone brightly. Mother Hagfish herself shone several times brighter than before, thanks to a thorough cleaning and a new ‘LED’.

They would have to assume that their goddess was pleased.

I honestly thought something would, I don’t know…explode, knowing my luck.

Oh right, you didn’t notice the part where we disabled the self-destruct mechanism, did you? Todd probably had a thing about corporate espionage.

What?

Don’t worry though, the worst that would’ve happened is the entire facility shorting out. It would’ve been fixable with knick-knacks anyway.

Calvin shook his head and dove back into the lake.

***Later***

“Our Lord has discerned the hidden knowledge that has been kept from us!”  Y’kuingi said, raising her forelegs high.”

“The secret hidden in your temple was this:” Calvin said, addressing the crowd. “There is a type of mineral in the earth that is very, very rare. So rare in fact, that the amount you get in your food is very, very small. In order to take full advantage of your Binding and the ‘plastic’ left to you by Mother Hagfish, you must increase your intake.”

“We have to eat dirt!?” one of the males said.

“No,” Calvin said. “It’s a specific mineral, and you only need a couple grains of sand worth a day.”

“What’s a mineral?”

“We have to eat sand!?”

Calvin sighed internally, resisting the impulse to bury his face in his hand.

“You do not have to change any aspect of your diet,” Calvin said, trying to be as clear as possible. “I am going to make the arrangements to find the mineral and ship it to you, and Chieftan Y’kuingi is going to come with me as your representative.”

“Is that fair?” Calvin asked, turning to the ooze-weaver beside him.

“More than.”

Calvin spent the next fifteen minutes answering increasingly inane questions and finally dismissed the Ooze-weavers, who happily went back to work.

I wonder if Kala knows where I can get into contact with the Knick-Knack leadership…assuming they have a leadership.

He found the girls where he’d left them at the vats, except now they were in the middle of a vicious slime-fight.

Ella was on her bottom, her hide clothes utterly slimed and desperately trying to breathe through a sheet of mucus covering her face. Kala was balancing atop the slick ground with inhuman grace, using Beli ma to redirect slime hurled at her back toward Learner. Learner dodged faster than she had any right to, her toes literally planted in the ground.

“No…fair,” Ella said, poking a hole in the slime as the battle raged on without her.

The onlooking Ooze-weavers seemed…confused, and possibly irritated? Calvin wasn’t perfect at their body-language yet.

“Is this okay?” Calvin said.

“It’s not terrible,” Y’kuingi said. “The vat they’re in is for the runoff that’s already been processed and had all its plastic removed. It is a little…strange to see humans playing with Binding.”

Strange? Lube wrestling is an ancient and noble sport with thousands of years of dignity and tradition. Yeah, tear off her blouse! The blouse! Damnit, it’s right there!

Calvin walked closer and cleared his throat.

The three girls froze mid-fling.

“She started it,” Learner and Ella said simultaneously, pointing at Kala, whose one-piece dress clung to her slender body in a way that was only possible with ooze-weaver slime.

“What, I…” Kala frowned, her eyes beginning to water as she made little gasp of astonishment. “I can’t believe you two! Teaming up against me!”

She stepped closer, her gaze upturned as she looked deep into Calvin’s eyes.

“You have to believe me, Calvin,” She said, taking his hand in hers, watering eyes the size of coins.

Umm, buddy?

I’m aware.

“I would Never –“ Kala spun and threw his arm over her shoulder in a bid to toss him into the vat.

Unfortunately for her, Calvin had placed his other hand on the small of her back and shoved her forward, preventing her from rolling him over her shoulder.

The dusky princess squawked and tumbled forward, catching herself on a pad of light inches before she fell headfirst into the vat of slime.

“I see you’ve grown jaded, Calvin,” She said haughtily, acting the proper villainess as she turned to look at him, her eyes dancing with mirth. “But it wasn’t enough to –“

“Look out below!” Ella shouted, the huge Genosian falling down from above Kala.

Kala let out a pitiful shriek an instant before she was mercilessly dunked into the two-foot deep vat of slime. Once Ella had the princess in her grasp, she forced a competition of strength over skill, and Kala began losing, badly.

I think we’re the real winners here. Elliot said.

You said this was a sport?

Oh hell yeah. It was a national pastime. Totally.

“I’m starting to see the appeal.”

“Ack!” A sudden pressure on Calvin’s back propelled him forward.

 The instant before he hit the vat of slime, he saw Learner’s body deflating, while another body stood directly behind him with a smirk, eyes deliberately closed.

Why didn’t I feel her with the Tarak – Calvin’s next thoughts were washed away by a deluge of slime from which there was no escape.

Up was down and down was up, as Calvin desperately tried to find his way out of the slime. Thankfully, suffocating wasn’t a problem, given his nature, and he managed to break out of the slime into the air, half-crawling, half swimming to the side.

“All right,” Calvin growled, desperately hauling himself to the edge of the vat before he was able to stand, carefully grabbing the wooden edge.

“If that’s how you wanna play, that’s how it’s gonna be.”

46/54 Bent remaining

Multi-split

Gradual split.

Calvin created jets of air dotting Learner’s entire body. She tried to stop him with Bent Manipulation, but Calvin was way ahead of her on that front.

“EEP!”  Learner let out a girlish squeak as the atmosphere itself lifted her out of the ground, exposing the extra-long toes she’d used to grip the sandy soil.

A moment later she was dunked.

***half an hour later***

Calvin dragged himself out of the slime-vat, followed by the others, as they slowly crawled their way to the lake.

Ella and Kala were totally out of breath, panting desperately, but Calvin and Learner had no such problems. Learner’s body and her Skills combined to make her…basically perfect. And a difficult opponent even if she didn’t have any specialized skills yet.

“Hey Kala?”

“…Yeah?” Kala asked between gasps as they dragged themselves to the lake, the slime making it impossible to stand.

“Do you know how I could get in touch with the knick-knacks, for trade?” Calvin asked.

“Oh..sure.” She panted, “There’s an embassy in Mujenan.”

“Did you humans have fun with your ‘breeding roughhousing’?” Y’kuingi asked as Calvin and co. finally began washing themselves off in the lake.

….

“Yes. Yes we did.” He cocked his head to the side as a thought occurred. “Y’kuingi, could you prepare the most recent batch of plastic and an emitter, please?”

“Of course. Is it for trade?”

“That’s right,” Calvin said, dunking his body. “I’ve got an idea who might have what the People need to increase plastic production, and they are in a city.”

He glanced at Y’kuingi. “You are going to get to visit a human city.”

She tilted her whole body in confusion.

“I thought your March was a city. It’s got so many people.”

Calvin laughed as he sluiced the slime out of his underwear.