Chapter 6: Sunland

Prue moved out of the hotel to her lodgings.

She was soon immersed in work. She had planned to spend two months in each of the three Academies in Sunland, before going to Paulartica. She had been invited to spend three months in both of their most prestigious Universities.

She had found that the first Academe in Sunland had not advanced as far as she had. They recommended that she went to the second sooner rather than later because they couldn’t help her. So she only spent about five weeks. She wasn’t impressed with their condescending attitudes either, so it wasn’t hard to leave.

She had been told a Master DeVan had been working on her problems. Master DeVan was receptive enough to her and he had done some interesting experiments. She collected copies of his notes for further consideration, as to how his findings affected hers. Here too, she found she did more teaching than learning. She spent the two months and moved on.

She found she was feeling a little ill on the journey and put it down to bad food, as it didn’t last long. She had been told that if she travelled dressed as a bereaving widow, no one would bother her sexually or question why she was travelling alone. After she and Reggie had gone their separate ways, she felt like a bereaving widow, so dressing like one had not been hard.

In some ways, it helped her accept that the relationship was over. She did miss the sex. However, she knew that she wouldn’t go back to him. While she loved him as her friend and the sex with him had been good, she didn’t feel that she truly loved him, in the forever sense. Something was missing, but she knew not what.

She found the Masters she was introduced to at the third Academe had been playing mostly with magnetism. She was very interested in their findings, as they agreed with her’s. However, she still wasn’t learning a lot that she didn’t know.

On the second day she had been there, she had taken a wrong turn and ended up in an older wing of the building. She found a tall, middle-aged guy who had several lengths of copper wire strung up and down the hallways from one end of the wing to the other. He was muttering, “Damn assistants never around when you bloody need them.”

Then he spied her, he called out, “You, Missy, come here, come here.” Wondering what he was playing with she complied. “Sit here. See this chart; it has dashes and dots on it. Each set is for a different letter, see?”

Prue told him she did. “Right, right, see how I have written the word ‘sent’ in this code. Now a dot is the count of one fish, a dash is one fish, two fish. Between each letter is a break of two fish, each word is four fish. Get it?”

Prue nodded that she did, even though she didn’t understand what he was doing. “Good, good. So when you see the clicker move, you have to count for how long it stays down. So a dot or a dash, then how long it is up to work out the words and letters.”

Prue examined the clicker, it had a coil of insulated wire wrapped around a post with an arm extending from it and going down partway into the hole in the coil. When she pushed it down, she saw a set of contacts close.

“Ah, see it has two parts,” he happily explained seeing her interest. “When you send, you need to have this bar open. When you push the clicker down, it closes a contact and lets the current flow to the coil at the other end.”

“After you finish, close the bar and wait for an answer. The person at the other end that will be me, I will observe my clicker moving up and down as you energise and de-energise the coil. Then I’ll send you a message back.”

Prue was fascinated. “How long are your wires?” she asked.

“I have four sets strung, each one about two hundred metres long. If it works, I plan to string a set of cables for about a klick them longer and longer until I found out how far I can go,” he said excitedly.

“My biggest limitations according to my calculations are the energy source and the wire resistance. I think I can overcome the energy issue by setting up cells at multiple points and use thicker wires, but I still have to work that out.”

He rubbed his hands together and Prue had to laugh. She loved working with people who were enthusiastic about their science. He looked at her, “So are you going to help? I have both clickers set up in here, but it’s hard to do this by myself. My damn assistant only turns up when he feels like it.”

“Send me a message Master...”

“Oh, oh, just John will do,” he said wiping his hand on his coat before sticking out his hand. Prue shook his hand and said, “I’m Prue, nice to meet you, John. I have a feeling we are going to become very good friends.”

“Ah yes, good, good. Okay let’s do this,” John walked over to the other side of the room. He then yelled out, “Make sure the bar is closed.”

Prue checked and gave him a ‘thumbs up’ signal. Grabbing a pencil, she was delighted to hear the little machine click and hold, then let go. She counted and drew dots and dashes. She then compared her message to the one he said she should get. Delighted she opened her bar and sent back the message.

John started clapping, as her message came back to him. “We need to connect to the next set of wires,” he told her.

They happily broke the connections and connected in the next set. They checked the power cell, and both agreed it should work and it did. They spent the afternoon completing the exercises he had planned, and a few Prue had thought of as well. They happily recorded their findings.

Finally, John apologised for being a bad host. They packed up their findings and went to the dining room to get some food. They were soon happily eating and going over the notes. Prue also explained why she was at the Academe.

Prue told him that if she could get the materials, she could build him a better storage cell. She had the designs with her for a small steam operated generator that he could use to keep the cells charged. She explained she still had a lot of work to do before she believed that she could make them commercially.

Master Wallace, whom she was supposed to be working with, finally found her. He frowned when he realised whom she was with. “Lady Lindum, I became very concerned about you when I couldn’t find you. I will be most happy to show you around more in the morning and get you set up with an office.”

“We have several meetings arranged for you to attend tomorrow and then we can see what we can do to help you,” he said as he smiled at her, expecting her to comply with his itinerary.

“Thank you, but I’m already working on John’s Clicker communication system, is there an office near his I can have?”

Wallace gaped at her and then frowned at John. John grinned at him and answered Prue. “Not a problem Prue, I have plenty of room in my offices in the Old Wing. We will see if we can scrounge up the equipment that you need tomorrow. I’m sure Master Wallace will be able to assist us. Were you given a budget to follow while you were here?”

“I was simply told to tell him what I needed, and Master Wallace would do his best to assist me,” Prue answered.

“Excellent, if you bring your designs in tomorrow we will compile a list of what we need for Master Wallace,” John said with a big grin.

While John grinned, Wallace grimaced. Prue realised she had become a pawn in some sort of conflict between the two men but didn’t really care. She found out later Wallace believed John’s machines were silly and wouldn’t work. He’d stopped funding for the project.