Chapter 24: Rings

We spent two more weeks in town.

When I’d asked Rose where she found the extra organisers that I had requested I had learnt some things that I didn’t know. Rose admitted to me that Garnet and Iren had fixed a little replicator that was designed to be portable.

It only made items that could fit into a 40cm square by 50cm long area. It was designed to go to new mining sites to provide basics for the miners like toiletries, bedding, small tools, work clothes and safety items like boots, protective eye covers, gloves and hard hats.

It could make cutlery, crockery, pots and other cooking implements. It also made lamps, organisers and the blocks for the chargers. The biggest problems were the chargers and lamps. They need the crystals added to them.

The androids couldn’t access the transportation ring room to retrieve the crystals. Without them, the lamps and chargers couldn’t be completed. The replicator couldn’t produce these crystals. I decided I was due a day off.

I asked Sable if he wanted to go exploring with Rose and me. How silly of me to ask. Sable loved any excuse to be with me. As you can guess, I couldn’t send him home when he had said he wanted to stay with Greta and me.

As far as he is concerned, we are mum and dad. He knew Bea and Cora were my other spouses and the girls his sisters but he loved being Greta and me, so we let him stay. Harry took over nanny duties when Sable couldn’t be with us.

As far as Harry, Peta and Pam were concerned, their jobs were looking after us. They didn’t wish to go live at the homestead until we left. I suspected when we went to Hornville they expected to come to look after us on the trip too.

Greta said that they loved me. If I wanted extra bedfellows, then they were then happy to volunteer. I asked her if she thought they would be a problem like Honey. Greta assured me that after the incident with Honey she had a talk with them.

They knew that while I liked them, I wouldn’t be happy if they did try to crawl into my bed. She said that it didn’t stop them from being perfectly happy to do so if I asked them too. She suspected it was more adoration than true love, a bit like Dale and Ian.

I’m sure she added the last bit just to stir me up. Dale and Ian had made a couple of jokes about me kissing them and where else they would like me to kiss them. They sure made sexy women in their female forms, but while I could kiss them, I didn’t get sexually excited. I’m just weird I guess.

Although I had been in Horn City for eight weeks, I’d not had a lot of time to just explore. I’d been through some of the out buildings they used as storage around town and a look through the museum, but for some reason, I’d not really explored the rest of the Citadel.

So Sable and I were planning on having an adventure. I asked Rose to take us back to the hallway where the androids go to recharge. I remembered that when we had been there that day, there were other doors that Iren couldn’t see but I could.

Rose did as I asked. She stopped at a door, which Iren couldn’t see, and placed her hand on the side of it. Rose said she hadn’t been able to open any of the extra doors but this one. She explained that those rooms had lock spells on them and that she didn’t have an override for them.

Not all magicians remember to put the override on a room, so they unlocked for the androids. She mentioned that some mages could become paranoid about security as they age. This room had not been locked to the androids. It was where they were stored when they were broken.

Rose had said that their City was a small one. The cities that the ten ruling wizards had lived in were on the main continents. Cities like this one were ruled by High Mages such as me.

While I wasn’t classed as a wizard I could possibly claim a wizard’s box should it become available. As far as she could remember there had been twenty cities ruled by High Mages. They had been cut off from the other cities for over two thousand years.

When the Controller died a couple of hundred years after my people came here, many of the systems could no longer be accessed. Androids can only do so much without the Controller’s direction. Before the Controller died, she had downloaded a lot of extra sub-routines into thirty new androids.

She and her sister had higher capacity storage for memories. The also had a special server that had been built for them. They could back up their memories after the controller died. The eighteen androids that I knew of were all that remained of that original thirty. There used to be several hundred androids in the city.

She and her sisters had been assigned different areas to manage. The ten sections each had three primary androids. While most section still had two androids, the other two only had one. They had since shared copies of each other’s sections in the event one of them failed.

They were also backed up onto their server. It also made it easier to go help each other. They had been cannibalising the old android for parts to stay functional. It distressed them to do so. One of the good things about getting the small replication going was that small critical parts that were prone to break could be replicated again.

Rose said that only one room had a spell that predated the war. The rest had been added since then. The room I was standing in was one that was created after the war. I should be able to open the door just as the androids could.

Sable and I looked at the huge room. Down one long wall were charging bays for androids. Rose said there were forty bays. They did have other charging bays scattered around the city. These were androids undergoing repair.

Each bay had a body in it. I could see where they had been working on several of them. At least twenty were just standing in the bays and looked functional. I asked Rose about them.

“They are functional to a point. Their problem is similar to that of the charging units. Sometimes when an android has an internal electrical failure, the crystals in their power supply disintegrate,” she told me.

“Because we have had to borrow power units for so long we are at critical. Those first twelve are like us. We have been able to put smaller supplies in them, but they can’t function for very long. In most of them, they have supplies that only keep critical systems alive.”

“We are not like the old androids anymore. We have evolved. We even know of death. To us, it is not simply powering down. I fear that we have become sentient. My sisters are in a form of hibernation. They are not dead,” she told me with feeling.

“I think Silver and her sisters are like you. I had noticed several androids in Ochre City that seemed more mechanical. They didn’t respond to us like Silver did,” I told her.

Rose replied, “That seems logical. If we were able to do it then others as old as we could have done it as well. I would like my sisters to be able to live fully again. They are crippled, and it distresses us.”

“Rose, why didn’t you tell me of this problem before?” I scolded her gently.

“You were trying to fix this crippled city. We determined that if you could do that, then you were a mage we could trust fully. I’m sorry master, as I said, we have learned what fear is,” Rose explained.

“Rose, you’re silly. I told you daddy would fix you,” Sable told her.

“Yes little master, we should have asked him sooner but we had been tricked once before, and it is harder to trust when you have been hurt,” Rose explained to Sable.

I smiled at Sable, “She makes a very good point Sable. It is hard to learn to trust others when you have been hurt. Sometimes you need someone special to come along to give you a reason to trust, like your mother.”

“Mistress Greta is definitely such a person. Her trust in Bron is so absolute that we could only assume that he had earned that trust. We have watched your father go from strength to strength, Sable. We are very proud to have him as our Mage.”

“If you hadn’t asked about the organisers when you did, I was going to approach you this week Master to ask for your assistance,” Rose told me.

“Well, now that I do have some time to devote myself to your problems Rose, it is probably just as well you left some of them to now. You have my undivided attention,” I told her.

“However, if you had mentioned that you needed magical crystals you could have had some of those two months ago. I would have happily given them to you.”

“Thank you, Master. Do you know where we could have acquired them from?” she asked in surprise and excitement.

I opened the satchel I carried and pulled out my magical box. I placed it on a shelf and opened it. Reaching in, I pulled out a large bag. “How many will get you out of immediate trouble Rose?” I asked as I showed her the contents of the bag.

She gasped. “Master, how long have you been carrying them around with you?”

I had to think. “Wow, now that I think of it, it has been close to eight months. It was towards the end of winter when Bea, Cora and I collected them. I have two other bags that are still full, this one is only half full. I put a bag in each of the girl’s magical boxes as well.”

“Master, they are so soaked in magic even a small crystal would be incredibly powerful. With what you have in this bag, we would be able to get a hundred androids going again and make you several hundred charging units. We should also get several other machines we would like to have fixed to go too,” she said in excitement.

I looked at the bag. I didn’t really wish to give so many away, but it was for a good cause. Rose also seemed to think she could make them go a lot further than I had anticipated. I handed the bag to Rose without another thought.

“If we can access the other crystals, I’ll give you one of the other bags too, Rose. I don’t think it will bother me that much to put fresh crystals in the box. If us dumping our excess magical energy into them makes them more useful, then it sounds like a good idea to me,” I told her happily.

“I can assure you, Master, that we will put them to good use. I believe the new power supplies made with these crystals will last us a very long time,” Rose told me with confidence.

She went and put them in what appeared to be a sort of metal safe. The fact that only a few people knew of this door reassured me the crystals were safe. I put my box away. I didn’t really notice the loss of the crystals as far as available power went.

As we went to leave the room, Garnet turned up. She then hugged me. “You are truly a wonderful Master,” she said and happily went to retrieve the crystals to get to work. Rose and I both chuckled.

Wow! My first android hug.

Rose took me to the next room.

I placed my hand on the side of the door and closed my eyes. I dismantled the two simple spells. I noted the third was a variation of one I’d uncounted on the ship, so it wasn’t hard either. The door slid back, and I stepped into the room.

I guessed it some previous mages personal store room. It was full of all sorts of crap. I had a general look around, but to honest, I didn’t find anything that excited me. One small chest had some nice pieces of jewellery in it I could sell.

I dropped them into my magical box. “Rose, I think I’ll leave this open. You can distribute to the needy if you wish. If you do find anything you think will interest me drop it off at the residence,” I said.

“Yes, master, some of the furnishings are in good order. I shall give the better stuff to one of the dealers to sell, and they can deposit the money into the Charity for you if that is acceptable?” she responded.

“As you see fit Rose, I trust your judgement,” I told her.

We went to the next room. Its spells were similar, and I wondered if both mages had studied from the same book. This room wasn’t much different to the first. I wondered why the mages felt they needed to hoard their possessions. I hoped I didn’t get like that towards the end.

I found several small chests of coins and jewellery, so I dropped them into my magic box. I’d look through the pieces later and sell the rest. I might even give them to Captain Hail to sell in Federation for me. I told Rose I’d leave this door open for her too.

The third room was a lot more interesting. It also had a fourth more complicated spell that took a minute longer to unravel. The other spells were more like a spell to divert a normal person’s eyes from the door thus making it invisible.

One checked you were a mage of a certain level so you could see the door, and the third needed you to solve a puzzle to unlock the door. This fourth one required that the mage had Psychic magic to even see the spell to unlock the door. It was a puzzle spell. I had to manipulate the pieces to form an imaginary box.

The room was a laboratory of some sort. It took me a little while to work out what it had been used for in the past. “Why would you want to manipulate viruses?” I asked Rose.

“Sometimes you can alter one virus to fight off other viruses. During the Wizards War, someone made a virus that killed millions of people. They could have even made it here. I have no records of what is in this room,” she told me.

“Do you have someone who can check that this room isn’t infectious or contagious anymore?” I asked with concern.

“I have already done so master. I have a special filter that checks the air for all know contaminates and flags any it doesn’t know. None of the viruses that I can detect are alive in this room.”

“I’ll have Magenta check all the containers in here to ensure it is free of contaminants and she will destroy anything she is not sure of. We will also check the documentation to see what they were doing in here. I suggest you put a spell on the door only you and an android can activate.”

“I agree. Let’s go look in the next room. There are only two more to go,” I said. I was happy to leave this room and even added a spell that warned any mage that the room had been used for no good.

The next door was also simple to access. At first, I wondered why it even had a spell on it. It was a huge room and filled with boxes. I opened one and looked inside. “What is this stuff?” I asked aloud.

Rose looked in the box. “I suppose one would call it contraband, Bron. It seems that an ancestor of yours was using the replicator to make items, which other cities might not have been able to produce any more.”

“Something must have happened to them before this shipment was offloaded. Wait; here is a list of the items. They are electrical goods, and they were destined for Palatine. We had heard from sailors that they had electricity until about six hundred years ago.”

“That’s about how long these items have been here. Possibly, the country lost its source of power, and these items were no longer a saleable commodity. The preservation spell is still good, so we could sell them locally.”

“It’s a shame we don’t have power sources so we could liven up the other towns. I bet that would get people to move. We still have too many unemployed and I can’t think of how to convince them to give up the luxuries the power here gives them,” I said.

Rose was flicking through the manifest on the organiser. “Hum, that’s interesting,” she said. She moved down the rows of stacked goods, and Sable and I followed her wondering what had caught her attention.

I noticed the other end of the room finished in two very large doors. Rose checked the doors, and they opened for her. We entered into an even larger space. “What is this space, Rose?” I asked her intrigued.

“It used to be an airship hanger,” she said off handily as she moved to look at one of the eighty containers that were at least 4m square and 6m long. Stopping in front of one, she checked the manifest and then the crate. “Well, that is interesting. I may have been correct the first time, Bron.”

“Twenty of the containers contain generation sets made up of a combination of storage cells, solar collectors and wind turbines. The other containers contain the items required to supply at least five hundred establishments with lighting and power outlets.”

“That is more than enough for your small towns and even your homesteads. You could use the leftovers from your homesteads for larger towns like Barton and Central. The generation sets are capable of supplying twice the number of homes as the other supplies account for.”

“Most of the items required to connect the homes we can produce more of. We even have the cables required. We have a large stockpile of cable for some reason. They may even have been made for this shipment.”

“That warehouse did have a strange lock spell on it, but we have been able to access it. The cable may not have all been made when the mage died. We would have simply filled the order at the time. The information is probably on the server,” she informed me.

“Rose, if you had lips I’d kiss you,” I told her. “The only thing is how do we get them connected up? Do I even have people who know how to set up these systems?”

“Yes, you have many Electrical firms in the City. They got a bit cranky at us fixing things, as we were putting them out of work. We have been a bit more careful and have only fixed major infrastructure since.”

“So if I advertised contracts to fix the units in place and install the other stuff you said we needed, do you think I’ll get takers?” I asked her hopefully.

“Yes, it may take a little longer than you may wish but if you also encourage them to take on trainees you will have the people you need to run and repair the systems once they are in place,” she suggested.