System Escape, page 26
“Well, if find a big enough rooster...” Marc said, leaving the sentence hanging.
The counter lady smiled.
“If you find one of those, you'd better run for it. Aren't roosters ill-tempered beasts?”
Marc shrugged.
“The one we have isn't bad, but that might be because he barely comes up to my knee.”
“Anyhow, let me grab your coffee. I'll bring some breakfast out to you once it's ready,” she said.
Marc took his coffee, then found a table and settled in to wait on food.
* * *
When Marc headed for the Town Hall he was surprised that Amy wasn't on the porch, waiting. He was used to her being there most of the time. Rather than try to find some other alternative to warn people about the buildings about to go up, he waited for her in his office, looking over the changes and additions his father had made while he was gone. He also looked into a few research chains that he was interested in completing. Since he was still holding onto his next Research topic to use, he wanted to figure out how to get the most out of it and Felicia's idea about using it to research the top of one of the research chains was one he liked a lot.
It was mid-morning by the time he'd gone through all of that and when he went back to the porch, Amy was there this time, doing something on her pad.
“Sleeping in?” he asked her, with a smile to let her know he was kidding.
She took him seriously though.
“Nope, I get up and have breakfast, then I do my route through all the Safe Zones on the train. Once I've finished that, I come back here and wait on the porch.”
“Your what?” Marc asked.
“My route. I found out more about what my junior class can lead to. After I got to level five in my junior class, I discovered when I turn fourteen I'll get to advance my class. I'll have three choices with what I've been doing: Messenger, Courier, or Crier.”
“I know what a Crier is, that's when you go around and yell out to let people know things,” Marc said, “but what's the difference between Messenger and Courier?”
“A Messenger works inside a Safe Zone, like when you have me find someone and give them a message? A Courier works between Safe Zones, they can do the same things a Messenger can inside a Safe Zone, but that class is focused on working between Safe Zones instead of inside of one.”
“Oh, so you're doing a morning run on the train to see what the Courier class would be like?”
She nodded.
“Plus, I can gain experience in my junior class by doing the things that any of the three classes I told you about can get experience at. I still will later, but the things not associated with my main class will give me less experience.”
“That's pretty cool,” Marc said. “You said you found that out by hitting level five in your junior class?”
She nodded.
“How'd you do that?”
Now she blushed.
“Um, all this time when you paid me to do things? I got experience for that. Anytime I got paid to do anything related to any of those classes I got some experience. The one that pushed me over was when a lady paid me to take a letter to someone up at The Mine. That's when I got told by the System that I could now access more help on my class. When I did, it mentioned the other three classes and I could pull up help on those also.”
“That's fine, Amy,” Marc said. “It sounds like you might not have gotten the experience if you weren't paid for doing those things, so don't worry about it.”
“Whew,” she said. “I thought you might be mad.”
“No,” Marc said, shaking his head. “You want to earn some more coins and experience though?”
She nodded rapidly.
“Alright, come into the build room with me. Once I have the first building I want to do laid out, you can go place markers and warn people away, okay?”
“You got it. What are you making?”
“You know we brought a whole bunch of kids back from another Safe Zone?”
She nodded.
“I saw a bunch of strange kids on the playground stuff this morning after I got back from my route.”
“Well, I need to make them a place to stay, somewhere they can call their own, but still all stay together since that's what they're used to.”
“Oh, that makes sense, where's it going?” she asked.
Marc started creating the barracks with the wireframe. He wanted to put the kids close to where everyone else was located, and worked on tweaking the overall shape of the building so it would fit between the keep and the livestock.
Because the kids, or at least some of them, will probably like the animals and like being able to watch them, he thought. At least I hope they do, what do I know about kids though?
Eventually he got it situated and as he adjusted the wire frame to alter the interior, he found that his original plan would leave him with almost double the number of beds he actually needed. He was pretty sure that they wouldn't be getting another infusion of children at any point, so he shortened the sleeping rooms and added a big communal room right off the front door. From there, you could go into the hallway that led to the two large sleeping areas or go all the way down the hall to the two small rooms he'd build for Brian and Chris.
Once he'd gotten that built in the wireframe, he sent Amy off to mark the area and warn people off. When she returned, he triggered the build to start.
“I hope you don't mind. I told some of those strange kids that they could watch their new home being built, but that they had to stay out of the marked area and lanes,” Amy said.
“No, that's fine. Once it's done, they can go in also. The next thing I need to do, though, is upgrade one the manufactories.”
“Why? Don't they already do almost anything?” Amy asked.
Marc looked at her for a moment, then decided that in the world they were in now she was old enough for him to tell her.
“My dad has been researching better firearms. The next stage, though, requires something called rifling. It means cutting grooves on the inside of the firearm barrels to increase the accuracy and range.”
“Oh, yeah, better guns would probably be good, wouldn't they? I saw when you were firing one of those big ones that we'd made and they didn't look nearly as good as the ones I used to see in movies,” Amy said.
Marc nodded.
Okay and maybe she was old enough to understand before all this happened. Like I said, I know next to nothing about kids except that I was one and managed to survive to adulthood. I do wonder how sometimes, I remember the stupid stuff Jeff used to talk Rob and I into doing.
“Yeah, a lot like that. These won't be quite as good as you saw in the movies, probably, but they'll be a lot better than the ones we could build at first. But the process needs some special machinery, so I need to upgrade a manufactory so it gets that machinery.”
Marc was guessing it was a milling machine, lathe, or something along those lines. One with the ability to cut the grooves in the metal on the inside of the barrel.
There's only one way to find out though, he thought, setting up the upgrade.
It allowed him to choose where a room would be added onto the manufactory, so he put it directly opposite the door to the outside that was already in the manufactory. Then, once he had it set, he showed Amy and had her go mark it off.
“It'll be a couple of extra minutes. I'll have to recover my flags from the barracks before I place them for this,” she said.
“There's no rush. I have two more things to build today, and as long as I get them done today, it's all good.”
“Okay, I'll head out now,” Amy said. “I'll be back as soon as it's marked out.”
While she was marking out the area for the manufactory expansion, Marc worked on figuring out where he wanted the Loader's Shack. Apparently, the building had its availability opened up as his father moved up the firearms tech chain. It was specifically designed for loading, and reloading, cartridges for the rifles they could now make. It required a number of different materials to be functional, but only the normal wood, stone, and metal to build.
To produce cartridges it was going to need: smokeless gunpowder, brass, lead, and a few other things. Marc knew that brass required copper and zinc, and that lead could be made or mined. He hadn't realized that they'd had everything they needed until he looked at the materials list this morning.
Dad did say that the recyclers were pulling in new stuff with the new software. I wonder if it's just that we can mine more things in the Industrial age, if the recyclers are pulling those out of the slag, or what? There's not a lot of it, but the fact that we have some means he knows how to get it if we need it, so where is this thing going to go? Like the tannery, I don't want it near anything else, just in case.
Eventually Marc decided that despite the inconvenience to whoever worked there, he was placing it in the little section he'd had to add to the southeast during the last expansion. There was nothing else there and it was far away from everything else. Plus, there wasn't a lot of room in that little bulge, so he wouldn't be wasting much space by putting it there and keeping everything else far away.
Before he built it though, he wanted to run that choice past his dad and make sure there wasn't anything he hadn't considered first.
* * *
“That is an incredibly good idea,” Sean said.
“Really? I mean, I wanted it out of the way, just in case, but that much enthusiasm?”
“Well, yes,” Sean said. “Because I was checking on things. We have the recipe for smokeless powder, but there's only one person currently in the Safe Zone that's going to be able to make it currently.”
Marc almost started laughing when he realized where his father was going with that.
“Don't tell me, Jeff?” he asked.
Sean nodded.
“Yeah. It needs to be an Alchemist, so technically Felicia could do it, but she'd need to go off on a tangent to the potion track she's been following. Jeff, on the other hand, is already using his Alchemy to create explosives so he doesn't even have to learn anything new, just follow the recipe.”
Marc couldn't help it, he broke out in a grin.
“We're going to have to bribe him something fierce to do this,” he said.
“I already have,” Sean replied. “I promised him the first of the new rifles to come off the line, plus a percentage of the profits if we do what I want. That's to make batches of the ammunition in the most popular calibers from firearms before the System. So 9mm, .45, 5.56, 7.62 in its most common variants, and maybe some .223 and even .22 LR. Then we put those for sale in the shop, undercutting the ludicrous ammunition prices that the shop charges for those calibers. I figure it ought to sell well if we do that.”
“Plus, the Safe Zone will get taxes off that also, which would be good. Last I checked the treasury could use a boost,” Marc said.
Sean grinned at his son.
“I guess you didn't look since you got back then, did you?”
“No, why?”
“Because the spider silk sells all on its own with nothing done to it, woven into cloth it sells even better, and when the seamstresses use it to make clothing that gets those nice little abilities? Well, then it sells for an exorbitant amount if you translate it into how much cloth is used. Since you didn't need it for another zeppelin or balloon right away, we went ahead and hired weavers and seamstresses after we found out that the raw spider silk sold well on its own. Needless to say, since they're just hired on and getting percentages of the sales from what they make, the treasury is very happy right now,” Sean said.
“That's one worry off of my mind,” Marc said. “And with that, I need to get back and have Amy stake out the area for the Loader's Shack and get it built. I assume that it has all the loading machinery plus the stuff for mixing the smokeless powder as part of the build?”
“It should, from what I read. If not, we can build it in just a few days ourselves,” Sean said.
“Okay, I'm off then. Hey, I want to steal you and mom after dinner for a bit. I think you might appreciate the thing I'm building after I do the shack.”
“What's that?” Sean asked.
Marc shook his head.
“Nope, it's a surprise.”
Sean scowled. Marc knew his dad wasn't too fond of surprises. In turn, Sean knew that Marc wasn't either and had still surprised him with a Safe Zone of all things. Turnabout being fair play meant that Marc felt more than justified at hiding the Crustacean/Mollusk tank from his dad until it was done.
“See you later, dad,” Marc said, heading back to the Town Hall. He stopped on the porch to acquire Amy again, then went back and set up the Loader's Shack.
“That's way out there,” Amy said.
“Yes, that's because this is where they'll be making the ammunition for those new guns and I'd like any potential explosions to be far away from everything else.”
Her eyes grew wide.
“Oh, yeah, I can see why you might want to do it that way. Back in a few.”
Amy darted out of the build room to place the flags for the new building.
Once she'd returned and Marc triggered the build process, he headed up towards the Shack to see what it looked like inside.
Well, that's not what I expected. It doesn't look like a shack at all. I expected something looking a little more fragile, although I suppose that doesn't make sense with what might happen inside of it. One good explosion would take out a shack, but this looks more like a stone bunker with a wooden roof, Marc thought.
After glancing around inside, and being happy to see that there was machinery present inside of the Loader's Shack, Marc left to find Felicia. He was going to build the Crustacean/Mollusk tank next and he wanted to check if she wanted to see that one build itself.
It took him a fair bit of time to find her, but he finally did. She was back in their room, studying an anatomy text.
“What's that one for?” he asked, noting the title.
She startled, obviously not having heard him come in.
“Oh, I need background information for a potion I want to make. I need to see if it's possible, and if it is possible, exactly what I'll need to have the potion do.”
“What kind of potion?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I don't want to say, just in case it's not something I can do. Is that okay?”
“Sure. I get it, you don't want to get my hopes up, only to dash them back down if it doesn't work.”
“Yes, exactly,” she said, nodding.
“Well, I'm about to start the Crustacean/Mollusk tank if you want to see that one build itself.”
“I think I'd like that,” she said, “but how about we get some lunch first?”
Marc realized that he'd lost track of the time again. A quick check of his pad showed him that they were serving lunch, but only for another twenty minutes or so, so he and Felicia quickly made their way down to the cafeteria.
* * *
Amy was surprised when Marc showed back up right after lunch, Felicia in tow.
“More?” Amy asked.
“There's one more. This one is kind of special, so I thought I'd see if Felicia wanted to see it going up,” Marc replied.
Amy nodded.
“Where's this one going?”
“I hadn't given it much thought yet,” Marc said.
“I did, after you told us about it,” Felicia interjected. “This one needs to go near the Town Hall, plus you're going to need guards on it.”
“Guards?” Marc asked.
“Are you telling me you trust everyone that was here before we left, plus those who arrived while we were gone, to not go after crab, lobster, or oysters? If they know it's there, I'm afraid there are a few people who might not be able to resist.”
“Well, I guess having a guard on the place might be a good idea,” Marc said.
“Just imagine how mad you'd be if someone stole some of them and you didn't have enough of them left to breed and supply the Safe Zone,” Felicia said.
“Wait a minute, let me go talk to my dad before we get this thing building,” Marc said.
A few minutes later he was back, with a promise of three shifts of a single guard for the new building once it was completed. Felicia and Amy were waiting back in the build room, and Felicia had pulled up the area near the Town Hall.
“Maybe right there? Behind the Town Hall, but where half the keep, including us, can see the building out of our window?” Felicia said.
“I don't know how big it is, I need to get the blueprint into the System first,” Marc said.
It took him a few minutes to do that. Octavius had told him how he'd use it in the dungeon, but the process wasn't exactly identical for a Safe Zone. The other thing Octavius had told him was valid though. Since all the materials had been absorbed to make the blueprint, he wasn't going to need any materials to build this one. If he wanted to build more, he'd have the pattern, but would need to supply all the materials on his own.
“Okay, right here?” Marc said, gesturing.
Felicia nodded.
“Okay Amy, this area here,” he said, outlining a building with the wireframe, “is going to have the building that houses it, then we'll build the actual tank inside of it. Mark out the area for the building, would you?”
She disappeared, although this time she was back within five minutes.
“All set.”
Marc triggered the building, then looked out the window to watch it build itself. A few minutes later, he went back to the build pedestal, selected the interior of the building, then triggered the blueprint.
“Come on, I want to see this one,” he said, leaving the room.
He led the two of them out of the Town Hall and back into the building he'd just created. Inside, the tank was already created and filled with water. He wasn't sure what the aeration and filtration methods being used were, but they were already active. The only problem was that there weren't any crustaceans or mollusks in the tank.
