by Garon Whited
Complicated. Difficult. But… possible.
“I understand,” I said, distantly. “Let’s get you some magical eyeballs, first.”
“An excellent suggestion, Professor. Do you wish to join Mary, or would you rather begin work on the cameras?”
“Let’s see what Mary’s up to. Maybe we’ll finish it and work on the cameras together.”
“Please follow the drone.” It whirred to life and floated away. Doors opened automatically for it. I brought my Diogephone—which, I noticed, someone had thoughtfully plugged in to recharge.
Yeah, Diogenes has been a busy computer—him and his army of robots, digging up everything, repairing, refurbishing, or recycling the remains of a collapsed civilization. I wondered what the place must have been like when it all worked. Everything so far was no more than the scraps left behind.
We headed over to the engineering building. The place smelled of ozone, burnt metal, and chemicals. Robots were everywhere, of all sizes and shapes—no two exactly alike, most looking like refugees from a junkyard. There were several fixed-mount robots—arms with built-in tools, mostly—busily making more robots while a steady stream of mobile robots brought in materials. It reminded me uncomfortably of worker ants bringing food back to the hive. We passed several rooms on the way to Mary. One was a machine shop, manufacturing (or recycling) structural members, but most were chemistry shops, cooking up materials. Electronics, I presume, but I didn’t press him for explanations.
Mary was in one of the subbasements. It used to be underground parking before it was converted to a cross between a machine shop and a robot repair center. Judging from the damage to some of the robots being repaired, there were local life-forms of considerable size and ferocity.
One of the damaged robots swung a camera lens to look at me, held out a metal hand, and played back a Star Wars quote from C-3PO.
“I thought that hairy beast would be the end of me!”
“You’re not funny, Diogenes.”
“My apologies, Professor,” he replied, in his normal voice. Other robots chuckled in the background. Maybe it was a little funny.
Mary’s corner of the place was on the far side of the machine shop territory. Several robots were braiding wire as it came off spools. The spools moved in a complex pattern, producing a tight braid of the fine wire. Two other spools held completed lengths of the braided wire. As I watched, they finished the third spool of braid and started changing out the spools of single-strand wire for spools of triple-strand braid, presumably to braid the braided wire.
Mary wasn’t paying much attention to this. She was examining the concrete slab—my gate from the library. A metal plate of some coppery-bronze color hung from supports on the wall. Several symbols were already inscribed in the plate, engraved there by the laser unit in her hand. With her goggles flipped up to examine the original concrete slab, she noticed me approach. She broke out her best smile and stood up to greet me.
I didn’t expect to be kissed quite so hard, but I didn’t mind.
“Do you like it?” Mary asked, confusing me for a second. Then she turned to gesture at the plate. “It’s the most magically-conductive alloy Diogenes has been able to make. Fourteen thousand meters of wire doesn’t show any perceptible decrease in magical potential!”
“Beats the hell out of copper,” I agreed, examining the plate. “Building a basic gate?”
“Building a gate, yes. But why do you say ‘basic’?”
“That’s what I built,” I replied, nodding at the concrete slab and the braided strips of metal in its arch. “I think we can do better.”
“Oh,” she said, crestfallen. “I thought I was doing good.”
“Oh, you certainly are. You’ve done a splendid job of getting all this set up. And, if you keep going like this, you’re well on your way to building a gate. That’s impressive, and I’m proud of you.”
“Really?”
“Really. I don’t know ten wizards who could do it back in Karvalen. I’m not sure I know more than one magician. And for them, it’s at least a year’s work to enchant, plus all the power crystals, then charging it over time just to use it once…”
“Then I don’t feel so bad about it being a basic gate. What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing, as far as I can see. We could add some extras, though, to make life easier on anyone using it.”
“I thought making it out of ori-calicolium would help. And I had the idea of using a bunch of braided wire—same stuff—to define the arch, itself. Diogenes has some rollers, some memory metal, and other stuff so we can adjust the size of the archway.”
“Brilliant!” I declared. “A variable-sized portal!”
“Thought it might save on power costs,” Mary admitted. “You did say it’s partly based on surface area.”
“A student who remembers and thinks. A rare delight to an old teacher. Well done!”
“So, then I thought I might use a laser engraver to put the gate spell on a base plate. I presume it’ll use the arch—or whatever closed-loop opening it has available?”
“We define it as part of the spell, but it should naturally form a field along an available plane. However, do you recall all those different ideograms and symbols we worked out in the farmhouse?”
“Vividly—oh! This is a whole new world!”
“With a new alphabet,” I agreed. “So let’s do this right, starting from the ground up.”
“Plate glass and a chalkboard?”
“If there’s nothing better, yes.”
“Diogenes?”
“I believe I can accommodate you,” said every robot in the room.
Apocalyptica, Saturday, May 14th, Year 1
Diogenes started a new calendar for the world. I’m not against it. I guess it’s easier for everybody if we can think about it in elapsed time rather than some arbitrary date, I guess. Although, since a calendar is a social construct, all dates are, technically, arbitrary, except for the way they relate to the seasons of the year. Calendars are really just a way of marking the orbit of the Earth like a clock face.
Anyway. Another calendar to keep track of! Hoo-ray. My delight is exceedingly great.
Pardon my sarcasm.
Our method for altering a known magical alphabet into an unknown local alphabet is relatively straightforward. Put the appropriate symbol under a plate of glass in a high-magic environment, bleed on it a little, and concentrate on the concept represented by the symbol. I’m not sure blood is required, but I’m a vampire and my blood is probably more magically charged than anyone else’s. I’m not messing with a system that works. When the blood finishes oozing into shape, note the shape, copy it, put it under the glass and repeat the process. Be sure to be exact, because even very subtle changes can be important. When the blood flows into a shape to perfectly match the symbol underneath, you’ve got the proper ideogram for the concept.
Of course, the key to this is the part about a high-magic environment, which involves an Ascension Sphere. I built one for Mary and one for me. It was better to have two, lest one wizard’s concentration on “fire” and the other’s on “water” interfere with the symbol manifestations. I also had Diogenes watch through overhead cameras so he could print out a new symbol for each iteration of changes. It sped things up enormously.
One computer, two wizards, three days. Bam! Almost-instant alphabet. We’re getting good at this. It’ll take a lot longer to enchant the actual ideograms into tiles, but that’s another project entirely.
The next step was another gate refinement.
Orichalcum—no matter how Mary mispronounces it—is a magical superconductor. This means it needs to be isolated from grounding out.
This isn’t easy.
Magic seems to flow through different materials with relatively low losses. Wood, metal, glass, plastic—it’s all a conductor of magic. Some things are better than others, obviously. Silver is nice, as is gold, while copper is only moderately good. Wood seems to be a
good conductor of magic once it’s dead, but living wood doesn’t conduct magic at all well.
Actually, living things in general tend not to be conductors. Plants, animals, possibly even fungi are resistant to magic, at least in some basic way. This strikes me as more than a little odd, since living things can use magic. Humans, for example. My only idea is they have something like… it’s…
Okay, take glass, for instance. If everything is transparent, light goes right through it all. There are some gloss reflections and sometimes some distortions, but, for the most part, light simply shines through it. But the really interesting stuff happens when you have mirrors, prisms, and lenses. All the odd stuff where light interacts with something, rather than simply passing through. Living things are like that. They’re capable of interfering with the normal flow of magic because they have an innate quality of resistance to it, which allows them to—potentially—shape it, direct it, and use it.
Orichalcum is exactly the opposite. It’s the utterly perfect, pure glass you walk smack into and hurt your nose.
Now, back to my electrical metaphor.
This property of orichalcum makes it a pain in the keister to work with. Since everything conducts magic, what do you insulate it with? Imagine trying to wire a doorbell with raw copper wire—no coating, no insulation. What would happen to your car if all the rubber, plastic, and fiberglass conducted electricity like copper? Pour a conductive fluid into your computer and see how it works. You’re starting to see the problem, aren’t you?
The only way around this, as far as I’ve been able to work out, is to enchant a base for the orichalcum. In much the same manner as a circuit board, an object can be enchanted to be impervious to magic—well, not totally impervious, but it can be an insulator. With this magically-resistant backing, you can lay out your magical diagram in orichalcum and empower the lines of it as though empowering the non-physical diagram of a spell. Once suitably set up, the lines of the spell pretty much locks themselves in place, much like an enchantment. It really cuts down on the enchantment time and greatly improves the maximum power of it.
I begin to see why the Atlanteans valued it so highly. I think this is the technique they used in their magical pyramid thingy.
What we’ve done is etch our new gate spell into a steel base plate—suitably enchanted as a magical insulator—and fill in the lines with the magical alloy. Diogenes did the engraving. Mary and I enchanted it. Diogenes finished it with the orichalcum inlay. With the hard part done, it was relatively straightforward to mount the new base, bolt on the wire-handling devices, and feed the braided wire through the holes.
For my money, the best part was Mary’s idea of using braided wire for the actual arch. I took that and ran with it.
With one end of the braid bolted in place, mounted to the magical circuit board, we could un-braid it and run a single wire to seven hundred and twenty-nine separate spaces along the edge of the baseplate. Each of these spaces could then have ideogrammatic tiles placed in them, a unique combination for any specific universe we wanted. Of course, we’d have to go there to determine the proper sigils—we’d have to analyze the universe for its source code, if you like—but then we could lay out the address and fire up the gate without worrying about mis-targeting a universe.
Why seven hundred and twenty-nine? Because we braided wire in groups of three. Three wires braided into one cable, then three of those braided into one cable, then three of those… Three becomes nine, nine becomes twenty-seven, eighty-one, two hundred and forty-three, and finally seven hundred and twenty-nine individual strands. We may not need so many ideograms to define a universe well enough to target it, but until we’ve accumulated one hell of a lot more data, how are we to know? This is a bench model for experimentation, not a Mark Six Acme Gate Kit.
When I suggested unbraiding the end, Mary asked if we needed so many ideograms. I admitted I didn’t know, so she suggested we mix in some additional wire types. A heavy-gauge, insulated memory-metal wire would let Diogenes make the cable stand up in a rigid arch without anyone actually touching it. A few strands of ruthenium wire couldn’t hurt, either. By electrifying it, the wire could produce magical energy as part of the gate structure! It wouldn’t let us run a gate on pure electricity—most of the magical energy would still come from crystal batteries—but it would lower the effective operating cost of keeping a gate open.
I was all for it. We started re-braiding cable immediately.
Speaking of not touching anything, Diogenes came up with a perfect way to place and remove ideogram plates. Each of the remaining orichalcum wires would still be available for use in a universal base-code address, the wire running to an indentation in the gate baseplate. If the ideogram plates were steel with orichalcum inlay, as well, a robot with an electromagnetic grapple could drop them into position or snatch them up without ever making physical contact. Even if the gate were in operation, it avoided the possibility of acting as a magical ground.
It really was a good idea. It almost hurt to tell him why it wasn’t necessary. We would enchant the ideogram plates, of course, so they functioned as magical items rather than potential grounding channels, and the base plate of the arch would be given a protective enchantment, as well. Diogenes made his thoughtful humming noise and finally asked for more information on the differences between electrical and magical theory. They’re similar in many ways… but the differences can come back to bite you if you don’t pay attention.
And, of course, right about the time we were unbraiding one end, spreading out the individual wires and spot-welding them into place, is when I remembered my gate experiments with iridium. Creating an unstable area of spacetime made it harder to create a gate—but that was a warp magnet. I never did get around to experimenting with an iridium ring to see if it would be a good material to make an actual gate out of. The micro-rings inside my Diogephone seemed to work, but did they work any better than other materials?
Diogenes, of course, was only too willing to mill out several pairs of matching iridium rings for me. He didn’t even ask why. Mary did, naturally, so I explained.
The word “moron” was used. I agreed. Fortunately, if iridium really was exceptional as a gateway border, replacing the braided-wire cable was far less effort than re-enchanting an entire gate. I pointed this out and thanked Mary for being so brilliant at making up for my absent-mindedness. I think I got away with it. At least, she didn’t thwack me in the back of the head.
And yes, iridium makes a damn fine gate. Pure iridium takes the spell extremely well and it feels as though it takes a bit less effort to operate iridium-ringed gates. Also, the usual silvery-tunnel-flush effect when reaching for the destination is almost instantaneous. At least, within the same universe, and when connecting from one solid ring of iridium to the other. I expect it to be less effective when it’s part of a cable and connecting to some other universe, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. I have no doubt it will help.
I enchanted the twin iridium rings for the phone and its local connection, then built a few tiny power crystals. Diogenes took my phone away for a bit, then returned it. Diogephone, Mark Two, also included a tiny ruthenium transformer for use in exceptionally low-magic environments. He thinks of things I don’t. I think it’s because he never forgets anything, but I do.
The weird thing with iridium and gates is the iridium, itself. A peculiar rainbow effect starts rolling around the ring as the spell activates, accelerates around and around until it all blurs together into a generic white, and the whole ring gives off a faint glow. I don’t know why it does that.
Of course, now Diogenes will be producing lots of cables with various ratios of orichalcum to iridium to ruthenium. Maybe, when we figure out how many ideograms it takes to define a universe—how long is the phone number of a universe? Ten ideograms? A hundred? —we can use only that many orichalcum wires wrapped around the memory-metal core, then surround all that with a sheath of iridium strands.
It’s a project. All this is keeping me busy.
Which, of course, is what Mary intended. I’m still wounded from the loss of Bronze and I suspect I will be for some time.
Is it whining to complain about it? I’m not sure. I don’t like to moan and complain, in general. I always feel as though I’m being a whiner, and I hate that. But maybe this qualifies me for some sympathy? If I don’t overdo it, anyway? Question is, what would I do with sympathy? I’m not sure anyone ever feels the same pain as any other, so how can anyone say they know what I’m going through? When was the last time anyone else lost a slice of their soul when their best friend and magical horse was disintegrated before their eyes?
Maybe I do need to let go of this. Trouble is, when I let go of it, it leaps for my throat.
Most of the time, I have something to focus on, something to do. The need to be distracted drives me to greater focus, and we’re making immense progress on the gate project. It’s a great, big, puzzling piece of fabrication and construction. It keeps my mind off my loss.
But sometimes I’ll look at a piece of orichalcum wire in just the right light and it’ll remind me of the golden-bronze color of a billion tiny flakes. Or I’ll look at the wooden horse sitting on a shelf in our quarters. Or Mary will say something and I’ll answer and I’ll expect a snort of hot air—in agreement, or in gentle mockery.
There are things to remind me of her everywhere, whether she had anything to do with them or not. A color, a metallic clang, the smell of something burning…
Mary was right, though. Having something to do—something I can build, something I can see taking shape—seems to be helping. The wound is still there, but maybe we’ve stopped the bleeding, at least. At last. When nothing pokes it too roughly.
Now all I need are some stitches and painkiller. I don’t know where I’m going to get those. Where do I find a first-aid kit for the soul? Religion? That’s not going to sell.
