The Rise Of The Three Crater Alliance

The room was about 40'X40'... and totally devoid of furniture. The ceiling was about 10' and made of white sheetrock. All four b.a.r.e walls were white sheetrock as well. The floor was covered with white ceramic tile. Two unadorned windows on the far wall opposite the door let in sunshine. The windows had glass panes in them. I turned on the two lights in the ceiling even though I probably did not need to.

Then I ejected a 15' long work bench that was waist high and about 3' wide. The top was a shiny black slate. The support had the everpresent wooden base that looked like a warehouse pallet.

On the edge of the table next to the door, I set five yellow triangular tent signs with numbers one to five on them. I knew that Silver could not read the numbers, but I assumed that she could distinguish between different written glyph.

I said, "All right, there are five rows starting on this edge. I want you to put the bad power stones in the bottom row. Put the fantastic power stones in the top row. If you cannot decide whether they are fantastic or bad, then put them in this third row here." I paused and pointed to the sign with 3 on it.

"This process takes as long as it takes.

"Since you have no idea WHY a given stone is fantastic, then we need to find out WHAT a good stone is and then make some type of generalization. Once we have that piece of information, then we can begin turning out copies of the BEST mana stones possible."

What I expected was that the woman would start going all logical on me, trying to avoid the task. Instead, she took out all the mana stones she had in her items box and spread them on the table. I ejected a comfy chair and sat there sipping my wine as she diligently sorted through the mana stones. Little by little she divided them into three groups close to the correct numbered sign in irregular clumps. The bad clump had 321. The medium clump had 137. The fantastic clump had seventeen. The mana stones were almost all green in color, but they were in all shapes and sizes. Some of them looked like shards of bigger stones that had been shattered.

We broke for lunch... I had picked her up at about 8am. It was now about 2pm.

This time we had a steak dinner that I had originally eaten in Houston. What I was trying to find out was whether the woman would get sick with a change of diet. I included bread... which surprised her.

Silver said, "I have never had such soft bread... I mean, I have had cake, but this is definitely bread, and it is soft instead of hard." Soft butter also surprised her, but less than the quality of the bread.

I asked her something that I had been curious about, "Can you duplicate things?... I mean, if I gave you this glass, could you make an exact duplicate?"

"Yes. I think so." She touched her glass and closed her eyes seeming to commune with it. When she opened her eyes, she said, "I do not think that I have all the ingredients in my items box, but I have most of them.

"What I normally do is place the object that I want to duplicate close to all my open items boxes and then draw the ingredients directly from the items boxes. In the past, I have gone to untapped sources of minerals and ores and stored big swaths of the rocks that contained the resource I wanted. Once I depleted the resource in the rocks, I would eject the spoil in the ocean."

"Can you detect what is missing in your items box? I mean, can you look at an object, then compare what you have in your items boxes with what you need and then know what you have to hunt up?"

"Yes, of course."

"What if I gave you samples of all the possible ingredients? Could you determine the location of which ones were missing from your items boxes, so that we could go mine it?" I asked.

"All the possible ingredients?... Impossible... If you DID have all the possible ingredients, then I could detect which ones were missing from my items boxes and then using an entirely different spell detect the location of the nearest location of the missing mineral or ore," she said much amused.

In a complete change of subject, she asked, "Where do you expect to find these people that work the land for us?"

"A lot of people are the roads right now. They are fleeing a plague that has swept the land. People who are desperate for safety will normally trade most anything for it. The trick is to make sure that you deliver on your promises or they WILL turn on you. Giving them more than what they could reasonably expect will create a LOT of good will." I paused. "By the way, the mana that is supposed to imbue these mana stones. Where does it come from?"

"All living things produce mana. I always thought that mana was abundant where I came from. Here it is bountiful. Only at power nodes back home have I felt the level of mana that permeates this place."

"Hmmm... I wonder whether there are power nodes in this world as well. Could you detect a power node if we began a search for such a place?" I asked. "Wait... What is the advantage to living at a power node?"

She finished chewing some potatoes au gratin which seemed VERY new to her. "I'm not sure. Or rather, I am sure that I would want to live at a power node, because my magic could regenerate quickly... When I burned that giant to dust, I used a LOT of my mana, but the local environment quickly revitalized my mana reserves. Being close to a mana node here... My mind boggles... There would be so MANY things that I could do in a day instead of having to wait for my mana reserves to fill to a level where I could finish a given project."

Suddenly she asked, "Why are you helping me? You have much more power than I do. I cannot think of anything that I can do that you cannot do, better and with less effort."

"Okay." I paused. Thinking. "Your magic and my magic complement each other. You do not see that. I do... If we separated, we could probably survive for quite a while, BUT we would not live well." I picked up the spoon next to my plate. "I do not think that there is a single local craftsman who can make something like this without a lot of effort. I can make a LOT of these, but that is not a good use of my time... I want to train someone to do it for me... I want you to train others to do what you do... I also think that you can make it more possible for me to survive in this chaotic and dangerous environment.

"What I am envisioning is that you will make tools for the people we run up against. With those tools they will make more tools. Using the new tools they will make even better tools. At that point we will have a set of people that can create all the things that make life worth living.

"In short, I need you to cut a LOT of time out so that we can enjoy life. Instead of having to hover over these people forcing them to do our bidding and provide us with what we consider a good life, they will do the work willingly. Getting their children to do good work may be a problem."

Silver was quiet for a bit, then asked softly, "Do you know how I can become pregnant?" Then she looked away like she was asking something shameful.

I carried on a quick subvocal conversation with Q, then said, "No clue... If you have ovaries that are still functioning, then there is a possibility that you could bring a child to term... If not, my people know how to substitute your DNA... uhh... your essence into some other woman's egg. Then implant the resulting egg into a host mother."

I froze. She honestly did not know what I was talking about.

"My magic and yours are too different. Even if I showed you how I could do it, you would still be no wiser. In short, there is a way for you to have as many children as you want, but, again, we do not have the time to do it right now. When we do have that time, I give you my word that you will have a child or if you want many children, I will make that possible." I caught her eye. "This is what I was talking about a moment ago. I always deliver on my promises. Over the years, I have discovered that people will forgive you quite a bit, if you just do what you say that you are going to do."

The rest of the meal was in silence.

When we got back to the room, I said, "All right... Now sort these stones from the worst to the best. What I mean is that I want the stone in the order of bad to good. In the first row we have the worst of the worst next to the sign and the best of the worst at the other end of the table. Same way with the medium row, sort from worst of the medium to the best of the medium. Finally, sort the top row from worst of the best to best of the best. You will have to wrap the rows around, but that is okay. Ask questions as we go along. The goal is to have these stones in order. The next step will be very strange to you, but is necessary."

In the next five hours the woman slowly got the rows into an order. I could see that in certain cases, she agonized over the placement of some of them.

Finally, Silver straightened up and said, "All right. The stones are in the order you wanted. What good does that do?"

I stood up and led her back to the dinner table and said as I sat across from her, "After dinner, we will do the final phase of the project. Silver, the main reason I did it that way was to keep your mind off the utter fact that you almost died today. Mindless tasks allow people to adjust to harsh realities... Unless, of course, the land you came from was very violent as well. I can imagine a situation where wizard fought wizard for real or imagined advantages. What was your home like?"

I ejected two plates of lasagna. I was unsure but still included a garden salad and garlic bread. As an afterthought I included a bowl of house salad dressing.

"Violent?" she chortled. "Yes. My home was very violent." I poured some of the dressing on the salad. "I was on my guard all the time." She paused, closed her eyes, gathering herself. "I came to my power when I was sixteen." She took a bit of the lasagna blinked. Her next bite of food was much bigger. "My parents went from being poor freemen living in a hovel to being rich, living in a huge home with slaves of our own. My older brothers went from being field hands to being... well, studs. A long line of mothers appeared at our door to have their daughters mounted by my brothers. My older and younger sisters were courted by many wizard families. They were desperate to have my sisters in their families." The garlic bread put an expression of bliss on her face... She eyed the salad and passed on it. I said nothing about it.

"I gather that everyone expected that your siblings would produce wizards as children. Did they?" I asked very interested. Being a wizard was a female profession. I expected that she would say that that it all came to naught and her family fell back into poverty.

Instead, she said, sighing, "Of the 168 women my three brothers i.m.p.r.e.g.n.a.t.ed, 98 of the resulting children were girls and 51 became wizards of various levels of competence. My six sisters ended up birthing seventeen children, ten boys and seven girls. All the girls were wizards. Over the last 234 years, my family has become the most prolific and powerful wizard family in the Empire."

The pasta looked like a large steaming, cheesy brick. The taste was exquisite. The garden salad also tasted great as did the garlic bread. As the meal progressed, Silver opened up about the infinite problems she encountered in her former life. As the oldest wizard in her family, she was de facto the head. She had to adjudicate squabbles, both huge and petty. She had to assign meaningful tasks to the members of the family, so that they would work hard for the betterment of her whole clan and her tribe.

In her timeline, Egypt and Mesopotamia never existed. Anatolia hosted kingdoms, but they got conquered. Europe never developed, because the Africans colonized the place and supplanted the natives. China and the Indus River cultures had existed, but they too were conquered by the Africans about two thousand years before. A couple of hundred years ago, they had gotten to the New World, but had not done much with it. Interspersed with the history lesson, she complained and complained about how much she detested her inbred relatives.

From what I could tell, Silver was deathly tired of dealing with her relatives... Just as I had screamed 'anywhere but here' multiple times, so had she.

When dinner ended, I led her back to the work room and said, "Now, go down the middle row and find a clear break between one stone and the next. What I mean is that not just one stone is missing, but multiple stones are missing. We will then divide the middle row into three parts, not necessarily in equal number."

What surprised me was that she only took a few minutes to do that.

I moved the stones around so that there were five rows of mana stones.

Showing too much weary amus.e.m.e.nt, Silver said, "Now tell me why we did it that way." The day had now caught up with her. Silver had the fatigue of the spirit, not the body.

"I have a... magic that will go through and analyze each of the stones and their placement to determine their... Silver, I have a way of examining a set of stones like this to see what is good and what is bad about a given stone AND extrapolate to what would be the best possible stone.

"Now. Let us get some sleep... Today has been one of those days where I just wish that it was just over."

As we walked, I felt her tense up. I said lightly, "This house has three bedrooms. You will sleep in one of the other two." That did not ease all of her tension.

I opened the door to the empty bedroom where she had taken a shower... which was almost exactly like the one we came from except it had two unadorned windows instead of one. She smiled wanly and asked, "Am I to sleep on the floor?"

I ejected a modeler onto the floor. The modeler immediately displayed 2-D pictures of about ten bed types from normal beds with box springs and mattresses to futons to cushions to sleeping bags to couches to a few that I could not remember putting into my Pocket. She examined the pictures floating in the air with interest. I said, "Pick the type closest to the one that you are used to and I will show you what beds I have in my Pocket."

Silver laughed, led me outside and said, "You are right. This has been a very long and tiring day... I have my bedroom furniture in my items box." Suddenly the room was furnished... a bed, a desk, lamps, carpeting and even curtains for the windows. She stepped inside. "I bid you good night." The door closed in my face.

I stood in the hall shaking my head. I had not expected to share her bed, but I had not expected...

In truth, I had expected nothing...

I padded down the hall to the den which was empty as well... I ejected my observation chair. When I sat down, I had Q bring up a picture of the area from ten thousand feet. "Q, what do you think? Will we be able to survive in this milieu?"

"Rock, if you cannot, no one can. Look at this map." The realtime image changed and a topographical map appeared... with a bunch of colored dots. "The red dots are animals of 1000 pounds or more." I was startled by how MANY there were. "The blue dots are specimens of over 10000 pounds." I was astonished that there were over 100 of those. "Over the last twelve hours, 129 of the plus 10000 pound creatures have died... Well over 1000 creatures of the 1000 pound to 10000 pound have died... Rock, most of them have been killing each other.

"Some just keel over and die... I do not have time to do an autopsy on all of them, but the few I have looked at just were not adapted for this climate. The season seems to be early spring, but the temperature is about 60°F." She paused sensing my unease. "Rock, the gates that deliver new creatures to this planet are dropping almost completely predators... In answer to your question, in the long run you will make a mistake and die unless you get a massive, disciplined organization around you."

"How is the analysis of the mana stones going?" I asked, wanting desperately to change the subject.

"Rock, that is what is very strange... I will say this. I do not see how a mana stone was discovered originally. By that I mean, the elements to create a mana stone should not exist in the same area of the planet. The lattice structure is just this side of impossible to establish naturally.

"Be that as it may, I have determined that the mana stones are mostly carbon and silicon... Beryllium, boron, tin and tantalum are distributed within the crystal in exacting locations. What is strange and I mean REALLY strange is that the stones have to be made of certain isotopes of given elements. I mean, who would expect carbon-13 and silicon-30 to be important? Then there is the tin... Why would tin-112 have to be in one part of the crystal and tin-124 be in another part of it? Why do the best mana stones have to be in the shape of a flattened tear drop?" She stopped talking. Why should I care about any of that?

"I will put all this in a report. You can read it or not."

"Thank you, Q."

"Rock, why did you have that woman go through that arduous task? I am almost certain that given just the three stacks, I could have figured out the orders. In fact, I am almost sure that I could have done the job without having her do any sorting."

I sighed. "Q, the woman is screwed in the head. I do not believe a word of her life story. Whatever the truth is matters not a whit.

"The sorting of the stones was a way for me to find out whether she had a God complex. By doing what I told her to do, she proved to me that she was willing to do scut work.

"Q, logistics is everything. Right now I need someone to create an industrial base, so that we can move forward quickly. I..."

I froze...

I suddenly knew what needed to be done...