The Rise Of The Three Crater Alliance

"I have found over the years that too much information given out prem.a.t.u.r.ely can destroy plans before they even start... As for what comes next... We gather resources. We should probably try and find that power node first, but I think that hunting for the resources to build a stronghold before we settle down is the best idea."

Silver put some of the salad on her plate and, after sniffing each of the dressings, poured one over it. "How exactly are you going to hunt for these resources?" She nibbled some salad with a pleased face.

"Basically, I... Silver, as we are talking I have devices out mapping the land. In the process of mapping the land, they are also making notes where..." How to describe elements to someone who does not quite understand chemistry? "Silver, I said that the number of ingredients in any compound was limited. My people have learned how to detected each of these ingredients... I had thought to use you to find them, but as time has passed, I have changed my mind."

"If you do not need me to find them, what DO you need me to do?"

"Silver, you keep making noises like you are worthless in this situation. You are not... Refining resources requires a massive amount of effort. You have said that as long as you have all the ingredients in one of your items boxes, you can copy an original... You have commented on the purity of the ingredients I have. You have not carried that insight to the next level... By copying a very pure original, you have a very pure copy.

"Let me try to give you an idea of what you can do that I cannot... Your magic breaks down compounds into basic ingredients. My magic has to expend a LOT of energy and time to do that. In addition, your magic somehow creates complex compounds from basic ingredients using less time and effort... Mana... You have stated that this world has an excess of mana. That mana as a source of energy seems to be much better than my source of energy.

"The first task we will accomplish tomorrow is to find the missing ingredients for producing spell chrystals. We are going to be needing a LOT of those."

"What do you mean?" she asked suspiciously.

"Wait and see. Even if I described what I am going to propose, you would not understand. Some things have to be experienced to be understood." I could tell that she was bit upset, but there was just nothing I could do about it at the moment.

--- === === ---

The next day we packed up, got in the air car and flew to a conical shaped mountain about two hundred miles away from where we were before. For a wonder, the invisibility device along with the subsonic wardoff worked. No dragon or other huge flying creature attempted to eat us.

When we arrived in the vicinity of the mountain, I began to slowly circle it. Silver did not balk as I described how to store the entire mountain in her items box... The easiest way was to store a portion at a time making sure that you did not cause some type of explosion that would drop pieces onto the air car. We spiraled in and spiraled out, as she grabbed portioned of the mountain. The process was not as clean as I make it out. Many times we created spires that collapsed and roared down the side of the diminishing peak in an avalanche of stone and dust. Three hours later, a thousand foot tall mountain had been reduced to a flat irregular circle in the ground about 75000' across. Inside the items box, we had approximately ten cubic miles of what might be in a certain light... ore fit for processing.

We broke for lunch on top of another mountain in the area of the mountain that we had just reduced to rubble... I just sheared off the peak of an adjacent mountain, landed and ejected the house we were using. I set up the security system and we went inside.

Over a seafood lunch, I said, "The next step is to refine the ore into the pure form of the ingredients we will need to make... lots of stuff."

"Why are do you have this mania for purity?" she asked idly.

"Uhhh... I could give a long talk on this topic, but you would be no wiser. Until I have time to translate some of the books on my magic, I do not think that I can make it clear as to what is going on... Silver, I know that you find my hesitancy to just spit it out to be very frustrating. My problem is that I am convinced that you would become even more frustrated and not be able to do the jobs I need doing, if I really tried to explain this in detail.

"In short, you have decades to learn my magic. We do not have decades to set up our domain. I am convinced that the management of this world is doing something odd. What exactly that is, I just do not know."

--- === === ---

Silver was totally bemused staring at the 48"X40" Styrofoam pallet stacked 40" high with bars of iron-58. She asked very confused, "Tell me again what this has to do with spell chrystals?"

We were standing in front of the house inside a 100 man tent that was just an awning supported by tent poles. The wind briskly blew through the empty sides ruffling Silver's straight silver hair.

"Nothing... That mountain had a LOT of iron in it... with a great deal of ingredients I need to create spell chrystals. I want to extract the iron first, then we shall move on to other ingredients I detected as they went into your new items box. Again, you copy what is on that pallet and put it in a second items box for future use."

I ejected a worktable and a work-stool like the one inside the house.

Mildly irritated, Silver went through the steps of making a second items box using the same steps from before. While she was doing that I ejected 1000 empty Styrofoam pallets from my Pocket. They were stacked fifty feet high behind us. When she was done making the new items box, she put the Styrofoam pallets in the first items box, so that she could duplicate the iron AND the pallet without any problems.

When she was done making the second items box, she stepped up to the pallet and seemed to commune with it, touching it here and there, trying to get a feel for it. She set the real component of the first items box four paces to her right. Then she set the real component of the second items box just below the first items box.

Without any mystic passes or claps of thunder and lightning, a second pallet of iron bars appeared briefly in front of the real component of the second items box before disappearing. I said, "Repeat that as many times as you can." Each pallet had a megagram of iron on it. Iron-58 is very rare on earth.

She made three more pallets appear and then disappear into the second items box, then she said, "I cannot get a full pallet of iron... I might get three of those bars and a little more." I ejected an empty pallet and moved three bars from the old pallet to the new one plus four kilogram weights of it. She said, "A little less than that." I took away a weight and put a half a kilogram on the pallet. She nodded and a duplicate of the short pallet appeared and then disappeared.

I put both of the pallets away and ejected a full pallet of iron-57 bars. She created 23 pallets of iron-57 from the mountain debris, then I ejected an empty pallet and set twenty bars and eight and a half kilogram bars on the second pallet. The new pallet was duplicated and stored in the second items box.

I put away the pallets of iron-57 and then ejected a full pallet of iron-54. This time Silver doggedly created 52 full pallets. I removed four bars from the pallet and added seventeen kilogram weights of iron. She made the duplicate and dropped it in the second items box.

I put away the pallet of iron-54 and replaced it with a full pallet of iron-56. Silver again touched the pallet and then stood up. she stared at the first items box and said, "I do not have enough mana to do this task. There are at least 10400 pallets of this iron."

"Okay... Let us create a spell stone assembly like you did a while back. The goal is to make as many copies as there is material in the first items box and transfer it to the second items box... Can you do that?"

Silver's eyes blinked a few times, then said dubiously, "Yes... I think I can do that, but, Rock, the piece of glass would be at least twice the size of the two pallets... The amount of silver would be... huge... I'm not sure that I can etch that much glass." She was becoming oddly panicky... like she could see how to do it, but NEVER expected to EVER have the resources to do something this outrageous.

I made a 20'X8' virtual blackboard appear in the air. I handed Silver a marker and said, "Draw the design that is needed to complement the spell chrystal and produce the effect I want. I want a generalized spell. In other words, I put something on the pad on the left, I want a copy of it to appear on the pad on the right. I want the second items box to store it in a place where you can find it. I want as many copies as ingredients are available. I want the spell to stop, when the resources in the first items box cannot produce what is on the first pad in full. It would be best, if the spell displayed what was left in the first items box, so we can make adjustments on the first pad to get that last small part of the ingredients. In all cases, the spell has to test what is on the first pad to make sure that the copy on the second pad is exactly the same. In short, I want you to automate the process that we just went through."

Silver spent the next three hours scribbling on the board. She had me make her a second virtual blackboard, then a third one. Finally she drew complicated diagrams on a fourth blackboard with the two huge pentagonal pads prominently display. I ejected a comfy chair for her and positioned the blackboards so that she could stare at her scribblings as well as the diagram.

The next two hours were her jumping up and making corrections here and there on the blackboards and then seating herself. At one point she had me enlarge the blackboard with the diagram on it. Finally, she sighed and then said, "How you are going to make a pane of glass this big that will not break baffles me."

I decided not to dispute her. I just ejected the 25'X12' pane of glass encased in a complicated frame that supported the pans in such a way that the glass could not easily crack. I could not help myself. I made it look like a pool table with green felt cushions surrounded by teak wooden frame. The control panel was at the nearest side pocket almost touching the cushion. The pads for the spell chrystal and tear shaped mana stone were together and equidistant between two side pockets to the right of left pad. The left pad was shaped in regular pentagon with each side 48" with the bottom flat side displaced from the nearside cushion and the top point almost touching the farside cushion. The right pad was identical to the left side pentagon not touching the nearside cushion and the top point almost touching the farside cushion. The first items box set on a silver pad shaped like a 10" on a side regular pentagon in the area of the upper right hand corner pocket with the top point almost touching the far cushion. The second items box set on a regular pentagon silver shaped pad identical to the pad holding the first items box and was in the area of the lower right hand corner pocket with flat displaced from the nearside cushion.

Silver slowly arose from her comfy chair with an expression of complete astonishment. She looked down on the flat surface shaking her head. Q had laid down the silver-109 exactly like the design that she had penned. The pentagon were sharply outlined. The silver lines flowed artistically all over the surface of the glass.

She spent a lot of time feeling this and that. I caught a mutter that the pads which were 48" on a side used more silver-109 than she had used in her entire life in all her research. When she was done, she summoned the large mana stone cabinet and the small spell chrystal cabinet.

She chose an eighth-inch orange spell chrystal. Then she consulted the three other boards before staring at the crystal for a while. Then she set it on a pad above the control panel. She used some silver wire to anchor it on the pentagonal pad that fit it exactly. The lemon colored mana stone she chose fit into a tear drop shaped pad that fit it exactly. She then latched it as well with silver wire.

The real components of the two items boxes were set on pads at the top and the bottom to the right.

She wandered around once more touching the assembly and at the same time muttering how perfect everything was.

Whatever I thought that she would do, I did not expect her to take the translation item on her wrist and put it on the left pad. I said nothing, when she looked at me. She did something. The device slowly awoke. A hemisphere of light enclosed the pad with the original on it and then the pad which would hold the copy. A hemisphere of light enclosed the real component of the source items box with the ore from the mountain and then another hemisphere of light enclosed the real component of receiving items box.

A stuttering, strobing image appeared on the receiving pad and did not stop for a long time. I could just barely make out the fact that the bracelet was appearing before almost simultaneously being stored. After about five minutes, it stopped and something popped up like a virtual blackboard. I had the feeling that Silver had figured out a way of creating a virtual blackboard and incorporated it into the control of the device.

Silver dry scrubbed her face, picked up the original translation item and put it back on.

I asked reluctantly, "How many copies did it make?"

Laughing hysterically she said, "33388 copies were put in the second items box."

"Ummm... Maybe you should put an option on it so that you can control how many copies it makes," I said dryly.

Silver sobered. "Good idea," she said absently.

She took out the spell chrystal and stared at it for a while before setting it back in its place. I somehow got the feeling that she was reprogramming a set of firmware.

She took off the original translation item and went to the receiving items box. A second translation item appeared on the edge of the device. She picked it up and closed her eyes communing with the two translation items... Then she put the original translation item back on and the copy disappeared. After a bit, she shook her head in wonder. "I am totally baffled by these turn of events. This is the last copy made. The copy is indistinguishable from the original. Even the mana stone of the translation item is charged.

"Put the pallet of iron on the left pad," she commanded. I did. She awoke the device again, except that this time, the virtual blackboard appeared after all the lights came on. "The first items box contains enough iron like the iron on the pallet to create 561 copies before it runs out of... ingredients from the pallet," she said smiling ruefully. She shut everything down.

Silver picked up the first items box and we went outside and I ejected a total of 30000 empty pallets from my Pocket. She stored them in the first items box. That took some time because there just was not enough room on the mountain peak for that many pallets. We did it in ten stages.

We went back under the awning, put the first items box in its place and started up the device again... This time she said, "The mountain contains 10451 pallets of iron... Do you need that much iron of this type?"

"Yes, I do, please proceed to the end."

Three minutes passed, then she said, "All right... I cannot judge how many bars can be copied. What do we do next?"

I took off one bar of iron and took the rest of the pallet back into my Pocket. I set the single bar on the left pan. We started the device up. Silver looked at the virtual blackboard and said, "Okay. It is saying that it can make ten copies of the bar."

I said, "Do it." Silver made the copies. "For the leftover, I am going to have to get you to tell me exactly how much is left in the first items box, or you are going to have to modify the spell so we can know how much is left. Iron does not count, but some of the rarer ingredients every little bit is going to be needed." When she was done, I took the bar back into my Pocket.

I ejected a small plastic globe onto the left pad. "Now we come to the ingredients for the spell chrystals... Iron in its various forms is useful for a multitude of things in my magic, but some ingredients of your magic are never used in mine.

"In that globe is a small sample of rubidium-87. I want you to tell me how many copies you can make of it using the first items box as the source of ore."

The globe looked like a clear ball with a small stone suspended in the middle, so you could look at it from all sides.

The virtual blackboard appeared before her. She smiled archly. "I can make 1561 copies of the globe, but I do not have enough ingredients for the material making up the globe to exhaust the metal in the first items box."