jumped without a jump drive

[rockeye_stonetoe]

Nick, in a full environment suit like any sensible person would wear in untamed wilderness, is overseeing a small swarm of robots harvesting various useful plantlife from the uninhabited parts of a sparsely settled planet, when something suddenly comes tearing through the undergrowth towards him and it's not showing up on scanners-

He raises his hand-phaser, notices it has a mirror for a face and hesitates a little too long. And then he is in a clearing, cut off from his ship and 'bots, with all available sources of data telling him he just went through a jump.

What.

Comments

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Between five and six feet."

[segreant]

"That will cover most of us, then, I think Anders is taller than that though."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"I can make one custom and the rest standard. But... There is the issue of money. These are expensive to make and my feelings of charity to the Winter Light only go so far." He quotes a number. It's about three quarters as much as a good set of steel plate.

[segreant]

"We can't replace everyone's armor at once like that - we are mostly funded by donations, and those mostly timed when people die and not at any steady pace - but I can speak to the person who handles our accounts and see how many we can order up front."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"I'll leave this one for now. I'd like coin for it eventually, though."

He goes back to his newest pet project, a nuclear power plant. He is even more aggressive about safety and diligence and cleanliness among the employees that work on it. They put up with it, given how much he's paying them. It's been three years since he arrived, and a nuclear plant is perhaps step ten out of two hundred before building a jump drive.

Well, no sense dwelling on it. Back to work.

[segreant]

The Order of the Winter Light want four more sets of armor and expect to be able to order an additional one per year, perhaps more, approximately indefinitely.

Nick's activities have made the city a more popular place to be and trade with. It's growing.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

He builds a sewer system. He makes more and more cars. He institutes a fire brigade. He builds electric wind turbines. He expands his little school system. He starts manufacturing pharmaceuticals.

Years pass.

The city keeps growing. He exports all his tech to neighboring countries. The nuclear plant comes online. He makes aircraft. He starts working on a spaceship, albeit not a jump-capable one. He expands the school system again.

More years pass.

He's filthy rich, now, so he makes large donations to paladin orders the world over. He gets that moneylender in on the ground floor of electronic banking and credit systems.

He pushes as many people as possible into his schools, and tries to make sure that it is good education and doesn't fall into any of the traps educational systems tend to fall into.

And twenty-five years later, he has a jump drive.

He finds Kaja, to say goodbye.

[segreant]

Kaja is now fifty years old, and while Winter Light healing means she doesn't have any scars and looks younger than she is, she's coming up on retirement age to teach the novices or do other lighter work than going out and hitting things with a sword. She is at the compound when Nick turns up, on guard duty.

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Hail, Kaja. It's been a while. I'm going home soon. Thought I'd say goodbye."

[segreant]

"...Home? You mean - back where you came from? You've been here so long."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"I'm not the kind of person who can really be happy spending years and years in one place. I might come back and visit, but I haven't seen my old friends or family for over two decades. Even if I wasn't too fond of my family. They're still family, and it's time to go home."

[segreant]

"What about all your - stuff? Can your people handle it all right? Everyone's used to having it now."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"That's what my schools are for. I've been having as many people as possible taught, as best I can. There are thousands who know how to make a radio now, and almost ten thousand who can repair a car. And dozens who can make more armor, whenever you need it. Everything that nobody else understands, I'll be bringing with me."

[segreant]

"I guess I'd imagined you'd get used to it here. Settle in."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"Well. If I'd married or made close friends I might stay, but I'm a lonely sort, I never did. Like I said, I'm a wanderer. You can't help being what you are."

[segreant]

"That's true."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

"It's a tradition in my homeland to give a gift of silver for significant achievements, happy occasions, and farewells. You were the first person I met from this world, and you helped me onto my feet. Please accept this coin as a gift."

He holds out a perfectly circular shiny silver coin with an intricate etched pattern of swirls that is not in common use anywhere in the country.

[segreant]

"Thank you."

[rockeye_stonetoe]

He gives a little bow. "Fare well in all your days."

He takes the train to his industrial complex, musing. The world is changing, because of him. Rapid change will start a revolution. Violence, maybe. But he kept the technologies he shared as safe as he could. They'll just have to deal with the rest.

He finalizes a series of ownership transfers, giving control of various industries to the best and brightest of his employees.

He boards his private jumpship and blasts into the upper atmosphere.

There is a brilliantly bright flash of light, and Nick is gone from the world.