remote station

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis tel Jobont is not living up to her lantelis.

She had been en route to her usual position after a rest-and-resupply period. Instead of the expected uneventful trip, somehow she loses her anchors, falls through a bizarrely shaped storm, then finds herself impossibly over land instead of water and with her upper antennas chopped off like they were never there.

She was able to stabilize with only minor damage to the uninhabited land, but she cannot hear a single intelligible signal, and a hundred other things add up to this is no place anyone has ever seen before. Or rather, reported seeing before.

So here she sits in the sky, relaying nothing, thinking about everything.

Comments

[calescent]

"Oh, of course, I can fund that."

[synchrosyntheses]

"I will need to research what metals and minerals are available in Welce. For all I know, it might require starting new mines. But before I return to your library, is there anything else you wanted to know? And would you like any of these books on radio communications prepared?"

[calescent]

"I'd like introductions to all the things you mentioned, radios first."

[synchrosyntheses]

"All right, I will get started on those." Teytis — or at least the obviously her part of her — leaves in the direction of the library.

The box on the floor reshapes itself into a somewhat taller form and starts producing more not-paper sheets every couple of minutes, slower than careful reading but not by much. The sheets stick themselves to each other to make a spine, and politely avoid interfering with reading the pages available so far.

The first book so produced is a radio operator's manual for children. It is short on theory but long on what it takes to communicate successfully. There is a background assumption that if you want to communicate without so much attention to detail, you use a computer (whatever that is) attached to your radio to handle things for you, but that these things are kept separate so that the failure of one is not the failure of both. It also assumes that the operator lankored their equipment, but describes purely mechanical controls available for emergencies on standard designs.

[calescent]

Kiri reads as quickly as it spits out pages, and takes notes between them. It's all very interesting.

[synchrosyntheses]

The books proceed through more perspectives on radio technology, then move to introductions to computers.

The material on pimsilt techniques starts to explain some of how these strange machines can possibly be made — in mass production, even. However, it still assumes that your tools, or your tools to make your tools, are tamsilt — made by "shapeshifting and telekinesis". (Perhaps this translation is poor.)

The material on transportation is almost exclusively lantamsilt as well; even when the physical principles are recognizable, if built in ordinary ways these systems would be defeated by friction or material strength, or be no better than a cart. If they existed, though, they would provide many ways to move people and goods miles in minutes.

None of them quite explains where the motive power for all of these machines comes from, either.

[calescent]

Kiri makes a note to ask about that. Teytis did seem to understand that people in this world don't do telekinesis. Well, except the primes who handle solid objects, they sort of do.

[synchrosyntheses]

Apparently, that was all of the 'introductions to all the things' Kiri asked for. No more books are currently in print.

[calescent]

Kiri goes downstairs.

[synchrosyntheses]

Teytis has finished Kiri's recommendations and is working on the rest of the library.

[calescent]

"Do you want more recommendations or are you finding your way around pretty well? ...And please make sure you put the books back where you find them or mark them for return by the librarian."

[synchrosyntheses]

"Every book should be exactly where I found it. Including these, though." She indicates the pile that Kiri provided.

"I think I am finding my way all right. I don't know of a particular thing that I need to know and haven't found, at at least. But — is it really the case that Welce is the only country that has any kind of magic, or are these things perhaps not well reported across borders?"

[calescent]

"They might not be well-reported. I don't think we've gone to any special pains to advertise what primes and blessings do, so it's possible there's magic elsewhere too. I haven't heard any likely-seeming rumors, though."

[synchrosyntheses]

"Well, that's a longer-term project no matter what, I expect. If however I got here came with a way to return, and this was known already, then surely there would be reports of explorers.

"How are my translations?"

[calescent]

"Readable. Although I'm sure there's some better way to render the thing you're calling 'shapeshifting and telekinesis'."

[synchrosyntheses]

"Oh, yes, that was words I got before we could talk properly. Maybe they should not be translated since your prime abilities are not all that like what we do.

"The thing that you do not seem to have is kored, the state of matter being directly claimed by a mind and therefore acting as part of its body."

She brings out a bit of glass to demonstrate with.

"The fundamental manipulation of kored is to create densilard, which I could more descriptively translate as — patterning of force — perhaps; causing matter to move or resist movement as we specify. Then there is movement, that is, temporary landensilard to merely move an object from one place to another with no lasting changes other than that.

"A material which does not have any complex structure, such as this glass, may be reshaped, which is very much like melting it but without any heat involved, then moving it into the desired shape. An object which has been reshaped into a particular useful form or has permanent force-patterns, or more often both, is tamsilt."

[calescent]

"Yeah, it sounds like we should just use your words. 'Shapeshifting' refers to something that it seems like you can't quite do - and 'telekinesis' means moving things without using your muscles, which you are doing, but very differently from how one of the other primes who works with a solid or liquid element would."

[synchrosyntheses]

"I will avoid those words in the future, then. Did you want more translations?"

[calescent]

"Yes. I'll take your recommendations for now. I did want to ask - if you can do the things described in the book without kored, where does the force to start things moving come from?"

[synchrosyntheses]

"I completely forgot about energy requirements, didn't I. This won't be very much the same at all, will it. We'll have to come up with some new ideas, if I'm not just making entamsilt for you.

"The radios, at least, are purely electronic devices so — well, there will need to be some storage, but they could be powered by photovoltaic collectors. This means that they require sunlight, and would stop working if you have days of cloudy weather. Or for you, well, your fire certainly should do for an energy source if it's something you're going to use, though that's merely a more convenient substitute for turning a crank on an electrical generator or some such thing."

[calescent]

"I can certainly produce a lot of fire, but it's not necessarily the best use of my time if there are other methods, and there is only one of me."

[synchrosyntheses]

“I meant for anything you were personally using. Probably not really worthwhile. In any case, powering things shouldn't be a problem; might need a little more land and materials.”

[calescent]

"I can supply both as investments. I'm pretty rich."

[synchrosyntheses]

"As you said.

"Did you want anything else translated? I assumed you would ask while you were reading, but it occurs to me now that you probably weren't thinking of me as being there to ask."

[calescent]

"...I wasn't. Could you have heard me if I said something?"