trade my soul for a wish

[from_scratch]

This is a successor to "call me maybe", which is getting crowded.

Cam is dipping a grilled cheese sandwich into a bowl of tomato soup when he feels the summons. He goes ahead and grabs it. Doesn't even drop the sandwich.


with Mark (kappa)

with Adanya (Aestrix)

with Sable (kappa)

with Ari (andaisq)

with Metella (kappa)

with Miles (kappa)

with Isabella (Eva)

with Steel (Rockeye)

with Daphne (Maggie)

with Edie (Maggie)

Comments

[from_scratch]

"I like this layered look. I bet Fairyland has cities like this. Hell can't organize well enough and Heaven does a cave network shtick and humans where I'm from can't fly."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I think the reason we're vertical like this is so that we end up with almost a cube or sphere of constructed bluestream. It doesn't degrade nearly as quickly when it's in the middle of more bluestream. I wonder if you'd like to see the urban farms later? They're very magic, compared to using fields and natural sunlight."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, I won't be able to see the magic, but it could be instructive anyway, sure."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Later, though. Here's the office." She goes in, and explains to the receptionist, "I'm just going in and out, Lina. I found a foreign expert and we're gonna give him a tour of the pump building."

"No tea, then?"

"No, thanks." She shows Cam into an office, which is crowded with neatly labelled and organized boxes and folders and papers and maps, and starts gathering papers.

[from_scratch]

"You know, if you can adequately specify the files you want I could just recreate them all, but maybe that would be more trouble than it's worth."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Probably more trouble than it's worth unless you put them on a computer and also teach me how to use it... Pumpjack diagram, water use statistics, the water main map... That's all I wanted." She carries a small stack of notebooks back out the front.

On the way out, the receptionist asks, "Did he do your new wings, boss? They're very fine work."

"He did, in fact. But I have to be on my way, sorry." Back into the air! This time she flies to the top of a building that takes up two entire blocks and manages to be taller than 90% of the rest of the city.

[from_scratch]

"Now people have conflicting stories about whether I'm a shaper," remarks Cam. "Hopefully that doesn't bite me."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"...Oops. Well, Lina isn't very gossipy at least. And they aren't supposed to make you use magic, you can lean on that if anyone confronts you about it."

[from_scratch]

"Yes, I caught that."

[sturdycoldsteel]

Fly, fly. Land on a roof. "This is actually one of the farms, we took over the top two floors and built the water infrastructure there." She goes in, revealing a warehouse-sized room filled with pipes and about fifty pumpjacks. Each pair has one bored-looking person sitting nearby and moves in sync. One set of jacks is offline, being inspected by someone in a red uniform.

"Behold, two-point-six million gallons per day of pumping capacity. The water gets squeezed through a sand filter and activated charcoal on the way up, and we change out the charcoal and re-activate it every two days. It sits in the tall tanks on the roofs, then drips down along mains embedded in walls and pathways to other buildings' roof tanks. The main sewage plant is outside the city walls, I can show you that later. What do you think?"

[from_scratch]

"Not bad for working without electricity. I'm going to guess you don't have hot running water? How's the water pressure, is taking a shower here like getting rained on?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"We have hot water, heat is easy. But it's usually lukewarm or cold again by the time it gets to whoever's using it. Most showers aren't very strong, especially if the building's water tower isn't close to full."

[from_scratch]

"Right, so I can definitely improve things. Where are you collecting the water to begin with?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Some from the river in the canyon, but the city of Nel kept complaining that we drain the river too much, so I convinced Grind to pay for a drilling operation and now we get most of it from an aquifer about half a mile below ground. This was a couple years ago. The whole thing is chugging along without me, now."

[from_scratch]

"Aquifers do not have infinite supply. I don't know how big yours is; do you?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"No, I do not. I just know it's there. I think we're the only city in the prefecture that collects from an aquifer, at least. Nel drains the river, Zalti pays for supply from the east in an aqueduct, and so on. How would you measure the aquifer, anyway?"

[from_scratch]

"Ways and ways. If I knew how big it was I could refill it; if I try that blind I might pop the sucker. Will Nel mind if I dam the river as long as they get the same amount of total water directed back along the same channel by the time it gets to them? Collecting energy from falling water is one of the best sources of tame lightning. I can also do floating windcatchers and solar panels but you'd want lots of them and they have a little eyesore problem - like, I can do pretty solar panels but you are kind of already using your roofspace more than I'm accustomed to humans doing."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Nel wouldn't complain, probably, but whoever's upriver from us might. I'd have to look at some maps and do a flyover to tell if anyone's house would become a lake if you put down a dam."

[from_scratch]

"Well, yeah, one does generally do a survey before these things. I know how."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"And the dam would be to power the new pumps and new everything else you make here?"

[from_scratch]

"You could get enough juice out of it to power other stuff too unless it's a really puny river. ...The hot running water thing will need to involve installing new plumbing systems in all the plumbed buildings though."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Many buildings already have hot water plumbing. They use separate tanks on their roofs, they just need to be made hot magically."

[from_scratch]

"Oh, I may have misunderstood. Is there a separate thing at the faucet to solicit hot water, and it just doesn't work that well?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"In most buildings, at least, yes. The problem is the tanks that supply hot water don't keep themselves hot, they must be kept hot by someone physically visiting and magicking at them, which is moderately annoying."

[from_scratch]

"Right, I can fix that, and insulate the pipes, and if that doesn't do it there can be smaller electrical tanks at more points throughout the building so that the water doesn't have to travel so far. Getting electricity from place to place involves wires. I don't have to gut a building to put wires in the walls because I'm a demon, although it will help if I can get enough access to see what I'm doing."