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

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Are you having fun toying with the laws of physics? And can you attempt to put rooms and corridors in roughly the same place they were before? We can reuse streambuilt paths to move around with, even if you're going to handle heat and light and pumping with electricity."

[from_scratch]

"Would there be a floorplan you'd want me to follow?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Nevermind on the paths thing, I'll defer to your floorplan. We can always redo them and you know more about how this stuff works than me. We'll want about a million gallons per day capacity, which we probably won't use all of, a few offices, and classrooms to give lessons about all this fancy new technology in, and the actual pumps and valves and pipe hookups."

[from_scratch]

"I'm gonna give you twice that and just not turn on half of the intake for now in case, oh, being the first wired city anywhere causes you to suddenly double in size or something." He pulls out his computer and designs the place - it takes about twenty minutes - and then it comes into existence, hooked up to the same outflow as the original, already on. "This won't require as much staff as the original - uh, is that a problem, are they going to be unhappily unemployed?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"They're civil service workers. Most people choose to work in the civil service for a few years to pay their debt to the city's public services. The alternative to the civil service is a rather severe tax. I think I'll arrange for other sections to take them. In particular the roads-and-lifts division always wants more shapers."

[from_scratch]

"Cool. So this... can basically run unmanned except when you want to step the intake up and down or if something breaks, which, like the dam, should take at least fifty years."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Can you identify some books aimed at electricity and engineering? I would like very much to understand exactly what these places are doing."

[from_scratch]

"Um... Start with 'Engineering for Summoners', but ask me when you don't understand stuff."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I'll read that later, then. I'm thinking about how to control this place... We'll have to set up a signal tower or send runners so the city's tanks don't overfill if we turn it up too high. Or maybe just build spillways."

[from_scratch]

"Oh, it can be controlled remotely, you just need a person doing it. And it's button pressing."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"...How, exactly, is that done?"

[from_scratch]

"On your phone poke the button that looks like a stylized house - box with a triangle on top - to get out of your library, then poke the water droplet."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"No, I mean... This thing can communicate at a distance?"

[from_scratch]

"Yes. That's actually the function it's named after, although after a while they did enough different things that plenty of people never use theirs to talk to other phones. Right now it can only talk to the water pump and the range isn't great, I'll need to put in some satellites to get good coverage, but from here to Opri it'll be fine all by itself as long as you aren't underground or behind a lead wall or something."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Communication is yet another thing you can do much more effectively than us. We are limited to physical mail, couriers, or for particularly important messages, coded sequences of light shined from one tower to the next and then the next until it reaches its destination and is decoded. Can you see yourself selling electric mail delivery?"

[from_scratch]

"Sure, once the place is wired up and you can charge the things. Modern battery life is great but it won't last forever all by itself. Maybe you could get along with shared induction chargers in public places while the change rolls out to individual residences."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Conveniently enough for that idea, public places are where Grind and company have the most influence. Speaking of Grind, do you want to write up some summaries for her while I read Engineering for Summoners?"

[from_scratch]

"You'd know better than I what'll go over well."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Don't lie or embellish about the new stuff's capabilities. She'll like concise descriptions of what the things you can make are, what they can do, any drawbacks or limitations they have stated up front, how they are not particularly dangerous unless mistreated. A description of how you can make things with whatever arbitrary limits you want to make up to discourage immediate attempted exploitation of you. Repetition of the very generous lease terms. Emphasize how great the city will be with all this new stuff, but don't go overboard with the rhetoric."

[from_scratch]

"All right." Cam pulls out his computer and writes up dumbed-down technical specs for the dam and the water pump. They require no routine maintenance; absent deliberate sabotage, severe earthquake, or similar magnitude of destructive force, they won't even need non-routine maintenance for about fifty years. Anyone who is not really stupidly determined to tamper with the things will find them harmless. They will produce, at peak capacity, a (comprehensible) volume of water and an (incomprehensible) amount of electricity. The terms under which their use is offered to Opri boils down to "no upfront fee, water's free, electricity's very very cheap, modest installation charges for things that use the electricity and any of Cam's time spent on teaching other people about it, and all of these prices are subject to change at any time depending on what Cam's doing with his valuable time and how friendly he is feeling towards Opri's representatives that day".

He describes his ability to make things as a non-transferable form of magic. He lists the real limits that will make sense in context (things cannot appear in motion, he can't appear things he knows nothing about) and asserts that he can't make anything complicated without design input into it (that should stop them from trying to sneak anything past him he doesn't like).

He lists some things electricity can do. With appropriate infrastructure - unmanned, low- to zero-maintenance, nonexpert-controllable light, heat, transport, communication and computing technology, household appliances, industrial processing - he stops short of talking about electric string instruments. Just won't have the right impact without a demo.

He shows it to Steel in its draft form on his computer screen. "How's this look?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Very impressive. If she believes you at all, which she almost certainly will after a tour of the new water plant, she'll be all over it. This will probably end up turning the civil service on its head, since electricity will take over something like half of what we do. But she's not the type to shy away from positive changes just because they're new and scary."

[from_scratch]

"Well, that's good."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Shall we head back to town, then?"

[from_scratch]

"Yep. I'll make the main cable from the dam as we go."

Up into the air he goes, and the cable, hidden by appropriately hidey layers of stuff and insulation, comes into existence below.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel follows, a bit slowly. "I'm going to need a nice big lunch. Flying burns calories like nothing else. And hey, it's probably a good idea to stop the cable about half a mile of the city walls, at least for now. Kell would make a stink if you encroached on the defenses built into the stream without his permission."