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]

"It would be a lot easier if you were willing to tell her that you have a new kind of magic. We can pretend it's more limited than it actually is, maybe. I don't think she's the kind of person to question strange magic systems. If you said you were doing it the the stream she'd have thousands of questions and demand to see the diagrams. But foreign magic? How does she know what it can and can't do?"

[from_scratch]

"If you say so. There is separately a question of how high-tech I should make the dam and wiring and things. It's almost a linear tradeoff between features like efficiency and safety versus the ability to easily teach locals to maintain them. I won't be making anything with a manufacturing defect, I have no reason to use flimsy cheap materials, and the high-tech stuff wouldn't want upgrading or replacement nearly as quickly - but if something catches fire or someone goes around deliberately cutting cables you want to be able to patch it yourselves if you can't get ahold of me, I assume."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I had to train people for three months to use the pumpjacks and filters without constant supervision. Some training is definitely an option. Can you make things - modular? So if the power cable is cut or the primary whatsit breaks you can just pop in a new one. Then they can have a supply of spare parts."

[from_scratch]

"Yes, for the wiring that works. I can color-code and standardize everything since I'm starting from scratch. It won't work as well for the dam, which is an enormous architectural thingummy."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"We have people who know architecture and mechanics and water physics pretty well. Whatever technology that makes the electricity, not so much. I should keep learning Italian, maybe I can translate some useful books."

[from_scratch]

"At its most basic, electricity is generated by shuffling magnets around. It's just convenient to make the water move the things that do the shuffling. I'm thinking I'll make a properly modern dam. Done to demonic engineering standards and in sufficiently robust materials, it should last for at least fifty years, which is enough time to get people who haven't even been born yet trained in how to patch the thing. If it breaks you'll need me, but that only becomes a serious problem if I make hundreds of similar installations and they're scattered on multiple continents."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"That sounds like a plan to me. Time to make it more detailed?"

[from_scratch]

"Sure. I hope there's a good place to dam it or this will have been a lot of wasted speculation and you'll have to make do with tidecatchers or windcatchers or solar panels."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"We're nowhere near the ocean. Tidecatchers may be impractical, and also be in other cities' territory where they can do what they like to them. Is anything involved in the surveying other than flying over it and making maps, possibly with a telescope or other detecting things?"

[from_scratch]

"I will have to estimate the capacity and speed of the river. Other than that, that's basically it."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I have speed and depth histories." They are in a box labelled RIVER DOCUMENTS. She gets them out and hands them over.

"I'd like to come along. Are you going to use a vehicle?"

[from_scratch]

"Nah. I'd have to do something with it after."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Then I will fly with you and attempt to practice Italian, as long as you don't mind."

[from_scratch]

"I don't mind," he replies magnanimously in Italian.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Also in Italian, "I, uh, can have a computer? Read books, and not carry books."

[from_scratch]

"Hmmmm," says Cam, "sure, let me just think." A few minutes later he makes a small black rectangle, which then lights up - "Put your thumb on it so it won't wake up if anyone else touches it, and then I think it should be straightforward from there - just poke whatever it looks like you want it to do or show you, and instead of turning pages you slide your finger from the bottom to the top of the screen and the text moves along with you."

[sturdycoldsteel]

She tries it out. It's pretty intuitive, though all the labels are Italian. She opens a book-reading program, and then opens a book. "Thank you. Is it fine if I ask you 'what does this word mean' some?"

[from_scratch]

"No problem."

[sturdycoldsteel]

She puts the shiny new computer in a pocket, then knocks over a box with one of her wings while turning around. After hovering it back into place, she heads out the front door and flies. "This way to the river."

[from_scratch]

Cam follows. He reads things on his computer once they're high up enough.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel also reads things, once she gets the hang of flying and reading. She asks for the occasional translated word, but never needs the same word translated twice.

It takes about half an hour to reach the southernmost part of the river that is still in Opri's territory. Steel turns north after that.

[from_scratch]

River. What an interesting river. Cam flies low enough to see if there's anything that shouldn't be underwater in the canyon.

[sturdycoldsteel]

There's some grass, and shrubs, and trees, and small animals, and fish. A little ways up there is the overgrown ruins of what might have been a house once. Ten minutes after that there is a very grand-looking glass-and-steel suspension bridge connecting road-ends on either side of the canyon. There's some sort of track going up and down nearby, and a significantly less abandoned-looking building at the bottom.

"That's the old water station. They would literally fill huge tubs and levitate them from here to the city. I like my way much better."

[from_scratch]

"They don't still use it?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Someone might be squatting, but no, not this one. There's another station with real pumps at the top of the canyon a few more minutes up. That's where we get any river water we use these days."