The Alchemist Chapter 38

 

Chapter 38

I had a compass built in five minutes with my alchemy power. I showed it to Moray.

“That’s not north,” said Moray. “As far as I can tell, that’s southwest.”

“But it’s true magnetic north,” I said. “A different thing from your map’s north.”

“So, what are you saying?” said Moray. “Are we going to rewrite every map ever made?”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Now that we know which direction the compass points in, we can just take note and call it a south west compass.”

“So it points to the same place no matter where you are?” said Moray. He turned around while the compass was in his hands. “Interesting,” he said. “This will aid navigation more than you can imagine.”

“Oh, I can imagine it,” I said. “Compasses were necessary for ocean travel in my world.”

“And you said you had no sky ships, but rather, um, aero planes?”

“Airplanes,” I said. “They were invented a hundred years ago compared to when I was born. They go fast. There is no magic in my world, so we never had sky ships. Well, we had dirigibles, but those worked through hydrogen, not magic metal …”

“Ah, this is the first time I’ve heard this,” said Moray. “Your world had no magic?”

“No,” I said. “None at all.”

“And yet you managed to create things that almost seem like magic,” said Moray.

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s that thing I’ve told you about. The scientific method.”

“You’ve gone on and on about that,” said Moray. “Hypothesis experiment, observation.”

“It’s very important for the improvement of technology,” I said. “I can’t be the only one who provides this world with high tech.”

Moray clapped his hands together. “Okay. I understand now.” He paused. “About the paper airplane contest.”

“Yes?” I said.

“Can you teach me some more ways to make them? I know you have more than a couple that you’d be able to teach me.”

“Of course,” I said. “I can also teach you origami.”

“Yeah, that,” said Moray. “What a strange name. Ori-gami.”

“It means folding paper in Japanese, a language from my home world.”

Moray nodded. “Ah, yes. You never mentioned it but I assumed.”

“That there are other languages where I come from?”

“Exactly,” said Moray. “You were granted fluency in this tongue by a god, but learning others may prove difficult. Does this have something to do with the development of the, uh, brain?”

“Yes,” I said. “If language is not picked up during childhood, then the opportunity is lost. You can’t learn a language to full fluency after age eight, and you’ll never lose your accent if you learn it after thirteen.”

“Weird, how that works,” said Moray.

“Even in my world we don’t understand that function of human psychology,” I said. “And I took a psychology class in my first year of university.”

“Tell me about yourself,” said Moray. “I haven’t heard about what your life was like back home.” He sat down on a rocky waist-high wall. We had disembarked from the carriage a while ago, before I made my compass. I sat down next to him.

“Well, in my world, kids go to school at the age of five and don’t stop until they’re eighteen.”

“Who handles all the farm work, then?” said Moray.

“We have things called combine tractors. They can harvest in a single hour what a hundred men can do in a week.”

Moray whistled. “That’s a lot of food,” he said.

“Only one percent of the people on planet Earth are actually involved in farming. As opposed to,” I paused to calculate, “About seventy percent here.”

Moray whistled. “And you have things called trains?” he said.

“They’re beasts of iron,” I said. “Very inspiring. They bow to no one. The natives of the continent of America called them the “iron horse.” I think that name is fitting.” I shrugged. “We measure the power of our automobiles using horsepower. An average automobile from my era has the power of three hundred to five hundred horses.”

Moray chuckled. “And I thought our steam engine was spectacular. How do you get enough steam to run these automobiles?”

“They don’t run on steam,” I said. “They run on internal gasoline combustion.” I shifted.

Moray shook his head. “We’ve become distracted. That’s what I find strange about you. You’re always willing to talk about technology, but you never tell me about yourself. How were your parents? Do you miss them?”

“I’ve been working too hard to miss anyone,” I said. “Though I suppose I miss my parents and my brothers a lot more than I realize at the moment.”

“That’s the thing I’m worried about,” said Moray. “You’re alone. No one else here in this realm knows what you do. You’re sitting in a backwards, superstitious, dark time where your brilliance will only illuminate the growing darkness.”

“And I’ll keep working until I illuminate it all,” I said. “But you’re right. I need to think better about myself.”

“Exactly,” said Moray. “You need to stop pushing yourself so hard.”

I looked off into the distance. “I just want to keep going until I achieve what I want,” I said. “And I’m not stopping until I do.”

“You keep repeating that sentiment,” said Moray. “You’re the most hard-working person I know. Every day you give it your all. I want to know why you’re that way.”

“Because I have a mission,” I said. “A mission to bring technology to this world. To defeat the demon king. To bring an end to injustice.”

Moray sighed. “You’re on a hopeless crusade, then,” he said. “Suffering will always exist. So will injustice. All you’re going to do if you create a utopia is shift the injustice elsewhere.” He paused. “I respect you for your scientific mind. I just don’t know if I can keep pushing you so hard.”

“You’re not pushing me,” I said. “I’m doing all this because I’m pushing myself.”

“And you don’t need the extra mile I’m giving,” said Moray. “I’ve worked tirelessly to ease your transition into this world. I don’t expect you to thank me for it, but I do expect you to take it easy now and then.”

“Okay,” I said. “How do you suggest that?”

“Spend a couple of days pursuing a hobby,” said Moray. “Doing something that doesn’t have an impact on your finances and won’t cause anyone to push you to produce more.”

I knew exactly what I was going to do with this spare time.

“I’m going to get together with Rachel and all your other administrative staff to run things while you’re gone. Go lock yourself in a room and write a book if you have to. But stop doing crazy things to this world with your crazy inventions.”

I smiled. “I’ll go now,” I said. I stood up and returned to the keep. Claude, who was watching my conversation with Moray from a distance, approached me.

“What were you talking about?” asked Claude.

“Moray and I were talking about giving me some time off,” I said.

“You need it,” said Claude. “I need it too.”

“I’m  going to need a playtester,” I said.

“Play … Tester?” said Claude.

“Yeah, for the game I’m going to make. It’s going to be a total rip-off of Magic: The Gathering but there’s no copyright here so I can do what I want.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Claude. “I’m in.

“I have some piles of paper and a cutting tool in my room. Let’s go and create some fun card games.”

“I thought you already created a fun card game, though,” said Claude.

“That was a playing card game,” I said. “This is a trading card game. You own the pieces to the deck that you build, and you construct your own deck …” I paused. “Come on. I’ll show you what I mean.” I walked to my room and started cutting out squares of paper with a knife.

Moray leaned into the room through the door. “And don’t worry about the paper plane contest,” he said. “I’ll get everything set up with all the proper permits. If things work out we’ll schedule the thing for next week.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Thanks,” said Claude.

I got to work putting together some cards that I remembered from Magic: The Gathering. Black Lotus, the Moxen, and the power nine were first. And then I took out my smartphone and began to copy down the cards that I wanted Claude to experience first.

Once I had a rough deck put together, I played my first game with Claude, teaching her how to play as we went along. Claude put her hand of cards down during the second game.

“We can make a lot of money selling these cards, can’t we?” she said. “However, there’s one big problem.”

“Literacy, right?” I said.

“Exactly,” said Claude. “Only the nobility knows how to read at a level required to play this game.”

“Then we can market it to them in the meantime while I try and raise the literacy rate. Being able to play this game will probably make literacy a lot more appealing, just like the newspaper.”

“I’ve thought of that, too,” said Claude. “Even on your days off you’re still thinking about inventing and changing society. I admire that about you.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a can of cola. It had clearly been reused, which was the obvious choice since I was the only one with the ability to create pure aluminum. She took a long draught. Then she locked eyes with me. “You’re strange,” she said. She leaned back. “So very strange.”

“I don’t try to be,” I said.

“But you still are,” said Claude. “And look at where we are now.” She flicked the light bulb hanging in the room, powered by electricity from the steam engine generator. She sat back up. “Let’s play another game,” she said.

We played more games after that, as I created a list of cards that I would include in the game’s first print run. I didn’t even have to come up with any cards myself, as I had access to the entire catalog through my smartphone.

I also spent a few hours speaking with the Oracle, learning more about his mission, which he knew very little about. I also thought about the floppy disc given to me by Yonas. The Elders’ attack had been staved off since I had saved the dragons, but who’s to say they wouldn’t attack my home world of Earth any time soon?

I spent my days off in relative quiet. When my vacation was over, I went right back to work.

“Right there, right there,” I said, as I watched a piece of equipment being lowered into place on the factory floor. One of the assembly lines, the one that made guns, was fully operational. The other two lines, cannons and fiber armor, needed a bit more tuning before they would be open to workers.

I watched the hundred people we had working on producing guns. Since the declaration of the special economic zone, the hamlet had grown from a small town of four hundred to a staggering two thousand. A new house went up every hour on the hour. Shops were popping up everywhere. Freedom Hill was a boom town.

I took a walk through the streets. I needed to talk to Moray about proper city planning. Before the town cemented its collection of game trails as main streets, we would need to plan this place out. We needed a sewer, paved roads, and plumbing. I knew who I had to contact.

“Reginald!” I said, coming into his office. “I know you’re a civil engineer. Can you help me with a few problems?”

Reginald sat up from his reclining position. “Yes?” he said.

“I want Freedom Hill to be a shining beacon of modern city planning,” I said. “Can you help me?”

“Of course,” said Reginald. “Anything to further this experiment of yours.”

And so we started planning.