Thursday, January 26, 2012

Celebrating Technological Advancement

An hour or so spent getting cleaned up invigorated me quite a bit. Plus the food, no matter how stale or overly ripe it was, was delicious. I looked forward to having some fresh food too, purchasing it using some of the more common materials I had should be simple enough. I didn't have any plans to reveal what I had gone through or what I had discovered the previous day, there would be plenty of time for that later when my designs were done and I had the finished product. I took some extra time to construct a new storage device, one that had a few enhancements from the new ores I had and one that would work solely as storage. It was shaped into a comfortable backpack and once done the heat cell I had was put inside of it. This technology also required I upgrade my refiner as well, it would now have to work as a control for my other technologies and so it was likewise enhanced and made lighter, especially considering it no longer had to hold the weight of everything I carried. The backpack was heavy, not quite the full design I would like, but it was much more comfortable to carry than to try to carry everything in the satchel I had or in my hands, and this would only be a temporary thing as I continued my research, the power potential of the ores I had would make it so I could greatly reduce the weight left over after the items were stored. As I walked to the village my thoughts took me in an interesting direction, the technology I was developing was very familiar to me, the designs came quickly and most of it worked as anticipated. There were still parts of it that worked in ways that I didn't understand, but for the most part it seemed like I knew what I was doing. It was strange to have the ability to do these things without the history of the knowledge behind it, it made me wonder once again if I had really extracted all of my memories or just suppressed them in to a type of long term storage in my head. Would I have problems in the future if I continued using this knowledge that I suppressed? Would I risk dying a painful death due to brain overload? I had no idea, but I felt I couldn't stop now, there were things I needed to do here, I felt compelled to continue my work.

The noise of the village was definitely louder than it used to be, the closer I got the louder it was and soon I couldn't pursue my own thoughts due to the distraction of such a cacophony. As I came within view of it all I saw that the village now had a tremendous wall around it with a large arched gate leading inside. The doors to the gate were open and there were no sentries, so it didn't feel like a protective measure against anything except for maybe the wildlife of the night. The walls were decorated with different colored stones, someone had taken a lot of time in designing it. I marveled that such a large wall could exist in such a small time frame. Walking through the gate I saw many villagers moving about doing their work. Most of them carried things from one location to another and it didn't seem any of them were actually building anything, yet it was clear they had been very busy. The buildings were being changed, each one becoming much more extravagant and yet I could see that they were using materials in the same fashion that I had, making bigger, stronger structures using less materials. Moving further into the village some elders noticed me and quickly came towards me, they seemed very excited to see me and their wrinkled faces were almost comical as they smiled widely as me. They led me in to one of the new buildings, it took a moment for me to realize it was the inn I had once stayed in. They explained to me all that was going on and surprised me when they said how they had made a device similar to mine, though not quite as powerful or mobile. This explained how everything was changing so quickly and why people had to move materials from one location to another. The device couldn't store anything, it could only take what was there and transform it on the spot into something else. It did its refining and construction in one step, though it took quite a bit more time than mine did, but still, they were proud of it. They explained to me that they weren't the only village with one, it had taken multiple villages to work out how to make something like this and how to power it, so each village that participated in the invention got one of their own. The other villages, who hadn't been able to contribute, instead were gathering raw resources in order to purchase their own. It was evident that the lives of this race would very quickly change and from what I could tell it was for the better at the moment.

After sitting a while and talking, as well as enjoying the food that was offered, we finally left the inn to go see the device in action. It was an unsightly contraption, they had mounted it on a cart in order to move it where it needed to be. It was the source of most of the noise, which was a very unpleasant thing. They showed me the controls and explained how it all worked. The device didn't have a display, so you had to make sure you entered all your settings correctly the first time, so there were about three individuals at the controls at any given time, one entering the information while the others double checked their work. I took some time looking over the design, watching it work and doing a few scans on different pieces. I didn't want to redesign it for them, but I quickly realized that with a few particular common materials that they could easily gather themselves they could make this thing work at the volume of a whisper. I explained to them what I saw and how I would go about fixing this using some simple tools they had lying around. They listened to all I said and then quickly sent some workers to gather the necessary materials and get to work to fix the design. Within an hour it was much easier to think and to communicate with the elders and engineers. They sent a few messengers to the other villages to explain what they needed to change in the design, which I was sure would be a relief to all of the villages that had one of these things. After the machine was quieted I studied it some more, it was amazing how well they could develop technology when all they had were a few stolen formulas from my walls and some demonstrations of the device I had. It dawned on me that these people would quickly catch up to me on a technology level, though they still had a lot of work to do to get there, and without the refinement of the tools I had their pieces would still look crude compared to mine, though they would be effective enough. They invited me to stay the evening with them, celebrating the changes that had happened in the village and enjoying a magnificent feast, which I simply could not turn down. The celebration went late into the evening until slowly but surely we all turned in. The bed was comfortable and it didn't take long for me to fall in to a deep sleep.

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