Mobius

by Garon Whited

  On the other hand, the closet where they kept the house battery said the solar panels were working. We could park a car in the garage to block the door into the house and Bronze could nap in the car. Her statue could stand outside the garage to one side. If she wanted to switch, she had only to roll forward a bit to touch it, but could veer the other way if she had somewhere to go as a car…

  I’d have somewhere to hide from the sunrise and sunset. The hand-cranked water pump worked, so I filled the reservoir in the attic and had running—albeit low-pressure—water. And the solar panels ran my electromagical transformer to charge my power crystals more quickly. The house also had a portable generator connected to the breaker box, as well as several bottles of propane to run it. It also had a built-in gasoline tank, which confused me. Can the thing run on both? I don’t know enough about small generators to know if it’s normal.

  All in all, I think this may be a good base of operations. I’ll need to spread out some solar conversion panels around the neighborhood to supplement the transformer, but I can start charging my crystals in earnest. I might even establish a gate in the bedroom as an emergency escape. No, in the garage. Bronze won’t make it to the bedroom without going through walls. Then again, they’re interior walls… I’ll do a feasibility study on the garage and then decide.

  It’s a good start. We’ll stay here until we have a good reason to move.

  Elbe, Day Four

  I still wonder what the actual date is, but it’s not too important, I guess. It’s not cold—not to me—so I guess it’s spring. Fall would have more colors, summer would be warmer, and winter would have snow. At least, I think so. I never lived in the Pacific Northwest. I don’t know what the weather around here is supposed to do even in my own world, much less some funky alternate.

  Did they wear kilts in this Seattle? Next time I’m near a men’s clothing store, I’ll look.

  Since I seem to be relatively stable here, I’ve used most of the output from the transformer to establish solar conversion spells. Every roof in the town is four percent darker than it should be. Why the roofs? Because some of the light and heat will be re-radiated from the roofs, back up through the conversion panels, and absorbed. It’s not a huge bump in efficiency, but every little bit helps.

  If I build one of those mirrored solar-power farms, they can track the sun. A dozen conversion layers will intercept the incoming rays, then intercept the reflected, outgoing rays, almost doubling the effective number of layers. Of course, this will take up space, capital investment, and time. It’ll also make them useless for an actual solar furnace powerplant, which will make people ask questions…

  Having invested so much magical capital, things are now paying off. I have a crystal charging up nicely. Bronze insists she doesn’t need to draw any power yet, but I found a vehicle for her, in good shape. It’s a big Ford Super Duty pickup truck, somewhat beaten up from heavy use. Someone parked it in their barn, so it was shielded from the elements. The battery was still dead, but Bronze fixed that by moving into it. The engine idles a bit faster with her in there, presumably providing the necessary energy to sustain her, but I think it’s her normal, in-vehicle metabolism. I don’t know much about energy-state horse-golem biology.

  But her charging up the battery gave me an idea. Actually, it was an old idea I remembered.

  The alternator under the hood had a lot of copper wire in it. Copper is the major component of orichalcum. Could I change the alternator to be wound with magical superconductor rather than pure copper? It wouldn’t have a ruthenium “magnet,” so the output should still be mostly electrical but with at least some magical energy.

  It could be done. By scavenging around town, finding other metals to alloy it with wasn’t really a problem. Pulling all the windings, mixing it properly, drawing wire, and re-winding it—now there’s a problem!

  As an alternative, what about a spell to gradually leach other metals into the copper? Don’t melt it and mix it, but have it diffuse, slowly, like smoke through a forest. I’ve done something like it when alloying my saber, although never with anything as complex as an alternator. We tried it and it seems to work. The result is an increase in the magical energy produced by the alternator and a slight decrease in the electrical production. Bronze is all for continuing the process, so I duct-taped some bits of metal under the hood to have them in proximity for the metal diffusion spell.

  Several hours later, when I checked on the progress, the metal was gone, absorbed into the body of the vehicle.

  “Did you…?” I began.

  Of course she did.

  “How long have you been able to do that?”

  How else did I think she maintained her orichalcum alloy in her horse body? And did I have any manganese, titanium, or zinc? A little chromium would go down well, too.

  “Uh… no. But I’ll keep an eye out. Do I actually need to cast these spells, or do you, I don’t know, just do it?”

  I didn’t need to cast the spells. Quasi-golem metabolism and digestion. Go figure. The spells made it faster, that’s all.

  Well, at least I know that much, now.

  I put an alarm spell on the house for when we roll down to the gas station and fill her up. I decided to do so whenever she’s below a quarter tank. There’s still no power for the pumps, but I found a hand-cranked pump compatible with the hose—well, with a little duct tape it’s compatible—so we can get fuel out of the ground. She keeps burning through gas at an appalling rate, but she’s also self-repairing the body she’s in. She seems quite pleased with the four-wheel-drive. The drivetrain, at least, is now in perfect condition. Every so often, she goes rumbling around town, experimenting with her cornering, braking, acceleration, and everything else. It’s quite a different body for her than the Impala.

  I kind of miss the Impala. It was a good car. I hope it found a good home. Finds a good home? Will find. In the future from here will eventually have found. Dammit. Time travel makes me tense.

  On the enchantment front, I’ve been working on my amulet when I’m not otherwise occupied. I have a couple of spells in it, now, as emergency day-shift I-don’t-want-to-die spells. They trigger when the conditions are met, so if I drop dead—or mostly dead—they’ll try to keep me alive. One is a general healing spell, on the theory those are never a bad thing, and the other is a moderately-complicated pacemaker spell. If it doesn’t detect a heartbeat during the day, it’ll try to make it beat manually.

  I’ll add others, one at a time, gradually, and build up an array of spells for it.

  I really don’t want to use them. Ever.

  Elbe, Day Nine

  The house is much better fortified and my magical batteries are all charged up. The back wall of the garage has a complicated magical diagram on it, suitable for jumping through in the event of a catastrophic emergency. I’ve used a smaller version of it to peek into other worlds and find a bug-out bunker. My escape gate is currently set for the brand-new, scratched-in target gate in a deep cave. The rust on the mine-cart tracks tells me it’s abandoned. I’ve relocated some supplies there on the basis I may need to recuperate. If I bug out at night and land in daytime, I won’t want to move around much. Food and water will help, as will a pillow, some blankets, and a variety of other basic comforts. Most of the hand-warmer packets—the chemical things you keep in your pockets—are there now. I figure I might need to keep warm in the sleeping bag.

  I’m giving serious consideration to finding a permanent bug-out bunker. A home base. A place to retreat. A lair, if you will, for use when the mobs with pitchforks come a-calling. I haven’t figured out exactly what I want, but I’m thinking about it. If I’m right about being locked into a time-loop and doomed to die defending Sasha against the mob, it won’t help. But if there’s any wiggle room, it would be wise to be prepared to take advantage of it.

  I also have several new spells on my amulet. I also have a backup spell on one of my rings. It’s a spell, not an enchantment, and activates
the healing spell in the ring if I shift from night to day in less than three seconds. The amulet should take care of everything, but having a backup healing spell just in case seems like a good idea.

  With these things sorted out, my current project is finding the three rare-earth metals I need.

  What little osmium I have is in the spiritual manifestation generator, connected directly to my altar ego’s self-storage sigil. I still haven’t heard anything from him and I’m starting to worry. I don’t know if this sigil thing counts as volatile or non-volatile memory. If he’s expended all his energy, is he erased? If the power dies, is he still in there, in stasis? I have no way to tell. We’ll see if he has anything to say in the next week.

  While I still have the iridium and ruthenium I bought, I’m thinking I may need more. The ruthenium is for electromagical transformers. Some is good, more is better. I’ve been re-engineering some portable electrical generators to use ruthenium cores. It’s finicky work. What I’d like to do is set them up to generate some electrical power as well as magical energy. There’s a butter zone of maximum efficiency for such a hybrid system, but Diogenes was the only one who knew the equation for it! As a result, I’m sticking to the pure ruthenium core version. Electric motors and power supplies I can get elsewhere—or crank the magic-generator by hand, if I have to.

  I don’t have much iridium, but I also don’t need much for my latest idea. All I need is a ring, suitable for wearing. Since I know what shape I want it to be, I put a spell on the ingot and told it to be the shape I envisioned. Iridium doesn’t like being reshaped—it’s hard and not too malleable in the pure state—so it’s taking a while. I don’t mind it being a gradual process. Eventually, it’s going to be a high-efficiency spy-gate for peeking into other worlds.

  With everything charged up, I’ve searched the other structures in town for jewelry. A spell containment crystal only contains information. It doesn’t need to be large. For brute power, on the other hand, size matters. There are any number of tiny stones available in jewelry boxes around the village, but only a few large crystals. I’m installing the smaller gems in the wall to power my escape-gate, since they’re impractical for most other purposes. The larger crystals are also getting mounted on the wall, mostly because I don’t believe in underpowering my evacuation. I’d rather have a ready gate here, with its own power supply. I might come running up to it after using my own crystal batteries. I might leap through it and find I need power on the other side. Although, thinking ahead, I did put two of the crystals I found here in my abandoned mine, along with spells to help them charge.

  I’m learning.

  While roaming around town and poking my nose into abandoned houses, I found only a few bodies. When I say bodies, I mean gnawed-on skeletons. I’m starting to think these people died from some sort of plague. If it spread enough to send most people to hospitals or emergency camps, those who refused to leave—there are always some who won’t go—would mostly die at home. All it takes is for looters to kick open the door and animals will get in.

  The only problem with my hypothesis is the strange nature of the houses. There are generally two types of house. First, there’s the boarded-up, walled-in, barricaded-door type. These are relatively rare and, without exception, have been broken into. In the second, more common type, the door is open, or at least unlocked, with no obvious signs of forced entry. If people relocated to quarantine camps, why didn’t they lock up when they left? And if they did, who was left behind to force their way into the locked and barricaded houses? The military?

  I still haven’t found anything like the last newspaper before the breakdown, but Elbe isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, either.

  I’m planning a trip into the next real town—Eatonville—to see if the plague-victim pattern holds, and to see if they have a library. I’d like to see what they have in their periodicals section. Maybe they have a newspaper vending machine that’s survived the weather, too. And, to be frank, find more food. Even with a sensory-damping spell, after a week the chili and beans are starting to go down hard.

  Elbe, Day Ten

  I’ve got a Nothing To See Here spell on the house in the hope any wandering looters will pay it no attention. It’s not a particularly powerful effect, but my base of operations is one house among many. With a little luck, any individual scavenger will simply pick another. Even with a group of scavengers, individuals should think someone else already looted it. We even moved Bronze’s statue down the hill and across the road from the gas station, leaving it where it could be mistaken for actual statuary. This made it easier for the house to be inconspicuous.

  It hasn’t been looted in over a year, but now that I’m living there, I expect a dozen roaming bands of scavengers to hit Elbe and make it theirs. I don’t necessarily object as long as I get left alone. I’ll settle for it being lightly scavenged as long as it remains mostly intact. I’ve got a lot of not-very-perceptible things going on in there. Most of my spells are invisible to untrained eyes! And, frankly, if someone steals a few boxes of chili-with-beans, I won’t be too upset.

  Eatonville is only about ten or fifteen miles from Elbe. It’s actually a town—an abandoned town—with real streets and everything. First thing in the morning, Bronze drove the truck and I went along for the ride. I wore my armor on the theory that anyone we met might be of the shoot first, ask later sort. Firebrand and my saber rode in the passenger seat. Whoever owned the truck before didn’t spring for the optional seats for sword-wearers. There wasn’t even a rifle rack!

  We stopped at the Shell station for a top-up. I had to use our hand-cranked pump. Eatonville was also without power. I made a note to find some sort of barrels. If we were going to stay in Elbe, we should transfer fuel to the holding tank there.

  The Shell station was out of food, but the broken windows and doors meant someone probably took it. Stands were knocked over and litter was everywhere. One toothbrush, still in the package, lay on the counter.

  When was the last time I used a toothbrush? Sometime in Apocalyptica, probably. I regenerate, so dental hygiene is mainly to avoid bad breath, which is a serious consideration considering some of the things I eat. Then again, my teeth are sharp, so toothbrushes don’t last long.

  As we drove around town, I was impressed at the capabilities of scavengers. There were quite a few skeletons in the streets, most of them partial. How many people died on the sidewalks? Why? The ranger’s skull had a gunshot wound, but until now, all the rest died of some uncertain cause. By contrast, every one of these had visible damage, mostly to the head. I’m not a ballistics expert, but when you line up fifty skulls and compare them, it’s not too hard to spot the difference between shotgun—buckshot or slugs—and the rifle and pistol rounds.

  Yes, I lined up fifty skulls for comparison. Fifty-two, to be exact. I’m allowed to be curious. The dead people didn’t raise any objections.

  During the course of my examination, something about the way they were distributed seemed strange. I drew out my mirror and took a bird’s-eye view of the scene.

  They were all on Iron Street, a dead-end lane leading to some light woods. From the way the skeletons were strewn about, I guessed they came down the street, around someone’s privacy fence, and into view of the house at the end. The first fell as they came into view, with more falling as they approached the house.

  The house itself was a ruin. The front door was lying on the floor inside, all four front windows were broken out, and the chain-link fence torn down from around what was probably once a carport.

  I picked my way through the wreckage. Skulls with head wounds grinned at me. The interior walls also suffered somewhat. Sheet rock and paneling were crunched and splintered, as though something large forced its way through doorways and down the hall. A grumpy Torvil, armored up and carrying a shield, might have done similar damage.

  The bones in the house were somewhat better-protected from the elements, but they were still picked clean and gnawed on, sam
e as all the others.

  The rest of the house held nothing of great value to me. Traditional valuables, yes—a jewelry box, probably some money, all the usual things—but nothing useful. Behind the broken-down door to the bedroom, amid the scattered bones, I did find a shotgun, two rifles, and a pair of handguns, but there was not a single round of ammunition. The door, on the other hand, was practically a screen door from all the bullet holes in it. I suspect someone opened fire from the house windows, retreated into the bedroom, fired through the door at their attackers, and finally ran out of ammunition.

  No doubt their bones are still in the room. I didn’t sort them out.

  Some of my curiosity was satisfied—or, rather, some of my questions—as we toured the town. Most of the houses conformed to the existing pattern, either left open or barricaded in. Some of the barricaded houses, though, were broken into by force, as with a bulldozer or some other brute-force appliance, while others were broken out of, as though the people inside were desperately trying to escape. Fire, perhaps? No signs of it in the two houses where the people broke out.

  Strange.

  Still, Eatonville had a library. Nobody bothered to break into it, and it was locked. No problems there. I’ve broken into libraries with better defenses. I didn’t even cut anything. At night, I’d move pins with my tendrils. Today, with the sun up, I tried it with my more limited psychic powers. I discovered I have to see the things I’m trying to move, so manipulating the pins wasn’t feasible. I spent a few minutes constructing a lockpicking spell to do the same thing.

  Bronze reversed so her tailgate blocked the door. If something horrible happened, this would allow me to come screaming out, leap into the bed of the truck, and be immediately in motion. In anticipation of something horrible, I belted on Firebrand and my saber.