by Garon Whited
“Oh. Sorry. My mistake. So, what’s up with the elven blood? You have lots of it on hand?”
“The normal technique of umbilical support requires supplementation for elves,” Diogenes reported. “Intra-arterial lines must be grafted into the clone and nutrient solution provided via cloned blood carrier. Since the clones reject these grafts as quickly as they reject umbilical support, constant monitoring and maintenance are required.”
“Well, elves don’t appear to have a normal mode of development. They lack bellybuttons and reproductive organs. They were created, not born.”
“As are these, Professor. Hence the difficulties in feeding them during the growth stages.”
“I guess so. All right, do you see any reason you can’t start providing adult elf bodies?”
“Production is limited, at present, to one adult specimen every nine days, assuming there are no anomalous clones. I have only three growth tanks large enough for adult clones, Professor. If they are all used for production, I will have to divert resources to build more if you wish me to continue research and experimentation.”
“If you only have three growth tanks, where do you get the blood? You mentioned having to use extra nutrients and suchlike to produce even one clone.”
“Harvesting blood from failed clones is not difficult. It is also possible to produce smaller specimens in the smaller tanks and keep them alive to produce blood on an ongoing basis. However, laboratory production of blood is proving more difficult than anticipated, thus requiring the use of individual specimens as production units.”
“I see. All right. Well… build what you need in order to establish a reliable supply of elf-bodies. I want to get magicians off my back and keep Bob impressed.”
“Think nothing of it, Professor.”
“Okay. When will you have your computer core setup set up?”
“It is in the basement, Professor.”
“I’ll look it over before I test the boxes. And do you think you could get me the equivalent of a smartphone or something? I’m thinking I can program in messages, open a small gate, have it transmit them, you can answer, and I can close the gate. Minimum power requirements, that sort of thing.”
“I will begin assembly immediately.”
“Thank you, Diogenes.”
The little holographic light reappeared and I followed it down to the basement. A pair of robots were finishing up some spot-welding, but the three-dimensional rack holding the computer core array was obviously not built just while we were talking. It was beautiful, really. All those crystals in precise alignment, glittering in a geometric figure, made me wonder about their placement.
“Diogenes?”
“Yes, Professor?”
“What’s the geometry, here?”
“The processors are arranged on the vertices and faces of a great disnub dirhombidodecahedron.”
“Who the what, now?”
“Skilling’s figure, Professor.”
“I’m an n-dimensional theorist, not an actual geometer.”
“It is a regular polyhedron classified as a uniform star polyhedron,” Diogenes clarified. While the clarification helped, it was on the order of pointing down which road to take when setting off on your cross-continent trip.
I know when I’m licked.
“Thank you, Diogenes,” I told him, and pretended thereafter I understood what Skilling’s figure was.
“My pleasure, Professor.”
“I take it their alignment is important for the processors?”
“It should minimize the interference from the separate processors.”
“Is this a quantum entanglement issue?”
“Yes, Professor.”
“So distance isn’t a factor.”
“Correct. The regularity of the placement of the secondary processors is of prime importance.”
“Fair enough. If you’ll be kind enough to set up the boxes I brought—they’re teleportation boxes for sending bodies back—I’ll start work on tying all these things together.”
“Professor, would it be wise to do so while I am operating? Perhaps I should put everything into a standby mode while you work.”
“Good thinking. Do you have anything needing attention? You said clones don’t like needles.”
“Yes, Professor, but I’ve inserted fresh ones into the clones still in growth stages. They should require no active intervention for at least four hours.”
“Okay. When’s dawn?”
“Six hours, nineteen minutes.”
“Good. Let me know when you’re ready.”
“My equipment usage is minimal at night. I have been putting active robots into standby mode since you arrived. To reactivate the system, please throw the switch the robot is about to throw. Thirty seconds, Professor… Entering standby…”
The robot by the power box flipped a breaker and ceased to move. The holographic light went out and I got busy.
Connecting one of the quantum computer cores to any other wasn’t difficult. It involved a spell almost identical to the vitality-linking spell I used to let the Diogenes drive talk to the original quantum computer core. I didn’t need a translation matrix to go with it, of course, since I was connecting two compatible crystals. This made the connection both simple and easy, effectively expanding Diogenes’ “brain” from one crystal to all the crystals.
But it was tedious. Extremely tedious. There were two hundred and sixty-four new crystals, each of which needed a direct tie-in with the primary Diogenes crystal. While each spell was relatively simple, there were a lot of them.
Imagine folding a paper airplane, then drawing an appropriate national logo on it—something simple, like that circular logo the Royal Air Force used in World War Two. Don’t forget a tail number for your paper airplane.
Very nice. Now, what did it all take? Two minutes? Five? It was easy, wasn’t it?
Only two hundred and sixty-three to go. Get busy. And make sure those tail numbers are all in sequence!
I got faster as we went along, of course. Lots of practice. I was profoundly glad I didn’t have to connect them all to each other, just to the primary crystal. If each one had to connect to all the others, that would be… let me see… thirty-two thousand individual connections? Thirty-three? Somewhere in that ballpark. No doubt they should all be interconnected, but it’s a project for when I don’t have anything planned that year.
Two hundred and sixty-odd didn’t seem so bad.
Still, I didn’t finish within the four hours Diogenes mentioned. I didn’t even finish in the six hours and change before dawn. I sat out the sunrise, used my Ring of Hygiene, and pressed on. I was afraid to reactivate the system with only a partially-completed great disnub dirhombo-homie geometric thingamabob lest they have a disruptive level of quantum interference. I didn’t know it would, merely suspected it might—and didn’t want to risk it.
I’m pretty sure the purpose of the arrangement was to make the interference into a pattern, which could therefore be filtered out. Diogenes could probably filter out even a partial arrangement, but I didn’t want to take chances with the thinking processes of an artificial intelligence controlling multiple armed robots. There are whole movie franchises about why it’s a bad idea to have a crazy computer.
A little before noon, I think, I finished double-checking the last of the linking spells. Nothing twanged oddly when I strummed the structure, nothing sounded off-key. All to the good, as far as I was concerned. Now for the next part. The spells were all in place and charged, ready to go, but they were standard spells. Not enchantments, not hybrids, just spells. When their energy ran out, they would consume themselves and disintegrate. In order to keep them operating indefinitely in this magic-poor environment, they needed a way to draw in energy. Adding a power input took more time, but it was a single spell addition, since it could juice the whole system, rather than an added piece to each of the component parts. Unfortunately, the power intake was barely able to sustain itself
as a spell. What little it had left over wouldn’t power a candle-sized light spell.
So much for my gate-charging jet. I took it out of the storage crystal, plugged it into the power intake, and cranked it up. It required a bit of a jump start from my personal energies, but it got there. Originally, I intended it to slowly charge gate crystals for later use, but Diogenes took priority.
I didn’t like the way it ran, though. It worked, but I suspected it was cycling down to a lower level of operation. Anything short of a total lack of magical energy would still allow it to run, but it would slow down to match the power intake.
Thermodynamic irony. The more deeply it violated thermodynamics, the better it worked. Sometimes I hate magic.
I drew giant circles on the two walls to either side of the intake and set them up as self-sustaining magical power fans, blowing higher concentrations of power into the room, toward the jet. These would also run at lower speeds due to the paucity of magical force in the world, but they would act as a sort of a pre-compressor even before the jet got hold of it. The jet seemed to run more easily, though. I should probably do that for the gate in the library, as well. If I got another fully-equipped jet spell constructed for it, it might need the same help.
Hmm. I wonder if my experiments with ruthenium could be helpful. In theory, ruthenium could be used as the core of an electromagnet. However, instead of a magnetic field, it produced a magical field—an electromagical transformer. If we can build one and keep it in the room, it should help even more. I might even be able to put a spell on it to direct all the magical output into Diogenes’ brain-structure spell system.
I flipped the breaker in the power box and waited.
I’ll say this for quantum computing: Booting up the system takes virtually no time at all. The holographic light blinked on again only a moment after I threw the switch.
“I see this took considerably more time than projected, Professor.”
“Internal clock?”
“Yes.”
“Anything ruined?”
“Two clones are irrecoverable, but they will be recycled.”
“Fair enough. How’s your new brain?”
“Much expanded. I am still not able to fully replicate my current operating matrix into the relevant processors, but I can use them as secondary processors—peripherals.”
“I was thinking about that. Do I need to cross-connect everything? Each crystal having a communications connection to all the others?”
“That would be optimal,” Diogenes agreed. “I calculate an increase in capacity on the order of six hundred times. But, extrapolating from the time to complete the primary core connection…”
“Yeah, it’ll take a while. Maybe I can figure out a way to automate the process. It’s the same spell, over and over again, after all.”
“No hurry, Professor. It will be over a year before I can make use of my current capacity.”
“So, you’ve definitely improved? You can run more robots in real-time?”
“Many more. My current estimate is on the close order of ten million individual units. This does not include dumb subsystems, such as automated factories, which do not require real-time control from the central processor cluster.”
“Naturally, naturally.” I shouldn’t be surprised at the numbers involved. Quantum computing. But still! I hope I haven’t built my own version of Skynet. Then again, the world has already been nuked, so what’s the worst that could happen?
“By the way, do you have any ruthenium resources?” I asked.
“I conjecture there are ruthenium components and alloys in many devices, but I do not have any of the raw metal on hand, Professor.”
“Can you get enough to build some small electromagnets?”
“Ruthenium does not make a good electromagnet, Professor.”
“I know, but I’d like you to experiment with small pieces of ruthenium, anyway. Use it for electromagnet cores, maybe as the conductors around the cores, all the variations. And with variable voltage and amperage—all the possible combinations. Strictly small-scale stuff.”
“Preliminary program set. Is this a continuation of your research at the farmhouse, Professor?”
“Yes. I’ve noticed such experiments produce magical energy.”
“I lack the ability to observe the phenomenon.”
“I know, but if you set up the experiments, I can evaluate them when I get back. And maybe I can enchant a camera to see magical forces, too—have one ready for me, along with the ruthenium setup.”
“Very good, Professor.”
“And set it all up in the library, please. If you run them in there, it should increase the magical environment and speed up the charging of the gate. When we get some working at high efficiency, we can put one down here to maintain the spells on your processors.”
“I will increase the priority of the project, Professor.”
“Good plan. Now, I’ll just go test those boxes and head back.”
“This way, Professor.” The light led me to a decanting room. Two cylinders—glass? Plastic? —held a clear fluid and a pair of full-grown elves. Bob.
My first thought was Bob would be beside himself if he could see this, but I’m a bad person.
Diogenes kindly decanted a clone for me. I put it into the larger box, realizing as I did so I wouldn’t be using the smaller one. Crap. Elves don’t produce baby-sized versions. I needed two large sets, one for T’yl and one for Bob… unless they could share it, maybe, taking turns…
I didn’t really want to burn so much of my charged crystals, but the boxes needed testing. I closed the large box and activated it. When I raised the lid, the box was empty. I closed and opened it again, but nothing happened. Of course. The box in Karvalen opened automatically. Well, that was to the good, at least.
Several minutes of fiddling with the one in front of me allowed me to use the micro-gate link between the two and trigger the other box to close. I cycled the lid on the local one and the system activated normally. The local box now held a wet, naked elf. He didn’t arrive inside out or anything, so that was a good sign. He was still breathing and what passed for hearts were still pumping, so I counted it as a success. I gave him back to Diogenes for a full examination—it wouldn’t do to hand over elf-bodies damaged in transit. But, judging by eye, it seemed to work perfectly.
With that sorted out, I complimented Diogenes on his work, encouraged him to continue, and explained the procedure for delivering clones. A robot wheeled the current elf away for detailed analysis. Another robot rolled up on small treads, brandishing a multiplicity of arms. From the look of the thing, it was designed and built “by hand,” rather than in a factory.
“One of your manufacture, Diogenes?”
“My analysis of electronics repair times indicated the need for a specialized unit.”
“Good thinking,” I agreed, as it handed me a thick rectangle. “What’s this?”
“Your smartphone, Professor.” I took the flat little unit and examined it. Tool marks, some scratches on the casing, and the smell of scorched metal seemed to indicate it had recently been a bunch of parts. I pressed the button and it lit up. Diogenes and I played with it for a bit. It worked and felt pretty durable.
“So, it will send text messages to you, but not much else?”
“In the event you open a gate, Professor, yes,” the phone said, in Diogenes’ voice. “You may make whatever notes you wish, upload them as a batch, and receive a batch download of progress reports in return. If you feel the need to converse, the unit will also accommodate you as long as a stable gate connection is maintained.”
“I like it. I’ll get the micro-sized ring gates set up for it soon.”
“Based on your experiments with gates at the farmhouse, I included an iridium ring in the design, proximal to the transmitter. It was originally twice as thick, but I cut it in two. The other half is readied as a communications gateway.”
“That… hmm. I think that
should help. If nothing else, it should serve as a good locus. We’ll have to experiment with it. At least I know what to enchant.”
“Always a pleasure to be of service, Professor.”
“Thanks, Diogenes.”
With that, I went back to the library.
The main gate wasn’t exactly well-charged. I installed the power crystals I’d brought. They still retained a little energy, but the detour to the desert library strained my power budget. What charge they had left, I spent on rebuilding and reinforcing the suspended magical compression jet I’d left on my last trip. I tore it down and put it back together, this time with all the added features to make it run indefinitely. It wound up being considerably smaller, but it will constantly pump energy into the storage crystals over time. If your car battery is flat, a trickle-charger won’t let you jump-start it. Leave it for several hours, though, and the charge builds up. This was the same principle.
I was very careful while opening the library gate. With the minimal magical power reserves, it was important to hit Karvalen on the first try. I suppose I could have gone through the coffin-gate, but it was sized for an elf. It would be a tight fit, at best, and Bronze would have to wait until I got a regular gate open, anyway.
The geode gate room looked pretty and familiar as we sprang through the archway. Judging by the geode décor, I decided it was probably the right place. We were quick about it, but mostly from reflex. Once the gate established itself, the linkage to the power crystals on both sides fed the connection.
I also didn’t double over in sudden death, so it was daytime. A quick check with the guard outside told me I’d been gone for only a couple of hours.
Well, crap. There were still hours to go before nightfall and my planned trip to Kamshasa.
Maybe I could kill some time explaining to T’yl and Bob how to take turns with the Coffin of Elf Creation. Who knows? Maybe they even will. Take turns, I mean. Since Norad and Morrelin were already in line for immortality treatment and I had another magical artifact to test, I decided to see if they wanted to do a whole run-through of the process that evening. Even I don’t want to try a soul transfer during the day.