Engineered Magic

2 AL: Irene

They found the badgers where they left them. Irene saw it as another sign that the rats were imported. If the rat population was really that high, these carcasses should have been stripped to the bone by now. Each member of the party carried one badger back to the square. No one tried to stop them at the gate. In fact Irene didn’t see a guard on this ‘back door’ entrance.

They carried the animals to a meat shop, where Jake fell into negotiations on the price. The butcher appeared to want to pay less than the three coins that he promised. Jake threatened to take his business elsewhere before the butcher finally paid them. The butcher used the pay surface that was integrated into his shop counter to give them the coins.

They headed back to the inn for lunch. Irene went up to her room to clean up before the meal. She left the notebook and pens in her room. She retrieved her water bottle out of her pocket, glad it didn’t fall out. She carefully folded her shirt with the ripped sleeve and carried it down with her, so she could try to get it repaired after the meal. She left her water bottle and broom stick in her room. She felt odd without the stick. She carried it with her everywhere for nearly two weeks.

Irene chose a table against the far wall, as far from the stairs as she could get. She sat facing the stairs so she could see everyone that came down. Jake and Sophia arrived a few minutes later. Irene waved them over.

“Can you direct me to the tailor you found after lunch?” Irene asked Sophia.

“Sure thing,” Sophia said. “You might want to just buy new,” Sophia suggested. “Jake and I did very well this morning and we haven’t even sold the scrap yet.”

When the server arrived with their lunch, Jake queried her about the value of coins. She told them a silver was worth thirty six iron coins, while a green was worth thirty six silver coins. Jake shared an excited look with Sophia before the two of them turned to their food.

After lunch Sophia led her up a set of stairs that opened up between two shops in the courtyard. They went up two floors to a hallway that looked identical to the one they had hunted that morning. The only difference was that this one was occupied by people. Many of the doors stood open. Passers-by called greetings to the people who occupied the rooms. Irene noticed that the doors were only on one side of the hall, the side facing the square. Four doors along they stopped at an open doorway. There was a drawing of a needle and thread on the wall next to the door.

“Hello,” Sophia called, knocking on the open door.

“Come in,” a man said in greeting. “I am Dean, what can I do for you?”

“Dean,” Sophia replied. “This is my friend Irene. I talked to you yesterday about if you could repair her Speedwell clothing.”

“Yes, I remember,” Dean said. “Did you bring it?” Irene handed over the shirt to the man.

“If it is alright with you,” she said to Irene, “I’ll leave you here. I told Jake I would meet him at the leatherworker’s.”

“Sure,” Irene told Sophia. “Thanks for your help.” Sophia hurried off, leaving Irene alone with Dean. Well not alone, Irene realized there was a woman with a child just about walking age on the balcony beyond a glass wall. The woman appeared to be working with a small device in her hand. Sitting quietly in a corner was another man with a length of green cloth at a small table. The room was very sparsely furnished. The chairs looked like frames that were salvaged from the debris. The steel frames were strung with a heavy cord to form the seats and backs. The small occupied table and a larger one that was pushed against a wall were both a combination of wood and metal. There was a doorway leading to another room, through which Irene caught glimpses of a woman rocking a baby while sitting on a pallet on the floor. The woman rose to her feet. She tucked the sleeping child into a body sling and moved out of Irene’s line of sight.

“Yes,” Dean said to her, “we can repair this. For one coin we can just sew the cut shut. That will tighten the sleeve around your arm,” he explained. “For two coins we can patch it, putting new cloth behind the rip so that we can keep the same diameter on the sleeve. It won’t be an invisible repair. You will be able to see the patching material.”

“Hmm…” Irene said as she considered. She fingered her own sleeve to determine how much a tighter fit would bother her. “How close can you match the color?” She asked.

“Not at all,” Dean admitted. “The only color I have available is green,” he said with a gesture to the green cloth the other man was working with. Irene thought green would be ok, at least it wasn’t the blue her mother was wearing.

“I’ll take the patch,” Irene said. “How do I pay you?”

“You can use our altar to pull out two physical coins,” Dean offered. “Or I would accept some of those pins instead of coins if you are interested.” Irene saw the other man lift his eyes from his work at the word pins. She saw avarice in the man’s gaze. Dean’s face was carefully blank.

“Pins?” Irene questioned. Her confusion was conveyed in her tone. Dean pointed to the T pins on the outer pocket of her work pants.

“Ten pins will cover it,” he said. Motion at the connecting door caught her attention. The woman with a baby in a sling moved to stand by the door. Irene was struck by the look of hope on the woman’s face.

“Ten?” Irene said challengingly as if that was a huge amount. A trace of fear ran across the woman’s features and Irene knew that number was high.

“I’ll tell you what,” Irene offered, “I will give you the pins if you tell me why you want them.” Irene directed these words to the woman.

“Agreed,” the woman said. She stepped into the room. “I am Rebecca but everyone calls me Becky,” she said introducing herself. “The pins are part of the required starting equipment for using the sewing machine.” She pointed to an odd shaped contraption that was obviously not in use. “They are very expensive to buy from the vendor and they wear out over time. If you prepay half, we can use the machine to do your repair. You can stay and watch if you want,” she offered. Irene decided that sounded interesting. She agreed, reaching down to pull the requested pins from the cloth of her pants.

Dean accepted the pins from her with care. He carried the pins and her damaged shirt over to the other man. The two of them began sizing the piece of fabric that would be used to back the repair.

“Where did you get the pins?” Becky asked her tentatively.

“A room off the halls north of the back entrance,” Irene explained. “They were mixed in with items I thought of as office supplies.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Becky replied. “You can sometimes find shears in places like that.”

“Shears?” Irene asked. Becky gestured to the heavy scissors the men were now using to cut the fabric. “Is there anything else you need that can be found in the debris?”

“There are a bunch of small items,” Becky replied. “Spindles, spools, pins, shears, I have heard you can find something as large as a hand loom. Most of the scavengers concentrate on scrap, since it has no mass. You can carry large amounts without it slowing you down.”

“Where did you get the furniture then?” Irene asked.

“Some of that was already in the rooms when we rented them. In the early days large groups would go out searching for usable stuff. Large items like chairs, tables and beds are very rare. We discovered that the furniture replaced itself after six days. So if you found a usable chair, you could go back later and essentially get it again. That is how we got the chairs,” Becky explained. “After woodworkers learned how to make furniture, interest in the runs faded.”

“Do they get their wood from the greens?” Irene asked. She could see how the animals could be replaced but she was having problems figuring out how the trees could be.

“Some but mostly they use scrap,” Becky explained.

“I thought scrap was metal,” Irene commented.

“There are different types. Metal, glass, wood, fiber,” Becky listed. “I have heard there is fabric scrap, although I have never seen it.”

“So you use the fiber scrap to make your cloth?” Irene asked.

“For some yes,” Becky replied. “There are also plants and wool bearing animals in the green. There is some physical debris that can be used too. It looks like furniture stuffing.”

“Oh, I’ve seen that,” Irene said. The men pulled the sewing machine out away from the wall. They loaded it with a spool of thread. The thread was wound on a white cylinder made of some kind of porcelain material. Irene thought this must be an example of a spool that could be found in the debris. “What does a hand loom look like?” Irene asked.

Becky described something that looked like a cross between an unstrung harp and an industrial printer. Irene doubted that was what a hand loom looked like on Earth. Becky excused herself for a second and went out on the balcony. She returned a moment later with the device the woman there was working with. It was about a foot long. A spool was fitted onto a long shaft at one end. It was almost completely filled with an off white thread. Becky demonstrated how fiber was fed into one end and the spindle was spun to produce more thread.

Dean used the pins to hold the patch in place before feeding it into the machine. The seam came out perfectly sewn. Dean reset the pins in order to add a seam on the other side. Becky returned the spindle to the woman on the balcony, as Irene watched Joe work.

“Something not a lot of people know,” Becky said quietly to Irene, “a lot of the debris can be turned into scrap at an altar. You get less material per item that way but you can carry more. If you try with an item like the spindle or pins, it puts the item into your inventory with some wear on it. It is one way to verify if something you found is an item or not.”

“What about the furniture?” Irene asked.

“An item has to be small enough to fit on the altar in order to convert or place in inventory. Most of the furniture is too large. If you break it apart it all turns into debris,” Becky explained.

“Finished,” Dean announced as he rose to his feet. He offered the repaired garment for Irene to inspect. It looked very well done to her. There was only a small line of green visible. The raw ends of the fabric were turned under and stitched to stop the fabric from unraveling. The patch was smooth on the inside as well, so it would not rub on her arm and cause irritation. It was so smooth it almost felt slick.

“This is impressive,” Irene commented. She handed the shirt back in order to free her hands. She reached down to pull the pins from her pocket. She didn’t stop at the five but removed them all. She tried to hand them to Becky. Becky shook her head in denial.

“You only owe us five,” She said to Irene.

“You didn’t have to tell me about the altars,” Irene said. “You can make better use of them than I can.” She offered the pins again.

“Wait a second, I have something else for you,” Becky said, after she accepted the pins. She disappeared into the second room for just a moment before returning with a square of folded green cloth. Joe folded the shirt into an extremely neat package in the few moments Becky was out of the room. Becky put the cloth on top of Irene’s repaired shirt and handed them to her. “It is a gathering bag,” Becky explained. “Food stored in it takes longer to spoil and you can get an amazing amount of fiber in it.”

Irene thanked her and headed back to the inn. She put her items in her room before heading down to the shops. As she wandered through the shops she found the pricing to be rather high, especially comparing it to the cost of housing. She found a gathering bag identical to the one Becky gave her for twenty coins. That made her wonder how much the pins were actually worth. Beyond just being high, the prices seemed very inconsistent. She couldn’t figure out what was driving them.

Irene was looking at a leather water flask when Phillip found her. It was on the affordable end at ten coins and she was thinking about buying it. The seams on it were sewed with a heavy threat that was almost cord. Irene wondered if it was made of the same fiber scrap Becky used. She was also wondering if the flask really held water. The leather felt strangely slick under her fingertips. She wondered if that was the waterproofing.

“If it isn’t my favorite sister!” Phillip announced as he entered the leatherworker’s shop. He engulfed Irene in a bear hug. Irene hugged her brother back, happy to see him.

“How are you settling in?” he asked after his warm greeting.

“Just fine,” Irene responded. “I am impressed with the variety of goods available here.”

“We have worked hard to build our crafters up,” Phillip said with some pride. He glanced down at the water flask Irene set back down on the counter. “That’s just a beginner’s item.” Phillip commented, “Don’t give him more than a coin for it.” Irene caught the leather worker’s wince. She thought the comment was in direct conflict with the idea of building crafters up.

Before Phillip arrived, the leather worker was hovering over Irene. He kept a close eye on her and his items. Now he was backed up to the shelving behind the counter that held his merchandise. He moved a little away from them. Irene couldn’t decide if he was trying to hide himself or something on the shelves.

“Did you go hunting?” Phillip asked.

“We went scavenging in the halls,” Irene told him. “We skipped all the rooms on the way here and we were curious about them.” Phillip frowned.

“The halls can be dangerous,” Phillip commented, his concern evident. “There can be a surprising number of beasts in a single room.”

“Yes,” Irene replied. “We discovered that. The three badgers were a bit tough but we came up with a plan that worked better after that.”

“Sounds like I don’t need to worry about you. Three is about the worse you will see as long as you don’t go deeper,” Phillip said with a laugh.

“We saw a lot more rats,” Irene commented. “We tried to limit how many got through the door at a time. Do you know any method to make a door close faster?”

“The blacksmith has some wedges that can be used to keep a door open,” Phillip offered. Irene spent a few more moments talking to Phillip about what products were available.

“Can you show me the vendor?” Irene asked. “I keep hearing, ‘You can get that from the vendor.’ but I have no idea where this vendor is.”

Phillip led her out of the storefront and down to an open area of the courtyard. The area was studded with short posts of stone. On a short freestanding wall in the center of the area was an altar. When they got closer, Irene realized it wasn’t the same as the altar in her room, or what they found in the halls. Phillip gave her a quick demo on how to use it, before he headed back to the leather shop.

Irene flicked through the items. There was food, crafting tools and a handful of items that Irene saw as almost random. The pen she found was there along with what looked like octagonal sheets of paper. There didn’t seem to be any bound notebooks which seemed odd to her. There was a small knife and a two pronged fork, which Irene thought might be eating utensils. Although the end of the fork’s handle was also sharpened, which hinted at a different use. The pins were listed at a surprising coin each. That explained why Becky gave her the gathering bag.

Irene was just about to leave when she realized the vendor included a buy back feature. It looked like it would buy back anything on its sell list, although Irene couldn’t determine how much it would pay, since she didn’t have any of those items in her inventory. It would also pay for scrap and she did have some of that. She was carrying iron, bronze and wood scrap. The vendor was offering her five coins for each iron, seven coins for each wood and a surprising fifteen coins for the single bronze scrap she possessed. It added up to nearly a hundred coins.

The vendor allowed her to see how many coins were in her inventory. Using the coin conversions their server told them at lunch and deducting the amount she could remember having the night before, Irene calculated she earned about two hundred coins on their scavenging run from killing rats and badgers. Again this seemed like a lot of money when room and board was only five coins a day. At the same time it didn’t seem like very much at all if she wanted to dress herself in leathers and carry a steel tipped spear. There were a bunch of fangs, claws, hides and meat also in her inventory but she wasn’t certain how much of that was before that morning so she ignored it.