“This chafes.”

“Why, is something wrong?” Calvin asked, looking over the map. He didn’t see anything that immediately jumped out at him as a horrible mistake, but then again, he didn’t have enough experience to start looking for them, either.

“No,” Gulad said, adjusting his collar and itching his groin. “I think I’m getting a rash. It’s this damn humidity.”

“You should raise your Endurance.”

Calvin had wanted to start experimenting immediately, but there was work to take care of, namely consulting with Gulad the Engineer about septic and water systems. His first instinct was to start doodling the tower and let everything else situate itself around it, but that wasn’t ideal for city building.

Calvin’s first instincts were rarely appropriate.

The green-sashed, snaggletoothed young man with the chicken coop obsession had something Calvin didn’t have. The Engineering Skill, and an extremely expedited course on civil engineering, which meant while Calvin could draw perfect examples of what he wanted, Gulad was able to tell him if they were shit or not.

It was also the young engineer’s idea to start with water systems and build everything else around it.

“The water system is the core of any city. You have to make that as robust and efficient as you possibly can, or you’re welcoming disaster. Build it with the number of people you have in mind, not the number we have now.” Gulad said, pointing at the thin tributary winding through Calvin’s valley.

“Five million.”

“You see, its –“ Gulad blinked, taking in that number. “five million?”

“In a hundred years or so, yes,” Calvin said, sliding the copy of his map back toward Gulad. “Design it with five million in mind.”

“I’m not sure I can –“

“Gulad.”

“Yessir?”

“Do you or do you not have an engineering Skill?”

“I do.”

“So you’re preternaturally good at designing water systems, correct?”

“In theory, yes.”

“Well, it’s time to flex it,” Calvin said. “Bring that back to me when you have a design and we’ll go over it. Do you need any knick-knacks?”

“Only a handful for surveying and finding the water table.”

Calvin motioned and a dozen knick-knacks separated from the group on standby and followed Gulad out of Calvin’s office.

‘Office’ was a bit of a stretch, but it did have the honor of being the only completely finished building. The town hall was a two story unpainted box that sat squarely in the center of the valley, albeit not on top of the water.

“Aaah,” Calvin half yawned, stretching his legs before standing and peering out the wooden slats, watching Gulad exit from the front, carrying a backpack full of surveying equipment.

All around him, humans and knick-knacks were working together to assemble the temporary wooden shelters, putting the wooden boxes together at a blistering pace. Another three days and everyone would have a place to sleep. Maybe not their own, individual place, but it would at least keep the weather out. Some of it, anyway.

The weather itself, was, for lack of a better word, moist.

Ugh. That word.

The heat and humidity was punishing, something Calvin would have to deal with before anyone would want to live here.

Seems like water is my enemy, Calvin thought idly.

Calvin was considering leading the charge in the abandoning of modesty. After all, the humidity was only a problem if you trapped it against your skin with clothing. Calvin hadn’t been wearing pants behind his desk all day, so he’d been largely immune.

The only problem was that going freebird was a solution that most people would not be immediately comfortable with, and it still didn’t change how clammy the air felt on….

Wait a second… Calvin’s thoughts sparked. Uleis. Uleis had a massive farm dedicated to stripping the tiniest hints of moisture out of the air to supplement the water supply.

Why not do that here? Calvin thought, returning to the maps of the city as planned. He traced his fingers around the mountains covering them on three sides.

Would it be more effective to make big ones in a crown around the city, Calvin thought, tapping the peaks of the mountains. Or small ones as part of the architecture? Calvin thought to himself, tapping the outlines of buildings in the center weighing the possibilities.

The moisture in the air was immeasurably higher than that of the desert. Calvin wiped a hand across his skin, thumbing the damp sensation on his fingertips.

It would stand to reason any system separating water from air would be many times more efficient on Calvin’s land.

If Calvin were to set up large towers around the edge of his land, that might put a dent in the humidity while supplying them with the equivalent of another river to work with. On the other hand, it might be more than they ever needed.

I like the aesthetic of incorporating it into our building design more, though, Calvin thought. The humidity was omnipresent, and having moisture sinks in the city rather than outside of it was more likely to make a perceivable difference.

Even though making the water strippers smaller would no doubt lead to a drastic reduction in efficiency, the humidity made efficiency an entirely different question.

Calvin pictured buildings with glass wall and pillars, with water being pumped through crystalline veins starkly visible through the clear outer halves of the walls.

That sounds practical and beautiful. Calvin thought. Now all he needed was the schematics.

Kurawe, Calvin thought, brushing his mind against the zealot’s.

Yes, ravager? Kurawe answered instantly, his mental voice strong and attentive.

I need details on how Uleisan water condensers function.

Of course.

On the other end, Kurawe began digging through the state-secret blueprints and theory behind them, relaying the information to Calvin.

Should I have someone deliver the materials? Kurawe asked.

Calvin had Uleis over a barrel in more ways than one. He didn’t just have his name stamped on the deed to a large portion of Uleis, He had their Cobalts.

A crucial ingredient for the finest glasses the desert city was known to produce. Glasses that bent instead of cracking, glasses as strong as steel, they all required Cobalt spines. Oddly enough, Cobalts had recently vacated the Cobalt Mountains. Uleis could still make glass, but without Calvin’s permission, they couldn’t make anything stronger than a brittle window pane.

Calvin was letting the Cobalts set their own prices for their spines, which had drastically reduced the output and raised the price, but in twenty years or so, after the population of Cobalts had exploded, supply would increase. Uleis had simply gone about increasing production the wrong way.

No, I have all the supplies I’ll need. Calvin thought back. Good work.

It’s my honor. Kurawe replied.

You gotta admit, Elliot said, It’s nice to be treated like a god. I think this is what I was missing when I was alive.

I doubt it. Calvin thought, rolling his eyes as he went to check on his other experiments. He had two he was currently interested in, one was up on the mountain, and the other was in the room next door.

Calvin opened the door and strode in like he owned the place, which he did. Goob and a couple knick-knacks were watching two Nadia’s do sprints, racing each other back and forth across the hall.

“Still can’t fly yet?” Calvin asked Goob. Both Nadia’s stopped and stared at him, panting desperately, sweat pouring down their temples.

“I didn’t tell you to stop.” Calvin said, accepting the chart from Goob while both Nadia’s got back to running.

“Actually the ‘Enhanced’ Nadia started off thirty-four percent slower than the control group.” Goob said, flipping to the third page for Calvin where a graph with a series of multicolored dots described their performance over time.

“Over time, the ‘Enhanced’ Nadia has managed to close the gap down to about three percent slower, on average.”

“So she’s using the space warping organs?” Calvin asked, glancing up at Nadia. He’d put the flight organs of a refraction spinner into her chest in the hopes that she could use it to fly. So far no such luck.

“From Nadia’s testimony it appears she’s only figured out how to turn them off so they aren’t causing interference, the remaining three percent is mostly likely the physiological difference, the extra weight.”

“Nadia!” Calvin got the dark-haired princess’s attention.

“Yeah?” She asked, coming to a halt.

“Turn them back on. You’re supposed to learn how to use them, not ignore them. I don’t care how much slower you are, you’re not stopping until you can float.”

“This is guar shit,” Nadia panted.

“Do you want to be Nadia the Succubus or not?”

Calvin knew for a fact that being a mythological devourer of innocence was right at the top of Nadia’s list of ideal jobs.

“I do,” She admitted grudgingly.

“Then you’ve got to learn to float.”

Calvin turned back to Goob, handing him the chart. “I’m going to head up to the mountain, have her do high jumps. Maybe that will trigger something. Vary it up.

With the Knick-knack’s help, they were able to measure precisely who was jumping higher, or running faster.

“Yessir.”

“Why aren’t you wearing pants?” Nadia asked.

Calvin glanced down, noting the complete lack of clothing. He’d gotten distracted by the sudden font of inspiration in regards to moisture control, and forgotten to put his pants back on before leaving his office.

“Getting a tan, obviously,” Calvin said, heading for the door.

“Obviously,” Nadia echoed, her voice laced with sarcasm.

“You know, that looks really comfortable, Can I – “

“No!” Nadia and Calvin shouted Goob down, causing the young teen to deflate.

This is where Nadia asks to let her take her clothes off to fluster the kid, Calvin thought, rolling his eyes as he closed the door behind him.

Wait a second. My overenthusiatic male apprentice left alone in a room with a manipulative, lusty demon wannabe. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Calvin ducked his head back into the room.

“Behave yourself,” Calvin said, pointing at Nadia before glancing over at Goob.

“What, him? gross.” Nadia shuddered.

“Human centipede.” Calvin said, motioning to his eyes, then to Nadia.

Calvin pointed at the knick-knack in the corner of the room.

“Engage chaperone subroutines.”

The little mechanical man saluted him with a clank.

***

“What did that mean?” Goob asked, frowning as Calvin left for a second time. The only one in the whole camp not suffering from swamp-ass because he gets to go without pants wherever he wants. So jealous. In my kingdom, pants will be a thing of the past.

Goob turned his attention back to Nadia. “Well, he told us to try different things. So what were those other exercises you said we could try earlier?” He asked, pen perched over the blank paper.

Nadia crossed her arms under her chest, glanced over at the Knick-knack and gave an angry huff.

“Damnit,” she muttered under her breath.

***

After a quick change of clothes, Calvin hurried out to check the progess of his other experiment.

Up on the side of the mountain, hundreds of knick-knacks were feeding identical amounts of stone to thousands of crystal lattices. Each of them lacked the protective coating of crystal that came natural to them.

Well, it had come natural. Calvin had already bred that out. It only took a couple castings of Calvinian summoning to find a mutant that was created without a crystal organ. He placed the resulting slug-monster in a new slot, labeled ‘Calvin’s Mass Converter’.

Now, Knick-knacks fed each of the CMC’s a variety of raw materials, each carefully weighed and studied to control for variables as accurately as possible. The knick-knacks then noted the flowrate and total output of undifferentiated mass for each of the creatures.

This was the fourth generation since last night, and they’d already increased the mass conversion to a solid twenty-five percent, rather than fifteen percent for an unmodified lattice. In a few weeks, who knew how much better the rate would be?

The knick-knacks guided him to the highest performing CMC, and calvin read the note in front of the slug, written in precise, mechanical script.

28% conversion. Highest flow rate, recommended as subjects are not permanent.

Well, looks like you’re going to be CMC version five, Calvin thought, about to re-slot the slug, when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

One of the slugs had really big pores, visible to the naked eye.

Each of the slugs was ‘tapped’ with tubes to allow the undifferentiated mass to come out of their organs unmixed, rather than mixing on their skin where it would become air faster than anyone could harvest it.

But what about those pores? Calvin thought to himself, frowning.

If he could ‘breed’ them to have fewer, bigger pores, he might even be able to change them into something reasonably similar to nipples. Then the organs could be milked instead of poked with tubes. Tubes were hard to come by and any idiot could figure out how to milk something.

This was the exact reason why Knick-knacks were useful, but couldn’t be counted on for creative thinking.

“Find me the top five producers with oversized pores.” Calvin said. A second later, the knick-knacks found him a handful of examples that fit the criteria he’d given them. Calvin chose the one that fit his idea the best, a twenty-three percent-er with oversized pores, vaguely clustered around where the organs were.

Calvin swapped it into the CMC slot, then recast the spell, making another several thousand CMC’s with that one as a base. They erupted from his hands and flopped around pitifully while the knick-knacks picked them up and got them organized.

“Find me the top five with pores clustered around the organs in question,” Calvin said, pointing to the three areas on the slugs body where the three components of undifferentiated matter was created. “The goal is to eliminate the need for puncturing the glands themselves. Understood?”

The knick-knack beside him snapped a smart salute and dove into the mountain of slimy slugs.

Without the knick-knacks to categorize them so efficiently, this wouldn’t be possible at all. Calvin thought as they used alphanumeric labels for each of the thousands of slugs.

I love unconstrained magical mad science, Elliot said.

Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Of course, as a byproduct of testing the efficiency of thousands of mass converters, Calvin was able to walked back down the mountain with three big-ass jugs of whatever the abyss he wanted.

In this case, Calvin wanted Nem, glass, Cobalt spines and icefish bone…and Jinsei.

The innovative and somewhat moody glassworker had been left without any kind of challenging project the last few months, leading to a gradual downward slide in the man’s mood, and this was exactly the sort of task that would get him out of whatever funk he happened to be in.

Or drive him crazy.

You know, whichever.