After they were done with the visit to the Ooze-weavers and the impromptu slime-fight, it was getting late in the day, and they decided to go to bed for the night and tackle negotiating with the Knick knack delegates in the morning.

Calvin laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, counting the seconds.

The gentle snoring around him was calming, but it did nothing to lull him to sleep. He was as wide awake as he had been this afternoon.

I said I didn’t want an Ability to stop sleeping. Didn’t I say that?? Calvin thought, scowling at the ceiling. He was lying in bed with two naked women in post-coital bliss and he couldn’t do the one thing he wanted to do. The perfect end to a good day.

Get some goddamned shut-eye.

I didn’t write the undead playbook. Elliot said.

Calvin heaved a quiet sigh and carefully extricated himself from the sheets, sliding out of bed like a worm and throwing his clothes on.

Might as well get some experimenting done, Calvin thought. Can you tell me when it’s sixth bell so I can sneak back in bed?

Computers have clocks, you know? Elliot said, matter-of-factly.

I didn’t see a clock. Calvin thought with a frown as he made his way to the elevator and brought himself up to the fourth floor, where he’d moved all the experimenting after repurposing the third floor for bringing the dead back to life.

If there had been a gigantic wooden cabinet with a mess of cogs in Elliot’s room, Calvin would have known.

…Nevermind. Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on the time.

The elevator opened to the fourth floor, which was crowded with extracts from creatures taken from the siphons. There were so many, he hadn’t even begun to figure out what all the combinations could do.

The flow of Warped extracts had diminished drastically ever since he’d destroyed Uleis, but he still got a few every now and then from the Temple of Awakening after he’d gone inside and opened the Filter so anyone could come and go.

The reason the Warp at the Uleisan filter had been so potent had been because of the human sacrifices.

A nice clean filter doesn’t really have anything to support life, so a creature from the Warp that wanders in tends to wander back out. The Uleisan one had attracted scavengers that fed on the dead bodies, predators to hunt those scavengers, and more. A whole ecosystem had sprung up in the filter based around the regular sacrifices. This ecosystem raised the Warp concentration to unsafe levels.

So for the Temple of Awakening, Calvin was considering throwing guar carcasses and other farm animals into the filter to kickstart the production of Warp.

As long as it doesn’t actually require human sacrifices.

I’m fairly sure the Harbingers would not be pleased with that course of action, but I hate ‘em so whatever. The only caviat here is that treating a filter like that might eventually break it. It might take a hundred, or even five hundred years, but it either it will wink out of existence or it will begin expanding, like the one in Uleis.

Calvin thought back to the one in Uleis.

Did I tell the System what to do?

I think you did.

“Give me back sleep.” Calvin said, glaring up at the ceiling.

No response.

Worth a shot.

Calvin let out a breath and was about to head over to the extract racks and grab some powders that struck his fancy, when he heard the clink of glass-on-glass.

It’s after two in the morning. Who the Abyss?

Whaddya wanna bet its some teens who snuck off to bone in secret?

Rather than entertain Elliot’s idea, Calvin simply snuck around the side of the rack he was facing and peered at the far wall.

One of his desks was being used.

There was a Gadveran woman stirring a flask, staring at the ingredients with interest.

As he approached, he was able to see her from the side, immediately recognizing her profile.

“Learner? What are you doing in here?”

“Studying biocrystalization.” She said in monotone, peering at the yellowish liquid in her hand. “What brings you here?”

She turned toward him, her face completely neutral, missing a large portion of that human exuberance he’d come to expect from her. It was like a blank mask.

“Can’t sleep,” Calvin admitted. “How about you? Do you not need sleep? I thought you were human now.”

“Oh, I am asleep.” Learner said. “My human brain is currently in its rest phase, and its processing power has therefore been diminished to five percent of its optimal capacity. If, during this time, you use an idiom or ‘body language’ to communicate ideas or make sexual advances, please be sure to state them clearly aloud.”

Calvin’s brows shot up.

“You’re asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.” A faint smile passed over Learner’s face. “She thinks this is a nice dream,” she said, her hand lifting towards him for a moment before withdrawing it. “I think that’s humorous.”

Well, I was bored just laying in bed, anyway.

“So, what are you studying specifically?” Calvin asked, taking a chair and scooting closer.

“There was a creature in the Siphon.” Learner said. “I don’t know its name, but when I ate it, it used biocrystalization to protect its DNA from the units in my stomach. I’m currently holding it in my stomach until I can find an effective way to dissolve the crystals without also destroying the DNA”

“Is stopping your stomach…bad?”

“Not stopping, exactly. My stomach is prehensile. It’s literally holding on to the piece of flesh in question while other food goes by.”

“Humans don’t have prehensile stomachs.” Calvin said.

Learner gave him a blank look.

“This one does.”

Calvin blinked, not entirely sure how to follow up on that. Even Elliot didn’t toss off one of his usual perverted observations.

Yeah, a stomach with a hand? Not my thing.

“And on that note,” Calvin said, sliding his chair away to another of his workstations, where he was in the process of creating a machine to circulate refraction spinner extract.

Another desk just a few feet over had some samples of the neutered fungus layer underneath the temple of awakening.

The portals strewn about the city outside the Temple of Awakening were solid evidence that it was possible to connect two spaces together, and Calvin was interested in making that happen.

Portals are basically the holy grail of all logistics workers, everywhere. I’m pretty sure even the Harbingers can’t do them very easily.

Calvin sat down at the workstation, and began making various minor fluctuations in space on top of his desk.

The two of them sat, working in companionable silence for well over four hours, the only sound in the room the occasional scratching of quills and the slight hum of reality being stretched. They kept at it until Elliot told him it was time to pretend to wake up with Kala and Ella.

***Later***

“I think that looks good,” Calvin said, studying the collar from every angle.

“I fail to see how pretending I’m someone’s property is helpful,” Y’kuingi said, itching at the leather collar around the ‘neck’. It was really just the ridge of shell behind her head, but no one really cared.

“It’s because there’s a real good chance some rando is going to see you walking through the city and immediately assume you’re a monster. Worst case scenario, they react violently.”

“And a collar helps with this…how?”

“Ooh, I know this one!” Learner said, bouncing in place with a kind of charismatic energy that had been totally missing just five hours ago.

She really was asleep.

“It’s because if someone sees a collar, that will lead them to believe that she’s tame, and not a threat, which should prevent immediate violence. Despite being a misunderstanding, it’s still better than violence.”

“That’s right,” Calvin said. “But just to be sure, try to stay with me, or Learner, or Kala.”

“What about Ella?” Y’kuingi asked.

Ella hadn’t picked up the Ooze-Weaver language as quickly as the princess whose job it was to be a diplomat, nor the information sponge.

It wasn’t just that, though. Calvin could see Ella escalating a conflict if someone tried something, and Y’kuingi couldn’t ask her to stop or inform her that the other guy hadn’t attacked her or…anything really. Imagining the Genosian getting drenched in blood defending Y’kuingi’s honor was an amusing thought, but it also wasn’t too far off the mark.

“She doesn’t know enough of the People’s language to act as a translator for you. It might do more harm than good to leave you two alone together.” Calvin said with a shrug.

“Okay.” Y’kuingi said, nodding.

They got their fair share of gawkers as they loaded the Ooze-Weaver onto the train, but it wasn’t until they got to Mujenan that afternoon that they really started to attract a lot of attention.

”What in the Abyss is that!?” a loud man on the street said, staring as they passed by. From the train station outside the city, they gradually picked up a swarm of onlookers with nothing better to do than to follow along beside the strange Guar-sized insect.

“No one’s even giving me a second look,” Ella said, glancing through the onlookers, who were mostly children. “I like it!”

“This is very stressful!” Y’kuingi said, carefully avoiding stepping on the small children that had made a game of running under her feet once they had realized she was smart enough avoid stepping on them.

Calvin imagined the sheer density of humans was startling to Y’kuingi.

“Alright, get out from under her feet, brats,” Calvin said, shooing them away with a glare. “’fore I make sandwiches out of the lot’a’ya.”

The current gaggle of children fled with wild shouts, but they were eventually replaced by another, and another.

Calvin was finally forced to form something of an honor-guard around the panicked Ooze-weaver as they made their way through Mujenan, toward the embassy.

The Knick-knack Embassy was a tiny shed between the merchant district and the noble district.

It was a grey-painted box about ten feet on a side, and just barely big enough for Y’kuingi to enter comfortably.

The embassy itself was…also a box. The walls seemed to be made of corrugated steel, and there was a bench on the side of the wall, a tiny plant in the corner of the room with some kind of light on it, and a strange paper picture on the wall with a fuzzy baby animal on it.

I kind of reminds me of a dentist’s office, Elliot said.

They all flinched simultaneously when a tube of steel rose out of the far wall, strange metal eyelids flicking open to reveal a glass lens eye.

“Welcome to the Laborer’s Embassy, meatsack. I don’t see you on our list of visitations for the day. If this is an actual visit to our embassy, and you’re not simply looking for a convenient place to expire, breed or defecate, would you like to make an appointment?” The voice that emanated from the walls was strangely human, if slightly lacking in nuance.

“Yes,” Calvin said. Life thus far had taught him to roll with the strange.

“And what is the purpose of your appointment?”

“I’d like to speak to someone about arranging a trade agreement with…the Laborers, to exchange fresh plastic for specific Lanthanides” Calvin said, pulling a thick chunk of plastic out of his satchel.

The eye in the center of the room focused on him for a moment, flicking down to the white substance in his hands.

“You name and role among the other meatsacks?”

“Calvin Gadsint, I’m a Marquis of Gadvera.”

“Acknowledged. Your appointment has been scheduled for our earliest convenience. We will contact you at two-forty-seven and fifteen seconds, local time. Please leave until you have been summoned.

Kala frowned. “Isn’t that –“

“Calvin Gadsint, the Laborers will see you now.”

Clunk!

The entire ten foot box began plummeting downward.