The previous night, just after the kobolds entered their new living space.

Despite being able to see the surrounding countryside via the cameras, the balloon wasn’t the most stable of viewing platforms. As such I was mostly using the cameras to take snapshots of key frames to get a reasonably good view. One thing that was very obvious was that the tall mountain to my northeast was even taller than I had thought it was, as the summit was at least another few kilometers above the current height of the observation balloon. Frankly it would probably compare favorably to Mount Everest back on Earth, I have no idea what they call it on this world, but it was certainly impressive nonetheless.

According to the temperature sensors I had mounted on the top and bottom of the balloon, the balloon had yet to cross the tropopause, which currently doesn’t tell me too much unfortunately, until the balloon hits the tropopause or until I run out of tether, I figure I will continue to unreel the tether, checking things over every 50 meters. I figured if I could determine how far below the tropopause the summit of my mountain is, I can get a better idea of the total height of my mountain is above mean sea level. That in turn should allow me to calibrate several sensors I have built, including the temperature sensors I am using to search for the tropopause, to a more accurate baseline.

Well, it was time to get back to work, the kobolds and Felipe’s group of delvers were settling in, in their respective living quarters, although Felipe’s group was primarily just exploring. The kobolds were all over the place looking things over, it took a few minutes of accelerated time watching them but I finally was able to see that it was an organized search instead of a more random shotgun of searching. I may have been able to finish off all the structures and some of the basic electrical and electronic components before the deadline I had set. However, I still needed to build the computer system that will control their doors, a genealogical database for the incubation chamber, not to mention the 30,000 RFID implants that should serve the kobold population for the next several years at least.

So I started off by building the production line for the RFID implants, my intent was to five the kobolds one implant per hand, that way if they were to lose a hand for some reason, they would not have to be re-registered into the system. I designed the implants to fit in a volume of two cubic millimeters, and unlike most of my designs, I decided to coat these implants in a thin layer of collagen and hydroxylapatite, or bone, finally putting some of the knowledge I had gained from my killing of the wolf and bird to use. I figured that if I coated the implants in bone, there would a significantly smaller chance that the kobolds immune systems would attack the implants, it wouldn’t do if the implants were to give them an infection. At 9:45 PM I started closing the exterior doors of the kobold living space, the final sentry didn’t take long to get the hint and scurried inside before the doors closed, one less worry for now.

I made a small production line to build the implants, which would receive power from the current induced by the magnets in the door sensors, and transmit a weak digital signal back. It took until almost midnight for me to finish setting up the production line and the few simple computers needed to control both the production line and the kobold living space. At some point in the future I was going to have to replace these specialized real-time computers that did nothing except what they were designed to do, with some more generalized computers that could accept updates over the wire and have their functionality expanded upon. For now it would be good enough, I placed one of those systems into a tablet style of device and placed it upon a pedestal which I would raise up near the central fountain in the kobold living area in the morning, along with the RFID injection system which I built into the surface of the pedestal.

Hopefully the wizard will be able to help me get the instructions across to them, otherwise I am going to have to be managing the external doors myself and that would be annoying to say the least. As I had started getting into the weeds of building out the RFID production line in the subfloor under the kobold living space, I had paused the unreeling of the balloon tether so that I could concentrate on the production line. The balloon was currently at 6750 meters above my summit, and still hadn’t crossed the tropopause, although I suspected it would happen soon. It was just over 1650 meters from the clearing in front of the entrance to the kobold living area to the summit of my mountain, and it appeared to be another 750 meters or so from that clearing down to where the ground levels off. Meaning my balloon is currently 9150 meters above the local datum level, of course I don’t know how far above mean sea level that datum is, but hopefully I will get some indication when the balloon crosses the tropopause.

For now, I decided to focus my efforts on building out a language learning area, for both the kobolds and myself, with an appropriate space for Alesandro and the others who will be staying behind. Carving out the space didn’t take long, I placed the space just off the cross street which went along the side of the dining hall. I took some small precautions when building the space to prevent Alesandro and the others from looking into the kobold living area. I also built a transparent aluminum separator above the meeting desk which divided the two parts of the room, on each side of the room, I placed an appropriate toilet facility with a sink, and an air hand dryer behind a door for some privacy. All told the small divided class room only took me until 1:35 AM to complete, there was one last problem however, and that was how to get the teacher to and from the classroom.

I had options of course, the problem was one of convenience and time, it was almost three and a half kilometers from the edge of the kobold living area where I had placed the classroom, and the more luxuriant quarters I had built for Alesandro and his companions. He could certainly walk the distance, but that would be about an hour or so each way, and thus a waste of all our times, I could build a moving walkway for that distance, but it would only save about half that time. I could build a golf cart type vehicle for them, that option would reduce the travel time down to just under five minutes each way, which would be a good improvement, but frankly I think the best option overall would be a dedicated maglev train line.

For one, it would be the fastest, allowing me to reduce travel times to about a minute each way, also it would allow me to control the perception of distance somewhat, confusing them slightly and not allowing them to determine exactly how far it was to the kobold living area. Although, I assume that they had a reasonable idea of how far it was to the clearing the kobolds had been using for their village prior to them moving in, but it would also allow for the most control, as it would be an enclosed cabin traveling down the magnetic rails. Having decided the direction for my construction, I laid out the tunnel from the two rooms, absorbing the material within and leveraging some of that to reinforce the sides of the tunnel.

Emplacing the rails, and building the cabin didn’t take all that long as I managed to finish that before 3:45 AM, the problem was calibrating the travel speed of the cabin to be quick, without causing nausea or injury to the passengers. I took a thought from a Japanese animation I had watched at my brother’s insistence, in the anime Initial D, the main character used a cup partly filled with water to learn how to drive smoothly whilst doing all sorts of maneuvers. Of course that was animated fiction, but, the idea of managing the slosh of water in a cup was one I could use to help calibrate the acceleration of the cabin. I leveraged a three quarters full cup of water which I placed in the center of the cabin, and forty trips of the train back and forth along the track to determine the best rates of acceleration, so that the water would not spill.

Somehow I suspected that this effort would go by unnoticed for quite a while, but it soothed my sense of esthetics to make the ride as comfortable as possible. I touched up a few other things in the cabin, adding lighting and sliding doors, and as all of but one of the scouts in Felipe’s group were all asleep, I managed to sneak in creating the door to the train loading bay in the kitchen, alongside a display I had placed along the eastern wall of the kitchen. Just after 6:05 AM, Felipe’s group started stirring from their bedrolls which they had brought into the living quarters, sharing the largess of the newly constructed living space.

As they bestirred themselves, they started their morning ablutions, heading to the toilet and shower facilities located by the entrance to the sitting room. Most of them started pulling out cold rations from their packs as they packed up their bedrolls. All told it looked like Felipe was able to corral those who would be leaving with him in short order after they finished their cold rations. They headed out by 7:23 AM, it would be a fair bit less boisterous without the entire group here, but then again, they needed to deliver their report about me, and frankly I needed to learn their language. The fact I had to do it the hard way was annoying but, at least I managed to finagle a teacher out of my previous agreement. Despite the effort I had put in building a comfortable place for the kobolds to live, I truly did not want to focus all my future efforts on them. The four who were staying behind, had not eaten with the others, and soon were watching the one who had stayed in the old bunk room, I think his name was Timoteo, cook up a hot breakfast for them.

The four who were staying had had a leisurely hot meal, and three of them were watching Timoteo wash the pot in the sink, as 8:45AM rolled around. I waited until Timoteo finished rinsing the pot before getting their attention with a chime. Once I had their attention, I put a message on the display next to the door, which I then opened. I waited for Alesandro to finish his translation of the text I had put on the display, and for the four of them to make up their minds to get in to the train cabin. I had already managed to entice the kobolds who were going to be learning the language with me over to the new language classroom, and they and I were waiting with anticipation as the foursome got into the train and traveled to the classroom.

It was kind of interesting watching everyone’s reactions as they stepped out of the train, the kobolds as they watched a door slide open from a seamless wall, and the four that stepped out of the train taking in the precautionary measures I had set in place protected them from the kobolds, and of course also protecting the kobolds from them. As the group sat in the chair I had provided, I changed the display in front of Alesandro to indicate that I had a message I wanted him to translate to the kobolds, before we got into the language lesson proper. It took some coordination but Alesandro was able to put to pen a translation of the instructions for the kobolds to use the RFID injection panel, and also the door control panel. The look on Alesandro’s face as he translated the instructions was most inquisitive. When he had finished passing over the instructions, one of the kobolds headed out to the chief’s residence at a run, and although the people in the classroom couldn’t see it, I thought the way they dodged other kobolds in the street most impressive.

After that short delay, Alesandro got started with the lesson, and it was as arduous and tedious as I thought it would be. A few minutes after the kobold had left with the instructions for the chief, they returned as per the chiefs order and rejoined the lesson. To my surprise the kobolds made better progress than I expected during the lesson, they weren’t yet caught up to me, but frankly I was a couple of sessions ahead, and I was cheating somewhat by recording each of our language sessions. I was also somewhat distracted during the start of our language learning session, as I was watching the chief as she made her way to the pedestal which would insert the RFID tags into the kobolds.

The chief had clearly noticed the new addition to the eastern side of the fountain, and as instructed retrieved the tablet computer which controlled the permissions to the RFID tags. After puzzling over the tablet for a moment, she followed the rest of the instructions and placed her hands in the lit white circles on the surface of the pedestal following which she felt a pinch and the white circles surrounding her hands turned green. After shaking her hands in reaction to the tag insertions, she looked at the tablet computer again, now seeing it turn on, and prompting her for input. She looked over the parchment she had received from the scout who had returned to the language classroom and as directed wrote the words for name, door, eggs, food storage, room, yes and no onto the tablet when prompted.

When she had finished writing the words on the surface of the tablet, she was surprised to see the display change and now show a list of columns with the word name in the first column, door in the second, eggs in the third, food storage in the fourth and a final column with the word room in it. Below that header she was able to see a prompt for a name followed by the words yes in each column. She wrote her name in the space that had a blinking line for her name, and she gave a toothy grin as the line stopped blinking and now showed her name.

It was obvious I hadn’t screwed up too much as she was able to navigate interface with little difficulty and after a short moment admiring her work she called the other elders to place their hands on the white circles too, writing their names down as they finished getting their tags inserted by the pedestal. After the elders were tagged she tried to pass off the tablet to one of them to continue the work, but I had stymied her in that the tablet would only turn on when in her hands. Later when I got around to updating the tablet to be more capable, I would give them the option to let others control aspects of user permissions for the tablet, for now, it was locked in to the chief.