Unsure where his spawn has disappeared off to, Franklin decides to proceed without his minion. He makes his way towards the second batch of charcoal, the kiln which he has constructed the day prior, thinking it should be just about finished burning, and as he cracks open the mud mound from the side, digging into it with a strong stick, he finds that indeed, the embers have died. This has left behind a few unburnt branches, alongside a rather large collection of deeply charred wood, grayish in color with a slight gloss to the surface. He rakes out a handful, inspecting a few pieces up close. Desiccated, the material feels light in his hands, and sounds almost hollow as he bangs them together, the noise somewhat reminiscent of shards of glass.

Digging the rest of the charcoal out of the kiln, he creates a small pile beside it, tapping a finger to his chin as he inspects the final yield. “Hm, five to one, maybe?” he wonders aloud, “I think this one started with about five pounds of wood, and this looks to be approximately a pound of charcoal… Not too bad, I guess. What’s the typical conversion again? Fifty percent by volume, twenty-five percent by mass? For a primitive kiln… twenty percent isn’t too shabby...”

He pauses, as the words he has just uttered replay in his head, “Maybe”. “About”. “Looks to be”. “Approximately”. Hm… As an engineer who prides himself on precision, he finds the speculative nature of his prior assessment… troubling. The inherent problem, I guess, is that I don’t have anything with which to properly quantify mass. My photographic memory isn’t very helpful here. I mean, I can “augment” a ruler onto my visual reality to approximate the volume and use density to calculate the mass, but there’s a few issues with this method. And simply visualizing a balance… Well, that’s a nonstarter, considering it can’t move. Hm….

No immediate solutions coming to mind, however, Franklin decides to set his sights on a different task instead, namely, the construction of a new bloomery, the first one having been destroyed in the recovery of the unfired iron ore. And since this is now the second one he is constructing, he has learned a few things to improve upon his design. “Let’s see, I should probably increase the fibrous content in the mud, and add some clay as well. This’ll allow the cob to retain its shape better without falling apart. Also, I can probably use a shorter chimney. No need to follow the video exactly, since I’m working with so much less iron ore. Okay, let’s try that.”

He begins with a small, circular mound of mud, about a foot in diameter, into which a dozen or so branches are inserted vertically, creating a cylinder about three feet in height. Then he takes the cob- the mix of soil, clay, grass and leaves- and starts to lather it along the outside of the branches, creating a long, earthen tube that will serve as the bloomery’s chimney. Finding that the material is still prone to sloshing off at points, perhaps due to insufficient water content, he makes a mental note to tweak the composition even further in the future. Then, he uses a large heaping of mud to secure the base of the chimney to the cavern floor, creating a triangular mound enveloping the tube to hold it in place. The last step is to dig out a small opening at the base, to allow for the tuyere to be inserted, as well as pulling out the branches, which had been used as structural support, from within the chimney. Construction complete, he takes a step back, observing the bloomery for a moment with bated breath, his hands outstretched and cradling like one playing Jenga, for in his first attempt, as soon as he had moved away, the entire thing had fallen to pieces. That had been rather upsetting, he silently recalls, This one, however… appears significantly more stable. Maybe due to the lower center of mass? I mean, I don’t want to jinx it, but it hasn’t collapsed yet… Feeling secure enough to let out a sigh of relief, he grins, saying, “Nice. Now I just have to wait for it to dry fully and then I can try out the bellows idea. Hm, let’s see, what should I do in the meantime…”

Given that Cy is still nowhere to be seen, Franklin decides to preoccupy himself by returning to the aforementioned issue of mass, namely, how to quantify it. Thus far, he has gotten by with guesstimations based on volume and density. As with the limestone initially, he can determine the volume of an object by measuring its dimensions with his mental “ruler”, and in multiplying this volume by the density of said object, he can obtain its mass.

“There are two problems with this approach, however,” he says aloud, running through the issues,

“First, most things are not cubes or spheres, but have irregular shapes. Take the materialized ores, for example. They’re just lumps. There’s not really a good way to measure their dimensions or calculate their volumes.

And second, even if I have an accurate volume, it’s not entirely clear that the density of these materials are homogenous. Take charcoal especially… there’s likely all sorts of density values throughout the material. So at best, this method is still just an estimate.

Hm… Well, for the ores, at least, if I could Materialize them as a regular shape, that might help on the volume issue. For liquids, I was able to select a container to Materialize into. Is it the same for solids? Actually, now that I think about it, that’d kind of be like casting, right?

Or wait, maybe a water displacement test is the way to go. If I use a floating tray, taking into account buoyancy, I can measure the displaced water volume to get the mass. And to get pure water, I can just Decompose limestone and Materialize water like I did before and…

Hm… Wait. Materialize. Decompose-”

Suddenly, Franklin’s eyes open wide, and he slaps himself on the forehead, facepalming as he groans, “Talk about missing the forest for the trees… Why am I still considering using density and volume and buoyancy, when Decompose alone will suffice…?”

He goes to retrieve a pellet of iron ore, and holding it in his hand, he commands, “[Decompose].” Immediately, a message appears, reading:

Decompose 1.22 grams of Hematite. This action will consume 2 AP.

Option 1) This will yield

0.43 grams of Iron

0.19 grams of Oxygen

Option 2) This will yield

4.44 O-Points

Please select an option to proceed.

“And now, I know that this is 1.22 grams in terms of mass, and all I have to do is cancel the request, thereby preventing any AP cost. A free scale… Duh! Not sure why I didn’t think of it earlier... Now let’s see if I can quantify the charcoal mass this way as well.”

He goes to pick up a piece of charcoal, holding it in his hand as he uses Decompose. Again, a message appears, this time reading:

Decompose 53.25 grams of Charcoal. This action will consume 54 AP.

Option 1) This will yield

21.50 grams of Carbon

1.03 grams of Hydrogen

4.09 grams of Oxygen

Option 2) This will yield

42906.64 O-Points

Please select an option to proceed.

“Nice! Now if I want to determine the yield of the pyrolysis process, all I have to do is Decompose charcoal and-”

For the second time in so very many minutes, Franklin feels his eyes suddenly opening wide, and he repeats his previous statement again, just to hear the words, “Wait… All I have to do is Decompose charcoal… Decompose charcoal. Wait... I can Decompose charcoal???”

Having been preoccupied with the question of mass, he had failed initially to realize the magnitude of his actions. Now coming to terms with it, he quickly tries the command again on the charcoal in his hand, and once more, the same prompt appears, indicating that he is not imagining it:

Decompose 53.25 grams of Charcoal. This action will consume 54 AP.

Option 1) This will yield

21.50 grams of Carbon

1.03 grams of Hydrogen

4.09 grams of Oxygen

Option 2) This will yield

42906.64 O-Points

Please select an option to proceed.

“Wait… I thought you couldn’t Decompose organic materials…” he mumbles to himself, “Wasn’t it Error 124 or something when I tried to Decompose a Swamp Slime? Hold on...”

He goes to pick up a nearby branch he has brought back from Paradosa Swamp, attempting the command on the stick. This time, however, he does receives the error message he had been expecting to appear for the charcoal, the message automatically translating in his mind as:

Error 124 (Target cannot be living). Please try again.

“So,” he concludes, scratching his head, “you can’t Decompose a ‘branch’ because it's considered living, but charcoal is okay…”

He quickly runs some numbers in his head, calculating the material yield of charcoal compared to limestone, the values working out as such:

Charcoal = C7H4O

Charcoal molar ratio = C : H : O = 80.76 : 3.87 : 15.37

1g charcoal => 0.8076g C, 0.0387g H, 0.1537g O

Carbon O-Point = 1989

Hydrogen O-Point = 135

Oxygen O-Point = 1

Total O-Point per gram = 0.8076(1989) + 0.0387(135) + 0.1537(1) = 1611.7

Total O-Point in reservoir = 1611.7 x 50% = 805.85 Limestone = CaCO3

Limestone molar ratio = Ca : C : O = 40.04 : 12.00 : 47.96

1g limestone => 0.4004g Ca, 0.12g C, 0.4796g O

Calcium (Ca) O-Point = 14

Carbon (C) O-Point = 1989

Oxygen (O) O-Point = 1

Total O-Point per gram = 0.4004(14) + 0.12(1989) + 0.4796(1) = 244.77

Total O-Point in reservoir = 244.77 x 50% = 122.39

Reviewing the numbers, Franklin finds a wide grin stretching across his face, the results almost unbelievable. “So, it’s basically a 6.58-fold savings in AP usage. In other words, an eighty-five percent discount on the Decompose command. Incredible. Well, I don’t know if it’s an oversight or intentional, to classify a branch as living but charcoal as not, but I think it’s fair to say… You done fucked up, System.”

And as he suspected before, he’s going to need more charcoal. A lot more charcoal.