And thus started my life in the Town of Porra-Kel in a world called Calorin with my new "family." The first few years were not enjoyable. Not only did I not know the language and had to learn it, but I also had to make do with the tiny body of a baby. Fortunately, I was treated better than a baby.

One of the biggest things that I had to get used to was living conditions. Everything was dirty, there were no toilets, and the food was not of any quality. There were other problems too. The one I tried to avoid the most was the parasites. Everyone had lice. In fact, at one point I shaved my head once when I could hold sharp objects without worrying about cutting myself. Ever since then I have made it a point to not come in contact with anyone and refused to sleep on anything else they had. Not sleeping with my "family" also kept the fleas away pretty well.

Another thing I had problems with was the lack of bathing. Everyone stinks. There was no toilet paper either and this made me realize why left-handedness was looked down upon in some parts of Earth. They used the left hand in the place of toilet paper…

Now, I would like to say that not everything about living in this small mining town was bad, but it was. There are no redeeming qualities about living here. Aside from the things I mentioned earlier, it is boring here. Very, very boring. While the men work in the mine all day, the women either take care of the many children or the many household chores. While the younger kids got to spend much of the time playing the older ones, about six Calorin years and up helped with many of the chores.

This boredom problem was huge to me. There was no way I could do chores like that all day every day. I could handle helping with some, and I did, I did not want it to become all I did. Call me lazy, but people deserve some leisure time and aside, from the occasional Vellis Bard and drinking for the men, there was none. I don't know how often I wished for a book or even a school textbook.

When a few years had passed, and I didn't know how much longer I could take this lifestyle, an opportunity came. While it was nothing I was proud of, I was happy to get away from that small dirty house and the ever-growing number of children in it. The opportunity was helping the mine superintendent keep track of records and payrolls.

To be honest, I wasn't exactly sure what had made them come to me, but I welcomed it. Not only did I get to learn the local writing system, the Flaern Alphabet, but I was also getting paid and with this pay I could save up and hopefully get away from this village. Where I would go from here, I didn't care.

In the meantime, now that I had some money, I improved my quality of life. There were just so many little things from Earth that I could make to make my life here so much easier. I just needed to keep anything I did a secret so people wouldn't try to steal whatever I had made.

With this in mind, the first thing I wanted to do was probably too big of an undertaking. By this time winter was only a little while away and winter on the mountain was never pleasant. While our house never got freezing because of our small stove, the family goat and chickens got to spend the winter in the house too. I imagine I don't have to say why I hated that.

So I decided that I might build me a place to live. The only problem with this was that I had nowhere near enough money to buy a house or pay to have someone build it. I also didn't have enough money for a stove. So, I tried to make my own.

I had never built a home before. I had never built much of anything bigger than models or toys. Still, I thought there was no way it could be that hard.

It turned out to be too much for me. Not only did I not have access to all the materials I needed, but winter also ended up coming so I had to stop. All I built was the frame to a tiny house since I was still so small. I also couldn't lift very heavy weights even though I had become suspicious that the gravity was lower on Calorin.

This was last year. This year I had started up again as soon as the snow had melted. During the winter I had been slowly collecting flat pieces of wood that I could use for my walls and roof. I had also gotten the idea to build an electric heater. This was more of a challenge to myself than something I expected to be realistically doable as I had only read a little about how generators worked. As for the heater, I remembered seeing some old ones that produced heat from wires. I was certain electrical resistance achieved this so if I could get electricity I just needed to find the right wire to heat.

Going into this, I knew the hardest part would be making a generator. As far as I could remember all you needed was some magnets and copper wire. If there was more to it than that, I would be in trouble. Still, I was looking forward to the challenge. It would also break the tedium.

By the time spring came, I was ready to get started. Unfortunately, finding some good magnets was the hardest part. There weren't any in town and the only thing that came up and down the road during winter were wagons filled with ore and even then it was only when it wasn't snowing so no merchants were available.

When winter finally broke, I patiently waited for the first merchant of the year to arrive. When he came, I made my request. I had never talked to any merchants before so few knew of the Terran child in town so I surprised him. I don't know if this helped my chances at him finding me magnets, but I hoped his curiosity about me and what I would ever want a magnet for would motivate him.

While I waited for the merchant, I built more onto my house. Since I was planning on building a generator, I knew that I would need to turn it. Nuclear wasn't an option and since building a steam engine was stupid because I just wanted heat and I would get that from the fires making the steam for the engine. So that left me with wind and water. There was a river just behind my house so I went with water.

Using water added one problem. I would need to build a water wheel. This meant more time, more wood, and a need to move my little house next to the river. The last one wasn't too big of a problem since I had gotten little done. The problem of time wasn't too bad because it didn't take me all day to do my job and the boss didn't care if I left early in the day if I had finished all my work. The only problem was wood. Most of the houses in Porra-Kel were made of stone and plaster, so there wasn't very much other than the wood discarded from the mine. Unfortunately, most of this wood was broken or the wrong shape or size.

Spring came and went. I had moved next to the river and had a sturdy frame built and had gotten a working water wheel built. I had also gotten some copper wire, iron wire, and a ceramic box that I hoped would keep the heating wires away from anything flammable.

Then the magnets came. Most of the money I had saved up left. Now I could get this generator built. I just hoped that all I needed to generate electricity was magnets and copper wire.

It was another day. Yet again I had a strong desire to just stay in my hammock and not go to work, but having Momma Eliz or Poppa Garen scold me like they often did to the other kids was not something I wanted. So I climbed down from my hammock near the ceiling, well away from any other sleepers mind you, and got dressed.

Momma Eliz was already up and making those bland wheat flatbread cakes that we ate every morning. She was also making up some eggs we got from those accursed chickens. Since we only got about three eggs a day on average and five other kids besides me, I rarely got any.

Fortunately for me, everyone left me alone, and I quickly ate my meal before leaving. They had long ago gotten used to me not caring to speak to them so while the others roughhoused, shouted at, and played with each other they ignored me. I wouldn't change it.

Since most of the miners, including Papa Garen, had already left for the mines and most people were still eating breakfast and getting ready for the day, the streets outside were empty. That was why I was walked to work earlier than I needed to be.

As usual, the walkthrough town was quiet and uneventful. When I approach the cleft in the cliff that led up to the mine area, I began to notice more activity. Men were preparing the wagons and loading some for the ore shipments down the mountain. Others were carrying tools and such into the mine while others were bringing newly dug out dirt and ore for processing.

As usual, I just walked right past all that and headed straight for the foreman's house. This house was where I worked, if only in a small room near the front. The house the second biggest in the village and probably the only clean place in the entire village. This wasn't because the mine foreman was a clean person, it was because he rarely came here after he hired me.

When I first started working here, the place had been a mess. None of the parchment papers were organized well and old pieces of fruit and bottles of alcohol were everywhere. I had never been one to demand cleanliness other than proper hygiene, even after coming to Calorin, but this place was so bad I spent half of my first day cleaning up what I could.

Now I enforced the cleanliness with an iron fist. I didn't allow the miners to even come inside if they were dirty and had clarified that anyone dirty would talk to me through the window. Fortunately, not that many in the first place and even fewer came as time went on. This was especially true when I added a drop box for the shift leaders to slip in their status reports.

As for what I do with my job. It is very simple. I recorded the output of the mine for the day, recorded any accidents, kept track of wages, and rang the bell that told the miners to stop for lunch or whatever reason. I was pretty much what some might call a secretary.

To be honest, I didn't have much to do. It only took me an hour to finish my job. For the rest of the day, I was supposed to monitor the mine and make sure everything was going as it was supposed to. I didn't have to do anything since the shift leaders were borderline slave drivers.

So for the rest of the day I did whatever. I couldn't leave the office for the first part of the day, but I did as soon as I could. On days I didn't have any materials to build my house with, which was most days, I cleaned the house owned by the Lord who owned the mine.

Even this didn't take long with the foreman rarely here. With the rest of my time, I often ended up bored out of my mind. So one day when I was dying from boredom I saw the faces of the miners, who also looked bored. I wondered if there was anything fun in this village. There wasn't. So what could I do for fun? I guess I would have to make my fun.

For the rest of that day I had thought about what I could do. I didn't want to do anything with someone. No one in the village beside me had much free time anyway, so even if I wanted to ask someone that wasn't like six years old they couldn't and even when they did things for fun they were things I didn't find fun.

Another problem was that I didn't have the things needed for most of the fun things I thought of or didn't have the money for them. While I technically had money, there was no way I would use it on anything that didn't go towards my house or go towards my Escape from Porra-Kel plan.

A few weeks had passed. That fateful day I had left home late so there were more people outside than when I usually went. Normally this meant nothing but on that day I saw something. Something that would forever curse the names of the two boys I saw.

These two boys were hiding behind a bush near a house and were watching the front door intently. Looking at the door I saw that they had propped a wooden bucket on top of the door that was slightly ajar. I immediately knew what they were up to. They had placed the bucket up there, probably filled with water, and were waiting for someone to open the door and have the waterfall on them.

I didn't stop walking; I didn't want to be caught up in their prank, but it gave me an idea of how to amuse myself. From that day on I was constantly thinking of things I could do or any items that I could use. That day was also the day that the people of Porra-Kel would live in fear. It was also the day I started enjoying life again, even if only a little.

This was last fall, almost a year ago. This last year was the most bearable year I had had, but I was running out of ideas to do with what little there was to mess within this small village. The villagers had also gotten very watchful, so it was getting hard to pull off anything anymore. I think the only reason I could think of why I wasn't suspected was because of how withdrawn and emotionless I seemed. The villagers even called it my defect.

Perhaps it was my defect. From what little I had learned about Terrans, or what the villagers called people who came from Earth, was that all Terrans had a defect. Most of the time they were physical deformities, but that didn't mean there could be mental defects.

As far as I could tell, this might have been true. While I by no means had defective emotions, I did still feel all the normal emotions, I could never express them. Not that I cared to. I would rather not have people know how I was feeling.

So, because the villagers saw me as an emotionless being, they never even looked in my direction when they searched for the culprit. I took advantage of this by being in plain sight of many of my pranks. I wanted to see if anyone would ever make the connection of how I was present at so many of them. Since I stood out so much there was no way they didn't realize I was there, even if they didn't show it. Someday they would have to figure it out, even if I had to do it.

Fortunately for the villagers, my reign of terror had temporarily ended a few days ago. This was because a certain merchant had come back with magnets. They were as expensive as I had thought they would be. They were good strong ones though, so I was more than happy to part with my money.

Because I had been thinking about all of this and the fact that I was anxious to get back to work on my home project, I soon found myself done with my workday and was on my way to my house. Since I had jogged all the way, I reached my house within a few minutes. There was still much to do on the house itself, like adding the walls, but I would soon have myself an electric heater.

It had surprised me at how easy it was to make a generator. I was expecting there to be more to it than spinning magnets inside a coil of copper wire, but that was all it took. My only problem had been figuring out how to get the right amount of power into the iron wires so they would produce heat without melting. If it hadn't been for that I would have finished on the first day. Now I had to figure out how to adjust my water wheel to make it spin at just the right speed or find another way to adjust the power.

For now, I did trial by error. Iron wire was cheap around here so I didn't mind melting a lot. And surely I would melt some today.

So, sitting inside my unfinished house, I got to work.