“Hey Robert, I know you’re feeling really pressured right now. You haven’t gotten any actual sleep all night, aside from passing out, and it’s been pretty eventful for you. You could enter the Library World and rest for a while if you wanted. Now that you’ve returned home, things should be alright for a bit.”

“Yea Ava, that’s probably a good idea, but I’ll need to sort out the things we got from the store before they start to thaw out. I will need to create some way to power equipment to keep everything fresh for now. I promise once I finish that I will rest for a while before we proceed.”

“Ok, sounds like a plan! Just don’t push yourself too hard, I know this is a lot to get used to.”

I hopped up off of the couch and entered the Library World. I could use solar panels for any power needs I might have outside. They would be inconspicuous as long as people didn’t see my lights on once they were installed. I would need to get some defenses in place before I go powering up anything outside though. There might not be a lot of people this far away from town, but people would start to notice if my house was the only one with power. That’s the kind of attention I don’t need right now and would like to be prepared before people noticed anything was different.

I looked through the stock of what we had managed to secure so far. It looks like we’ve got several pallets of non-perishables that can be stored outside without anything extra. However, the pallets of frozen and refrigerated products will need cold storage. There’s so much it will be necessary to have a large walk-in cooler and freezer to store everything. I’ve got the basement that I could modify and separate into two sides. That should give me plenty of room to store everything and keep it away from prying eyes.

I searched through the database looking at different configurations of refrigeration equipment available to me. It seems I have a few options to go with; either mechanical, electronic, or chemical heat pumps. Contrary to popular belief, refrigerators actually move heat away from an area, thus cooling the internal area instead of actively producing cold temperatures. While I was coming up with an idea for my refrigeration system, I decided I would create a simple icebox to store everything in. This should provide me with an ample amount of time to retrofit the basement into the cold storage I need.

I created a simple insulated box with a door around the pallets of food. This was quite a large structure so I had to create it wall by wall to conserve on mana. It took me around an hour and a half to get everything set up and fill the area with ice. I should have a couple of hours outside to install everything now, so I won’t have to rush too much.

I left the library world and measured the basement then plotted out the areas I would turn into the freezer side and refrigerator side. I should have an area of roughly thirty feet wide for each side with fifteen feet in length for each. That gives me a better idea of the strength of equipment I will need to control the temperature. Now that I had that mapped out, I needed to decide on my refrigeration systems.

Luckily, I found a system that I think would fit my needs. Most existing solar refrigeration technologies rely on batteries to store electricity when there is a lapse in sunlight and use more power as they are basically just normal refrigerators converted to operate on DC power. However, recently NASA developed a solar refrigeration technology that not only doesn’t utilize batteries but is scalable to commercial-size systems. This was perfect for what I was looking for.

I started the creation of my insulated boxes for the system, taking my time to ensure that I didn’t use all of my mana. It was a lengthy process but would be well worth it in the future. It took me four hours to get my insulation created and installed. Luckily when using the creation system, it would allow me to join components and create them in place, reducing the amount of heavy lifting I needed to do in order to get it installed.

Once I had the boxes created and piping installed, it was time to create and install my compressors then fill them with R-134a refrigerant. These systems have an advanced compressor control method that exploits almost all of the available thermal power from the photovoltaic panels.

I had everything installed and set up after another hour and a half. All that remained was for me to create and install my solar panels outside then run the wiring to my new system. This should be fairly easy; it will just take a large amount of time to create each solar panel and find a suitable location for them to get the most energy they possibly can. It takes almost all of my mana to create one 500-watt panel and I would be needing around 20 of them to power the system and provide a small amount of excess energy to be used within the house. At least this would be scalable in the future, and allow me to operate the things I needed right now.

After almost seven more hours, I had finished the installation of my solar panels and ran the wiring for my new system. I connected everything to the home grid and powered up the compressors. It would take a while for the temperature to regulate to be safe enough to store my food, but if I transported the ice from my icebox over as well, the temperature should stay within a safe range. I opened a door to the Library World from the basement and transported the pallets over with the pallet jack I had stolen from the store. Everything was finally installed and I could rest! I made sure there weren’t any lights on in my house and snatched Greta up before opening a door to the Library World. It would be much more efficient to rest in the Library with the time dilation. After entering the world, I created the best bed I could think of and plopped it down in the middle of the stacks. I felt much more at home surrounded by my books once again and conked out almost as soon as I hit the bed.