“Welcome Miss Margarette!” proclaims a portly golem. “Selim told us there was a new golem about.”

Margarette returns the greeting as she looks around the R&D department in wonder. “I’ve been told I needed to swing by at least once even if I wasn’t interested in helping out, so I thought I’d swing by a few days after I spoke with him. You would be Miss Fyles then?”

“Yes, pseudo-secretary and image specialist! I started keeping systematic records of the things they create and what happened to them, at least the last we could tell what happened. Temporal fluxes can be quite flummoxing you know.”

“Yes,” Margarette says slowly. “I’ve heard… stories, in the last few days after asking around.”

“Seriously though, if you see the tall skinny golem we painted black and silver, if he tries to hand you something pointy it’s best to just keep your hands in your pockets. @#* damn Space-Time Archmage. It’s great we have more room and all and the funding from all the magic bags he’s made as punishment, but most of us still don’t know how he managed to weaponize it like he has.”

“Oh?” Margarette says. “Out of curiosity, how many bags are we talking about?”

“Easy enough,” Fyles says waving a clipboard, “since he hasn’t finished and I keep the inventory on this. He’s not quite 50% there even after 200 years.”

Fyles hums for a second while flipping through a few pages. “Nine of 1000 cubic meters or greater, 236 of 200 cubic meters or greater, 13462 of 100 cubic meters or greater, 57692 of 50 cubic meters or greater, and 142996 of 5 cubic meters or greater. I’m expecting the total number to surpass 215,000 in about 3 months, he’s been bored recently, which we aren’t sure is a good thing, but since it’s recursive space we don’t have to worry about the lab filling up with them.”

Margarette is speechless at these numbers. By her rough calculations, those numbers could easily account for 90-95% of all magic bags currently in use. It wasn’t like the bags were rare, but they weren’t exactly common either, and they definitely couldn’t be bought without having connections and a significant amount of money. If she could make expressions on the golem she’s piloting it would be shock.

As if she doesn’t even notice, Fyles waves the clipboard and turns around to start the tour of the R&D department.

“Anyway~ let’s start with the traditionalists. We have 32 projects on this side at the moment, 14 are weapons projects, 12 are magic research, and the rest are economic technologies projects. Of particular interest on the weapon side of things is continued development of what the Handbell group is calling the ‘Holy-Super-alloy. Lightweight and sturdy, capable of housing and transmitting the highest level spells and blessings to fight off evil in this world.’ Or so they say.

“Of continued interest in magic research is unique applications of common spells and micro-engraving techniques. Feel free to ask them about any they’ve made in the past. By chance Miss Margarette, do you know much about engravings in the modern era? We hardly get the chance to hear how things are developing. How about the short-range teleportation spells? Those have always been expensive and the nobles want the objects small. How small have the common ones gotten?”

“Common?” Margarette says in a slightly confused tone as those objects are among the most rare available. “Well, I guess about the size of my fist, slightly larger? Sends them about a half hour’s horse ride away.”

“Ah, disappointing,” Fyles says with a sigh. “The group in charge of that project got carried away and ended up making about a hundred, each the size of a corn kernel. We were hoping to make some money without shaking things up too much. They reduced the size and quintupled that range unfortunately. On a similar note though, the economic group did manage to create a new weight reduction plate we’re expecting to ship out in the next couple months.”

“Wait, so it’s not just relics you make here?” Margarette suddenly asks as the implications of the last few minutes hit her. “When I was talking with some of the others it seemed like most of them had family heirlooms they traced back here after they arrived.”

“Yes, I can see why you would expect that,” Fyles says. “The shock some experience after finding out one thing of that magnitude often weighs heavier on the mind than an entire mountain of the mundane. Even he has his limits on the resources he can obtain for us without money. It takes a lot to run an evil empire from the shadows you know.”

“I…” Margarette says, pausing. “I think I will take you up on looking through your archives sometime.”

“By all means! Since we have plenty of time and people looking for projects so there are a few index works so you can look through short descriptions alphabetically or by subject. We have a catalog system for the complete write-ups noted in the index references. Oh! We also have a reference chart for completion rewards on the end of the archive shelves if you are curious. For secret rewards you can ask the Broker.”

As Margarette numbly nods, she’s walked through the isles and introduced to the golems working on the traditionalist projects. They numbered between four working on a new application of fire and wind engravings on forging, up to thirty-two on the weight-reduction plates.

“So, would you like to meet the purists or the physicists next?” Fyles asks.

“What was the last one?” Margarette replies.

“Physicists. Those that work with exclusively physical phenomenon rather than magical, as in their favorite question for newbies, ‘how fast will a rock fall,’ and ‘how long will it take to fall twice that far?’ Party tricks for the powerless some say, but they have figured a few things out that makes the traditionalists happy, though it’s mostly theory. Though, some of what the purists do is mostly theory. Strangely enough they have developed lots of children's toys, and in fact, he ordered about two dozen special stuffed dragon toys not long ago from the production department.”

“Do you happen to have some of these on display somewhere?” Margarette says with a sparkle in her voice. “I like cute things and soft things. And fire, but I can’t play around with fire here…”

Fyles begins moving towards one end of the room and begins her reply. “Actually, that’s almost exclusively what the ‘Hellfire and Brimstone’ group does. Let’s head there last, and even if you don’t join them feel free to swing by and talk to whoever you want whenever you want.”

The two golems pass the center of the hall, where a large analog clock and round table seems to be the meeting area for the three groups. Margarette notices the organized chaos she is walking into has a very mechanical charm to it, benches filled with gears and cogs, wheels, spheres, ramps, strings and wire, bunsen burners and test tubes, and a hundred others.

“While it is somewhat slow going,” continues Fyles, “we have a group that is working on classifying and writing a compendium on all minerals and substances, one working with sound and sound generation, an entire section working on what I’ll call mechanical projects, another section working on physical changes under various conditions of the materials in the first group, and a whole section that almost split off just to work on physical properties of plants and products made from plants. I feel like that group needs a different name but the traditional ‘herbalist’ doesn’t feel right and neither does ‘botanist.’”

Fyles introduces Margarette to the rest of the thirty-two groups and factions, then shows off the examples of toys and gadgets they have created over the years. While Margarette was less surprised at the origin of some of her childhood memories due to the earlier revelation of magic bags, she was still amazed at some of the intricacy that was involved in their production.

While there, she found out that most of the physical measurements she was used to were developed with convenience in mind, particularly beginning with the aforementioned drop test. At one point early on it was decided that, as the numbering system was base-10, the height objects could drop in 1 second if you magically removed the air would be split into 10 units. Every other distance measure would be based on those units. This helped standardize measurements rather than the ambiguous dealings of how big was this-or-that ruler’s hand or horse that he rode in on.

And the most surprising news (or more properly non-sedative news) was that the official measurement device for all kingdoms and merchant guilds was a type of crystalline rod measuring one unit in length by 1/10th unit in diameter. They gave her a long explanation that boiled down to the nearly imperceptible change in length depending on the temperature of metal and water content of wood.

Finishing the tour of the physicists area, Fyles takes Margarette over to the ‘purist’ magical research area.

“So what would you say is the typical expectation you have of magic research and researchers?” Fyles begins.

Margarette replies nearly instantly, thinking of her former companion Rory. “New and powerful spells or attempting to pioneer a new field or expand one we know little about, and they’re usually dressed as comfortable as they can, are shaggy and need some education on hygiene.”

Fyles replies to this with some disappointment, “And it appears that hasn’t changed in a while, and perhaps some of the social graces they showed in the past are disappearing. Most of our teams here, though we call them the purists, actually talk extensively with the physicists. I’m sure someone of your caliber is aware of the correlation between the chants you use, the image in your mind, and the effect and power they show, yes?”

“Yes,” Margarette says, “And some can go without chants, but the power fluctuates wildly depending on the day and their mental state.”

“Most of our research is focused on improving the power and versatility of existing spells, with one group looking into what I’ll call forceful-transfer-of-knowledge, or an FTK.”

“I can guess what you mean by the former since you mentioned the physicists are helping, but I can’t say I follow with the latter.”

“Perhaps this will help. You’re familiar with magic scrolls and magic tools correct? Scrolls you can use once since they’re written with quality parchment and high-grade magic stones or gems, and tools you can use until the power source is empty. An FTK would be like if you had a spell scroll that would copy itself to your memories rather than cast the spell, which you could then, permanently, use with your own mana pool. No more struggling to learn how to manipulate mana into fire, turn that into a ball, and send it on a path to a target. The chants we have used for years, centuries, would be obsolete and you could say whatever you wanted to anchor the spell.”

“That… Is that… Even possible?” Margarette replies, struggling to figuratively wrap her head around the implications.

“We’re in phase 1 of deployment and trials. The two major concerns we have at the moment is the potential damage to the one who creates it and the one who receives it. The short story is we considered this after we obtained a necromancer of sorts in our ranks, and a peculiar one at that. Through a series of unfortunate events, this ice mage turned necromancer had stumbled onto a trap that implanted the memories and skills of a leader of some ancient group or another. Fortunately or not, before everything could completely overwrite his personality he was killed by his pursuers while in pain from the event, getting trapped in the soul gem. And since you exist here, you know-“

“Our memories and personality remain intact in a soul gem. So, does that mean I could still use spells if I could power them?”

“Yes indeed! We have a lot of magic stones and whatnot, so it’s a bit more cumbersome than you may be used to, but it’s possible. Anyway~ the current phase is to see how we can only transfer a single spell to a soul crystal, and see if that causes any damage to the soul making the spell, and any effects of the spell on the soul of the receiver, and phase 2 is processing soul stones as a replacement for magic stones. Fortunately we can easily measure the former. Unfortunately, we can’t do the latter on ourselves due to the nature of the transfer, so he is taking care of the subjects for that.”

“Dare I ask?”

“Slave maids, apparently. The ones we have made so far to test this are water generation, heat generation, and hot-water generation. One of his spells, for the lack of a better word, can check the integrity and make a temporary copy of someone’s soul, and apparently he can use it twice, side-by-side, so he can check for changes.”

“But why maids?”

“He claims it’s for profit as we can make an entire book of skills and sell it for a good price to the nobles and royalty. Some of us doubt that. He has a habit of taking someone who looks gentle or a typical non-combatant and weaponizing them, at least from the stories I’ve heard. Maids, nuns, priests, clerks, cooks, bartenders, doesn’t matter, if he has his way their combat potential seems to climb into the rank of heroes just below Graham. Well, that’s just their potential though.”

Margarette goes silent briefly as she thinks back to Rachel’s new equipment. And she would be frowning if she could.

Fyles continues to explain the intricacies of the various magicians’ research, while Margarette finally snaps out of her rumination around the fourth group she’s introduced to.