Automata Prime

1.13: Shop talk

“Good Morning Miss Shea!” Shiro called out to Shea as she came down stairs to the shop with her coffee in hand.  “Were the eggs to your liking?”

“They were absolutely delicious!  I can’t believe you were able to make such tasty food from what I had in my kitchen.”

“All the ingredients were there, just waiting to be put together”, Shiro said with a smile in his voice.

“So, what are you guys working on today?” Shea asked Ram and Rom.

Ram and Rom looked up from their work at her and shrugged slightly before going back to work.  Via Alfred, I answered for them, “Much of the same, I’m afraid Miss Shea.  We are crafting the weapons and daily tools that Miss Jada suggested and showed us but sales have not been great.”

“Yeah, the location isn’t the best for a store.  We’re a couple blocks away from the market district so we don’t get too many people coming this way.”

Elita, who had been sitting in the corner honing her blade, stood up. “Shea, we need to get going to the Guild if we’re going to get any of the good quests.”

“Ah, Miss Elita, If I may, would you be so kind as to accompany Shiro and myself to the Guild shop?  We are in need of more small shadow crystals and mana infused plasma, if we are to work on Master Prime’s new product idea.”

“I know that you’re controlling Alfred, Prime... So why do you talk like you’re not?”

“Miss Elita, is it not more difficult for people to wrap their minds around the concept of one person with multiple bodies than it is to mentally think of each body as an individual themselves?” Alfred asked while fingering his metal mustache.  “Especially when each of those bodies performs a different function and displays as an individual?”

“I find it very useful,” Shiro offered, “I know in the back of my mind that Mister Alfred is being controlled by Master Prime, but I still feel different about Mister Alfred.  Like they aren’t quite the same person and I can speak with Mister Alfred as a colleague, while Master Prime is still... well, Master Prime.”

“I suppose there is some truth in that,” Elita conceded, “but it still creeps me out a bit.”

Rom finished inlaying the magic circuits and uploading the magic “firmware” that I had developed for the [Inventory] bag to a large metal plate.  She then handed it over to Alfred and got to work on the next task.  Alfred took the plate and set it neatly on the table to get a “second” look at it.

“What’s with the plate, Alfred?” Shea asked.

Alfred looked over and took the coffee mug from Shea and set it onto the plate.  “This, Miss Shea, is an [Inventory] Plate.”

“My mug!” she called out, reaching for the mug, but it didn’t go anywhere.  “Oh, does it not work?”

Without looking, Rom grabbed the mug and handed it back to Shea.  She then set a spare block of steel on the plate, touched the plate’s edge, and the embedded circuits lit up with magical energy as the block voxelated and vanished.

“You have to give it a bit of mana, you see.  This way we don’t send things into the [Inventory] by mistake”, Alfred explained, giving a pointed look over at Shrapnel.  “We still can’t retrieve anything from [Inventory] space, though, only Master Prime can do that for now.”

“I thought only Prime could make these sorts of devices,” Shea asked.

“Initially, that’s true”, Alfred replied, “but once Master Prime has developed a magical script and [commit]ed the changes to our mental code base, dear Rom can load that script into the magical circuits that she crafts.  We proxies can’t actively develop any new scripts, just install ones that have already been made.  ...and only Rom has been upgraded to have that ability.”

“I really don’t understand any of that,” Shiro admitted.

“Me neither, buddy,” Shea shrugged as she handed him her mug.  “Anyone seen Sparky? I haven’t seen him all morning.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Elita said, “he’s a wild beast, after all.  Not a pet.”

“That’s what worries me,” Shea huffed.

“Okay, whoever's going, let’s go or I’m leaving without you,” Elita ordered.

Alfred knocked on the door to the adjacent room, “Miss Jada, we’re heading out to the market.  Do you require anything?”

The door opened up and Ravage sat, just in the apartment, in cat form.  Alfred looked down at Ravage, then at the height of the door knob and decided not to question it.

“Jada yis still sleeping,” the cat said, “Ravage will let her know.  Leave the bug one so she can talk to meyew later if needed.”  Ravage then transformed into maid mode and gently closed the door without waiting for a response.

“Very good Miss Ravage,” Alfred said to the closed door.

“Mrow,” he heard from within.

Shrapnel came online and flew off the shelf where he stayed, to land on the workbench facing Jada’s door.  He then transformed into bot mode and sat on the edge, swinging his legs back and forth.  Shea headed up the stairs to retrieve her Adventurer kit with Shiro following after her.

“I can do my own dishes, Shiro”, Alfred heard her say.

“Habits and duty dictates, I'm afraid, Miss Shea,” came the response.

“He’s settling in well, but I can’t help feel like there’s more that we should be doing for him.  We can’t house every Automata that comes along.  We’ll have to come up with something else,” I said, dropping the Alfred act for a moment.

“Where is there to go?  You can’t help everyone, Prime,” Elita said looking over to Alfred.

“I know... but that doesn’t mean I stop trying.  Oh. Ram found Sparky.  He’s sleeping in the forge.  Again.”

“Come on, ya rat!” Elita yelled in the direction of the forge.  “If you don’t come with us, you don’t get any experience!”

Flame burst from the forge opening as Ram poked the squirrel.  When it died down, the coals inside were red hot and Sparky came out shaking the soot off his fur.  Elita held her arm out and Sparky bounded across the shop from forge to counter to workbench to Elita and sat expectantly on her shoulder.  She pulled an acorn from her pouch and handed it to him.

Ram stoked the hot coals and shoved a length of steel into the center to bring up the temperature in preparation for crafting spear heads.

Shea came bounding down the stairs with Shiro following after her. “We’re ready!” she announced.

“Finally!” Elita said, exasperated, before heading out the door.

Alfred pulled the cart along and headed out after her with Shea and Shiro.  After my first experience in the market on my own as “Prime”, we decided that it would be safer for Shiro and the proxies to be out if they were accompanied by an organic— or at least someone that could pass for an organic.

“Looks like we’re heading back to Urd—what about you, sir Carnivac?” asked George.

I really wanted to get back so that I could turn in the quest report.  If I ran straight there as Carnivac it would take me about five hours, but going with this carriage would likely take twelve to fourteen hours, so chances were good that they would camp somewhere overnight to break up the trip.

“I need to get back to the guild to report on the quest.”

George seemed to be adding up something in his head then decided on something. “I can’t offer much, but can I hire you to escort us back?  I don’t want to push too quickly on this repaired axle, and there are still a number of other beasts and monsters along this road.  When we get back to Urd, I can pay you ten silver.”

“That’ll be fine.”  I just couldn’t leave these people in a bind, and the heavy damage to the carriage wouldn’t offer them any protection if they got attacked.

George rummaged around in his bag and pulled out a quest contract paper; he then wrote down the details along with the reward amount and asked Carnivac to touch his Adventurer tag to the paper just like Talios had done.  When I did, I saw that Carnivac’s information had been added to the paper.  The status on the tag data screen updated to read On Quest id8846465; ID88473329, which I found neat.  I hadn’t noticed before, but the quest IDs in the status section were underlined like hyperlinks.  If I tapped on one, then I saw a screen showing the quest details.  Handy.

With escort duty decided, George hooked up the horses and we all climbed into the carriage to get underway.  When no one was looking, I put the remainder of the boar along with the first centipede into my [Inventory].  I thought about splitting up and going on ahead, leaving Carnivac behind to escort them back, but I wasn’t nearly as fast as Carnivac running.  I could’ve kept going without tiring, but that didn’t mean I could do it quickly.  I could’ve sent Carnivac ahead and handled the escort myself, but there wasn’t much point to that either, since Carnivac wasn’t equipped with [Inventory] and couldn’t produce the spoils and proof of the subjugation.  In the end I had Carnivac stay ahead of the carriage as a scout, which made Lily sad, but everyone else seemed to be fine with it.

During the trip I mostly fielded questions from the kids and explored the options available to me in my [Console].  One neat feature was Incognito Mode, which allowed me to open and use my [Console] without anyone but me being able to see it.  This was pretty useful in avoiding more questions that I wasn’t ready to answer.  So like the Dev Tools that I was used to in my old world, I had a Sources tab that let me see the “core” type of magic.  It seemed like most of the different magics that people used were actually broken down into a combination of a handful of core types that acted like magic building blocks or elements.  I’d used the Network tab before to be able to tell what magic was happening around me and get a vague idea of how far away.  The Performance tab let me see how efficient the magic was in terms of mana consumption; that would be useful for optimizing the spells of my team.  I also had Security and Application tabs, but they were grayed out.  Maybe I would need to level up more before I was able to use them, or it depended on what I was [Inspect]ing.

“Mister Prime, what are you doing?  It looks like you’re just staring at your knees and waving your fingers around.  It’s kinda weird,” Jacob asked me.

Heh, I guess Incognito Mode is a double edged sword here.  “Oh, I’m looking at my stats and reading through some documentation.”

“Dock.. you men nation?” Joshua asked.

“Documentation. It’s like a book about how something works.  You know how a bunch of words and stuff show up when Carnivac holds out his Adventurer tag? It’s kinda like that.  Automata can have whole books worth of words inside our heads that we can read through.”

“Any picture books?” Jacob, this time.

“Sorry, no.  The books I have are all about how magic stuff works and Automata stuff.”

Joshua had pulled out a small stone disk and held it out. “This is my Illusion Stone!  I have the Lion Knight!”

I looked at the small disk and could see some runes etched into it and a tiny crystal at the center.  “How does it work?” I asked as I [Inspect]ed it.

“You put some mana into it... like this!”

In Joshua’s hand the stone began to light up and a 3D image of a Lionkin knight appeared.  He stood tall and proud with his cape flapping in a non-existent wind.

“Oh! I got one too!” Jacob yelled and dug through his belongings to pull one out and lit it up.  “Mine is the Tiger Archer!”

This time, the illusion was of a Tigerkin dressed as a ranger looking in the distance and occasionally pulling an arrow from his quiver to shoot.  I inspected both of them, and they used a small Illusion Crystal and some basic spells to control the illusion.  This was my first exposure to this world’s “toys.”  In my old world, I had loved collecting and making toys, so this was pretty exciting for me to see what these kids were playing with.

“Those are really neat.  Do they do anything else?”

The boys looked confused. “No? They’re just little illusions, what could they do?” Joshua asked.

I supposed these were the equivalent of expensive trading cards then; still, I had some ideas.

“Would you mind if I messed with them for a bit?  I promise not to break them, and if I do then I’ll make you action figures of these guys.”

“What’s an action figure?” asked Jacob.

These poor, poor children.  I would have to educate. “How to explain... Okay, imagine an Automata like me but without a soul to move it around, and small enough to hold in your hand so that you can have pretend adventures with it.”

“Like a doll?”

“Sure Josh, but in the shape of those guys,” I said, pointing at the illusions, “and made for adventure.”

“I don’t know...” Jacob said doubtfully, “I’m not into dolls.  I’d have to see it first.”

“That’s fair. Can I still mess with your Illusion Stone though?”

“I ‘spose.  But you have to show us what you’re doing!”

“I can respect that.”  I checked to see that George and Lily were focused ahead watching the road and Carnivac respectively, and I opened up my [Console] so that the kids could see.  Looking at the Lion Knight disk, I started dissecting the spells that were attached to it.

“What are you doing? What is that?” Joshua asked, looking at my screen.

“First I’m looking at the spells that were used to make this. Then I’m going to see what I can do to make it better or do some other stuff.”

“Other stuff? Like what?”

“Not sure yet, but it’ll be a fun surprise.”

As I looked at it, this thing wasn’t efficient at all.  So much mana that the kids were putting into it was getting wasted.  I found the scripts that handled the animations and was able to make some easy changes—this meant that I could add some new functions for different animations and trigger them when I wanted to.  I also added some new eventListeners that would listen for when another disk was close by as well as specific commands sent along with the mana push.  I copied the new functions and changes over to the Tiger Ranger and made tweaks to it.  The whole process took quite a while, which took even longer having to answer questions from the kids, but eventually I got them done and handed them back to the kids.

“Okay, they’re all done.  Now I want both of you to hold them out with the stones close to each other, right, like that.  Now, think hard about either Fire, Water, or Wood and push your mana into the stones.”

They did as asked and the illusions appeared.  This time, the Lion Knight pulled out a large wooden shield while the Tiger Ranger drew and shot a flaming arrow.  The lion’s shield burst into fire and crumbled away as another fire arrow hit the knight, knocking him down.  The tiger then raised his bow in victory.  The boys stared at their stones wide eyed for a minute before shouting and screaming in unison.

“Ohmygoshohmygosththatwasamazing!didyoujustseethat?thatwasthemostamazingthingeverinthehistoryofeverything!!!”

Lily turned around to scold them for yelling like that and they jumped on her, shoving their Illusion Stones in her face.  I felt pleased and had Alfred talk to Shiro about buying up a bunch of these Illusion Stones that I could modify before I figured out how to make them from scratch.  The kids spent the rest of the trip fighting each other and finding all the different combinations of animations.  Eventually, I’d like to see if I could figure out how to add more fighting options to make them more interactive.  Maybe with larger stones and more powerful crystals I could build an arcade unit.