Cyber Core, Chapter 67: Two Up, Two Soon To Be Down, And One Still Treed
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#Log Entry: Project Day 0019 ##Addendum 68:
I must say that the Fuin-Braetehl boys' enthusiasm for following the voice of the unseen 'Mocking Woman' as played by Jilalyn out of the foyer and down the stairs to the ground floor serves to keep them moving with dispatch. I'm still only 45.293% confident of my ability to translate most of what she tells them, between that pudding-thick accent and regional slang, so I can only go by the visible results: the six teenaged Human boys shoving each other through the door from the foyer to the stairwell, and then down.
I can recognize certain words and even a phase or two in Jilalyn's directions to them, bobbing like ice-cubes floating in a flood of muck; 'cowards' and 'pantry levels' in one case, and 'little boys playing at grown-up games' in another. The secondary speaker on floor-landing #3 in the stairwell serves as precisely the 'lure' the boys need to keep going. I'm able to re-purpose the intercoms on the door-locks to the two completed units on the ground floor to serve as further speakers, which helps guide the six of them to the utility-stairwell door. And from there, of course, the "Mocking Woman" takes turns with recordings of the two 'fugitives' to draw the Fuin-Braetehls the rest of the way down to sub-level three, where the sole portal into 'the hiding-place' greets them on the other side of the short hallway behind the main stairwell...
... And then, updating the firmware in the 'transciever-stones' to let me temporarily override the programmed 'jogging circuit' for Fancy Hat and Big Hands, leading them just the slightest bit further away from the temporary entrance on the third sub-level as the remaining six race through it, keeping the two of them from somehow convincing the 'newcomers' to turn around and go back the way they came before the door disappears...
It takes a bit more effort than I had expected. I needed to get Fancy Hat and Big Hands all the way across the second sub-level to an area where the spill of light from the third wouldn't give them the clue they needed to escape the Labyrinth before I'm fully ready for them to do so...
#Addendum 69:
Scinjir releases an explosive sigh of relief, probably buoyed by more than a little fatigue. "Oh, thank the Mother," he says, as soon as I finish reporting that the remaining six Fuin-Braetehls have been contained within the Labyrith and the final door has been re-sealed by my nanites. "We can get down..."
He's interrupted by the yips and barks from the forest-wolves still claiming the open area just down the ridgeline from the foyer.
"...Aw, phooey," he adds, crestfallen, as he looks out at the creatures he can see... knowing full well that there are probably at least a few he can't.
"For whatever it may be worth, I can unseal the door to the topmost empty landing in the stairwell, Scinjir," I offer. "The rope-ladder section you have won't quite reach that far, but providing you with safe extensions should take very little time."
Snatdrure nods, but jerks a thumb in the general direction of Jilalyn's 'roost'. "What are we going to do about those forest-wolves, and getting our Hafling friend back to safety, Joachim, over?" she asks.
"I can walk you through the fabricator menus to set up requests for the components of the equipment we need set up, once you get back to the main suite, Snatdrure," I respond. "The main zip-line package should be fairly easy; it's part of the same disaster-recovery protocols that forms the basis of the genius-building program. Over."
"What kind of disaster would require anyone to be able to slide along a suspended wire?" Scinjir wants to know. "Over."
"Flooding, for one thing," I explain. "Also, vehicular recovery. I'm sure that you've all heard stories about bridges getting washed out during severe storms. Back home, we have no wizards capable of commanding water or air, so we have to make do with the tools we have available. While riding on a board hanging from a wheeled bracket along a wire suspended above a pack of hungry forest-wolves may not exactly sound like fun, I calculate that the odds of Jilalyn's arriving at the roof safely are at least ten times as good as her odds of trying to cross the lawn to the main foyer doors, on foot, uphill, and with the entire forest-wolf pack focusing their entire attention on her, over."
Jilalyn sighs over the connection. "I'm not entirely certain I like those odds, Joachim," she continues. "But I definitely prefer that option to the prospect of nesting up here for however long it takes for the wolves to wander off to the next stop along their migration path. How soon would your fabricators have the equipment you need ready to go, over?"
I spend a clock-cycle calculating, translating the results into 'Jilalyn breaths' and double-checking my math. "At least 2,000 breaths, Jilalyn," I answer, managing a note of regret. "The zip-line package itself is relatively simple, but it will take time to fabricate the ballista-components necessary to get it to you without putting Snatdrure or Scinjir at risk. Will you be able to hold out until then, over?"
Jilalyn sighs. "That's not as bad as I was expecting, but not as soon as I had hoped," she answers. "I've put up with staying in concealment for a lot longer than that," she continues, a slight boastful tone to her voice that vanishes with her closing words. "It was not fun in the slightest, and I really would rather leave that as my personal record for such things. Do, please, get me out of here with dispatch, over."
##Addendum 70:
As it turns out, helping Scinjir and Snatdrure get off the roof of the foyer takes much less time than I had expected; Sudryal emerges from his meditation, and Thakhibi rises from the bed-rest she needed to recover from her injuries.
Of the two, Sudryal seems more interested in conversation. Jilalyn had informed him of the situation regarding the Fuin-Braetehls' arrival in the vicinity, after all. He seemed content to wake up more slowly, over a flagon of fresh water and conversation with me, while leaving the other two members of Jilalyn's group to rest a while longer.
When Thakhibi gets the news, she asks primarily about the Fuin-Braetehls; upon hearing the news that all eight had been successfully captured and locked in the underground labyrinth, almost all the tension I could see in the lines of her muscles and hear from her tone evaporated. While she asked a few pertinent questions about Scinjir, Snatdrure, and Jilalyn, she gathered up a fresh change of clothes for herself (selected from the items she had requested from the fabricators, I'm somewhat proud to note) and took them with her to the bathroom for her morning 'ritual'.
Judging from the reports of the housekeeping nanites in her vicinity, her "strengthened healing capacity" from her Ork parent amounts to an acceleration of her body's usual cellular and metabolic processes that I find somewhat worrisome. She leaves a trail of 'biological traces' with each step from the bedroom to the bathroom that, at a guess, anyone else in the same apartment would detect via scent.
It takes hardly any effort on my part at all to direct a freshly-fabricated additional supply of housekeeping nanites to the apartment, along with whatever appropriate scent-controlling chemicals I've managed to cook up from available materials. This is part of what they're for, after all.
According to my housekeeping logs, Ulotamph had, in all likelihood, 'broken the pact' between the Krags and Fuin-Braetehls, with Mathieu's enthusiastic help (somewhere between two and five times), and the pair were sleeping it off in the bedroom of the 'honeymoon suite'. If I still needed to breathe, I might have let out a deep sigh as I peruse the reports of 'biological traces' the two of them left on what seems like virtually every horizontal surface in the apartment, and quite a few of the vertical ones.
Ah, well, at least they'll have a much better chance of getting themselves cleaned up and 'presentable' in the suite here, rather than out on the south-bound trail to the Capitol.
Addendum 71:
"A migrating pack of forest-wolves..." Sudryal echoes, while chewing on another synth-block and washing it down with more water. He has asked me to help him break his fast in the dining-room area, so I helped him move the table and his chair back into that room from the 'main' room. "I suppose that taking in all these new guests worked out for the best, then. I would not expect that even eight Fuin-Braetehls, strapping young lads that they may be, could have fared well against such opposition."
I animate the avatar nodding in agreement. "I haven't taken any opportunities to get to know any of them personally. I have only Jilalyn's word on what five of the six carried in their pockets and what she extrapolated regarding their capabilities from those hints, but neither of us saw any indication that the group had the training or tools to keep a determined wolf-pack from making a meal out of them."
Sudryal sighs. "Still, though... They yet live, if confined to the Labyrinth for a while. Assuming that the forest-wolves continue northward, they will cross the trail of others among the Clans, corroborating our own version of events to some degree or other."
I animate the avatar pointing upward at an angle, to his right. A video-window unfolds, showing a replay of the rescue of the six from their campsite. "Getting the Clan Heads themselves all the way out here to my wayside inn might take a bit more diplomacy than we have available," I opine. "... But if we can get some sort of trusted witnesses out here, I can provide this testimony, along with recordings of whatever they were saying, or bellowing, from the time they first entered the foyer until the time I sealed them in the Labyrinth."
Sudryal nods, clearly impressed. "True, true..." he says. "Well, since the eight of them seem safe, what do you propose to do about our three stalwart, and likely exhausted, defenders still out there?"
"Getting Scinjir and Sudryal off the roof won't be that difficult. I can unseal the top doorway alongside the stairwell, and get them some extensions to their rope-ladder so they can climb down pretty easily..."
[Aw, dangitall... I just realized that Joachim's plan for a 'passenger/executive elevator lobby' by definition would need to be at the same level as the foyer itself. Therefore, the same rope-ladder that let Scinjir and Snatdrure get up to the foyer's roof must be more than long enough to reach the doorway attached to the stairwell. Phooey. Gotta re-write a good chunk of that chapter now, but at least it'll accelerate rescuing Jilalyn.]
[Note: from this point forward, the action proceeds with the amended roof-escape plan for Scinjir and Snatdrure.]
##Addendum 72:
Overall, revising the rooftop, and the landing outside the door, proceeds smoothly enough. Scinjir and Snatdrure get tired of watching the forest-wolves finish 'claiming' the clearing below the foyer and make their way across the roof to watch the nanites work; it's the first opportunity either of them have had to truly see my barely-visible 'servants' following my instructions.
Nevertheless, the relatively short trip from the front to the rear takes a while longer than it might have while they admire the 'decorations' up there, previously out of sight or mostly incomprehensible until now.
"... So, these windows," Snatdrure says over the link. "... They turn sunlight into lightning, over?"
They've wandered out of the range of the only camera I had available with a view of the foyer roof; I make a note to myself to correct that as soon as the raw materials become available.
"In English, they're called 'solar panels'," I respond. "There's more to it than that, but I really would rather explore the mysteries of the term 'photovoltaic' some other time. Preferably after the two of you have had a good night's sleep and at least one filling meal. But yes, the panels are part of the genius-building power system. Over."
"What's this one, with all the spinning bits, over?" Scinjir asks. "Oh, right, you can't see what I'm pointing at, um..."
"It's all right, Scinjir," I reassure him. "Under the circumstances, there really aren't many other things you could be talking about. That's a collection of tools to keep track of the weather. The 'spinning-bit' keeps track of the strength of the wind. There are a few other little things inside the box that measure humidity, atmospheric pressure, rainfall, and a few other things. I have several educational videos I could share with you, if you want to know more, over."
Scinjir's grin comes through quite clearly in his voice. "Maybe some other time." The smiling-sound fades from his voice when he asks his next question. "Um, what else is up here that we should worry about? Uh, over?"
"The large metal pole with the reinforcing ties in the middle of the roof is the upper radio antenna," I explain. "There's another one on the side of the maintenance stairwell shaft, if you can see it under the current lighting conditions, over."
"Why have two? Over," Snatdrure wants to know.
"Functional limitations of radio-waves," I respond. "They can only go so far through solid rock, so if I want to communicate with anyone up on the ridge-line or past it, I need to have an antenna up there. Also, having two lets me figure out where a given radio-signal is coming from, in the same way that two people standing a few steps from each other can figure out where a loud noise or a landmark off in the distance might be located."
"Hmmm..." Snatdrure transmits.
"I'm not sure I understand," Scinjir offers. "Over."
"Imagine the two people are, say, standing 100 steps apart, Scinjir," Jilalyn sends. "If they both point at the same landmark, they can figure out the angle of their arms relative to a line drawn between them. When they have that, there's some straightforward math to figure out how far the landmark is. Over."
Scinjir's tone holds doubts; for my part, the Gnome strikes me as the sort who would have taken lectures on 'plane geometry' as an excellent cure for insomnia. At least, initially.
"Don't worry about it for now, Scinjir," I send, trying to reassure him. "I'll be using that math in a few other ways to target Jilalyn's tree for the zip-line installation, but I'll wager I can work through the calculations quickly and accurately enough on my own."
Now, he sighs with audible relief, followed by a yawn.
Snatdrure and Jilalyn chuckle at him, though I noted a certain ragged edge to their own response, as well.
"Anyway, I'll move the one on the side of the maintenance stairwell wall upward as the nanites keep building. Sometime soon, once I've built up the floors to where they're level with the foyer, the two antenna will let me communicate clearly in the river-valley, as well as outward from the ridge-tops. And it's always a good idea to have a backup, in case one or the other gets damaged."
"Sounds like a good plan," Snatdrure says. "Ah, I think we're here... I can see some of that silvery stuff of yours spread out across a part of the roof, Joachim. How far away from it is safe enough, over?"
"Let's say three Snatdrure-paces, for now," I answer. "They're also making sure that the anchor-points for the ladder have a solid connection to the rest of the roof."
"Hey," Scinjir interrupts. "We aren't that heavy...!"
I wait a moment, until Snatdrure does something to encourage him to finish with a proper, "Over."
"There's some more math involved, Scinjir. Basically, the further away from the anchor point you get, the more pressure you put on it. And that's not even taking into account the possibility of sudden wind-gusts making the ladder start swinging, or anything else. Over."
"Oh," he responds. "I... guess that makes sense... Uh, over."
"Well, if you would rather watch something a little more impressive, you can circle around to the edge of the roof and watch the nanites construct the initial stages of the elevator-lobby floor," I offer. "It will wind up taking at least another day to fully enclose, but for now, a basic floor-platform capable of holding both of you safely should be finished a little after sunrise. While that swarm of nanites work on that part, I can temporarily override some of the safety protocols and assign another swarm to unseal the door into the stairwell. Give it another two hundred Snatdrure-breaths to get the basic framework in place for the platform, and two hundred more to make sure it's sturdy enough before you start climbing down, please. Over."
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Posted Oct 31, 2023, 3:56 PM UTC