Day 56: Bill's Hardware (Late Afternoon)
The day had gone by surprisingly fast. Guy could hardly believe that it was drawing toward an end, but the fact that he'd run into Natalia against all odds was probably what contributed to that. Still, he'd made one purchase, caught up with her at least somewhat, and had lunch, so Guy was set for the most part. The last thing that he wanted to do
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When Guy started walking, Rita followed, answering his question as she walked. "I picked up a notebook and a magnifying lens, for research." Neither were anything impressive, but they'd have to do if she was stuck on a shoestring budget. "I'm going to be investigating a possible blastia core in the institute tonight, so the lens should help with that, at least."
As they moved through the aisle, Rita kept an eye on the shelves she passed, noting any products that were within her price range. Many of the adhesives were affordable... but would she use them for anything? Best to wait and see if she found anything better. She could always come back.
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Her purchases seemed practical enough. He didn't know why she needed the notebook when they were already provided with a journal, but maybe she was paranoid about the staff snooping, which wasn't completely unreasonable. The magnifying glass sounded useful in principle, but Guy couldn't actually think of something she could use it for off the top of his head.
Rita already had an answer for that, though, as was made clear when she explained what she would be doing that night. Blastia -- those were the stones she had explained to him, the ones that produced energy back in her home world. Or they had, anyway. "Wait, there's something like that here in this place? But how's that possible? How did you find out about it?" As he turned into the next aisle, Guy found that it was meant for small tools. Wrenches, pliers, hammers, the whole nine yards was here for perusal. And yet he doubted they would be allowed to buy any of them.
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Looking around, most of the tools on display looked both affordable and potentially useful... but chances were slim that the shopkeeper would let a bunch of "mental patients" walk out with hammers and sharp objects. It was vexing to even think that she was being viewed that way by the townspeople, but for now Rita had to keep her anger in check and focus on equipping herself with whatever she could.
"That reminds me," she went on after a pause. "I wanted to hear about the types of energy used on your planet." Though Guy had said that his planet's main source was about to run out, that didn't make Rita any less curious about what it was and how it worked.
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Seeing all of these tools reminded Guy of the time that he'd built a house with his own two hands. He'd lived with tools like these as his only friends for a good while during that time, and the memory was both comforting and far away. Though he was soon dragged out of those thoughts by Rita's question.
"Oh, sure," he said in response, already seeming excited at the chance to talk about it. He didn't know how well she would be able to follow, but Rita was a smart girl. She would probably be fine. "As you know, a lot of this is going to be obsolete pretty soon, but... basically, in terms of both magic and energy, Auldrant runs on a source called fonons. The planet is surrounded by them and also full of them, and there are seven different types that correspond to different elements." From what he'd learned, the separation by elements was common among a number of worlds.
"Fonists can use fonons to cast spells based in those different elements, but the fonons can also be converted into energy and used to power machines. We call them fon machines." And that was really the most exciting part of it all. While his explanation was very clear, the bright look on his face was hard to miss. For a moment, he'd forgotten about what he was looking for.
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"Fonons..." she mused, mulling over Guy's explanation in her mind. Surrounded by them, full of them... they sounded similar to aer in that respect, but hearing that there were different types was a surprise. Aer was aer, and mana was mana - the only variation found in those sources was density, generally.
"Can you explain the different types of fonons?" she asked, deciding to take full advantage of Guy's knowledge while she could. "And... what sorts of fon machines are typical in your society?" Rita had a feeling that city barriers weren't as common in other worlds as they were on Terca Lumireis, and resources likely went to other types of devices.
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"A Seventh Fonon, the one of sound, was created later. It had healing properties but also made it possible to read something called the Score, which predicted the future." He paused for a moment then, letting out a sigh as he considered all of the problems that it had caused. "As you can imagine, that wasn't all good."
As for fon machines, he could talk about those all day if he was given the chance, but they were short on time and he still needed to find what he was looking for. He started to move into the next aisle. "Oh, they can be all sorts of things! Practical things like elevators or land-ships, machines meant for security measures in buildings, and even robotic guards." He'd fought a few of those in his time, no thanks to Dist.
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"...Hm," was Rita's initial response to the explanation, but she followed it up with something more intelligible. "Magic in my world uses the same six elements. There's only one type of aer, though. It's converted to whatever form is needed." Perhaps some aspects of magic were universal... or at least common, even among different worlds.
There was one part of Guy's explanation that she couldn't completely wrap her head around, though. "... Predicting the future?" Rita asked, her eyes wide with surprise at hearing something like that mentioned so casually. "How does that even work?"
She couldn't help but be a little skeptical. While she knew her society's technological level was low compared to some places, and there were a lot of developments they hadn't even begun to dream about... things like predicting the future were usually the stuff of superstitions, rather than scientific speculation. Still, if there was an explanation for it, she'd hear it out.
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Unlike everything else, the Score was something that Guy was fairly certain was unique to Auldrant. He had imagined that Rita would want to hear more about it, and so he set his own feelings about it aside to give an unbiased explanation.
"The Score is something that is believed in by most of the residents of Auldrant because Yulia Jue, one of the first Seventh Fonists, used the Seventh Fonon to predict the future. This prediction was then written down on fonstones -- tablets of sorts -- and scattered across the world. A religion was formed around it called the Order of Lorelei, and those in charge started to gather the fonstones and deliver the word of the Score to the masses."
There was a lot more to it than that, seeing how their entire culture had been built up around the Score, but there wasn't enough time to go into it in detail. It wasn't exactly Guy's favorite subject, either.
As he moved down the next aisle, which was full of building supplies from bricks to wooden planks to everything else, he finally came across what he was looking for: large pieces of leather that, with some handiwork, could be shaped into the exact form that we wanted. "Here we go," he said mainly to himself, reaching to pull some off of the wall.
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It sounded like Yulia Jue was a respected figure, but Rita knew from experience that that didn't necessarily mean she was absolutely trustworthy. One needed only to look at people like Alexei to see how people could abuse the trust placed in them, even if they earned such trust through honest hard work.
"Right. So it's a religious thing." Rita didn't say more on that, but the look on her face implied she wasn't entirely convinced.
She shifted her attention instead to the product Guy pulled from the shelf. "So they have it after all." Looking around, this aisle had a few materials that Rita would have found useful - if she had the money or authorization to take them back with her. Facing Guy again, she asked, "How do you plan on making a sheath out of that?" Though leatherworking wasn't an area she knew much about, Rita had a basic idea of how sheaths were made, and most of the necessary tools were scarce or unobtainable, as far as she knew. Guy would probably need to improvise in quite a few ways.
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Still, what mattered was that they could get on without the Score. People in other worlds clearly did, and no one should ever be so tied to that idea of fate. Life wasn't a path that you followed, but one that you made, right? Luke, himself, and the others had proved that.
Then again, Van had also proved it in his own way, hadn't he?
However, it seemed that Rita had moved on, and as Guy studied the quality of the leather in his hands, he glanced over to her. "It won't be easy," he replied with a shake of his head. "The sheath is going to be crude, but if I can find tools to cut this leather and then stitch it together, it would be better than nothing." Guy was good at being innovative when it came to this sort of thing, though he had to admit that he'd never been as short-handed as he would be now. Still, he was willing to use his money on a long shot, since he hadn't discovered any other use for it.
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Well, it still wasn't a technical explanation, so Rita continued to shrug it off, even if she felt vaguely sympathetic for a society that functioned like that.
"I see. Well, good luck with that," she offered. It looked like Guy really did plan to improvise, but so long as the result was usable, it probably didn't matter that it wasn't professional-grade work. Rita could at least respect that he planned to use his money on something as practical as a sheath. She was sure some patients were blowing their allowances on useless junk.
From where she stood, Rita noticed a "nurse" in the store, gesturing for them to make their way to the front. She nodded in that direction to call Guy's attention to it, then said, "Looks like it's time. I'll see you around." Since Guy was going to have to stop at the register and Rita didn't feel like waiting for him to make his purchase, she went ahead and made her way to the exit before him.
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However, in a split second Rita had gone from chatting with him to wandering off, though Guy didn't take that to heart. Waiting for him to pay wouldn't be very interesting and she probably wanted to get back to the buses considering how dark it was getting. He didn't think Rita had been here when the zombie attack had happened, but she'd probably heard the stories.
And so Guy sectioned out a sheet of leather that would give him more than enough to work with to make the sheath, granting him some extra material in case he made a mistake. Paying for it went surprisingly smoothly, and before long he had the roll of leather tucked under his arm as he headed back to the drop-off point.
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