The Way Ahead

Edwin wasn’t really sure how long he sat in silence, staring at the flames as his campfire slowly died down. Inion had tried to say something at one point, trying to get him to continue talking about Earth by trying to persuade him that she really did care about his story, and that she did care about him. She seemed almost genuine, too.

Edwin didn’t buy it, though. He’d been in this position before. Even if she did legitimately feel bad for him, it wouldn’t last. Give it a day, maybe two, and she’d return to however she felt beforehand. She wouldn’t ignore him, at least, though in some ways that might be worse.

His emotions began to try and claw their way out of their boxes, wanting him to pay attention to them. But no. He couldn’t do that, not yet. If he gave his emotions even an inch, he’d regret it. He’d do something which seemed like a great idea at the time, but just didn’t make sense, or made him vulnerable, or something. No, if he was going to open up fully with his emotions, he wanted to find someone who actually cared about him and somewhere to call home first. He was in a completely new world, after all! There was bound to be somewhere just right for him where he could settle down. Heck, that was even partially the point of his cabin-in-progress! If it turned out well, maybe this could be his home. Even if this wasn’t it, the world was really big. He could find somewhere to settle down.

The fire swirled into eddies, twisting and dancing as he poked at the burning logs with a spare stick. Edwin tossed the branch into the flames, twisting Firestarting such that it was firmly on fire before it even landed. Well, there was nothing to be gained sitting around feeling sorry for himself. Before he did anything else, though, he stood up, brushing off the dust from sitting and stretching his cramped legs as he got a few more logs for the fire.

He’d found that Firestarting meant he didn’t strictly need dried wood, but unless he wanted to keep the Skill constantly active, green wood made a lot more smoke than deadwood. Granted, it would probably help his Skill level if he did so- he dismissed the level 45 notification as it popped up- but the strange fatigue associated with doing so made it firmly not worth it for the time being.

As a result, he only kept it going long enough for his fresh logs to catch firmly ablaze before releasing it. He then retreated a few feet to escape the smoke, dropping onto the dry ground.

The half-finished rhoreed mat lay next to him, discarded some time before, and Edwin retrieved it, silently picking up where he left off. A few minutes later, Inion returned from wherever she had meandered to, taking up a seat to his left.

“So… do you wanna talk about it?”

Over, under. Over, under. Over, under. Okay, that row was done. Grab a new reed, start threading that in…

“Look, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure you wanna try to deal with that somehow. It’s not good for you, keepin’ it all locked up like that, y'know?”

Finish the row, then press the stalks together for a tighter weave… what Edwin wouldn’t give for internet access. He had a vague recollection of Egyptians making boats out of papyrus? How did they get it waterproof? Did they wait until the stalks were dry first, or did they weave it while wet? Rhoreed seemed oddly flexible for something which Edwin’s intuition indicated should be stiff, but that was grass for you.

“Come on, Edwin. Talk to me. You’re obligated to.”

“…Not when I’m working.”

“Not when doing so would distract you from working. If you’re even half as smart as you like to think you are, you can weave and talk at the same time. You humans have been doing it for centuries.”

“Guess I’m not that smart, then,” his mumble was intended to be almost inaudible, but Inion clearly had better ears than most humans. That, or he was just bad at determining how loud was too loud. Probably that one, honestly. He always brought up topics and dialogues which people just did not want to hear.

“Come on, now. Don’t be like that. You have four mental skills, that’s way more than most humans ever get.” She nudged Edwin for a few minutes until it became more obvious that he wasn’t about to budge from his duties, “If you don’t wanna talk about yourself, you can talk more about Earth or whatever.”

That declaration hardly surprised Edwin. Of course they weren’t going to be interested in him, just care about the information he could provide. Not to mention that the only thing of value he could provide was because of the System, not anything inherent to him. Just that he had four mental Skills. Well, he’d anticipated as much. Still, he supposed he could oblige, and this time, Edwin made sure to keep his story centered more around what Inion actually cared about.

“So then… you were an ongoing student of….”

“Physics.”

“Right. And that was basically just math. If you wanted to focus more on things, you’d go with… Chemistry, and Biology is life. 'Making things' was engineering.”

“Yep. Physics is about taking the most fundamental aspects of reality and turning them into math. Somewhere in my mind is the speed of light, and how objects are put together on the most fundamental levels.”

“It’s so… strange” she eventually settled on, “that your kind was able to measure something like how fast light itself moves, but without magic to help support you. How big of a population can you really support?”

That had earned a few chuckles from Edwin, and led that conversation down the path of the scale of Earth, and how a few thousand just wasn’t a big town for him, that selecting from hundreds of thousands to millions of individuals was needed to find someone suitable for the most advanced of physics, which even Edwin couldn’t manage. Though with his new Skills, he could probably manage even more these days.

Over the course of their conversations, Edwin made good progress on his rhoreed mats, finishing off his first one, followed by his second. While the mat was far from luxurious, Edwin welcomed any and all additional layers of comfort between him and the dirt floor of the forest. Still, with nothing else to really do as the sun set and the darkness began creeping in, he bade Inion goodnight.

The next day proved to be quite eventful. His batch of wood-drying potion had finished treating his test lumber, and the briefest taps with Firestarting had it burning merrily. Once those flames died down, even a bit of testing showed that the wood had indeed been dehydrated, and the lumber served as excellent fuel for his fire, burning almost as well as the deadwood he’d been utilizing so much of.

The sudden success threw Edwin off balance. He'd made it work on his second attempt? That wasn’t how this was supposed to go, but hey. That just meant he could use his last batch as a bit of an experiment. Time to see if he could improve on the basic concept!

As his working theory for the mixture was that he was making something of a reverse-soap, Edwin decided to start off by more or less making standard soap, purifying his lye as much as possible, and going from there. His memories, reinforced by Alchemy, involved creating lye by boiling ashes and skimming the solution off the top into a second bowl. Once he’d filled the second bowl, a process which took hours, he boiled all of that, letting the water evaporate until he had nothing but some off-white powder at the bottom of his bowl.

This, if his memories served him properly, was Sodium Hydroxide. Perhaps not terribly pure NaOH, given the slightly yellowish color present, but NaOH nonetheless. He dried off the powder with a bit more heat and ran it through a small sifter, trying to remove any contaminants. With that completed, he placed the final powder in a ceramic beaker off to the side to make room for everything else.

Satisfied with his results, Edwin distilled some water from Inion’s pool, collecting the purified springwater in another bowl. From there, it was a simple matter to produce mostly-pure lye, slowly mixing his NaOH into a small measure of water, stirring throughout until the powder had completely dissolved. By the time he was finished, the container was actually quite warm, the dissolution having generated a sizeable amount of heat.

“So what was the point of all that?” Inion seemed genuinely curious rather than just making conversation, so Edwin didn’t ignore her this time, “Was that salt?”

“No, it wasn’t salt, though I get the confusion. It’s sodium hydroxide, which is a salt, but not the kind you’re thinking of. Highly corrosive and quite dangerous. Honestly, I should weaponize it…

“Anyway, a salt is just a chemical term for something consisting of a cation and anion in a crystalline ionic structure.” Inion looked even more confused than when he had started, which… fair, “So remember what I said about atoms and molecules? The smallest you can divide a ‘thing’ until further divisions just result in something different?” she nodded, so Edwin carried on, “There’s different ways that they can combine. You guys have lodestones, right? Metallic rocks which can stick to each other or other metals? Good. Basically, cations and anions work like that, just on a really tiny scale. They stick together and make tiny crystals, and that’s what a salt is.

“What I made is similar to what you’re used to calling salt, but when it’s dissolved in water, it makes the water basic. That’s… the opposite of acidic. This,” he pointed at the beaker where it sat, slowly cooling off, “is as pure as I can make lye, which I suppose finally answers your other question. I went through all of that because I have a theory about how the drying-out potion works and need to test it.

“To do that, I need to eliminate as many variables as I possibly can, so I took lye, which I think is the active ingredient of the ashes, and purified it as much as possible. That included getting rid of any contaminants in the water-” Inion made a vaguely offended choking noise, “I’m not saying your water is dirty, but there’s all sorts of things in any water that, well, aren’t water. Minerals and the like, which help with flavor, to say nothing of tiny creatures, dust, and more. Distilling the water just means I can be more confident that any water I use, regardless of source, should be essentially the same as any other water. There’s a whole bunch of ways to do that, and they should be used together, but I work with what I have, which… isn’t much, at the moment.

“Now, I really wish I could make DI water- ah, deionized water, that is. Like what I was saying about cations and anions, but different- especially given I’m messing around with acids and bases, but I’ll take what I can get. There’s probably some alchemical methodology I could use to magically purify it, but the Grimoire doesn’t care about that sort of thing. No, much too practical,” he muttered, somewhat bitterly. What he wouldn’t give to get his hands on the notes of Salvierra or whoever had supposedly pioneered alchemy. If she was an Outsider, she might actually have respect for the basics.

“Sorry, I’m getting sidetracked. Anyway, now that I have my lye purified enough, I can use that as my variable for this trial. I’d like to try and implement all of my desired changes at once, but when it inevitably fails I’ll have almost no information about what actually caused the problem. This way, I can just establish my baseline, get a nice, consistent base for future experiments, and hopefully get some high-quality anti-moisture potion all at the same time!”

“Seems kinda slow and boring if you ask me.”

Edwin shrugged, “Well, that’s science. Heck, that’s life. Hurry up and wait, do lots of boring work for a few moments of success. No job is entirely exciting all the time.”

“Well, for you humans anyway! My life is thrilling!”

“Didn’t you just sleep for two thousand years?”

“Other than that!”

Edwin shook his head and chuckled as he checked the temperature of his lye, lightly tapping the beaker with a bare knuckle before putting his glove back on and picking it up, angling the container to let light shine into it and double-check that there wasn’t any undissolved powder still drifting around. There was, so he added a drop of water more, but when it didn’t dissolve, he figured it was probably a trace contaminant, dust or something. Ah well.

The rest of the procedure wasn’t exciting, just following the steps one at a time until he had his final result. It looked somewhat different, for sure, as it wasn’t quite as gray as before thanks to the missing ash, instead primarily green from the added rhoreed, but otherwise had the right consistency and looked like it should work fine.

He applied it to another test log, gave himself a few stretches, and pulled up his notifications. He was expecting a handful, for sure, but was still completely blindsided by just how many he suddenly found himself confronted by.