365. T.I, 2

(Rose)

Bleue and I were reunited with the sea, the shipyard and our fun project.

Though it became gradually clearer we would return sooner or later to meet Mushio and learn about T.I.

Still, it doesn't prevent us from using it meanwhile.

With the rudimentary tools we have found for laboratory work, I redevelop our colonies of anti-gravitational bacteria.

Bleue tries to make alcohol from the orange rice for them, but all she succeeds at is making wastes of our stocks so far. I don't blame her, it really seems harder than it sounds.

In the end, she used a trick similar to what I did.

She used a bottle of liquor found in the city and well preserved. She poured some of it in a corner of a vessel filled with the waste of molten rice goo.

And then, using a piece of broken down wish stone, a fragment of the shard she found, she transmuted the sludge into alcohol.

Making the wish, the power released worked its way through the liquor, and went duplicating its content into the goo. It went fast, and produced an enormous amount of heat. Everything began boiling.

It was spooky to witness the spell making its way. Meanwhile, it worked. She did it, using powers we do not yet fully understand. The magic worked.

The rice sludge beginning to ferment transformed into liquor, overflowing from the vessel that was filled too high.

The flow of excessive alcohol drink swamped the level and poured down into others, flooding the place, soon saturated with its sweet and slightly intoxicating vapours.

 From her success, and probably a little too much inhalation of alcohol, Bleue was laughing very loudly and energetically, for a long while afterward.

That perfume lingered for ever, and would make us laugh every time we returned to this workshop.

As time went on, we used that power she showed to replicate a few other chemicals, and even help the anti-gravitational sludge to grow also.

Properly fed and properly wished for, we can get a chemical to replicate itself from nearly anything. It's not alchemy technically since we're not transmuting atoms. But we're forcing compounds to break and rearrange, so we're forcing chemical reactions to occur. It's chemistry. Oddly to me, most of the time, we don't need to warm things to happen because on the contrary, as soon as the wish stone powder is activated, it produced a lot of heat as it reacts.

I didn't know chemistry could do that. We're expanding our knowledge slowly.

On the side, we were chopping wood and making planks from it with different tools.

We noticed a long time ago that regularly, when something dies, it decomposes faster than usual. But around here, it's even worse. Plucked flowers and leaves, unless you dry them fast, can melt and disappear in a matter of hours.

We often found ourselves unable to find back where we had cut trees down before. Because the leaves and soft branches disappeared, but also because a new tree had already begun to grow and replace the cut one, overnight.

Nature is a little more insane than we're used to around here.

Bleue is able to tell me through her other sight that this entire area is more rich in T.I than anywhere else we've been before. That must play for something.

There's a new way to draw maps of the world now probably. It's got temperatures, elevations, waters limitations or even magnetic field variations. Whatever that last one may look like. Now there should also be T.I field differences in magnitude. I wonder what this map of the world would look like.

Here, it's high. Higher than the rest of western Europe and the Mediterranean area, and even the southern shores of the black sea. That's all we know. Maybe it goes even higher in the east, or far drier on the contrary.

I have no idea what the maximum or minimum levels are, and what would be the effects on a larger scale.

We've seen what it can give in local peaks. I remember one place in Italy I think, where above a broken road, water was flowing upward, and dripping into the sky.

I guess in places unaffected, or with very low levels of T.I, life is essentially just as it used to be.

Perhaps human cities, with physicists at work still remain spared. We have found clues about that eventuality.

And in the worst places, if it can reach much higher levels than here, then it could become surreal.

Life and death melting into one another, demons rising spontaneously. I probably can't imagine what could happen there.

I would like to see such a map.

And if Mushio had access to one of these powerful satellites technologies, and working computers, perhaps...

It's the first time for us witnessing a significant difference that goes beyond the species transformations.

Plants that are cut around here melt in hours at most if you don't dry them. And they regrow overnight, without requiring any kind of help from me. It's bewildering when you start realising how vivid the forests are.

And even more peculiar is the fact that despite that, the cities are intact, when intuition would dictate that such energetic flora would have taken over everything rapidly. I can't explain it.

It always felt a little like a shame that the age of great discovery was in decline when I was growing up. I remember feeling I was born too late. That childhood frustration is somewhat compensated today.

There's a new way to map the world now. I'm quite happy with that. There's more to discover.

~

Bleue was charmed.

She was mesmerised when I demonstrated to her how my work was coming to fruition.

In one of the dry docks, planks were now hovering into the air.

They were soaked in the bacterial goo, and then varnished all over, except for a vein I left open to feed the bacteria later.

Now Bleue could see what it was for that she worked restlessly, duplicating extraordinary amounts of sludge, liquor, white spirit and rosin varnish.

The dozen of planks now hovering into this space were the greatest of gifts to Bleue. She was so happy she just yelled. I was making the planks twirl and dance weightless with the slightest of touches around me.

~

Over time, we built more and more.

We found the frame of a small boat, far away in the city. We brought it back making it turn weightless.

It wouldn't be able to hold or carry much as it was without sinking, but it still made another impression.

Not only on us, but on our new friends coming to visit us as well.

They saw the frame of a good ship being pulled and carried slowly above ground by two giant birds. That's not your usual sight around here. Even for I.

~

Mushio was extremely intrigued and curious about our work after the jaw dropping demonstration he had witnessed.

He was doing fundamental research in his abandoned power plant. We were focused on applied development here, in a way. He had the theories, while we applied what they could translate into.

The gift he brought us that day was a computer. A working computer! And with solar panels to charge it.

We forgot to tell him we didn't know how to use this thing last time.

Now will be the time to confess where and when we really are from.

But before that, we share our results happily. Varnish, solvent and alcohol.

Bleue is so happy about all this that she drinks a little too eagerly and laughs a lot. Mushio is quite similar, too happy currently not to.

I, Ana and the golden girl, we don't drink as much, we're more cautious.

And we look after our loved ones having much fun.

Ana translates a little for me what she understands, while the girl is petting her.

Night comes.

Then they notice that Bleue's tummy is a little swollen.

She caresses her tummy, merrily explaining she's expecting.

Mushio sobers up in the instant he understands what Bleue said and loses his smile.

I saw his face change and my eyes now focus on him, not smiling either. What does that mean?

He says a few words, hesitates and say a few others. Bleue doesn't translate them to me. Everyone appears frozen.

Ana steps in with a bad sounding caw and tries to translate for me.

A - He said Bleue will die.

~