Spires’s wristwatch was the only relic he had of the world he’d lost, that and a coin he’d given to MacBain. The wristwatch though, was military issue, with full holographic display, communications, organization and a really good solitaire game.
Now that the Imperial Scout Ship had left, it would have seemed that all such chatter had ended. But it had not. Someone or some thing was trying to respond to the airship, but it was in some kind of arcane telemetry that the communicator did not understand, and wasn’t powerful enough to try to adapt to the protocol.
All he could do was slowly, with many errors, as there were plenty of corridors to bounce microwave signals about, to follow it to the source.Along the way he left Samwise at a stables.
Jon Spires stood facing the power station in Clockhaven after what could only be described as a hell of a brisk walk.He reached the door, and not pausing, opened it, unsure if the facility was manned.
But stopped when he realied it was unicorned. At that moment his wristwatch began projecting holograms without his permission of various power transfer requests.
Awkward.
“Uh, good day, Sir?” he said to the being in front of him, “I think we need to talk”
Avariel Falcon and Unit #6 turned to see the visitor enter the control room.
“Hello there… I’m certain I know you from somehwere, but my identification system is having trouble locking on for some reason… I’m Avariel Falcon, welcome to the Clockhaven Power Station”.
Unit #6 rumbled, “Greetings… I… am… Unit #6… Would… you… like… to… play… a… nice… game… of… chess?”.
At close range the communicator finally seemed to be able to talk to Unit 6. Spires held it very close to Falcon why saying “Good day. Jon Spires, Wheatstone, and well, wherever. Tell me, do you know much about this unit?”
He looked at the readout, as he talked. It was an old Imperial Unit and it HAD communicated with the airship.
“Actually, while I am thinking of it, Avariel Falcon, do you know anything about gateways between worlds?”
Avariel looked at Jon Spires, “Ahh yes, you are Jon Spires from Wheatstone, knew I had met you somewhere!”.
“So you are interested in visiting other worlds? Worlds of adventure await you! Through the aetheric portal to adventure! … Or at least they did before this dark aeather with its dreadful aetheric flux… since that decended on the city we can only generate portals within the city limits.”.
“All rather bad for business sadly…”.
Spires seemed to take it all in stride. “You can? What about a little further out of the city? Say, near the Fells?”
He fished out a scrap of paper in his pocket. Various technical babble that this writer refuses to go into are scribbled on it. 45kEV, 2.1ghz, 33155 thingamabobbits etc.
“Is it doable?”
Avariel looked at the coordinates, “Interesting… Very interesting… Follow me…”.
The clockwork unicorn led Jon Spires accross the gantry, past the large main generator, to the wing of the power station that housed the portal generator. She checked settings and with the help of Unit #6 operated the controls of the portal.
“I wondered if anyone else had detected the recent aetheric activity over by the Fells… I guess this answers the question. I would love to know how you solved the q-axis equations so quickly? Most impressive!”.
Unit #6 finished entering data into the control system, “Coordinates… set… systems… ready…”.
Avariel checked the controls, “Oh my, alternate dimensional space? We really must have a longer talk sometime!”.
The clockwork unicorn pondered the readings for a moment, “Hmm… This may just work… The destination is just about within the aetheric flux surounding the city so it should be possible to open a portal. It will be a rough ride though, we will be on the very limits of aetheric cohesion…”.
“In answer to your question, it is doable, and will be quite an adventure!”.
Spires looked at the Unicorn. There were plenty of what this world called Moreau’s there, and for the most part they had a seperate-but-equal status in the Empire, but he’d never seen a unicorn.
“Where we’re heading is going to be dangerous, and you may stick out a bit. But you seem to be a.. a creature, that can handle himself, well enough.
He looked around the vast power station, admiring the work that went into building and even more to maintaining it all these years.
“I say, do you care to see if the grass is greener on the other side?”
Avariel pondered the question, “I will have to visit the other end of the portal in order to focus a transresonance crystal to the new location. Otherwise there is a risk that the portal could drift off lock. Once the crystal is focused then the portal can be reopened reliably in the future, or more importantly when we want to return home”.
(heh)
in a corner of the power station, a monk listens quietly to the conversation.
*Typist watches in interest to see if they’ll succeed*