“Everyone, record what you did and what you think it spawned in the User Manual tonight.” Grandmother announced when the guild hall build was complete. “Start putting together lists of what we will need for the next one. We should start gathering specialized items. I don’t think we will get to it until after the term is over, but it is good to be prepared. I want to do one close to Chicago next. I was going to just rotate through the team, but I’ve decided if someone really wants it they can claim it out of the cycle, although if more than one of you want it, we’ll fall back to the cycle to pick the winner. When everyone has one we will start the cycle over again.”

  “Are you including Muriel and I in this rotation?” Joe asked.

  “If you want to be, sure,” Grandmother responded. “You’ll go at the end after Valin. You can fight over which one of you goes first. My requirements are you take part in the builds, you add the rest to the Guild and make it free for guild members to travel there. I’d like you to keep it in the guild until the crystal fails, but I realize life happens. If you can give me five years, I’ll be happy.”

  “Let me think about it,” Joe responded. “I’ve had a lot of fun, but I do have other commitments.”

  “Don’t we all,” Sarah agreed.

  “I’m in,” Muriel announced.

  “Ok,” Grandmother agreed. “I want each outpost to have cooking and sanitation facilities, barracks and an inventory access minimum. Now does anyone want Chicago over any other location?”

  “I may,” Valin announced. “A surprising amount of information can be learned in Chicago. A stranger can pass through there without question. However I am not interested in an outpost that may get absorbed into Chicago itself. How close do you plan to place it?”

  “I want to get it within an hour's travel of the settlement,” Grandmother stated. “I plan to put it above the green. Almost no one travels there.”

  “Yes,” Valin said. “I would be interested in it. I’d like to add doors and a crafting room for metal, stone, glass and fiber.”

  “Excellent,” Grandmother announced. “We’ll need to gather the tools along with everything else. We can make a scavenging run to the south gallery to get the glass needed to purchase the doors. We should pick up enough for this guild hall too. Everyone, keep an eye out for any compost plant seeds. I see that as our most limited resource.” Everyone agreed to this plan.

  “I am heading back to the Speedwell. As Joe so eloquently put it I do have other commitments,” Grandmother explained. Joe chose to go back with her. While everyone else decided to stay and try out improved training rooms they managed to spawn.

  “I’m surprised Todd let you out of his sight,” Joe said teasingly, as they drove out of the parking area.

  “He is old beyond his years. I’m happy to see him act like the young man he really is,” Grandmother replied. Todd was only seven years younger than Joe and Joe had grandchildren. Joe didn’t think of Todd as young at all. Grandmother was in her mid sixties. Joe decided that from that age Todd might still seem young. “I keep expecting him to pair up with someone. Actually I expected all of them to pair up by now. I think I’ve been keeping them all too busy. I need to try to give them more free time this year.”

  “I don’t think it's a lack of candidates that keeps Todd single. He is happy with his life the way it is,” Joe commented. Joe didn’t expect Todd to ever pair. He was too devoted to Grandmother. It wasn't sexual love, but it was a love and loyalty that didn’t leave room for another. Alex played the field with a friendly abandon, never leading any of his partners to expect more. Ellen was a bit of a mystery. Joe thought she just hadn’t met that special person yet. He thought there was something between Sarah and Kai, until recently when he started thinking it was actually Kai and Muriel.

  “I hope so,” Grandmother replied. “Do you want me to drop you at the hunter’s rest or the annex?”

  “Can you drop me at the annex?” Joe asked. “I’d like to head back to OpenSky and spend some time with Betty. It is still early.”

  “Let me check if she is back,” Grandmother volunteered. She used the cart’s on board systems to check where the hunter’s cart was. It was sitting on the turnout for the hunter’s camp. She didn’t know if Joe or Betty left it there. She sent a message to Betty telling her they were on their way back from the new improved rest. Grandmother got a message back from Betty within minutes saying she and Unkell were at the hunter’s camp.

  Alex decided Unkell was a troll. It was a close competition between troll and werewolf. When Alex discovered that there was a tradition of making troll dolls with long wild hair, troll won. Even Unkell agreed to the name, since it was a word she could say. The species name she called herself was a growl to human ears. It was heavy in the low guttural sounds that humans couldn’t hear.

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  “She is back at the hunter’s camp,” Grandmother reported. “I’ll drop you there.” Betty and Unkell were waiting for Joe. Grandmother was surprised when Unkell climbed into the cart after Joe disembarked.

  “I’m heading back to the Speedwell,” Grandmother warned the player.

  “Good,” Unkell responded, with the help of her Speedwell translator. “I want to talk.”

  “What do you want to talk about?” Grandmother said, as she directed the shuttle to drive back to the Wizard's Tower.

  “I bought a volume bowl from the glass maker at Home Square. He sold it to me for too little,” Unkell announced.

  “You mean the black bowl?” Grandmother asked. Kai made one for her and Unkell was very excited when she saw it.

  “I have not seen one since I left Grove,” Unkell said.

  “Is that where you are from? Grove?”

  “Yes, no. It is where my people meet for the growl,” Unkell responded.

  “That didn’t translate,” Grandmother observed. “Is it an event?”

  “Yes.” Unkell did not elaborate. “Many dangerous things can be crafted with a volume bowl. I can not teach your students.”

  “Asher blew himself up by making a fire potion in an iron bowl,” Grandmother replied. “This is a dangerous world. People who start thinking they can control the spread of knowledge are either delusional or power mad,” Grandmother stated. “Especially on this planet. If you don’t teach us chemistry, Control will. And Control won’t give us any warnings along with the instructions.”

  “That is not what I am trying to say,” Unkell responded. “I can not teach your students. I can not stand before their eyes. It is not in my nature.”

  “You're shy,” Grandmother responded. “I understand that. You don’t have to teach the classes. If you teach one of us, we can teach the children. It will work best if you can teach Asher. He is interested and has more time than me.”

  “I have not met this Asher,” Unkell announced.

  “I’ll introduce you,” Grandmother promised.

  Asher was in the chemistry lab, working on an experiment.

  “Asher,” Grandmother called in greeting from the laboratory doorway. She was trying to not startle him and cause an accident.

  “Engineer Whitman,” Asher replied, “Let me just shut this off.” He turned off his heat source and moved a crucible to the side.

  Grandmother led Unkell into the room.

  “Have you met Unkell?” she asked him.

  “No,” Asher replied. “I have not had the pleasure.” He bowed slightly to the player, obviously a little confused about how to greet someone with that much hair.

  “What is this?” Unkell asked, looking at the glassware after the introduction.

  “Asher is studying earthen chemistry,” Grandmother explained, “to see how it compares with the magic version.” To Asher she said, “Unkell is a master of structure chemistry.”

  “Do you know any chemistry magic?” Unkell asked Asher.

  “Some,” Asher told Unkell. “My aunt taught it to me.”

  Grandmother thought that was a good start and slipped out when they weren’t looking. Now she just needed to get Fa-Ra-Me to teach stone crafting. Speedwell’s computer told her Fa-Ra-Me was in the swimming pool on deck eighteen. She decided that was a likely place to find a selkie.

  Grandmother arrived to find every selkie on the Speedwell swimming in the pool along with a dozen or more of the youngest students. Grandmother’s first impression aside, she decided it wasn’t every selkie, but it was definitely most of them. She watched from the viewing area for a few minutes, before deciding now wasn’t the time to corner the stone sculptor. The selkie weren’t just playing with the humans, they were teaching them to swim. Any kind of instruction looked like a move in the right direction to her.

  She left the swimming pool and went back to her apartment to change out of her leathers. She might have stepped into the pool area if she thought to change first. She found the pointer amulet in her pocket. She returned it to her closet where she set it next to a stack of the cubes they got from the machines in the structure mine. Grandmother managed to ask Valin about them, but he didn’t know what they were. She realized she should ask Unkell and Enchanter if they knew what the cube was for. She slipped one into the pocket of her uniform, hoping an opportunity would arrive soon.

  She went down to the engineering control center and pulled up the Speedwell’s maintenance task list. She went through the list looking, not for something she could do, but something she could automate.

  The maintenance robots on the Speedwell may look similar to the equipment that was on board at landing, but they weren’t. They were the sixth generation of improvements. The first three generations were implementing designs that the Speedwell carried from Earth. The last three generations were based on improvements Irene designed herself. Without their help she wouldn’t have been able to keep up the ship’s maintenance over the long years when she did it all herself. In the last ten years she shared that load with her team. She could see how with the academy, her other job with the structure and their continued explorations and game play, there was once again not going to be enough time to do it all.

  She needed to get most of the maintenance and repairs automated. Keeping only the unique or new items for human completion. She was really far from that. There were numerous tasks she really didn’t know how to automate that were extremely simple for a person to do. She would work on them one at a time, from simple to more complex. Hopefully the solution to the first task would lead to a solution for the last.