"I hope you don't."

"Me too, the returns aren't anything to write home about."

"So... what is your plan for now?"

"Pick something to invent, collect or earn money for materials, invent it, sell it, repeat."

"Here, or somewhere else?"

"Probably it'll eventually make sense to move to a city."

"Gao Ling isn't far from here."

"Have you been?"

"Once. There's an earthbending arena there."

"Sounds fun, though more relevant to me would be the state of industry and engineering."

"I think there's a foundry there. But the Earth Kingdom doesn't really do that stuff on the same scale as the Fire Nation."

"Nobody does it on the scale I need. Good economic policy and human capital are as important as whether I need to bring it two hundred years forward or two hundred and ten."

"Human capital?"

"People who might want to work for me or make stuff I can use, who are smart and creative."

"That makes sense. What decides if economic policy is good or bad?"

"It's complicated because all of it interacts and there's tradeoffs but for my purposes low trade restrictions and low tariffs are good."

"Gao Ling might be good, then. You shouldn't go to Ba Sing Se, it's big and has a lot more people than anywhere else, but it's very hard to get things in and out."

"Gao Ling it is."

"I don't know who to talk to there but you can probably figure that out."

"Probably. Thanks for the suggestion."

"You're welcome. Do you want more paper for today or...?"

"Nah, I can't do too much at once or my error rate goes up and stuff."

"Okay. I'm going to go back to my reading, then."

"Enjoy."

Tarinda collects startup funding and heads to Gao Ling. She rents workshop space.

She invents the telegraph.

There is a foundry in Gao Ling and it does have wire drawing equipment, but they're not prepared to produce it in the quantities she'll need to connect multiple cities.