There are farms and farms and farms. There's another small patch of woods. There are more farms. There are lots of livestock. There are lots of people who are culturally pretty chill about the idea of just asking if you can buy some of someone's blood. There are six humans having a picnic.

The nearest nature preserve is ten miles south and there's a fence around it.

Humans, rare but not nonexistent. He sort of wants to lurk and figure out what their culture is, if it's discernable from the general Hari culture at all.

Ten miles is a quick jog. But he probably can't just barge in there, it's a crime, right? This is more annoying than he predicted it would be. There are swathes of mostly untouched nature in America, despite rampant urbanization.

It would be weird to buy blood from a person and not hypnotize the event away. He's too used to keeping up the masquerade.

Sigh.

(And all these farmers are probably doing it inefficiently but that's not his problem.)

He finds a place with recently butchered livestock by smell and offers to buy some livestock blood. Preferably pig, not sheep or cow or whatever.

An entire pigful is available for a relatively reasonable price. The farmer doesn't seem at all confused, it really wouldn't have been a memorable event anyway.

Yay. Nutrition. 

(He doesn't let himself indulge in the thrill of the hunt like a shortsighted hedonist, but he still misses it on some level.)

He finds a lurking spot in a patch of woods and reads his tablet and downs large quantities of pigs' blood. It won't keep without dealing with more other people and he doesn't want to have to do this often.

No one bothers him. Someone visits the woods but doesn't seem interested in going anywhere near him, let alone interacting in any way.

He sleeps in the woods.

He goes back to the tiny village with a slightly better idea of the other exotic chemicals and tools he'll need to buy to make semiconductor chips, and also the idea that he really should start with electromechanical relays and mechanical storage and controls as a sellable proof of concept, instead of semiconductors. Or maybe try and sell radios. Because probably his first dozen attempts at viable semiconductors are going to be useless junk.

He goes shopping for springs and more gold and some basic tools and keeps an eye out for Valanda.

The next day he can find Valanda waiting by the sea for his force mage to come pick him up.

Boo! Nick is here. "That interview go well?"

"Nope, but maybe the next one I interview will be better."

"Out of curiosity, what qualities are you looking for?"

"Death mage, willing to travel to another continent. Able to be on call most of the time. Knows how to recognize and heal distemper, caralendar pox, rabies, tuberculosis, the flu... knows what they can't handle, knows when to admit they need to quarantine a patient and get help. Not afraid to enforce a quarantine, able to tell someone what to do and back it up. Fluent in Hari or Ilan, preferably Hari. Preferably not someone who owns anyone right now. Human would be best, agerah second-best, caralendar third-best. Under sixty, for a human, unless they're really exceptional and willing to teach their successor. Under seventy-two, for an agerah. Under a hundred forty-four for caralendri. Can tolerate being without the conveniences of civilization for a while."

"Bit of a list, yes. At any rate, looks like I won't be skipping quite as many steps towards computers as I had hoped. Turns out semiconductors are hard. I may well be willing to help you do things on your shiny island in exchange for the rights to hunt the fauna."

"What are you offering for how many kills?"

"Eh. I can build stuff. Boats, buildings. Calculator. I'm no force mage but vampires are still strong enough to fell and cut trees barehanded. And I spent years as a civil engineer and then a construction engineer, once. I know how to build very tall buildings with automatic elevators, no force mage required. I can sell the meat and give you tax money on it. I can do paperwork and infrastructure planning. I did a lot of research on obscure topics back home, tracking down lost magic, if you need something researched. I can map the land very quickly, what with the keen senses and excellent memory, if you haven't had some knowledge mage do that already. More questions on the crystal ball, which could land you good people faster now that I think of it. Favors from my other magical artifacts, which are numerous. I could go on."

"Some of those things could be useful. How much do you need to eat?"

"Roughly a pig's worth every two or three days, in addition to some of what humans more traditionally eat. Carnivores are better than omnivores or herbivores. Oceanic mammals are tasty but I can't catch 'em as easy."

"Some of what you're offering I don't know enough to evaluate yet. How about if for the next couple months you build things and talk with me about infrastructure planning and let me use your crystal ball when I want, and you can kill up to twenty pig-sized animals in that time, and we can decide if that's a satisfactory arrangement after a couple months of trying it? I'll throw in a free ride to my next interview and then back to the other continent."

"I'd honestly prefer more. Thirst isn't fun. Also, not unless we define how much I need to build and meet with you, because if it's much at all and you're not also paying me it's a better deal for me to buy blood from people and try and get a saleable calculator working."

"Maybe you should just work for money and then pay for any animals you kill. There's an established rate for a building minus the materials and enchantments, we can figure out a fee for your consulting services, and so on. I'm copying Ehima's conservation laws, including the pricing."

"I suppose it was the bargain I made that I can't just casually ignore the law, here." Sigh.

"I'll have a look at the conservation laws. It's probably still profitable to sell the meat, no? You may wish to adjust pricing down to attract hunters, or up to keep the wildlife unmolested, depends on what you want with it. Ehh, building... I can possibly collect and process materials for buildings for you, on site, but I'm not sure if that's a vampire's competitive advantage at that point."

"I'm not sure what your comparative advantage is yet, you're the first person like you in this world. And I'm not sure how much to trust what I've read about your abilities and I'm not sure how much to trust what you tell me. I'm sure we can't come up with the best use for you right now without trying anything, no matter what we come up with I bet in three weeks we'll think of something better."

"Well, if I claim to be able to do something and then turns out I can't, I don't get paid."

"That's true. But we can both make mistakes, I can phrase job descriptions badly or you can guess wrong about things you've never tried." Shrug. "What do you think is your comparative advantage in my colony?"

"Otherworldly ideas and technology. Automation and calculation. Doing things quickly. Miscellaneous planning and recording or recalling knowledge - my brain is sharp, like most of the rest of anything vampire. My mystical artifacts, which unfortunately do not always have directly measurable effects. As to technology..."

He digs out his little tablet and opens up a calculator app and does some math. "This is the sort of thing I may be able to make, eventually. With enough effort and construction we can have the internet - sort of like a bulletin board anyone can look at and post to, where you can shop or sell with anyone in the world without having to actually go talk to them all. Imagine a market of a hundred thousand people who you don't need to talk to to know what's on offer. Or being able to see the art that someone makes, or sell your art, to thousands and thousands of people without leaving your room. Or a game where a hundred different things could happen, almost like playing it against a real person, except it's just a machine. The applications are almost endless, really."

"I want that. How long would it take you to have a working calculator and an internet?"