"Yeah, I think there's still space in one of the tents, if there's not then you can get a couple heat and illusion mages to make someplace warm and private for the night."

"I'll just... Go do that then." His eyes linger on Mahan a bit as he turns to leave. "See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'd love to."

He smiles again, and steps out, and goes to rent a place to sleep and study his notes on the Hari language and try to muddle through his feelings and sleep.

The next day someone goes looking for Nikolas.

She won't have to look far, considering he's also looking for her. "Next batch of whatsits are ready, you want to go help me figure out what's wrong with 'em this time?"

"Yep! And after that do you have some free time?"

"Well, probably not. Busy busy busy. I'm starting on a proper workshop soon, inventing and figuring out all sorts of things, proper computers are closer by the day, got to keep ahead of the New Dovites, you know."

"Oh, that's nice. Let's see your broken whatsits, I guess."

"You do remember you're getting paid, right? Well, let's be off, then."

He's come a long way since the first attempts at semiconductors. These are much more sophisticated and hardly anything is wrong with them at all. He tries to have her narrow down the exact step where things went a bit off. And there are other whatsits now, too - precision magnetic spinny disk things, various other little arcane arrangements of wire and metal and electricity. He has rapid-fire questions about all of it.

And she has answers. "They're better this time! If only your calculators would give you partial credit for trying!"

"You know, there's a funny story. Tiny problems in calculators that break the whole thing - even just one letter out of place can do it - are called 'bugs'. Because the first 'computer bug' to be called that was a literal insect that had gotten stuck on one of the relays and burnt to death and stuck it closed. Everything must be perfect for these to work. They're going to be very impressive, though. When I finally freaking get the manufacturing process working consistently. Who knew something that took thirty years the first time around is hard to replicate, even with all their books."

"You can do it! D'you need a death mage to keep bugs out?"

"Couldn't hurt, come to think of it. I'll find one later." Sigh. "Okay, so about the microphone, it should have..." He puts them both back to work.

Work work work. It's a little tedious.

And then he has a page of notes on what to try a little better next time. 

Little electronic bits and bobs and toys are scattered around the place, but he doesn't need to make something sellable, he has his capital for now, he wants to get to the point where he can make microprocessors that he can write programs for, and make little personal computers and arbitrary electronic gadgets with.

"Well, that's us done for today. I think you've earned a raise by now. From today on, one forty four an hour instead of one twenty."

"Of course I have."

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself. But you're not wrong. I'll have more for you to do tomorrow." He yawns. "Well, unless I work on my buildings tomorrow instead."

"Guess we'll see if you can make anything work by then."

"I'll get it eventually. G'night."

She leaves.

Not a lot happens for a couple of days.

Eventually Valanda goes to see New Dover.

It's a bit of a tent town right now. Their small tower of a water heater-pump-thing has gained two friends, one of which is powering a sawmill and the other is soon to be hooked up to a greenhouse, which looks mostly finished. The automaton plods around slowly, as with the whole past week, hauling trees from Valanda's logging area.

A few of the tents have gotten sturdy wooden framing with some of the fresh timber from the sawmill, and even a few windows, making them look almost like temporary buildings. A kitchen, a temporary church, a clinic, and a planning office. The neat array of tents each have pipes leading into them.

They've marked out plots of land with colored stakes set into the ground, and dug a couple of building foundations. One of the foundations even has the first timbers of a building frame going up already.

Katherine the botanist comes out of the near-complete greenhouse when he approaches. "Welcome, governor! I have learned a little Hari!"

"Hi, Katherine! Looks like everything's doing well. Do any of you need anything?"

"More money to pay more mages!" She laughs. "Maybe protecting some things? We are almost done making the greenhouse, in a few days I want you to un-defend my seeds and I can see which ones sprout. Tell other people they are welcome to visit if they want, too. Especially if they will talk to us so we can learn Hari, or do magic for us cheap!"

"Sure, I can let people know and come by again in a couple days. I'm impressed with what you've built so far, I think you've outpaced the rest of us."