"Aluminum skin for ships will probably help a lot. Or an even lighter alloy, there might be a candidate in my handy dandy computer library. Or even, say, fire-suppressing foams. There's options."

"Want me to look at materials and tell you what I think I can make that might be useful?"

"You mean, look through my library for things that you might be able to make, or what? Sounds productive, anyway."

"Yeah, that. Do you have any books that describe the chemical structures of lots of things or should I just read all the books in case there's some things here and there?"

"I think I have one paper chemistry book-" He gives the title, "And a few more on my computer, but I don't want you touching the computer without me there, mind if we go over stuff together tonight?"

"Sure, sounds good."

And evening comes without them finding a town Nick likes the look of - there were a couple, but too small for their purposes - and he opens up his fancy Milliways-purchased laptop and shows Valanda lists of useful materials that Cloudbank might enjoy.

Most of the medicines have structures too complex for him to make without spectacular amounts of luck. The interesting things made of simple materials under pressure are... maybe possible.

"We might be able to combine my magic with some other way of making things. Or maybe if I go really slowly, atom by atom, they'll just... choose to bond. I think that's how molecules work, right?"

"Problem is molecules are incredibly tiny, doing things to them one by one would take a while. We could try some tricks with film deposition, or other chemistry stuff. I think using technology on magic will work better than trying to get magic to cover the whole gap."

"Whatever you think will work. What're your priorities for introducing technology?"

"I'm still thinking about it. I think - things that will be popular and relatively easy first. Metal tools and containers and walls. Weapons if we think we can trust the folks we're making them for. Then improving access to food, navigation, and medicine. I should probably write out, like, a project plan, but it's not my strength exactly. Maybe I can find someone who's good at organizing, but bringing in someone new also introduces new risks."

"That sounds as good as anything. Will we be able to sell metals and technology to everyone if we stay in one place? Will they all eventually come find us?"

"We need a project plan. If we sell useful things extremely cheap, they'll percolate around the world - not as quickly as we might like, admittedly. Maybe we can build communication systems and fly around hooking up as many cities as possible to those, so we can know who needs what."

"That sounds useful, if we can figure out how to find everyone to give them the communicators in the first place. Will the communicators be able to... see each other's locations, somehow, so we can find the people who call us?"

"I think at minimum I can get them to read direction and distance and we can have people make maps based on that. Do you think you can make metal into the shape of a wire, with practice? I saw the lumps you made for that farmer, but would practice help with that? It's not essential but it'd speed things up a bit."

"I think so, wire should be pretty simple. What kind of wire?"

"Copper. Or gold, gold is like copper but moreso if you try to do wiring things with it. But for now, copper, don't want to shock people with fabulous opulence too much right away, yeah?"

"How even do you need the thickness, how thick should it be, how long do you need it to be?"

He consults a notebook and reads off some stats. The thickness should be really even, ideally.

"Just a couple feet long for the test runs. I'll want more to try and make an electric motor and generator with if it works well."

"I'll have to practice but at least if I make a mess of it you can still sell it as scrap. Do you have anything you want me to work from right now or should this wait till we find another town?"

"I have a bin of scrap and recyclables and compost. Copper scrap is strictly more valuable than any of that."

"I'll see what I can make out of that. Want me to go work on that now or have you got anything else you want me to do first?"

"Nothing urgent, go ahead. And thanks. I have to do some checks and maintenance on the engines and so on, so I'll see you in a couple hours?"

"Sure, see you then!"

Off he goes to work on wiremaking for a while.

Maybe two hours later, he comes upstairs to investigate the no doubt growing pile of scrap.