"Yeah, probably. If it's any consolation nobody else thinks I make much sense when I talk about, like, personal growth, either."

"It seems important, though."

"That kind of thing you sort of have to think for yourself on, I think. I dunno."

"Being a free person is turning out to involve a lot of thinking about things. You'd think it'd be the opposite."

"You used to be a slave? Damn slavers..."

"I get that a lot! It's kind of nice how literally everyone reacts that way. You've got a much better society here, good job on that."

"Well presumably a filthy pirate slaver wouldn't react like that. But, thanks?"

"Exactly! It's nice how no one here is a filthy pirate slaver. Or any other kind of slaver."

"Glad you got free, anyway. This is my stop, though. Unless you want a beer and you're a bit older than you look, we'll have to talk again later."

She points to a restaurant advertising alcohol.

"See you another time!"

Maybe he can head Nick-ward without ending up in another situation like that.

If he remembers Lisan's instructions to stick near the grand staircases, he can get back to the workshop without running into another suspicious area!

He's so good at this! Time to find out if Nick is ready for him yet.

"Welcome back. Hope you had fun. Wanna get back to work?"

"Yeah, of course." Otherwise maybe they'll lose their ally and that lady will lock them up.

"So, I want to try some things with alloys - I looked for stuff specifically about metalworking and there's lots of potential there that's not just making gold and steel and titanium. But I'm also thinking about the future. A nice long term goal would be finding and mining the surface. Not as long term as fixing the stargate... But if people can mine the surface for resources, it might make you... Not the only knot holding everything together, so to speak. What do you think?"

"Redundancy is good and even if we were really likely to get immortality sorted out I'd still want the option to quit doing this someday. How would mining the surface work?"

"I have books - there are these things called robots, I dunno how much work whatever taught you this language is doing. If you make them tough enough maybe they can usefully get to the surface, gather up whatever's down there, and get back up somehow. It seems very hard, though."

"That does seem hard. Do the books describe anything about protecting robots from those kinds of conditions or would we just have to figure that out on our own?"

"There's stuff on hazardous environment robotics, yeah. Lots of robots are meant for doing boring work, but lots of them were meant to do work in places humans couldn't safely go, too."

"Then that sounds like a good plan. What do we need before we're ready to try it?"

"I think first step is to drop a probe down and see what it thinks is really down there. Radios, maybe some simple computers, and the materials to make it as tough as reasonably possible. This'd be easier with more mages, particularly defense and structure, but I've complained about that already."

"Force, too. And radios and computers would be a reasonable thing to work on even if we can't mine the surface, right?"

"Just so.

-I feel like we ought to get to know each other. Friends talk to each other out of work. How's the city?"

"It's great! I went and explored some and while I was out some people who don't know I'm a mage thought I looked like a target but nothing happened because this other person, who also didn't know I'm a mage, decided to come talk with me loudly about their police friend and their work fighting pirates. People here are weird, this one told me the others probably didn't want to kill me even though they were obviously planning to rob me and couldn't be scried, and if there are going to be people who are only trying to hurt me a little then I really need something between frowning and killing them because it's kind of unfair to them if I skip right over all the steps they probably expect there to be in between. Right?"

"--Goody two-shoes. Glad you're alright. Well, a murder gets you a hell of a lot more attention than a robbery. The police will tear down whole buildings going after murderers, metaphorically speaking, because uninvestigated murder makes people feel much more unsafe than uninvestigated robbery. I wouldn't exactly blame you for killing assailants and the police would side with you too, there was self-defense in the law books - if you're reasonably afraid for your life - but, yeah. Something between a glare and death. Maybe turn their clothes to nitrogen and say 'your heart's next, back off'."