Of all the usual results of a blow to the head, this one probably isn’t even in the top four. One minute a misunderstanding with a crowbar and a man called Hercules—in retrospect that should have been a warning sign—the next…something else.
This isn’t the Colt Arms Factory, and it isn’t even Hartford. He’s in the middle of a ravine he’s never seen before. Must be a practical joke by someone who’s about to be unemployed. He groans, pushes himself to his feet, and works his way up the nearest slope. On second thought, this is less of a practical joke and more of a dream. The half-clockwork dog would be decidedly impractical to fake, and the enormous bipedal beetle is far too well-dressed.
At the top there’s a fence, with signs facing the other side. No gate is in evidence, but the fence isn’t too much of an obstacle. From the other side, the signs can be read as saying variations on “beware of the magic.” Huh.
From atop the slope, there’s at least a clearly visible destination. A nearby city, it may not be any city that was nearby when he was last conscious, but it’s better than here. He heads toward it.
One of the vendors has some unusual wares. Each sign has a name, an age, a price... And a person chained to a wall. He stops, and addresses one of the more alert-looking captives.
"Ayabel? I'm Hank, Hank Morgan. Please tell me this is anything other than what it looks like?"
"Of course there's a king. It'd be too much to hope for a halfway decent republic... At any rate, yes, I suspect it's the king I'll have to convince eventually. Though that does sound difficult from a standing start, and far too slow to help you."
If the papers are in his possession, can we write it out like I bought and freed you? No one else needs to know I haven't the funds, and a strange and obviously foreign person could go either way on that score."
I'd assume the security you mentioned is guarding you when the market's not in session; is the same true of your owner? If not, I could rob him then. And show up claiming to have bought you and with papers to prove it."
In the meantime, I should probably find a blacksmith or something and see if I can get," he glances up at the sun, "half a day's work on short notice. Dangerous felonies on an empty stomach sounds like a bad idea."
He pulls out a pocket watch and looks at the sun again. "Good, it's about the same time of day it is in Connecticut."
Keep in mind that a hundred and twenty five is the only number that means anything to me directly; can you guess at a ballpark number for the watch so I know if I'm being cheated?"
This would go much better with her doing the negotiating, but under the circumstances that's probably not an option.
"You did walk out of a magic with inexplicable memories," Ayabel says. "And an unprecedented timekeeper. But if it hasn't screamed, squirted blood, or stopped working until you fed it a fried egg so far, that will probably be good enough for the collector and you can probably get at least five hundred, maybe twice that."
"Look, whatever your memories tell you, you walked out of a magic with that thing and they haven't existed for hundreds of years here. Best just to say it's from the magic and is merely oddly well-behaved. You're looking for Chayer Terunone, and he lives twenty minutes' walk north of here in the gaudy green mansion, and you can probably have a two-hour hold on me with no collateral if you ask the proprietor nicely and don't say anything crazy."
I just came out of a magic, and was apparently very lucky if that chair is anything to go by, and heard that you offer a fair amount even for useless items sometimes.
I've got a wallet full of what I assume is meant to be money that's no good here, and these clothes if it's worth making another trip back here after buying some normal ones, but the main thing is this."
He shows the pocket watch. "No explosions or unexpected behavior of any kind. But it keeps track of what time of day it is, more precisely than any non-magical method. And it can show you which way is north, if you need that kind of thing." He launches into an explanation of how to use it for both.
But considering how predictable magics aren't, it would require an astonishing amount of good fortune for such a thing to even exist."
The banking system could look like anything here. Slavers might accept bank notes and make change, or they might not. For that matter, the notes could be backed by gold, or anything else, or nothing at all, and who knows what that might mean.
The obvious first thing to make is gunpowder. Requires very few starting resources, and useful for demonstrations if not much else. Would also be indescribably valuable for militaries, though I hesitate to hand control of the world to any country I just met."
Ah! I have it. The combine harvester. That sign said you had some familiarity with farming, though I hope it was lying; you were what, six? Anyway, it reaps, threshes, and winnows all at once. Can definitely pay for itself, or vastly improve an economy of your choice, depending on the time of year."
So the next question is, how much is what's left of the thousand actually worth? It'd be too much to hope that we're set for years, but if it's a matter of days before it runs out then I'm sorely disappointed in your economy's prices for both slaves and eccentric rich men's collector's items."
"On eight hundred seventy-five you are not rich but you will not be out of money in a week. For maximum frugality, we can sleep in a church attic as charity cases, eat mostly rice at whatever hours the clergy aren't using their stove, and not replace your bizarre outfit. We could probably coast for a year like that if necessary, which it probably isn't. We could also rent either one or two rooms in a boarding house, try not to develop rabbit starvation, and get you normal clothes and me a pair of shoes that cover the heels, and we're probably covered for two to four months."
Other possibilities are things like communication faster than any messenger can travel, light with no need for burning, or rendering buildings immune to lightning strikes. No way to prove that last one works, though."
But we're not in much of a hurry, so maybe once we have rooms you look into nearby countries and I'll start inventing electricity?
And no, Ancient Sudre is no more intelligible than it should be.
If this is any more surprising than the rest of everything, maybe try a pun? If Esevi and English happen to have the same sets of coincidentally-similar words then something is even more up than it seemed."
"People who mix various chemicals together while being grotesquely unscientific about it. The materials I was thinking of just now I could make from scratch with oil of vitriol, but if there are people known for working in funny-smelling laboratories with lots of glass bottles then it might be easier to see what's already available."
"Season is moderately important to the combine harvester's prompt usefulness and sounds less relevant to your other ideas, and unlike the messenger idea doesn't require convincing at least two people to make one sale. I definitely advise starting there so you'll have the leeway and reputation to advance other ideas."
But that also means if we do sell someone the machine or its services, they could just copy it. Not a problem most of the others have. Do you have patent protection here?"
"If you prove you invent a thing, the government gives you the exclusive right to make them. No one can copy it without paying you first. The theory is that people will be more likely to invent useful things if they can profit from it more. Not that I invented this, but the point stands."
The other wrinkle is that the harvester is likely to be the fastest at increasing prosperity wherever it goes. If I keep enough control of it, I can sell exclusively to people who use free labor. Or even exclusively to free countries...it's big. Maybe spreading it everywhere is the way to go, or maybe not, but that can't be undone."
In any case, first order of business would still be a demonstration copy of the combine and as many related machines as possible."
"My main concern is access to a space where assembling machinery is less frowned on; presumably they don't take kindly to that sort of thing in the rooms. Other than that, any one is as good as the next."
"The buffer zone is rather dangerous if one doesn't know exactly where the magic starts, and sometimes embroidered animals can be destructive and it's likeliest near the magics, but this does mean no one is already using most of it. We'd have to maintain the signage around wherever we were set up, but wouldn't incur other land costs."
"While magics produce a wide range of effects, including harmless things from your timekeeper to you, there is no particular reason to believe that they definitely won't turn a fruit fly into a firebreathing elephant-shark hybrid with spikes, or something. The gun sounds very impressive but most people prefer to avoid dangerous magic results via distance for a reason. It's cheap to go there for a reason. It will probably not get us killed but it should not be the default option if it turns out we can afford something farther away from the magic."
"Sometimes the monsters - or the inanimate objects - or the mysteriously pale and pun-impaired men - are useful or interesting, as with the collection you contributed to. But it's certainly safer to occasionally throw a cat at a magic from a safe distance while prepared to deal with a flying tentacled horror if that's what you get, than to have them at the bottoms of ravines next to the only roads between certain cities. So it would be better for all but the tamest and most convenient magics to be got rid of, if that were doable."
What they can get, if they walk up the whole Row to see all their options, is apparently a single room with a bed that ostensibly could fit the both of them for five seo per fifteen days (it goes up if they want to buy in smaller blocks), or a room with two beds for seven seos, or two beds in a room with other people for two seos every five days.
He is informed that he may use the kitchen but must not get into fights with other residents or the landlady's sole discretion will be used in sorting out (and if necessary evicting) involved parties, and there are bath facilities (such as they are) in the back, and he is to be quiet after dark and very quiet after it has been dark for a few hours. And he is shown to the room.
Eventually he collects himself. To pass time, he retrieves a small note pad and pencil from a pocket, and starts sketching out plans and designs.