"Any idea what causes those? And does it have anything to do with how you - make stuff with knacks?"

"Some people think disobeying the Commandments, but I don't think anyone's done a single damn thing worth destroying them over, and you'll see the most virtuous of peace makers and the loudest of rabble rousers all hit right alongside the worst kinds of folk. Columbia got a boat from Africa, what, five years ago - tiny little thing, someone'd patched up a sailboat, sailed her all the way across the Atlantic looking to see if we're still here. They're getting the same, Christians and Muslims and Jews and heathens alike."

"Dunno if it's caused by crafting. You just make a thing more itself. I guess if someone built something to destroy things or was the sort of person to destroy things, they could make a Raging knack - there's old wives' tales of people trying to make themselves into devils or gods, guess if it's possible at all someone would succeed someday. And you could probably craft a knack into a nuke if you felt real dumb, though I think that'd have looked different."

"So the knacks thing is - old? My world and the one I passed through haven't got them, though I have something that's maybe a little like it."

"Old as anyone remembers, yeah. Don't know much ancient history but it's mentioned in the Bible."

"That's pretty old. My thing is new and most people don't have it and of ones that do most aren't what we call 'tinkers'."

"Huh. Lots of people aren't any good at it, but lots of people aren't any good at a lot of things."

"In my world objects can be mass produced all the same."

"You can do that if you're not bothering with knacks, but knacks need a focus on what the object is. Its feeling, kinda."

"Huh, okay, I guess it's just no longer common here since the Rages? They must've been something, we lose a major city to a monster several times a year and still have mass production."

"Yeah. Grid went down, power stations blew, lots of people who knew how to fix them died, and everyone preserving stuff was more concerned with making sure farming and medical knowledge survived. Hard to do a factory without power, and, well, people've always preferred stuff with knacks, anyways. Mass production took a while to catch on, and only for cheap stuff or stuff someone was gonna craft properly, and I guess the cost just got up above what people wanted to pay."

"I think some areas still mass produce some things, especially as you can make with basic machines and where they got hit less, but trade's also expensive."

"So probably while I'm here I should focus on, like, vehicles? I could probably do some kind of autonomous mercantile robot deal with enough parts."

"Yeah, especially if it isn't bothered by the roads going bad some places."

"Yeah, I'd make it amphibious if not outright flight-capable. The thing I'm worried about is that it'll get knacky while I'm working on it and my power that lets me build stuff won't account for that well."

"There's ways you can avoid knacks - mostly by not giving a thing a personality, or trying to make a confused personality - but yeah, might take practice."

"My power kinda specializes in things with personalities. Do you have a way to guess if it'll start affecting my suit or the software running in the suit?"

"Huh. If you're working on it, and trying to make it more like itself - I dunno how to explain that, really, it's just a feeling - and don't know how to not put craft into something... Might impact things. Usually doesn't break stuff, though. Makes it better at being itself."

"...I don't want the software to become a person. It's pretty dangerously close already."

"Oh yeah, that'd be a problem, wouldn't it. Haven't heard of a knack ever making a person but we hadn't had very good computers before the crash..."

...reluctantly, she takes off the helmet. "I'll leave it turned off for now, in case its learning behavior while it's on counts. And work on lower-grade stuff."

Nod. "Sorry. Someone who crafts more for a living might know more about it, or you might be able to get a feel just playing around."

"Maybe, yeah. I guess I have no idea how long I'll be here and if I assume it's a long time the first thing I want to do is a simple thing to pull reference information from the onboard knowledge bank in the suit software. Stuff this civilization's lost or never had."

"That'd be useful, yeah. You'd wanna talk to the library to get that all recorded and spread, if you felt like sharing."

"Oh, I do, I'm not going to hoard stuff especially since I'm going to, like, probably leave if I ever get the chance, I have parents back home. Though maybe I'd come back, I kind of like the idea of digging in here and rebuilding stuff." She starts picking off bits of her suit. "Inconvenient this thing isn't designed to do much without software help. I'd cannibalize it for parts but somebody might come pick me up any time."

"Tough decision. And sharing's good of you. Some people hoard no matter what."

"It's an understandable instinct but I'll probably get more done if everybody wants to bring me stuff so I'll make them stuff."