"Oh, yes ma'am, come in and I'll wake her."

"...Oh, um, if she's sleeping I can come back later." 

"She asked to be woken for this, ma'am, it's no trouble."

"Um, sure." Sandra follows DZ in. 

DZ guides Sandra to the desk and goes to get Deskyl; she's not gone long.

:Hey! I hear you've got a list for me.:

"I do. Um, I probably haven't thought of everything but I made a start." She gets out a folded piece of paper. 

Her list includes: heating rooms and cooking (currently done by burning wood or sometimes peat), lighting (possible with magic, generally done with candles and lanterns in practice), lifting heavy things (one of the frequent requests that Savil and Vanyel get), things like glasswork or blacksmithing (possible with magic, usually done by hand due to lack of mages), transporting people or goods (can be done by Gate but not feasibly at scale, currently the state of the art is 'carts pulled by draft animals') pumping water around, and laundry. 

She's also curious if there's a way to do something like Mindspeech using electricity. The Mindspeech relay is fast, but it's dependent on Gifted Heralds being in the right places, so it doesn't extend to the whole of Valdemar. 

All of those are possible; glasswork and blacksmithing by machine will take more work than the rest. So will a replacement for Mindspeech; the way she's familiar with of doing it is to make a machine that puts an invisible signal into the air with sounds encoded into it, and other machines in other places to decode the signal and make the sound again. It would also be possible to do the same sort of thing but send the code along wires; getting the wires everywhere would be a lot of work but would let anyplace with a wire talk to any other place, instead of only certain places being able to send messages.

"Neat! Um, for the things that are easier, how would it work?" 

She can explain how to make heating elements and lights and motors, and how you use a motor to run an elevator or a pump or a cart. It should be possible to run glassmaking and blacksmithing machines with a motor, too, but she'll need to see how they're doing those things to figure out what motions the machines will need to make and how to get them to make them. (She sends DZ to get them snacks a few minutes into this, and is still going strong when she gets back.)

Sandra is absolutely enraptured. She takes a lot of notes. 

And Deskyl does, eventually, run out of things to infodump about explain. :So that's all going to be a lot of fun. I don't know what your highest priority is, though - who would we ask about that?:

"Hmm. I was about to say Savil but actually I think Lancir knows more about the overall picture. Probably whatever would save the most time for Gifted Heralds, and in the meantime we can try to think of things that we can't do yet here, even with magic." 

:Some kind of data tech, maybe. You have books, I hear, but they're bulky and fragile and figuring out where the information you want is in them is work, and good enough tech can solve all those problems and then some. That's going to take a while, though, if I'm figuring it out from scratch, it might be better to come up with some kind of writing machine first.:

"You can make a machine for writing? That's incredible! I think I heard once about some kind of magic for copying books, but that's no good here, all the mages are stretched as it is." 

"Mmhm." :Definitely. Writing's usually pretty easy -: she pauses ask DZ something. :Yeah, yours won't be hard, there's only a few dozen letters and punctuation marks. Some people use little pictures to write, that's much harder but still possible. So is copying actual pictures, like paintings or even pictures that come from a machine that records what the real world looks like, but that's much harder again, so I don't think we'll be bothering with it soon. Unless there's some specific need, I guess.:

"That's really amazing! I don't think we specifically need it that much, though – um, except that some books have diagrams that are pretty important to understanding the book. How hard is that to do? Usually it'd be just lines, not too hard for scribes to copy without knowing what it means." 

:A machine that draws any picture you ask it to is pretty hard - the drawing part isn't hard, but setting it up so you can ask it for things is. A machine that just draws a particular picture wouldn't be very hard but it might still make more sense to have a scribe draw it, depending on how many copies of the book we're making. Depends on whether I come up with a clever way of setting it up, probably. Or whether you do.:

Sandra grins. "I'd love to think about ways that could work! Hmm - I think the scribes use woodcarvings sometimes, it's just usually not worth it if they're only making a few copies, but if a machine could make lots then it would be." 

:That should work perfectly, especially if we can standardize the sizes - do you have standardization, I bet you don't. One interesting thing about doing manufacturing with machines is that they can make a bunch of things all the same, in terms of sizes and shapes and things, and make them to work together that way. I bet when something breaks right now, and you go to fix it, your crafters have to make any replacement parts they need right then, so that they match whatever they're fixing. With standardization, you can make the parts ahead of time - if you have, say, a hundred chairs all the same, it makes sense to make five or ten spare chair legs just to have, and then if any one of them breaks you can just pop it right in, no need to wait. And with the printer, it would be complicated to set it up to use any size of wood carving, but much easier to set it up to only use one size, or a few specific sizes.:

"That makes sense - what a clever idea! I think we could do that no problem, just have a couple different sizes – maybe full page drawing, half page, or small one." 

:Yeah, exactly. What does your schedule look like for the next few days? We should find some time to put together a plan.:

Sandra thinks. "I've got lessons tomorrow morning, but I'm free for a few candlemarks in the afternoon, if that works?" 

:Works for me. Do you think we'll be able to talk to... Lancir, then?:

"Maybe! He's really busy but I'll ask Savil right away. If he thinks it's important he'll make time, um, or Savil could move my lessons around so we're both free." 

:Sounds good. I expect I'll be busier once I'm recovered, but for now one time is about the same as another for me.: