Beep! He does things with the screened devices.

"I don't even know where to start. You grow up with this stuff, most folk."

"Point me to a library and I'm sure I'll pick it up.  I gather that - if there's one primary trick to it, it's harnessing lightning?  I - can hardly think of anything else that that warning symbol could mean, at least.  And the other thing to know would be what DNA is; it seems - rather core to your understanding of life."

"Caveman." Sigh. "Or some kinda long-term psy-op? Memory fuckery? ...Fuck. Palm." There's a flat pad for her to press it on. "And then look into this. Computers read off stupidly long lists of very precise instructions and do math really fast. You can set it up to give them examples of math that looks good and examples that look bad and it makes guesses about how to make it look good, that's a VI, a computer that can sorta learn but still isn't really thinking. Lightning is a form of electricity, which can be used in creative magnetic-fuckery ways and for computers. DNA is the computer-instructions that drive a living thing, except the human is ten times more complicated than the worst chaos-brain VI because evolution's the only one editing the source code and it doesn't leave comments."

"More the former than the latter, I'm rather confident.  Though I'll have you know we didn't live in caves.  Why, we could work iron.  Even make some that was of comparable quality to this knife, here."  She's poking a bit of fun at herself with that line.

Palm, indeed.  She peels off a long blue glove, first.

And then she will gaze into the machine as if she can get it to reveal its secrets by peering hard enough!

"I can hardly imagine the necessary convolutions to get an electrical abacus to show you all of that, in a format you can just read.  It's really quite a wonder.

"And - evolution, is that to do with why you can breed animals?"

"Iron. Right. In small batches by individual people? That's another thing, most manufacturing is by big machines like Serisse makes. Twenty tons of stainless steel alloy at a time. Also, not much easily accessible ore left, it's all recycling these days. Haul in an old cargo container from the badlands to the dump and you can get a couple hundred bucks for it, scrap value. I should fucking think there's no large uncontacted tribes left anywhere on the globe. Even those Tuvalu island guys or whoever got evicted for some CEO's new vacation mansion, I heard. And yeah, that's artificial selection. Evolution is when predators and hunger and shit are doing the breeding."

"Not exactly small batches, but compared to twenty tons, certainly the total production was tiny.  Twenty tons is - grain shipments, not iron.  Iron...If my numbers are right, and I do think they are...

"Mm.  The forges at Lethian's were putting out pretty much all the product we had, at least ever since the last mines got fucked over, but they were more limited by their ability to bring in ore...

"I'd still hazard that the shipments I have particular records of, multiplied by five or so because it's just the one finger of supplies, has the Forge-Bound comparing decently well to one of those.  Albeit only one, for a hundred people's labors just on the processing, let alone at the mines digging it out of the ground.  That was a right mess to make happen; everybody wanted iron, nobody wanted to haul the fucking ore.

"I do think we made what you call steel; it just wasn't by that name.  The properties resemble ones I know well.

"By the way, what's your calendar like?"

"Yeah, mass production really doesn't give a shit compared to handicrafts. I could theoretically hand-assemble a capacitor given the right stuff and an hour but it's better to pick up five for a buck off a street seller, or get them new from Bob's Tools. It's just that a highly profitable factory needs a huge military force hanging around to defend it, or someone would steal shit or blow it up. Nothing just straightforward makes money. If it does, you get shot for it. Still, lots of old abandoned industrial facilities in Cinci's guts. Cheaper to manufacture in China and Africa these days. I even salvage stuff out of them sometimes."

"Yeah, been there, done that, reorganized the mercenary company into a guard force for strategic materials that still somehow didn't catch --

"Mm.  Really ought to take a look into how it took so long for the ongoing theft to come to my attention, let alone Welby's; that's the sort of thing that people should tell other people.

"...Although I'm hardly going to be able to get in touch with them to do it, so, it's rather moot.

"Anyway, being annoyed at my past self's inadequate procedurecraft aside...

"What makes it cheaper to ship a thing off to be manufactured over there in an identical factory?  Seems kind of fake, if you ask me.  You want your final processing steps as close to the destination point as you want your initial processing near the inputs so you're not hauling around waste."

"Do I look like a corpo director of operations or whatever? Stuff does totally get made in Cinci- Everyone in cinci's eating algae and catfish no matter how processed it is, honestly, and they're actually mining the old dump because people used to just throw out perfectly good metal- Maybe it's the poverty. And the Badlands. This used to be the edge of the American midwest, or so I heard. Corn fields as far as the eye could see."

"No, you just sounded like you had some idea of what you were talking about when you said it was cheaper to make things Over There and not here.  Kinda thought you might have an idea why that was.  Still, you aren't an operations manager, so, yeah, fair enough."

And then...the algae and catfish and the Badlands being a new thing.

"...The Badlands were not always like this.  Is that what you are saying."

"Resource wars." He shrugs. "Wasn't any one thing. Global warming and climate change. Sabotage here and there, in dribbles. Land that'd been overfarmed for generations unable to cope with a sudden switch back to 'normal'. The old 'States fell apart, and all the people fighting didn't realize that what they were fighting for was slipping away until it was over. A hundred years ago, maybe even forty, yeah, the Badlands were probably fine. Forests, farms, whatever."

She swears.  Vehemently.

"Let me guess.  If someone fixed it, or looked like they were trying to.  That would be worse than an unguarded factory."

"I don't know. Maybe. Seems too big to fix- Way too expensive. The kind of thing whole nations would have to align to do, and there's no long-term gain to that when Ohio, Texas, Ontario, Michigan, and the Mississippi Combine would all suddenly be very interested in historical documents about how exactly the 'States used to be shaped. Not to mention the Felmann- They pretty much own the Dakotas for whatever they're still worth as farmland and would be pissed at the supply of farmland going up."

"Whole nations - or the right single Archon.  When the Orphan Midwife walked the land, fields bloomed in her wake.  Kyros locked her away, for sharing her Sigil - the way of echoing her magic - with nominal enemies of the Empire - and that affected the yields of the entire continent.

She seems to be getting into telling stories as she continues.

"I expect that if I had continued upon the path I had been set upon when I spoke the Edict of Execution, I would have been the first Archon of the century to achieve the title primarily by the merit of her labors, rather than mostly by quirk of fate.  No-one expected me to make Cairn scream in pain as he bore down on my city - or at least a city I was presently sworn to protect and administer, if it was not necessarily mine in the sense of ownership.  He was a walking avalanche, an invincible weapon of Kyros - until he decided he was not.  Yet I did hurt him, no matter that the task I'd set myself was yet more impossible and uncompleted.  And in turn I was asked an even more impossible task.  The Archons of War and Secrets had been tasked to suppress a rebellion of territory recently claimed - and were failing miserably.  Whether it was incompetence or treason, Kyros had had enough of that - and so the Overlord of the Empire gave unto me the gift and burden of the Edict of Execution.  A burden, because from the moment it was spoken, it fell upon me to save the lives of everyone in Vendrien's Well - no other force cared to, not even the rebels, who wished only to die gloriously and inspire greater revolt, as hopeless as that was.  A blessing, because the goal was simple enough to achieve: Take custody of the rebels' citadel beneath a Spire, to lift the Edict before it killed us all.  By whatever means I saw fit.

"I saw fit to bring everyone to the negotiating table, and unite them against the worst fucker in the room: Nerat, locus of the Voices of Secrets.  A monster in the guise of a man, the worst sort of weapon - there was no safe way to handle him, for if you thought there was, his blades would turn in your hand.  He ate people.  Consumed them as grist for the mill, as fuel for the fire, as a source of secrets no-one would tell.  And his Scarlet Chorus...

"It was a mockery of the laws of Kyros.

"As was he, for that matter, before he revealed to all present at the blue table irrefutable evidence that he was forsworn of them.

"I had not, precisely, planned for that to happen, nor for things to devolve into violence while I was arranging for diplomacy - though I cannot say it wasn't expected.  But I acquitted myself well - for even as he tried to flee, in the wake of his own body betraying him, I landed a blow upon his otherwise unchallenged Eye, who held Nerat's escape route.  Teleportation, Kyros only knows how, was hidden within the Sigil Fifth Eye cast, as dazed as he was by being thrown across the pavillion.

"And because I'd struck Fifth Eye at exactly the right wrong time, I was caught within the ritual's effects, and thrown far from Terratus.

"That sort of story...

"It would make an Archon of me to survive Nerat's direct attention.

"I outmaneuvered him.  I won a fight he picked, no matter that it was one mostly of words - and made him run, when I had not even come into the full flush of power that claim to a Spire would bring.

"And now I'm here.

"Looking up at a city of Spires, and facing a problem an Archon has solved before.

"You say that the problems of this world are too big for one person to solve.

"All I can say is that I intend to rise to the occasion."

He stares deadpan throughout this.

"...Look, head, dramatic speeches make me think less of your chances at this early juncture. You're talking like you're out of a goddamned TV show and it does not inspire confidence. Something's incredibly fucky with you and that does not inspire confidence. Who the fuck are you, huh? Reciting some kind of speech like I know who any of those people or things are? You gonna go crazy and stab me? Flip out and fuck me over for having introduced you to my contacts later? Fuck this. Free advice, it's hard to trust so at least learn to speak the language. I'll be around the market some time tomorrow afternoon with your border pass. Payment in advance, though."

He stands and shoulders his backpack.

She sighs, as whatever semi-manic force animated her through that speech subsides with the sandstorm.

"You're right; it was not the time for dramatic oration.  I'm not quite sure what came over me.  Perhaps cabin fever.  Perhaps pure need to - assert myself in my own mind; to control the story I'm in.  But to answer your question -

"I am, as I have ever been, a duly appointed Fatebinder, and moreso a scholar, a healer, a governor.  My name is Ophelia Vaudelle, and I swear upon it that I won't make you worse off for knowing me."

She hands over a scroll.

"...I hear that, surprisingly. Head's got to know who they are. Right, okay then. Pleasure doing business with you, Ophelia. Roland's my street name, for what it's worth, maybe I give you my real one eventually. See you tomorrow."

He puts the scroll carefully away in the depths of the big pack, fusses with his coverings for a bit - mask, goggles, boots, neck gaiter - and pushes open the door to the outbuilding with a grunt, letting the wind whip in for a moment, and then is gone.

...The dust storm does seem to be starting to die down though.

"Pleasure meeting you as well, Roland."

The wind does not in fact whip in!  Ophelia is glad her wards work.

The storm dies down in the next twenty minutes or so. The empty rail yard is still empty.

Then she'll proceed with her original plan of Now There Is A Tree; she wants to put better scales on this knife and she needs more blade oil.

The ground of the old train yard is concrete and gravel. There's plenty of dry dirt all around, though.

Well, it'll have to do; she'll get less yield, in nuts (and therefore blade oil) because the ritual that grows plants is going to be putting more effort in to compensate for the lack of water, but it's not impossible to press the issue, magically speaking, especially if she's just pumping it into the one tree.

A shame she doesn't have a chance to learn from that Tidecaster anymore.

...Shit, she doesn't really have anywhere to put the seeds once she's grown them.  Oh well.  She'll do it anyway.

And if a drone happens to be overflying this random patch of desert, it will see a person-shaped dot pacing a small circle that's made of some sort of sigil, while a tree visibly grows inside.

Or rather, if it could see through her illusion, it would see that.

She does not expect there to be such a drone, but she wards the area anyway.  Magic, or rather knowledge thereof, is something that should be spread by rumor alone, for now.

There are no drones flying over this patch of Badlands at the moment.

There's some wild dogs, though. Here they come, a pack, gaunt and skittish and sniffing around the scent of growth.

Well.  Hello there.  They can have a bit of Life too, gentle green wisps melting into their flesh and filling it out a bit.  It's not perfect; she's been meaning to work out a proper melding between Life and Vigor for a long while.  But it will do.

She rather hopes she won't regret this.