“This is nice,” Todd said, as they walked along the hallway. “I mean it’s really nice. I haven’t seen a chipped tile yet. It is not like home at all.”

  “This area does have a different motif,” Grandmother observed.

  “Staging area three two is the higher difficulty choice for continent three,” Tinkerer stated. The robot followed along behind them in complete silence. It was only a projection, so its feet made no contact with the floor. Its voice was being whispered directly into their ears with the use of nanobots.

  “The other staging area on continent three is a swamp,” Grandmother declared. She really couldn’t see how that was easier.

  “Species three is an amphibian,” Tinkerer responded. That was a rather surprising comment, Grandmother thought. It indicated the continent was tailored for the species. The mountainous area the colony ship landed in would have seemed hostile to a species dependent on water to live. Grandmother suspected species three was extinct. She thought they’d probably been extinct for thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands, darkness, it could be millions. When she thought about how many species found their way to this planet, (humans were species forty two), she could believe anything. No other species found Earth in all of recorded history. Recorded history lasted around five thousand years. If it took five thousand years for an outside species to find a planet, it must have been two hundred and ten thousand years since species one and that was just a guess.

  “It is all so clean too,” Todd continued his comments. “It even smells clean.”

  “Supersections without players are not stocked.”

  “All the lights are on the day cycle,” Grandmother stated. She was doing the math in her head and she thought it should be close to nightfall, unless they did actually circle the planet.

  “The lights are cycled on for an inspection tour. Did you want them returned to the day-night cycle?” Tinkerer asked.

  “Not right now,” Grandmother said. They were proceeding down the corridor at a deceptively easy pace. Both Grandmother and Todd were on high alert since they were walking in unknown territory. Nothing Tinkerer told them was going to make them change that behavior.

  “Let's check out a room,” Todd said. “I want to see what it looks like when everything is new.”

  They made entry into the next room. Todd took the lead position, with Grandmother at his back, ready to support him with spells as needed. He secured his glass shield to his arm and drew his large Speedwell knife, before pushing the door open. He scanned the room for any movement, letting the door swing shut. Right before it latched, he pushed it open again. Todd stepped into the room. Grandmother stepped in and wedged the door open. It was much easier to exit back out of a room if you never closed yourself in.

  The room was a simple office. There was a desk and chair in the center. The surface of the desk was bare. A side table held a single mug and a stylus. All the pieces were component furniture. They were constructed of stainless steel tubing with wooden surfaces. Alex would probably drool if he saw this room. Since Todd and Grandmother were both on the job they weren’t allowed to take anything with them.

  “There is no scrap,” Grandmother commented.

  “I didn’t think of that,” Todd observed. “No debris either. You must have to harvest the furniture.”

  “Furniture recycling is a specialty that requires its own set of spells to maximize the results,” Tinkerer announced. Grandmother shared a look with Todd. Tinkerer was giving away too much information. The last time the robot talked this much it had wanted Grandmother to go to Londontown and rescue the non-human Unkell. It was a decidedly non-Control thing to want and made Grandmother’s view of Tinkerer shift.

  “Tinkerer, please lead us to the nearest unique room,” Grandmother instructed. Spells made her think of unique rooms. Unique rooms often contained spell hints. They may not be able to take anything with them, but maybe they could remember something useful.

  “This way,” the robot replied, walking off into the halls.

  “I’ve been in this room before,” Grandmother observed. The room was large. It was furnished with rows of desks, separated by short dividers that were constructed of components and covered in cloth. The desk chairs were covered in leather. Their seats and backs were stuffed. There were two side rooms that were closed off with wooden doors.

  They carefully entered each of the side rooms to reveal cleaning supplies in the first room and office supplies in the second. Although everything on the shelves was intact, Grandmother thought they held a lot less than the ruined version she saw before.

  On the inside of the hallway wall was an inscription in Roman. Grandmother doubted Tinkerer would let her decode it, so she didn’t even try.

  She was sitting on one of the desk chairs when she made her comment to Todd.

  “I mean not this room exactly, but a ruined version of it near Londontown. I thought at the time that was like engineering control,” Grandmother observed.

  “It has a lot in common, only there are no computer workstations,” Todd observed. He sat in the chair at the next desk. He could still see Grandmother over the short cloth divider. He wasn’t certain what the cloth divider was for.

  “This room is based on typical office conditions found on the developers’ planet. It is not similar to the engineering group office,” Tinkerer announced.

  Grandmother twisted in her seat and looked at the robot. Tinkerer was limited to the structure. It knew of the staging area where the generational colony ship Speedwell landed and still stood, but it could not see there. There was no way the robot could know what the engineering control center on the ship looked like unless it read their minds. That was something Grandmother had nightmares about Control doing, but she didn’t believe that it did. Control had very clearly defined limits to its behavior.

  Control was the central computer that ran the structure. It was very old, very powerful and a little twitchy. Grandmother didn’t know where it was housed. She spent most of her life thinking of it as a psychotic killer with a vendetta against her. She surprised herself when she accepted this job working for it fixing problems that had piled up over the milenia.

  Tinkerer was an avatar for Control, but because of Grandmother’s earlier opinion about it, she found herself more comfortable thinking of the robot as a new and separate identity.

  “How do you know what engineering control looks like?” Todd asked, before Grandmother could respond.

  “It isn’t talking about the Speedwell,” Grandmother countered. “It's talking about an office here in the structure.”

  “That is correct,” Tinkerer confirmed.

  “Where is this office?” Todd asked. His last question was a mistake, driven by his surprise at the moment. This question was intentionally asked. Grandmother and Todd were the engineering department in the structure. Tinkerer, in his role to support engineering, would be required to answer that one.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “It is currently in supersection two four four three six five four,” Tinkerer replied.

  “Currently? Does that mean it can be moved?” Todd asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That is interesting,” Grandmother commented. “I’ve often thought it would be nice to have a place that was secure where we could talk about issues before we go out on them. I’ve been working on the extended lifetime problem for the bind. I keep getting interrupted. An office would be a place away from the bustle where if anyone did interrupt me I wouldn’t have to hide what I was working on.”

  “Are you getting anywhere on that one?” Todd asked. The bind was a hybrid spell, enchantment and nanoweapon. It looked like a vine. The elven king on the southern continent grew them into the flesh of anyone who reached tier five. It was his way of keeping them constrained. Valin, Grandmother’s spy master, fled from his people with one growing in his back and guts. Grandmother removed it from him using the science of the Speedwell. Valin swore himself into her service in payment. Grandmother did not completely trust the elf, but he was useful. He told them more about how the structure worked than anyone before, although even he didn’t know it all. Elves were species thirty four, that was an estimated forty thousand years they’d been in the structure. They had plenty of time to learn how it worked, and plenty of time to forget parts of it too. Then there was the limitation of how much Valin was taught before he fled.

  The bind was considered an issue because they lasted too long. Everything crafted in the structure had a limited life. There were actions you could take, like repairs, to lengthen that life but everything was supposed to fall apart in time. The bind was not one of the few exceptions, yet it lingered far past the limit without repair interventions.

  “I have the code adjusted, but I need to run more tests. I don’t want to accidentally take out our fertility implants. I don’t think my code changes will do that, but I want to be certain,” Grandmother explained.

  “Tinkerer, can you move the engineering office to within a five minute fast travel time of the annex?” Grandmother asked.

  “Yes,” Tinkerer confirmed. “The office will be unavailable for three days during transit.”

  “Please do that,” Grandmother requested.

  “Process initiated. It will complete in three six six six six zero two six six six minutes,” the Tinkerer reported. Grandmother was happy Tinkerer told them three days. That meant she didn’t have to do the math to figure out that number. Grandmother suspected the odd way the structure stated numbers was part of the obfuscation of the game. The fact that Tinkerer stuck to the notation even when speaking in the human language reinforced that notion.

  “Should we head back?” Todd asked.

  “I guess so,” Grandmother admitted. “Do you think you can cook us something for dinner?” she asked Todd. “I don’t really feel like more travel food.”

  “This transport module is pretty roomy,” Todd responded. “I can put something together.” The transport modules they took to closer issues were composed of a single oval room with a bench wrapped around the outside. Grandmother thought they were short haul pods. This time they were issued something larger. It was equipped with seats and bunks, a vendor and something they thought was a toilet.

  They looked over the toilet for some time trying to figure out how to use it. The structure toilets were organic. They named them composting plants. The facility on the transport module was mechanical. It was constructed of stainless steel. Four large obvious buttons along the back edge transformed the object into different configurations. None of them looked like a Speedwell pedestal toilet, but one of them was somewhat similar to the squat version they installed on the ship for the selkie to use.

  Selkie were non-humans. They were air breathing and walked upright on land. They swam better than they walked. They strongly resembled an earthen walrus. They had two fingered or flippered hands and feet. This limited how much magic they could cast with their hands. They sang most of their magic. Their voices were high pitched. Their language was also sung. Luckily they understood human attempts at their language sung at lower octaves.

  During the long eight hour trip, both Todd and Grandmother ended up having to use the thing. Tinkerer didn’t show up chastising them for pissing in the water supply, (not that there was any water in it), which left them hoping they figured it out.

  “Tinkerer, please escort us back to the transport station,” Grandmother requested of the robot.

  “This way,” the robot replied.

  Tinkerer was pleased, happy even. The Engineer Claimed the wrench. Six previous engineers tried and failed. Most of them came back for multiple attempts. One failed fifty seven times. The wrench was stubborn and looking for something none of the previous Engineers offered. After the fifty seventh failure the Engineer resigned his position and left this world. He felt if he could not claim the wrench he had no chance at the hard issue.

  Tinkerer did not know if that was true or not. It was true that the wrench and the hard issue were of a similar generation of technology. Strictly speaking the wrench was older technology, even if it was physically younger. It was constructed outside this star system by species five. Species five’s technology lagged behind species one. The team that left the wrench behind were attempting to steal proprietary secrets to advance their own technology. They were found out and ejected from Gameworld. Tinkerer didn’t know why the wrench was never bound. It was probably an act of extreme ignorance.

  The wrench contained a strong cloaking ability. It remained hidden for millennia. Species five’s knowledge on that front exceeded species one’s. It was only when it reverted back to the wrench form from the pry bar used to jam the door, that Control finally noticed it.

  Tinkerer was running out of time. Statistically speaking species forty two was the last chance. There might be one more chance after this Engineer, but it would have to be another of species forty two. There were no more candidates from among the landing generation, but this engineer named associates. One of them would be promoted to Engineer if the first Engineer failed.

  It thought about removing the wrench issue from the list, afraid a failure here would cause the Engineer to retreat from the planet, just as that earlier Engineer did. It decided to see it through. The colony ship species forty two arrived in was not designed to fly again. To leave the Engineer would need to construct a new ship. Tinkerer hoped that delay would keep her here.

  Tinkerer was horrified when she picked the wrench issue so early. It wanted to train her on a few more newly created items first. The Claiming of the wizard’s staff in the coliseum was unplanned. Normally a copper tier six followed a long training/quest line to learn the skill of Claiming and advance to silver. Now the Engineer was out of sequence. Having not completed the quest line, she was out of position for the gold quest. Technically she didn’t have to be gold to solve the hard issue. The golds failed just the same as the silvers. Not being in the right place to reach gold could work out well for Tinkerer, since she wouldn’t complete the game and win the prize either.

  It wasn’t going to think about that now. She Claimed the wrench! There was no need for more created items. It would reward her with the engineering office. Tinkerer turned its attention to the workspace. It was in sad shape. It wasn’t used much. The time between engineers was far longer than the time one held the position. Tinkerer considered just throwing the old one out and creating a new one. The Engineer might enjoy some of the trinkets left behind by previous holders of the job. She always liked puzzles. It decided to save them. It rolled them up and sent them by transfer pod to the new location.

  Tinkerer thought about other things that the Engineer and her team enjoyed. Todd enjoyed cooking; recently he developed an interest in plants. The Engineer liked the greenspaces. She paused to take in vistas, although that might be more scouting than enjoyment. Even at tier six she would spend the night in a tree over one in a room. She appeared to really love the little animal she picked up. She was always transporting it around with her, and was genuinely worried when it wandered off in a green.Tinkerer placed the new engineering office high on a wall of one of the ruined greens near staging area three two. It was an area no living player ever visited. It added individual offices to the layout. It would place the trinkets that originated with different engineers into separate offices giving each one its own flavor.

  It added a breakroom and upgraded the simple food preparation area into a full kitchen. It decorated the day room with a water feature that incorporated the gravel that species twenty three so enjoyed sleeping on. It bumped the ceiling height up to allow the addition of the largest size of potted trees. Tinkerer picked the same plants to decorate the space as the human’s picked for their guild halls. It added artwork to the walls, putting up images of the originals the structure artwork was derived from. That should please the artists among them.

  Tinkerer wished it could use the images with the spell hints in place, but its code prevented it from doing that. It would have made rewarding the Engineer for her good work with image spell hints easy. Instead it would have to think of another way.

  Tinkerer was limited by its production lines on what items it could add to the game in the spawn rotation. It was much easier to add crafting patterns and did so over the megannuns. It just needed to find out what the Engineer wanted.