Grandmother studied the wrench on the way back. She held it and stared off into space and unfocussed her eyes. A tiny flashing wrench appeared in the corner of her vision. A second flashing light that was her engineering interface was also present. This light was purple, which was why Grandmother knew it was the engineering interface and not her personal one. Her personal interface was represented by a white light, but it did not appear in the transport module. Grandmother noticed that before, but didn’t know why.

  The tiny wrench opened to reveal a beautifully crafted interface. The interface was very simple compared to the other two. The icons were larger and more detailed. They illustrated the shapes and functions the wrench could perform. Next to each icon was a line of text. Touching the text opened up a multiple screen description of what each shape could do and how to use it.

  Grandmother knew that from the images that accompanied the text. She could not read any of it. All the text, including the top level labels, were in a language she’d never seen before. In a quick study of it Grandmother picked out literally hundreds of symbols. She thought it must be a logogram, where each concept has its own symbol. She didn’t think there was much hope of ever figuring it out. It was unlikely a human, or human built computer, would have a similar enough world view as an extinct high technology alien race to even have the same definitions of concept.

  She figured out touching the images transformed the wrench by trial and error. She now held a pry bar in her hand instead of a wrench. She selected that icon thinking it made more sense for jamming a door.

  One of the images showed a strangely shaped hand. When she touched it, the wrench melted down and spread out across her hand, forming a metal glove. She flexed her hand. Although it looked like metal it didn’t impede her movement at all. Running her hand over the leather of her clothing she could still feel the seams. In fact as she continued to stroke the seam she found she could sense the details with more clarity on every pass.

  There was an image that showed something that looked like a full body cover. The image was the only hint of what the makers of the wrench looked like. Even though the icons were larger and more detailed than the structure interface, the small metal colored humanoid figure didn’t give away any details.

  The icon was heavily pink. When Grandmother selected it her entire vision flashed pink and the interface automatically switched over to a different icon. This icon was by itself in the lower right corner of the starting overlay. Opening it showed a long list of icons. Several of these were outlined in pink. Selecting one of these, Grandmother was presented with an animation. The animation showed sitting the wrench down, sitting a block of something on top of it and then selecting the icon. She was then to adjust the area in three dimensional space that was cyan colored so that it included only the block. Only then was she to tap what was obviously a confirmation screen. In the animation the block of material flowed into the wrench.

  “The food is ready,” Todd called. He set up his portable stove on the floor in front of the vendor and started cooking as soon as they were on board. Grandmother returned the wrench to its default form and dismissed its interface. She slipped the tool back into her pocket before joining Todd on the floor to eat.

  Todd dished out food onto the stiffened squares of leather they used as plates when traveling. The meal was delicious. It was especially good after the travel food they ate on the way.

  “That was excellent,” Grandmother commented. “I think you outdid yourself. Where did you get the fresh fruit?”

  “The vendor,” Todd said with a wave. “It is offering up a lot of raw ingredients and it didn’t charge me for any of it.”

  “It must be a benefit of our employment,” Grandmother responded. “I assumed it was offering the same items as a gallery.” Galleries were one of the seed versions of a guild hall that the structure spawned. They were often equipped with a food preparation area with a food only vendor.

  “I did too, but I wanted some salt. It is offering some of the structure travel bars, but mostly it is fresh fruit and vegetables. It has listed one meat icon, which I think is badger. It looks to me like it has been tuned to human tastes,” Todd observed. “What did you find that was so fascinating?” he asked.

  “I think the wrench is hungry,” Grandmother explained. She pulled the tool from her pocket and held it out to Todd. “Here,” she said. “Take a look. I’m not certain what material it is asking for.”

  Todd accepted the wrench and stared off into space looking for the interface. It was only after Grandmother handed it over that she wondered if the wrench would work for Todd, since it was bound to her. Todd opened the interface without any issue. Grandmother told him how to play the animation. After watching it, Todd took the time to look over the list of food icons.

  “Well,” he commented, “all these pink icons look like metals. They are gray and solid at structure temperature.”

  “I suppose that is a clue,” Grandmother replied. “Do you know how many gray metals there are?”

  “When you run your tests, you can skip copper and gold,” Todd said, handing the tool back. He had no doubt that Grandmother would set up an experiment to identify the icons that were currently outlined in pink.

  “I can skip mercury too,” Grandmother said, “but that leaves a lot of gray metals. I don’t think the Speedwell even has samples of most of them.”

  “Start with the most common,” Todd suggested. “If it uses some kind of rare radioactive element, I can’t see it lasting as long as it has, stuck in that door.”

  “Radioactive, no,” Grandmother agreed. “The advance ship would have rejected a planet with high background radiation. That does make me wonder how nanobots power themselves.” Grandmother looked lost in thought, turning the wrench over in her hand. Todd recognized that look. The old woman was going to think about it until she came up with a way to do it. Todd left her to it as he tried out the bunks.

  The arrival gong sounded. At a destination the arrival gong rang once in warning and again right before someone stepped out. In the Engineering transport module the arrival gong rang softly on repeat, giving them time to wake up and gather their belongings. When a player used the transport system in game, they were kept unconscious for the entire trip. Grandmother and Todd didn’t know if similar modules were used to transport the players, or if something completely different was utilized.

  The gong fell silent when the two of them stood ready to exit. The module's door slid open. They walked down the short passage and through the arrival door to the transportation room at the annex. This guild hall was used by the Speedwell Academy for many of the classes they offered inside the structure.

  Grandmother paused in the transport room and called Tinkerer. The projection stepped out of the transportation stone interface.

  “Engineer, what service do you require?” Tinkerer asked.

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  “Todd and I wish to return to our gameplay,” Grandmother instructed the robot.

  “Your current status is updated,” Tinkerer responded.

  “Thank you, Tinkerer,” Grandmother replied. “I look forward to seeing the office.”

  “The office will be available for use in two six six six six zero five six six six zero four six six minutes,” Tinkerer commented.

  Todd surveyed the room beyond the glass wall. The lights were just starting to brighten into the day cycle. The annex looked empty, Todd thought it really was. Tinkerer didn’t like to drop them off here if it wasn’t. The robot delivered them to a hidden transportation room a little farther from the structure entrance when the annex was occupied. The Control system wouldn’t return them to active game play until they were close to where they logged onto the job. It was a method to keep them from using their employment to get free in-game travel to destinations they had not yet opened up through the game.

  Squirrel, Grandmother’s pet, came running as soon as Grandmother stepped out of the transportation room. The animal was burbling happily. Grandmother pulled a food bar out of her backpack and broke a piece off for the little animal. Squirrel accepted the offering and climbed to the top of the sofa in the central furniture grouping to eat her prize.

  Grandmother reached out and tried to pet Squirrel’s fluffy tail. Squirrel danced around, keeping her tail out of the old woman’s reach. Grandmother only landed a few glancing blows. Todd knew the old woman could catch the animal easily if she wanted to. At tier six the nanobots in her body augmented her agility and dexterity to superhuman levels. This little dance was a game.

  “I am really interested in seeing the office,” Grandmother commented, “but I think we may need to put that off.”

  “You have other plans?” Todd asked.

  “We are getting close to the recruiting tour,” Grandmother observed. She was referring to the collection of students from both the eastern villages in the staging area outside of the structure, and from settlements inside it. All of Grandmother’s endeavors were an odd mix of planning and impulsiveness. This was the second year for the academy. They had a much clearer idea of what it took to run a school and much more detailed plans. Todd figured it was inevitable that something would really go sideways this time, especially since Grandmother wanted two or three times as many students as last year. Last year the experience was new and strange for all the students and everyone was on their best behavior. Todd expected with some of the newness gone, they would start to see friction among the students since they all came from very different backgrounds. “You and I need to go down to Whitewater and collect Fa-Ray-Me.”

  “We should take Alex or Companion to translate for us,” Todd commented. Companion was selkie, while Alex was a gifted singer. Of all the human members of Grandmother’s team he spoke selkie the best.

  “Valin finished making me a translator ring,” Grandmother replied. “He recommends wearing it in my ear. Unfortunately my enhanced healing keeps ejecting it. I am not certain how Valin manages to keep his in place at tier five.”

  Valin was an elf, specifically a light elf. Alex named Valin’s race that because he had pointed ears, white skin and was tricky. Speedwell’s genetic sequencer thought Valin was related to an earthen shark. That was likely just an accident of randomness, but Valin did have pebbled almost sparkling white skin and surprisingly sharp teeth. He was as short as a selkie standing upright, but where a selkie was stout, Valin was slight. Besides being a spy and thief, Valin was a skilled jeweler.

  “Did you want me to wear it?” Todd asked.

  “Yeah,” Grandmother admitted. “Although I want to try not using it. I think two stupid humans wandering around the selkie federation capital will be less threatening. I don’t want to rouse the federation into motion against us.”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t go. Ellen is getting pretty good at stone sculpting,” Todd observed.

  “I hope that hiring a crafter out of their capital will show that not only do we want to work with them, but that we must have something to offer in return to attract such high end talent,” Grandmother explained. This was a more detailed reason than Todd heard from her previously.

  Fa-Ray-Me came to Home Square during a challenge day last winter. Home Square was located near a structure Coliseum where players could challenge stone automata for glory and treasure. Challenge day or days, was when the Home Square guard organized an escort for challengers and audience members through tier three space to the coliseum. The guard offered life saving healing and transport of the injured back. This encouraged challengers to go on those days. The guard charged audience members for the escort.

  The selkie believed fighting in the arena was a way to honor the true god. They attracted a large number of selkie from the frontier squares. They attracted so many that Whitewater, which was located close to a different coliseum, noticed a decrease in their challengers. They sent Fa-Ray-Me to find out what was happening in the frontier.

  Fa-Ray-Me heard about the academy during his time in Home Square and asked if he could come see it. He spent a month in the Wizard’s Tower, which was Speedwell academy's nickname. Fa-Ray-Me was a stone sculptor.

  Stone sculpting was a craft that was unknown among the human squares. Grandmother’s team discovered its existence from Companion. Companion was no crafter. Ellen was the team’s crafting expert. She was also Valin’s jewelry crafting apprentice. There was some overlap, cutting stones and jewels was stonecrafting. She was concentrating on learning those techniques and not the more common methods and tasks they would want to teach to students.

  Todd thought Grandmother wanted to hire Fa-Ray-Me because it amused her to recruit someone sent to spy on them. Actually he still thought that was most of her motivation. It didn’t hurt that the selkie spent most of his time in the Wizard’s Tower learning the human language.

  “I have no objections to heading down today,” Todd offered. “We’ll need to tell the others.” The cost of traveling down to Whitewater would be high. That was why just the two of them were going and not the full team. They spent the summer doing scavenging runs in tier four and five space out of the south gallery, setting up guilds halls throughout human territory and completing the maintenance for the Speedwell and its associated equipment. Grandmother owned the south gallery, making travel to it free. It was months of travel by foot down to the south gallery. It took over four hours by fast transport.

  Whitewater was even farther south. Todd suspected it was farther away than where they found the wrench. It cost Fa-Ray-Me two greens for the trip, which was a fortune.

  “Did you want to try to set up a guild hall while we are down there?” Todd asked.

  “I do and I don’t,” Grandmother replied. “I thought about it before and I don’t know how just the two of us can convince enough selkie to go there to complete the a path well traveled quest. For now we will skip it. I’ll just have to pay for Fa-Ray-Me to go home. Once he is part of the guild, he can always come back here for free.”

  “Fa-Ray-Me said it took him four jumps to get to Home Square,” Todd commented.

  “It may take us more, since we’ll go to the south gallery first to save some coins. From there we’ll go to the southernmost selkie square that we visited on the spell buying tour. If we are lucky, the portal master there will have Whitewater on their map. It is their capital. If they don’t we will already be at four jumps and there is no guarantee the next portal master will have Whitewater either.”

  “That makes it sound like we should set up a guild hall close to Seagrass,” Todd suggested.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Grandmother commented. “I’ll put that on the list. Maybe we can still get it done before the term. We could use the selkie students for the quest.”

  “Have the team build it out while we are gone. Who is the next person on the ownership rotation?” Todd asked.

  “Joe,” Grandmother responded, “unless he’s decided against it, then it is you.”

  “Companion may want it out of turn,” Todd commented.

  “I’ll give Sarah a copy of my summon inventory access script and tell them to pick up Joe on the way out,” Grandmother said. “You and I will travel light, although I’m going to take a couple of the big mouth bags so we can carry back anything Fa-Ray-Me wants to bring with him.”

  “We should take a couple of the leather sacks too,” Todd suggested. Grandmother had the bottomless bag perk, which compacted integrated items into insanely small bags. It didn’t work on real objects. The leather sacks were what they were using for bulk items that didn’t compact. They were large and Sarah, Ellen’s sister, enchanted them to decrease weight. “He may want to bring stone.”

  “True,” Grandmother agreed.