20 - Putting it Together (Patreon)

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Modak tiredly pulled open the flat door.

"Morning," he yawned, giving Silvia a hug, "How're you doin'?"

"I'm... okay," the elf replied, almost meekly. A bit concerned, Modak looked at her face more closely as he let her into the flat. Her eyes were puffy and red, and she wasn't wearing any sort of makeup even though he hadn't seen Silvia leave her house without winged eyeliner since he met her.

"You sure?" Modak questioned. The two were walking to his room, and Silvia kept looking down at the ground.

"I... honestly, no? Like, I'm really not doing that great..." she explained, picking at her cuticles as she spoke, "There's some stuff going on, and it's really just kind of messing with me a lot."

"Oh... I'm sorry. Do you want to talk about it?" as he offered this, Modak closed the door to his bedroom behind him, while Silvia sat down on the chair in front of his desk. She slowly shook her head.

"Not really? At some point, probably, but right now I'm just really... confused? I did talk a ton to my dad about it though, so it's not like I'm dealing with this completely on my own," Silvia explained, "To be honest, I wouldn't even know where to start... I'd need to give you like 12 years worth of context first."

Modak briefly touched Silvia's shoulder encouragingly as he sat down on the stool next to her, "I'm always ready to listen, but only when you're ready."

Silvia smiled lightly, practically feeling the support of her friend give her strength, "Thank you. Seriously."

After the moment passed, and both Modak and Silvia felt like it was better to move on to what Silvia was here for in the first place. The orc quickly looked at the table, "Okay, so. I've been working on this for you, like you asked."

"Oh, awesome! How do I use it?" Silvia replied, looking closer at the cassette recorder on the table. Modak picked it up and turned it around to show her the parts she needed to know about.

"It's pretty basic, really. So, this old recorder only had an XLR port for microphones and stuff, so I took that out and replaced it with a 3.5mm jack port, so you just need to plug in your phone, play whatever you want, and press the record button. But since there was space I actually added a small audio splitter, so you can plug in your headphones so you can hear what you're actually putting on there as well," Modak explained, pointing at the two small audio ports at the side.

Excitedly, Silvia looked at the recorder, "Cute! Do you think you can-"

"The screws are already loosened, you just need to pull the covers off," Modak interrupted, and a grin quickly formed on Silvia's face as she practically pulled apart the tape recorder, exposing the electronic innards. She leaned down to her bag and pulled out a few things; first, some sandpaper. Without another word, she started roughening up the smooth plastic surface.

"You need help with that?" Modak asked with a raised brow, and Silvia quickly shook her head, "No thanks! Probably won't take too long, I just need to roughen it up so the paint will stick."

"You got an idea what you'll paint it?"

"Hmm... I want to give it this sort of sleek, vibey retro look, like, beige with coloured lines on one side. I thought it'd be pretty cute like that! I mean, cuter than this boring, dark-grey."

Modak thought about it for a moment, trying to imagine it, "That does sound pretty neat... Do you mind if I continue working on something else?"

Silvia scoffed, "What, did you think I want you to just watch me paint this the whole time? I know you've got plenty of projects on your own."

"Yeah, kind of. I'm working on this one thing right now that's a little annoying to figure out," Modak started, pulling over a small box from the corner of his desk, "You've been asking me to help you out with a lot of this retro cassette stuff, so I've been thinking about it a lot. Do you know how cassettes work?"

Silvia thought about it for a moment, answering a bit hesitantly, "They're like, magnetic tapes, right?"

"Yes, exactly. Basically, when you record onto a tape, the sound is placed onto that side of the tape through some super light electrical discharge to magnetize it. And then when you play that tape, the magnetic imprint is read and turned back into the electrical signals that we can then turn into sound."

"Right, right..."

"But these days, one of the most effective ways we store data is through crystalized transistors that work with mana instead of electricity. Like, there's still plenty of use-cases and benefits to electrical transistors... they're a bit less prone to mistakes, because mana-based memory can be damaged by too much ambient mana surprisingly easily, so right now we mostly use mana-based memory in bigger data farms or computers where we can shield it from ambient mana a bit more."

Silvia followed along with Modak's excited explanation, trying to see where he was going, "So... what exactly is that related to tapes?"

Modak smiled broadly, continuing, "I'm getting to that! So, mana-based memory is so effective because the flow of mana is a lot more precise, and it's a lot easier to read and write a lot of data at high speeds at a relatively low energy cost. Okay, now, back in the time of earlier computers and data-carriers that worked with magnetic tapes, there were some attempts to store data on mana-based tapes. But the issue with that was that, back then, we didn't know the most effective crystalline structures to retain exact mana patterns, nor did we know how to block out ambient mana from getting to the tapes, so the cost was far too high for the benefit."

Finally, Silvia understood what Modak was trying to do, "You're going to make mana cassettes?" she asked with a curious expression, her hands already having stopped roughening up the piece of plastic she was holding as she looked over at the objects laid out in front of Modak.

With an almost smug expression, the orc nodded his head, "Yup!"

"Any reason, or just for fun?"

Modak thought about it for a moment, but in the end just shrugged, "Mostly for fun, but I was talking to my magic engineering professor about it, and he suggested I write a small paper about it... He said if it turns out well, he could help me get it published, and that's going to look pretty damn well on applications."

"Oh shit, yeah! That sounds like an amazing opportunity! You should do that, for sure!"

Modak nodded, still smiling, "I'll try, yeah, but I need to get it to work first. So, after some massive trial and error, I found the right sort of crystal tape that I needed, it's this really specific thing that's super rarely used in like a handful magic engineering applications, but it looks like it will work perfectly for what I need. But here comes the thing that I'm struggling with. On regular magnetic tape, the electrical current can be used more directly to magnetise the tape, but here, I need to turn the electrical current into a magical one, and then when I read the data on the crystal tape, I need to turn it back into an electrical current that can actually be turned back into sound, otherwise it's not going to be usable at all."

"So what did you do to make that happen?" Silvia asked, looking at Modak's expression as he rambled on and on. He got like this sometimes, but Silvia didn't mind. Rather, the way that Modak was explaining it was actually pretty interesting, even though magic engineering wasn't a topic she was particularly interested in.

"So, yesterday while we were at the robotics club, Richie mentioned something about an energy-converter that's inside of his robot, right? And of course, converting mana to electricity and back isn't anything new, but I felt like the way that the energy converter seemed to work was pretty unique, so I looked it up online, and in one of the older models, the energy in question is turned into mana in high-frequency bursts, and is then transformed into whatever other energy is needed. In the new method it's just a more constant stream because that's more useful for what they need, but for me, those high-frequency bursts are exactly what I need."

Nodding her head as if she really understood the exact details of what Modak was actually talking about, Silvia at least tried to understand, "So you're using that high-frequency mana stuff to actually put all the data onto the crystal tape?"

Modak quickly nodded, "Exactly! But it's really, really hard to fine-tune to actually make this something that's worth it. Like, if it all works, then we'll have a cassette tape that can store... three, maybe three and a half hours of audio? And that's using the same tape length as for a 30-minute magnetic version. Not to mention, magnetic tapes degrade after like twenty years, but these will last a lot longer. Not necessarily indefinitely, but pretty long.

"...Do you think once you've got it all figured out you could make me some?" Silvia asked curiously, and Modak immediately nodded his head.

"Obviously, why do you think I wanted to even do this? You'll have to use a new cassette player and recorder though. Not like I'll be figuring this all out today anyway, though."

"Seriously, now I get why the professors are just all over you," Silvia smiled broadly, as Modak looked at his friend with some relief. Of course, she managed to pick herself up perfectly fine, but if he managed to help her cheer up a bit, Modak was more than relieved.

 ---

---

---

Ryan clicked the last piece into place, a steady frown glued to his brow. The armour that he was staring at was dull and boring. The form felt weird, the pieces too light, and the stupid expression on the face of the elven spearman almost ruined the whole thing.

"...You ruined model building for me, you know?" Ryan groaned loudly, leaning back in his chair as he rubbed his eyes. He peeked out from behind his fingers at Maximus, who was seated on a small stack of books in front of Ryan's computer monitor. Right next to him was the mouse that he was using to scroll down the page where he was currently reading a comic that Ryan recommended to him.

A bit confused, the knight turned toward Ryan and tilted his head to the side.

"No, you're right, you didn't do anything. There's nothing wrong with the model either, I think I'm just still feeling weird about the whole Runar situation," he pointed out, and Maximus quickly moved his hand away from the scroll wheel to pay more attention to what Ryan was saying.

"And seriously, you don't know anything at all? You remember nothing from before I woke you up?" Ryan asked, but Maximus quickly shook his head. It had taken a pretty long time of going through dozens of 'yes or no' questions, but as it turned out, Maximus knew maybe less than Ryan did about all of this.

Whether it was some kind of specific spirit-amnesia or because he never knew anything to begin with, but Maximus had no clue what was going on. He knew how to use his skills and had a very clear idea about what his values as a knight were, but basically nothing beyond that. Not if there were other spirits like him, nor why he was in that box with his father's stuff.

Though, it was probably wrong to say that he knew 'nothing'; he did know that he had some kind of history with Gaia, but not how deep that history went. From what Ryan gathered, and he didn't ask too much about it as he didn't want to pry, they once were close friends. But since Maximus couldn't say when exactly that 'once' was, that was a dead end as well. Maybe Gaia would know some more things once Ryan found her other two fragments.

At least there was a trace there. While he didn't have another moment like when he recognised there was something in the abandoned copper foundry dungeon, he could guarantee one thing; Gaia's full being was within this city.

Though he was only able to tell him that since yesterday. When Ryan had spotted him seated in the domain in contemplation, Maximus was seemingly in the middle of realising that and let Ryan know afterward.

With a long sigh, Ryan leaned his chin onto his desk, "Like... and this could definitely just be me not wanting my uncle to be involved in some crime shit, but my gut tells me that it's nothing too bad. I mean, I'm freaking out about it, obviously, but I'm not freaking out as much as I should be... right? But at the same time... I just can't believe that he's involved in anything bad," he explained, as Maximus listened to him intently.

Ryan looked at the knight's expression, though it was really just the same never-changing helmet, "Am I putting too much faith into my raised intuition stat? It's not like it's a massive difference."

But to Ryan's surprise, Maximus also shook his head.

"Hm? Wait, do you also think it's nothing bad?"

Maximus nodded.

"...Do you have some sort of secret knight's intuition that tells you that?"

Hesitating for a moment, Maximus finally just pressed his palm onto the centre of his chest. Ryan sort of understood what he was trying to get at.

"You think he's a good person?"

Immediately, the knight nodded his head once more, but Ryan just sighed, "I really do hope you're right. I mean... we might figure something out soon? I mean, during that call he did say that he wants to talk to me about some things first. I guess I should trust in him a bit more?"

Feeling a sense of relief, Ryan looked back at the model that he had just built, smiling lightly, "Alright, let's get this shitty thing taken apart. I might as well re-paint it to make it look a bit nicer," he said loudly, reinvigorated with a new sense of energy, as Maximus turned back toward his comic.

As Ryan looked at the model, he did get an idea, however. According to the booklets that Yanna gave him, the main way to train your stats was to push the limits of what you were currently capable of. Frankly, ever since he got his class, he hasn't really spent too much time doing things with his hands beside building this model in front of him that he had put off, as well as build Maximus himself.

His palm was practically perfectly healed at this point too, so he didn't have to worry about hurting himself either. Ryan pulled out his phone, not wanting to disturb Maximus' reading-time by pulling it up on the computer, and started up a stopwatch. Taking a deep breath to mentally prepare himself, Ryan quickly got started.

He grabbed the model and immediately started pulling it apart; not violently, of course, but with as much precision as he could. It took him a little while to get used to it, but before long, he was moving at a speed that he could barely recognize from himself. He already surprised himself while working on Maximus' new arm, but this was something completely, wholly different.

Ryan continued, and in the end, it didn't actually take him all too long to finish taking the model apart. It didn't have all that many pieces after all, at least compared to Maximus. Ryan looked at the stopwatch. Five minutes. That wasn't bad at all. But this wasn't the end yet; he still had to paint them.

After priming the pieces with their new base colour, he was going to go in with some finer brushes to paint in details. That was also something that Dexterity was supposed to excel at, so he still had plenty of chances. Not to mention... Ryan still had plenty of money saved up. He could buy dozens of models if he wanted to, which he did.

"Guess I'll be a bit busy," Ryan grinned broadly, standing up from his chair to grab his spray-on primer.

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