Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

type of puzzle they loved to solve. Tactics and strategy, what a wonderful game! As long as they were safe and protected, the self-appointed kings would direct the pawns and rooks, bishops and knights to defeating their enemy.

Chapter Thirty

The Riddle

Day 8 2:54 PM

2:09:16 remaining

Gus headed back to the Foundry, and looked up how many sensors could be made at one time. It turned out the number was twenty, and the bundle would take an hour to finish. To cover the entire path, Nick recommended he would need sixty-three sensors total. He added them to the queue again. The sensors seemed to not require any of the energy consumption from the manor, which was nice, considering it was a limited resource. It was just before noon, so he could get some more sensors placed before it got too late. A brief glance at his watch told him there was time to finish today. He paused, making a mental note to examine his watch at greater length.

In the meantime, Gus went to the beach and practiced Basic Flight. It was probably an influence of the Nth, but Gus felt compelled to be constantly busy, not wasting any of his time without developing something.

The feel of what he needed to do was becoming familiar, but he had to get in the repetition to reinforce it and level the skill. As he practiced, he saw a squadron of six drones fly out over the water. They had a net stretched between them. They got in position and skittered around the water for a bit. After hovering in one spot for a while, they suddenly burst up in the air. Raising up, they drifted closer, creating a basket out of the net. Gus saw they had caught six fish. They sped back to the manor with their prize. Gus’ mouth began to water a bit at the thought of a real dinner instead of protein bars. Not having to work for a couple hours to fish and cook wasn’t bad either.

Besides the distraction of the fishing drones, it was difficult to concentrate on flying. Gus’ mind would wander to every possible subject. He wondered how much time was left in the queue, what recipe the bots would use on the fish, or recall a certain stage of his katas, and the ability would wink away. He wondered if this would ever become an unconscious ability that didn’t require so much of his mental real estate.

“Good things are seldom cheap, and cheap things are seldom good…” Nick said.

Gus mentally agreed and set again to forcing out distractions. As he did, his mind started to wander, again, this time thinking about the palm frond weaving he had done when first on the island. Playing with this idea, he thought about the fish net and his mind began to weave the pulls of ether and fashioned them into a small basket of sorts, and then interposed this basket under himself.

Suddenly, Gus had to exert no effort to maintain hovering in place two feet above the ground. Twisting, he spun around in place like a child in a bucket swing, fully supported in midair. A chime sounded:

You have just upgraded the skill Basket Weaving into Ether Weaving!

Ether Weaving (Level 1)

You can manipulate refined matter to access basic translocation effects. Weaves must be unraveled to remove effects.

Requirements: 50 MP/second during weaving. Stable effects require no MP to maintain.

100 XP awarded

200 FP awarded

You have leveled up the skill: Basic Flight to Level 5!

50 XP awarded

100 FP awarded

“Wow. I think that one deserves an achievement to pop or something. You’re probably one of the only humans to actually use basket weaving for something useful. I guess aside from people who need baskets, that is,” Nick said.

“I’m as surprised as you!” Gus replied, swinging suspended in the air, twisting in place and enjoying the feeling of free floating. When Gus attempted an ether pull, he thought he would move in that direction, but instead he swung like a pendulum just as if he were doing something similar in a real swing.

Gus looked above to see if he could see anything mysteriously supporting him above. He could not visualize the ether far away from him, but tendrils seemed to extend upward in that direction. Gus tried to pull himself straight upward, in an attempt to get closer to the anchor point and see if he could influence it to move, but could not achieve a sufficient vertical movement to get close enough to visualize anything.

Gus tried different tethering methods. The first using two tendrils to pull himself in a specific direction and hold himself there. Another using two lateral tendrils to swing in a wide arc. Another at off angles to pull himself into a spin by pulsing how he pulled on each tether.

“It’s time to check on the sensors, if you want to finish placing them today,” Nick advised. Gus had been so engrossed in playing around with how the tendrils moved that he had lost track of time. Mentally envisioning his basket, he placed virtual fingers between the folds in the center and pressed outward, undoing the overlaps and folds of ether until he dropped to the soft sand.

Gus headed back to the Foundry and found he had the same problem with figuring out how to carry all the sensors. “How did I forget to deal with this?! I just had this issue!”

Gus tried his basket idea again, making it larger and deeper. Loading the sensors inside, he found the square shape made them easy to stack and he fit all of them inside. He found he could attach the basket’s focus point to his spear and move the whole basket instead of having it be attached to a fixed point.

Using the naginata, he directed the large load through doorways and out of the manor. He felt like a mime, since the basket was only visible in his display as a transparent construct. He continued the task of placing sensors.

During