8
For the next few days, Milo split his time between his cubicle and the Workshop.
Once Fed had finished translating the Workpad, a whole new world opened up for him. The pad was mostly a queuing device which linked to Fed and allowed golems to receive orders as soon as they returned to the Workshop.
It also let him prioritize component construction within the Workshop.
Some functions looked to be locked. Fed had advised this was because he wasn’t currently authorized and would need access to The Prime first.
He still had no luck prising details from Fed regarding that. The Workshop seemed unable to give more details regarding The Prime.
Every time he asked, he received the same annoying response.
The Prime is The Prime.
What he did discover was the Workshop Library, which held scrolls full of detailed blueprints. At first, he’d been concerned that they would fall apart in his hands, but it seemed the paper they were printed on wasn’t like any paper he had felt.
In fact, it seemed more like cloth. Looking close, he could see the scrolls were made of finely woven thread which the Workshop told him was a composite material.
It didn’t know more than that and, once more, referred him to The Prime.
All that mattered to Milo, though, was the scrolls didn’t seem like they would fall apart in his hands. He took one back to his cubicle every night to study.
While he still couldn’t read the Dwarven language, he was starting to understand the basic theories behind their machines.
And also, with the cold help of Fed, he was able to give names to main parts such as the Machine Communication Relay which allowed constructs to communicate with the Workshop’s systems.
And that there was a difference between a Machine Core, a Machine Intelligence Matrix, and a Machine Unified Core Matrix.
This was his biggest surprise.
Physically, the three looked similar. Usually wafers of silicon or other metal with a crystal embedded in the center.
To the mages, they were the same thing. A core.
To engineers, they were very different.
A Machine Core stored mana and used it to power the construct. A Machine Intelligence Matrix acted as a brain, translating instruction into action.
A Machine Unified Core Matrix was one which did both.
At first, he was confused why golems didn’t all just use one. If one could do the job, surely that would be preferred. It would save parts.
However, it quickly became clear from the schematics that the Machine Unified Core Matrixes were only used in simpler golems such as Click.
For more complex golems, a more powerful Intelligence was needed.
It made sense when he thought about it. Especially how he’d been told that the cores used by mages could multiply their mana exponentially and how some were better than others.
Based on what he was seeing, he guessed that Machine Core Matrixes would provide only an average amount of additional mana to a mage. A Machine Core would provide more, as its main function was dedicated to collecting mana.
And a Machine Intelligence Matrix would provide significantly less as its function wasn’t to store mana at all. It was to guide the intelligence of the construct.
Most other golem parts were fairly banal. The Machine Frame was an umbrella term for the overall skeleton of the construct and while there were differences depending on the final form the golem would take, they were mostly similar.
A Machine Drive Train was the system governing movement. Milo thought of them as the musculature. It was mostly taut wires, springs, and the gears and pistons required to provide smooth motion.
The Machine Shell was interesting. This was the outer sections which defined much of the golem’s appearance.
Click had only a basic shell of dwarven bronze, but some constructs looked to be insanely complex. A few looked to be made of exotic materials. It was also clear that the dwarves had been interested in creating golems which resembled themselves in some detail.
When confronted with one blueprint which looked almost exactly like a slender humanoid with detailed facial features, Milo had been surprised.
“It’s a bit creepy,” he told Fed.
While the Workshop didn’t seem to have an expansive personality, Milo still found himself talking to it often. The only other people he could talk to were Ket, who continually gave him chores. Or the other students who preferred to tease and bully him.
Fed was easier.
Sort of.
Personal preferences can be customized.
“How so?”
His Workpad lit up as Fed hijacked it to bring up a display. The screen showed a basic humanoid golem.
Adjusting sliders, the construct can be customized according to the Engineer’s preference.
“Huh.” He fiddled with one of the sliders, noting it changed the shape of the eyes. “This isn’t what I meant. I mean, they kind of look a bit too real, if you know what I mean?”
It is the goal of the Engineer to create perfection.
Milo nodded. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard Fed say that. It sounded like some kind of mantra the dwarves had lived by.
“Yeah, but how perfect can it be?”
Quality of Biological Mimicry is dependent on available components.
“I bet.” He tapped another slider and the skin color adjusted across a range of colors. Most were realistic, but as soon as he reached hot pink, he winced. “I don’t think pink skin is very perfect.”
Golemskin can be indistinguishable from biological skin.
He lifted his head. “What? Golemskin? What’s that?”
Golemskin is a thermoplastic elastomer. A selection is available on the customization screen.
“Thermoplastic elastomer,” he repeated. The words twisted his tongue and meant nothing to him. But he pushed it into his head anyway, trying to relate it to skin. “And you say it feels like real skin?”
Affirmative.
He was about to ask why dwarves would want a golem with realistic skin when he pushed another slider and watched breasts grow to disproportionate sizes on the golem.
“Ah,” he said. “Dwarves were freakier than I thought.”
That fact made him smile as he remembered seeing the recording of the dwarf ranting about a faulty core. When looking at the machines and architecture left behind, it was easy to think of them as a cold and mechanical race.
It was hard to think of them as being anything near human at all.
Yet, as he discovered the sliders adjusted some more intimate parts, he found himself also adjusting his perspective of the dwarves themselves.
Then, as he found a dropdown menu which let him select a variety of tentacles, he decided that was enough playing with the customization menu for one day.
Looking back at the schematic for the humanoid, he wondered how hard it would be for him to build. It was nowhere near as easy as Click had been.
Click was clearly something the dwarves might have considered to be similar to a pet. It was clear they were very common once upon a time.
Milo based this on how easily click moved through the Keep.
He’d never noticed the ducts before. Along the top of every wall, merging with the runes, little holes led into ducts which Click was using to get around.
It would be easy to think of them as air vents.
But Milo suspected that, once upon a time, golems like Click raced up and down from room to room.
He wondered what sort of privacy dwarves had expected and, guessing from the customization options in their personal golems, he reckoned there was almost none.
A sudden chitter made him look around as Click raced into the room. The little spider golem whipped past and darted into the Security Room with a sharp whir of gears which sounded triumphant.
“You found something?” Milo asked, following and taking his chair. He now had a few cushions to make it more comfortable.
With another whir, Click raised its back and flipped its shell open for Milo to take the crystal, which he now knew was called an Access Memory Crystal.
He tugged it loose and slotted it into the chair.
Using a slider on the chair, he was able to make the footage skip ahead. Click chittered along, encouraging him to keep going until with a chirp, it tapped his wrist with one leg and bounced excitedly as the screen showed the front of a shop.
“This is outside the Keep,” Milo said.
Click whirred, which he took as an agreement.
The screen moved, almost blurring, as Click had raced around the shop in search of a way inside. It had found one. A small vent which again looked almost perfectly designed for the spider golem.
Milo at first thought that was strange, but the shop had been built within an old dwarven building, so maybe it wasn’t so weird.
In any case, Click had raced through the ducts inside the shop and paused over the top of the counter.
Looking down at a nearly-bald head as the shopkeeper slowly dusted off a Machine Core.
A shelf along one wall was stocked heavily with more.
Each varying in size.
“Well,” Milo said, thinking about the gold he’d saved to open his own shop one day. “It looks like my savings are about to take a hit…”