Flair's Invention
Flair's Invention
"Right." Flair nodded as she stood up from the table. "Follow me. I'll show you the control room first." She led Ed through a numbered door near the back of the room. The room they entered was a small hallway with almost nothing in it except for another door and some purple clothing. "Put this on." She said while pointing to a purple hazmat suit hanging on the wall.
"Right. I suppose it's necessary to prevent interference." He grabbed the rubber-like suit and put it on. It was somewhat bulky and baggy, making it uncomfortable.
Flair put on an identical suit and closed the door they entered from. Then she flipped a lever near the opposite door on the other side of the room. A humming sound reverberated throughout the room, and a purple gas started entering the room from the ceiling vents. "It should only take a minute to fill up." She explained as they waited.
The purple gas quickly filled the room. It was so dense that they could barely see in front of themselves. Flair examined a dial near the door closely, watching a needle slowly tilt from left to right. When it had moved nearly 180 degrees, she pushed the lever up, stopping the flow of gas. The humming sound continued as the gas that had filled the chamber was slowly vacuumed up back into the vents. When it was completely gone, she pushed the lever back down, placing it back in the neutral position of neither up or down. "That should do it." She smiled as she pushed open the door and entered inside.
Excited, Ed hurriedly followed behind her. This was something he had dreamed of seeing ever since he was a child, and he never thought the day would come. He hated to admit it, but Flair really had outclassed him in engineering. Granted, she had an entire 10 years of freedom to dedicate to it while he had been trapped in stasis. "Amazing." He muttered under his breath as he slowly examined the room.
The room was fairly large, and it was filled with strange equipment and machinery. Tall racks with various flashing components were lined up in rows along three walls. Several desks were lined up on the remaining wall. Ed didn't wait as he made his way towards one of the desks and sat down. "So, this is a computer." He sighed in disbelief.
In front of Ed was a bulky monitor. It was the type he had only seen in books he had read and had heard about from his father. "How did you create an operating system?" He asked. "They should have all been destroyed when the first apocalypse started."
"The DOS operating system was written down in several paper records, and I traded for a copy of it. After that, the rest was far more difficult. The information on how to make a computer isn't that hard to find but utilizing that information today was always thought impossible by the scientific community." She grinned. "I'm happy that I proved everyone wrong."
"Right." He nodded in agreement. "It's the damn environment that's always made it impossible. Mana interference... How did you manage to get around it?"
Flair sat down at a computer next to Ed. The monitor only displayed lines of code, as it was an operating system predating graphical user interfaces. "It wasn't easy, and it took a lot of trial and error. The entire compound is protected from mana with purified manullium plating. That was the easy part though. After that, I had to remove all mana from inside the room. That proved far more difficult. I ended up using manullium gas to clear out the mana, and then I removed the manullium gas using a vacuum."
"Smart." Ed smiled. "And these manullium hazmat suits and the manullium gas we passed through when entering were to prevent our own mana from interfering with the electrical components."
"Mm." She nodded. "But that still wasn't particularly difficult. With my inventions, it wasn't too hard to get ahold of manullium. The really difficult part came with removing mana from everything used in the room, from the title floors to the metals used in the electrical components. Mana is infused in everything on Earth by this point, making it impossible to create electrical components."
"How did you do it then?" He asked.
"Well... It's supposed to be a secret, but I guess I can tell you. I made every piece of equipment in here from scratch. And the way I got the raw materials was... unorthodox to say the least." She turned to look at Ed. "Do you remember when we were at the academy a long time ago, and how Mr. Sai had forcefully taken the troublemakers to the moon?"
"Eh, that did happen didn't it..." Ed agreed, not really wishing to recall memories from his academy days.
"Well, that gave me an idea. I tried many methods of removing mana from raw material on Earth. Flooding iron with manullium gas in a furnace, treating steel with liquid manullium, purifying small chunks of metal inside a vacuum. None of it worked." She smiled. "So, I decided to just get the material we needed from an asteroid instead."
"An asteroid?!" Ed's eyes widened in shock. "How'd you pull that off?"
"I paid several espers to wear hazmat suits like these and collect the materials in identical hazmat bags. Asteroids pass relatively close to Earth regularly, and there are plenty of espers capable of surviving for short periods of time in space. Especially those with mastery over laws related to space."
Ed leaned back in his chair and played around with the keyboard, not really knowing what he was doing. The command line prompts were completely unfamiliar to him, as he hadn't used a computer even in any of his past lives. "You've really outdone yourself this time. But will this really be useful to us?" He hesitantly questioned. While it was true he wanted to invent new technology equivalent in power to technology of the past, he had never really considered actually reviving past technology before. Even if he had done so, it would've been more along the lines of nuclear weapons as opposed to computers. Of course, he knew the astonishing potential of computers, but it was hard to say how well they could utilize them when they were trapped in a room with strict access controls.
"I thought you might say that." Flair replied as she started hitting the keys. Lines of code flashed by as she started a program she wrote. "Take a look." She said as she turned the monitor to face Ed.
"Hmm?" He glanced over it and his eyes quickly widened in surprise. 'Cultivation database. Paths database. Laws database.' He slowly read the screen, seeing descriptions of various different laws, cultivation techniques, and more. "You collected all this data?" He asked.
"Mm. It was pretty expensive, but I've bought information in exchange for my products over time. You're free to read over everything I've collected later."
"I will." He nodded. "Thanks."
"Well, that was just one of the simpler uses." She sighed. "The real value will come once we get similar operation centers set up in various countries. Then we need to connect them together through insulated underground wires to set up a global communication network. It should prove extremely useful to both Harmony and the world as a whole." She stood up from her chair. "Follow me. I'll show you the other rooms."
Feeling quite whelmed already, Ed stood up and followed behind Flair expectantly. The rooms had doors connecting them in a circular fashion, meaning that they didn't have to reenter the central room and go through manullium gassing each time they wanted to switch rooms. It was good planning on Flair's part, though it did mean that there was a single point of failure should something go wrong. If there was ever a mana leak in one room, then it would likely damage the electrical components in all of the rooms.
The next room they entered appeared to be a gym. There wasn't anything particularly special about it except that some of the equipment utilized electricity instead of steam technology. Of course, all of the lightning was also controlled by electricity as opposed to mana-core technology.
Several more rooms consisted of resting areas, a kitchen, and a meeting room. Soon, they came to the final room. "This is Tao's room." She explained as she opened the door.
The door slowly opened, revealing a large crocodile resting in what appeared to be a sauna. Hot steam rose from the sulfur-smelling water. Tao was currently a mix of red and blue in color, and he was nearly as large as the entire sauna in size, which nearly took up the entire room. The croc glanced up at Ed, and its eyes instantly sparkled. But an instant later, its eyes returned to normal. "Humph." It snorted in the water, causing bubbles to rise to the surface.
"He's been like that lately." Flair sighed. "He's been quite angry with you over disappearing for so long."
"Oh?" Ed nodded. 'Well, Tao will probably get over it soon.' He looked back towards Flair. "We'll look into establishing similar comm stations in the US and China for now. I'll get Dupe to start working on it the next time we see him." He rubbed his chin. "Are there any major events you think are worth reporting to me from the last 10 years?"
"well, there are quite a few." Flair counted down from her fingers. "War has broken out in Europe a couple times, though nothing has concretely changed yet. It's a bit of a mess." She lowered a finger. "Mr. Sai is rumored to still be in Africa even after a decade has passed. In fact, no one's even seen him in the last 10 years. Casualties during nightmare attacks have skyrocketed as a result." She lowered another finger. "Haru is pretty famous now. That one is a particularly long story. Oh, and there's been a lot going on with China." She lowered two more fingers, leaving only her pinky pointing up. "Oh, and lastly, Dupe got pregnant."
"..." Ed stared blankly upon hearing the last sentence.
"..." Flair calmly stared back, waiting for a response.
"Sorry, I think I misheard the last one. Can you repeat that?" Ed asked.
"Dupe got pregnant." She repeated.
"Huh?" He asked.
"Nick got knocked up." She changed her wording.
"I'm not sure I follow." Ed purposely played ignorant.
"He's with child. Blessed by God. He's got a bun in the oven. A bat in the cave. He's eating for two." She continued listing off various terms for pregnancy.
"Enough!" Ed held up a hand to stop her. "I get it. I get it..." He rubbed his face in exasperation. "Is it at least one of his closes that got pregnant?" He sighed, feeling quite irritated with the situation. His top advisor had went and gotten pregnant, and he was a man to begin with. "I never thought Dupe was actually capable of pregnancy...' He thought to himself in disbelief.
"I'm not really sure." Flair shook her head. "I only received the news a month ago from one of his clones in the area."
Ed sighed again while rubbing his eyes. "Is Dupe the father?" He asked without thinking. Knowing Dupe, he found it equally likely that Dupe had done it to himself or he had gone and done it with someone else. Of course, those were really the only two possibilities in the first place.
"Beats me." She shrugged. "I wasn't really interested, so I didn't ask."
"Of course you weren't." Ed nodded while staring at Flair. 'Only someone as obsessed with machines as her could care less about a man getting pregnant...' He shook his head, snapping himself out of the train of unimportant thoughts. "Forget about Dupe for now." He said. "Tell me about Haru and China."