Chapter 42: Battery Stone
Charlotte went out with Gut to buy the very same memory disk she had put in all the information regarding the blueprints and materials before. She started to work on it as soon as she got back to their room. She asked for Gut's personal laptop to work on it. Between making sure it worked properly and checking its contents, it took her a full day.
Once everything was ready, she looked at the blueprints and materials. Everything was there, all her research and documentation.
She sighed in relief, she didn't have to do everything from scratch.
What she wanted the most now was to get the one machine that allowed the conservation and subsequent emission of the fifth force, so she wouldn't have that problem of excessive exhaustion ever again. Finding it and then making comparisons between that one and White Prism's previous blueprints and materials, she noticed it required less elements altogether, although the complexity of its internal structure was the same.
Maybe I can even produce it with Prism's help?
Taking out her notebook, she noted down all the materials, elements and devices she needed to make it work, leaving out the blueprint and how to actually make it.
"Hey, I need these." She tore the three pages everything was on and threw them towards Gut.
"You need these? What for?" He asked, surprised that she wanted to buy so many strange things.
"To make a new machine!" She answered with vigour.
"Another one? Like the last one?"
"You knew about… Oh, right, you're following me back then… Yep! Like that one but a different one!"
"How did you get all this?"
"In here," she pointed to her newly bought disk, "I've put everything in here."
"Oh? Then in there is the one you gave him?"
" ! Right! Yes! Please, don't tell him… There, there are seven in total, and I don't want him knowing about them." She asked with puppy eyes.
"Seven? That is actually a lot, and each had its own functionality, right?"
"Yep! But I'm still researching them, so, please?"
"…" he hesitated for a moment, it was his job to tell everything regarding the machines to James, but he also considered the girl's feelings and trustiness. "Alright, as long as you do not cause any problem, he will not know."
"Thanks!" She smiled sweetly at him.
"What does the one you will be creating?" He asked, wondering if it was dangerous like the last one, it had disappeared completely, taking with it all the stuff lying around.
"I think it's kind of a storage device, a battery of sorts. I'll have to complete it first and make it work before knowing better."
She continued talking about what it could possibly do, but Gut didn't understand much of it, at all. It sounded so out of norm for an unknown energy like the one she tried to describe to exist.
The next morning, he went to buy all the things he could find as early and fast as possible. There wasn't a big black marker and similar places if one compared to the ones he Knew in Paversia, but it was enough to find all of the stuff she needed. Though everything she had asked for could be obtained without going there, it would take too long and came with the risk of alerting the government.
In the late afternoon, he came back after buying everything she had put on the list: vials of pure elements and the necessary equipment. Charlotte had been looking at the theory she had devised and comparing it with what she had come to know.
The next day, they went to a storage room he had rented the previous day, telling her that it was necessary lest something went amiss, she agreed with his judgement.
It took her two days to complete, she couldn't exert much strength as her body was still recovering nor could Gut help her as he didn't know how to do it that well, and could possibly make things slower. He just stood on the doorway, making sure to give the girl a hand if something disastrous happened.
On the third day and with a new computer Gut had bought her, she stared at the completed machine. What came next was the most crucial part. She had to first make the new strange material, and needed all the concentration she could muster.
She first put all the vials of the elements it required and, after marking them with a needle so she would know what they were inside the External Projection, she sat in the middle of them, cross-legged.
Gut was watching her with interest, looking at what she was about to do. From what he knew, James had taken three days to make the previous crystal, and it was with the help of advanced machines and instruments. What she was about to do was a mystery, and it was also the first time he was going to see what she could fully do.
Inside the Crystal's Space, she called forth the External Projection and saw everything around her. She had inscribed on the floor the material's chemical chain, so she could always see it if she forgot anything. It was a compound of 13 different elements, in a chain of more than 100 atoms and having an internal alloy of other 5 every four to six molecules.
She started zooming in, feeling a little nervous, as this was the first time she was going into that small realm. Zooming in, she saw everything becoming big around her, her body was big, the dust was big, finally she could see, more dust, dust she hadn't seen before, the smallest part of air. She noticed, she wasn't near the vials, so she zoomed out.
Remembering that she could make a script to move freely, she made it for the 18 elements around her. Going to the bottom most part in the vial. She finally went to the first element of the chain and zoomed in again. At some point she couldn't see anything but whiteness, the whiteness of the External Projection. She started to search for anything she could describe as an atom. And so, she saw it, floating in there, a small cloud of energy, of dust, of something, she couldn't describe it. It was there, like a pebble in the sea, she felt that if she zoomed a bit more, she would stop seeing it.
"This, I zoomed so much and this is the nucleus?" She speculated that what she was seeing was the protons and neutrons of the atom and not the atom itself as she couldn't see anything surrounding her except for it. "So that's why there was nothing?"
She then willed to zoom out, slowly this time. She felt she went out of something that couldn't be seen and looked back, nothing. Gritting her 'teeth' in frustration, she started to think how to move it without seeing it.
After some attempts, she started moving the nucleus out of the vial, though she couldn't zoom in to have a full perspective or she would stop seeing it, she could still move it if it stayed in her 'palm'. If she zoomed out too much, she would stop sensing it altogether, so she had to remain in a relatively small size. She brought it to the top of her head, or at least she intended to, as she couldn't see properly at the size she was in and could only be guided by White Prism.
"This'll be harder than I thought."
After making a script so it would be remembered where she was and how much distance she had zoomed in, she went to the second element, finding a nucleus promptly, as she already had some experience with it. She 'held' it and brought it to where the first one was, after looking for a moment, she decided to try and make them join together. Some attempts latter, she felt it connected.
"Fui, it took a while, now to the other."
She went on, making the first molecule of the crystal. Letting it go to see how it behaved, she was glad it stayed in place after going to the scripted locations of all the atom's nuclei. On the second one, she created a script of it all, making it go faster after the third one.
Once the tenth molecule was done, it only took longer than ten seconds to be completed. She knew it needed to be faster or she would be staying there for decades without finishing it. So she started to increase the number of molecules created at once, calling it a cluster. Then, more clusters at the same time.
When three hours had gone by, Gut saw how a little pebble no bigger than a grain of salt started to form on top of Charlotte's head. He had been paying enough attention to whatever happened around her. Her body was the same, not becoming thinner, as she had told him before.
After another two hours, the pebble had grown to the size of a ping-pong ball. He could already see it well, without the help of his augmented vision. Its color was darkish, but he didn't get what color it exactly had, simply dark, as if consuming the light around it, it wasn't completely black as one could see through it, but its color was uncertain. It was completely round and without any perceivable edge.
"Woa, so this is what she can do, so this is what she has created."
He remembered seeing something similar the first time he saw Charlotte up close, laying on the floor while on the nude. On the floor where the first machine had once stood was a little diamond shaped crystal. The same crystal she had searched desperately when she woke up in the tent once they came to Igny.
"So that crystal is the final form of her machine, it never disappeared, it just changed sizes. How intriguing."
He had the momentary urge to call James and tell him about it. But hesitated before deciding not to do so, she had trusted him enough to let him watch and tell him her theories. And he valued that kind of trust, like a father would with her daughters secrets.
After some more minutes, he realized the ball wasn't growing any more, he started to wonder if she had made some mistake when he heard someone breathing heavily. Looking down at her, he saw her shoulders heaving slowly.
"Are you okay?" He said after approaching her.
"! Y-yes, it's tiring, you see." She was startled by the sudden voice and said between her breaths.
He frowned at her answer, she had told him she wouldn't be getting any thinner, but now she was breathing heavily, as if she had done a lot of exercise.
"I hope this will not be bad for your body?"
"No, haa, it only tires the mind and my breathing follows its tiredness. It's not a physical exhaustion but a mental one." She spoke while slowly getting her bearings back.
"So?"
"I've been, in a worst state, you know? Hehe, this is not that much. I can bear with it."
After speaking, she felt something hitting her head. She had told Prism to hold it for some seconds before slowly putting it down so she could see it. Had it not been for Gut, she would have looked at it from below. She grabbed it before it could fall to the floor.
"What is it, anyway?" He said while looking at the crystal on her hand.
"This? Is simply the central part of the machine, without it the machine won't do anything, and this without the machine had close to no use, just a pretty stone." Her eyes shone looking at the pretty stone she had made with her own efforts.
Her eyes truly shone, as if there were leds in each of them, Gut had never seen that reaction, not from a completely normal human. But thinking back, she was not normal anymore, she was a new kind of modified human that could do stranger things.
"Are you turning on the machine?" He asked as she started to get up with his help.
"Huh? Nono, it's still not enough." She waved her hands in denial. "I just couldn't do it anymore as I was getting tired."
"What are we to do with it, then?" He pointed to the machine.
"Store it here? I doubt anyone knows how to use it or even what it does."
They went out of the storage room and into their hotel. The next few days they would come for only some minutes after some hours of rest, as charlotte had already made all the scripts for it to be completed fast enough. She could do more but she would get way too tired and even possibly faint, she thought.
On the fifth day, the vials of some of the 13 main elements were completely empty, while others still had some. The remaining 5 auxiliary elements were almost full, though, as they weren't needed that much. She had finally made the Core Crystal of the machine.
Coming back in the evening after resting for some hours, Gut stayed outside of the range she told him about. From what she remembered, every non-living thing that wasn't big enough would be lost within, and he was mostly technology, only having flesh in his torso and head.
Getting everything ready, she told the Core Crystal what it was and put it inside. She then started the machine and after making sure everything was okay, she approached it. Sitting in front of it, she started to meditate. Feeling she was floating, she opened her eyes, it was somehow different, it was darker and more constrained than with White Prism, she felt like she couldn't move as freely. Sighing, she believed the cause of this was that she had left the External Projection on, to see if it could be reproduced without the need of making another machine.
She kept herself in a meditative state until she found herself again in her body. Looking at the machine, she saw the same black luster the Core Crystal had before, but surrounding the machine. Smirking, she got up and waited for it to fade completely. She then approached and opened the hatch and waited some more. Finally seeing that everything was okay, she braced herself and touched the stone. She felt her body being launched over the air again, as the first time. This time Gut was prepared to catch her, though.
"Ugh," opening her eyes, she saw the same glow again, but without the machine, nor the new computer, nor anything around it. It had created a crater in the storage room, "This' bad?"
"Indeed. What happened?"
He asked incredulously, he just saw Charlotte sitting in front of the machine for some minutes before turning it off, she then waited for a minute or so, before opening the hatch and waiting some more. It looked as if she was waiting for something she cooked to cool itself down. Finally touching the stone, she was repelled at an incredibly speed. Gut couldn't perceive when the machine was gone, it was instantly, there was no time before the machine was there and the machine not being there. As soon as she touched it, everything was gone. When he caught her, though, there wasn't any force.
The crater had a radius more than a meter big, there was no sight of the equipment either, even in the warehouse before, the ceiling and the floor stayed intact, without change.
"It was a success... Where's White Prism?"
"White Prism?" He asked back, not remembering that name ever being mentioned.
"Ah, the crystal I always carry with me. Can you see it?"
"Not from here, let us approach, and you, put something on, you have nothing."
"Uh?" Looking down at herself, she finally realized it. "Why didn't you tell me before…"
"There were more worrisome things, now, put this on." He said as he handed a lab coat he had prepared in case she went nude again, hitting the nail.
She grabbed it while trying to cover herself with the other hand. Putting it on, the coat went down to her knees. Not saying any thanking words. She started to walk to the hole in the middle.
"How big is it?" She asked as she wasn't sure of the dimensions and Gut had pretty good sight from what she could tell.
"It's pretty deep, more than one meter down, maybe one and a half at its deepest." He answered looking from edge to edge, seeing in the center and deepest part two small crystals, he pointed at them. "There they are."
"Oh! Finally, something goes well!" She said as she jumped in, not caring for the light that apparently was only visible for her.
Can't he see it? Why's he not saying anything? Hmm, I'll try something new after this.
Crouching down, she first grabbed White Prism and then looked at the other one, not sure of what to call it. Thinking what she was about to do, she smirked at the silly thought she had, and decided to go with it.
"I'll call you, Charlotte Eschette's Crystal Core." When she finished saying its name, she grabbed it as fast as possible and put it in her mouth, swallowing it instantly.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone