10 - Crafting a Battery

You know what’s an awesome tool? Wikipedia. I used to spend so much time randomly crawling through pages. Every time I had a question, I turned to it.

“Whatever happened to that actor from that show from way back when?”

“What’s toilet paper made out of?”

“Where’s Japan ranked in the world for English speaking ability?”

“What colour is zomp?”

“What’s the history of rondels?”

One time, I was looking up the history of Edison and Tesla and stuff, and read about the history of the lightbulb. While credit for the invention is often given to one person, the lightbulb was actually the product of all kinds of innovation by many different people. I remembered reading about different things being used for the part of the lightbulb that lights up. You can make filaments out of cloth, carbon, and wood, not just metal. Seems impossible, but apparently, people have done it.

If I was going to make a light to explore the cave, my options were burning something or creating a lightbulb. Carrying a bunch of torches down there seemed difficult, the same with making a lamp. I couldn’t think of a supply of oil in the oasis. Even if I could make something, could I possibly make enough to get deep into the cave? How long would a torch even last? Plus, carrying a flame of some kind would require the use of a hand, one that wouldn’t be on my spear, leaving me vulnerable. How would the scorpions react to it? Would it chase them off or attract them? If the light went out, how would I light it again? How would I light a fire in the first place?

The other option was an electric light. Now, one would think that electric power would be far, far more difficult to achieve than setting something on fire. But this was a magic world. When I magically transformed, I now had a crystal embedded in my forehead. That crystal, I hoped, would shoot electricity. The trouble was, my mana was so low level that I only had enough to transform; I couldn’t fire lightning bolts yet.

But I had a crazy idea. What if it were possible to regulate how much energy I could let out of the crystal? Did it only fire lightning bolts, or could I slowly allow electricity to trickle out like I was a human battery?

I’d have to wait until the next day to test my skill because my mana needed to recharge. For the rest of the day, I would do two things: harvest potential materials for a filament, and harvest some meat off the giant scorpion sitting in the water. After I got it out, because it was further polluting the water source.

Even though I was stronger with my enhanced strength, I was far too weak to even drag the whole monster from the oasis pool. Thankfully, I had an indestructible spear. I used it to hack the arms and legs off the corpse. The legs I dragged way out into the desert and figured I’d start a garbage pile out there, well away from the oasis so that anything coming around to scavenge through it would stay well away from me. I dragged the pincers out next. I’d discovered from eating small ones that they were just too tough to do more than gnaw on. If a baby was that bad, there was no way giant pincers would be edible. That left the body.

I dragged the torso from the water with lots of grunting and sweat. Lots of bodily fluids had leaked into the water during our fight and after. Pretty gross. There are so many things we take for granted in modern civilization. Running water is a big one. I doubt most of us truly appreciate how great it is to be able to turn a tap on anywhere and get clean, drinkable water. That can also be used for showers and toilets, cleaning and anything else. But live without it for a while, and you see how hard life can be. I just knew I was going to keep getting sick from drinking barely filtered water. I was going to have to come up with a way to evaporate the water and capture condensation. Or find a source of fuel so I could boil it.

I hacked and sawed the scorpion torso to get at the “meat”. The beast was big enough that I could peel the shell off and carve out handfuls of the most edible parts. It smelled awful. It was going to taste awful. But I needed the food. So I hurried to cook a few scorpion steaks while the sun was still up. I would risk gorging myself, and hoping it didn’t hit my digestive system as badly as usual.

As I sat there shovelling the second seared scorpion steak into my mouth, I wondered:

Since I could change into scorpion form now, did that make me a cannibal?

I chose not to think about it too much lest it ruin my appetite. I ate until bursting. The meat wasn’t going to last forever with the thing rotting in the heat. Knowing that, I cooked some more as the stove rock cooled in the evening. With the lower heat, I was able to cook slower and dry it out, giving me food for the next day as well.

I went to sleep under the stars, marvelling at how weird this world was. Then I got up and rushed to the sand toilet. My kingdom for a bidet function.

The next evening, as the sun set, mana restored, I was able to cast [Vengeance shall be mine! Lightning Scorpion!]. If I was going to experiment with making light, I needed it to be dark. I made sure to cover my eyes as I did, and then immediately turned off the scorpion vision. I gathered the filament options I’d collected: fuzz from the disgusting fruit husks, a strip of cloth from the robes I wore, and pieces of palm trunk. With pieces of palm leaf and trunk, I fashioned ways to hold the filaments so I would be able to touch each end to the crystal in my head.

I knew that if I tried to blast a lightning bolt, I’d get mana sickness. I waited, hoping my mana was slowly recharging over time. Giving it about an hour, I touched the cloth filament to the crystal and used all my concentration to slow-release energy instead of charging the crystal. It was like trying not to pee full blast, but controlling it so it came out only in a tiny trickle.

At first, nothing happened. But the more I relaxed and willed it to work, I finally felt the energy building in the crystal, which was a very strange sensation, like a crackling buzz in my head. My control slipped. The lightning bolt tried to trigger. Pain split my head in two.

I woke up some time later feeling like I had the worst hangover ever. Not wanting to waste the food I’d eaten recently, I just lay face first in the sand, not moving, willing my stomach to settle and waiting for the burn to go away. It lasted the rest of the night and made sleep nearly impossible.

So the next day, recalling my earlier goal, I forced myself to get up and exercise a little bit. A few pushups, a few situps were all I could manage. Filtering water and eating took most of my remaining energy and willpower. That evening, I transformed and tried the experiment again. And painfully failed. I was sick well into the night once more.

The third night, I tried again and managed a slow trickle of power for about three seconds before failing. It was a small step but an encouraging one. I hoped that all this practice was going to raise my mana stat in the future. I’d continued to exercise during the day.

By the sixth evening, I could finally let energy flow from the crystal in a somewhat controlled manner. I could even stop and start. That was very exciting. I’d turned myself into a living battery. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any of the materials I had to act as a filament.

On the seventh day, disappointed, I walked around the oasis for the umpteenth time, trying to think of something I could use as a filament. If only I’d had something metal. I’d tried putting the spear to my head, but that hadn’t worked. I paused in my walk and did ten whole pushups, which I was proud of. I was making progress.

As I was making yet another circle around the water, feeling increasingly frustrated by my failure to build a light despite what a huge challenge it was, a glint of something in the water caught my eye. I idly glanced over and saw some of those rocks on the floor of the clear pool. Wandering over, I waded in and picked one up. The water soaked into the bottom of my robes, making them heavy. Though the water was warm, it was refreshing. Too bad I couldn’t swim and bathe regularly if I wanted to keep the water as clean as possible.

The rock was dark from the water, except where it was shiny and white from the quartz vein running through it. And the yellow splotches of some mineral were really bright. I stared at the wet rock in my hand. At those flecks and patches of metallic yellow.

“This can’t be…actual gold…can it?” I stared longer. Finally, I shook my head and scoffed, “Nah!”

But I couldn’t get the possibility out of my mind. I held onto the rock. Logically, I knew for sure it wouldn’t work, but I couldn’t convince the emotional part of my brain of that. After the sun set, I transformed, “[Vengeance shall be mine! Lightning Scorpion!]”

I sat down on the sandy grass overlooking the oasis water, almost trembling with nervous anticipation, not wanting to allow myself to hope yet unable to stop it. I held the rock to my forehead.

“This is dumb. There’s no way this can work. You can’t just touch a rock to an electrical source and make light. Physics doesn’t work that way.” So I said, but I couldn’t stop holding the rock to the crystal embedded in my forehead.

Finally, I took a deep breath, centered myself, and tried to direct electricity into the rock.

A soft, golden glow spread out before me. It was just like wearing a headlamp.

I laughed in disbelief. “Fucking magic. Unbelievable.” I laughed again, this time with excitement. I now had a light source!

I spent the rest of the evening rigging a headband out of a long strip cut from the bottom of the robes I wore. It took some doing, but I was able to craft something that kept the egg-sized rock in place, resting on the upper edge of the crystal. It would fall off if I moved too hard, but it stayed in place if I moved carefully.

I went to sleep feeling good again. It had taken a slow and frustrating week, but I’d worked hard and kept at it, and the effort had paid off. It was an uncommon feeling. I found myself wanting to experience it more often. I knew the reason the feeling had been rare in my life was because of how often I’d tried and then given up on things because they were too hard or complicated or too much effort. I’d have to work not to fall back into that bad habit.

The next day, I rose feeling rested. With the control I’d been gaining over my electrical output, which was a really weird thing to say, I was eager to get back to the cave and explore deeper. I was both excited and terrified at the idea because I knew there were going to be so many scorpions in there again. I’d probably been lucky the first time. I couldn’t let myself be complacent; I’d have to stay on my toes.

I returned to the cave entrance. After placing my palm frond parasol and crude fruit husk sandals just inside, I then fixed the gold rock to my forehead. It had to be tight, but it would hold for now. Gripping the spear, I took a deep breath and strode into the darkness. Quietly, I breathed,

“[Vengeance shall be mine! Lightning Scorpion!]”