Date: January 4, 2018 | Time: 11:45 AM |
Location: Rented Apartment - Industrial District, Sylvaris
Perspective: Ami
The afternoon sun was a persistent, unwelcome intruder, leaking through the gap in the heavy curtains and hitting the edge of my notebook. I stared at the numbers until they started to swim, ink-black fish in a sea of parchment.
11:45 AM.
Master had been gone for three hours. Or, more precisely, 10,800 seconds.
"Ami? You're doing that tail-twitchy thing again."
I didn't look up, but I felt my tail go still against the wooden chair. Bibi was sprawled on the rug, her fluffy black tail swaying in a slow, hypnotic arc. The rhythmic crunch of her chips was the only thing breaking the silence of the room.
"I... I'm just calculating, Bibi," I whispered.
"Still on that big paper?" Bibi sat up, a stray chip crumb clinging to her lip. She looked at me with those warm black eyes, the kind of gaze that made the air feel less heavy.
"You've been staring at that since breakfast. Isn't your brain tired yet?"
"It's... the Market Equilibrium of Mana-Crystals in the South Seas trade," I said, my fingers tightening around the charcoal pencil. "The export-import ratio is shifting because of the Avalon mobilization. If the demand increases by 14% while the supply of raw mana-ores stays stagnant... the inflation coefficient is... it's..."
I bit my lip, staring at the long string of variables.
`Σ(Pm * Qm) / (1 + i)^n = ∫ [S(t) - D(t)] dt`
The integration was the problem. Calculating the flux of mana-value against time-decay without a proper anchor point was... impossible.
"Without a calculator... I can't find the derivative," I breathed, my ears flattening against my head. "If I had one, I could solve this in a few hours. But doing it by hand... I'll make a mistake. One decimal point... and the whole market collapses."
Bibi laughed, a soft, bubbly sound that made my ears flicker despite myself. She crawled over, leaning her head against my shoulder. She smelled like salt and home.
"Let the market collapse, Ami. It's not our market," she teased, gently bopping her nose against my cheek. "We're just waiting for master. He said he'd be back soon, right? That's the only calculation that matters."
"But... he gave me the book," I said, looking at the heavy economics tome at the edge of the table.
"He said... 'Learn how the world works, or the world will work you.' I don't want to be... worked again."
I felt Bibi's arm wrap around me, pulling me into a side-hug. She was warm, always so warm.
"He's not Malakor, Ami. He's... he's Kaiser. We're safe here." She kissed the top of my head, her energetic tail giving a decisive flick. "Now, stop thinking about numbers and eat a chip. You're getting that 'math-frown' again."
I looked back at the parchment. The numbers were still there, cold and mocking. But the weight on my chest felt a little lighter. Just a little.
"You're doing it again."
"Doing... what?"
"The frown! It's back! I'm going to have to physically remove it."
"Bibi, wait—don't—"
Before I could finish the warning, Bibi lunged. She didn't use her hands; she led with her forehead, rubbing her cheek against mine with a force that nearly sent me off the chair. It was a 'mark', a claim of territory that smelled faintly of salt-vinegar chips.
"B-Bibi! I'm in the middle of a—"
"A what? A headache? Numbers don't cuddle, Ami. I do."
"St-stop! My pencil!"
I tried to pull away, my tail lashing in a flurry of black fur, but she was faster. She pounced, her weight pinning me against the backrest as she began to ruthlessly scruff the top of my head. I felt my ears flatten, then pop back up, helpless against the onslaught of sisterly affection.
"Say it."
"No."
"Say 'I am a cute kitten and I hate math'."
"I will... literally calculate the probability of you slipping on a chip if you don't—"
"Wrong answer!"
She started tickling my ribs—the one spot where my logic always failed. I let out a sound that wasn't analytical at all—a high-pitched, embarrassing squeak that made my tail puff up to twice its size.
"Okay! Okay! I... I'm a kitten! Let go!"
Bibi pulled back, her eyes sparkling with a mischievous, predatory glee. She gave her own tail a satisfied swish, looking down at me while I tried to smooth my matted hair.
"Better. Your face looks like a person's again."
"You're... a menace."
"I'm the big sister. It's in the job description."
She was about to go for a second round when a sudden, heavy sound echoed from the hallway.
Clink. Clank. Thud.
It wasn't a normal footstep. It was the sound of metal—heavy, dense, and rhythmic. My ears snapped toward the door instantly, swiveling to catch the vibration. Even Bibi went still, her energetic swaying stopping mid-air as she sniffed the air.
The scent hit us first. Ozone. The cold, sharp bite of industrial steel. And something else... something deep, like the smell of a storm about to break.
The door clicked open.
Master stepped into the room, his posture as effortless as ever. But it was the bag slung over his shoulder that caught my eye. It didn't just rattle; it sang. A high-frequency vibration was coming from inside the leather, a resonance that made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
"You're back," Bibi cheered, already leaping to her feet.
My eyes were locked on the bag.
What... what is in there?
It wasn't just metal. The energy coming off it was... wrong. It was too dense. My mind immediately started trying to calculate the weight based on the way the floorboards creaked under his boots, but the numbers were spinning out of control.
"Master?" I whispered, my tail giving a small, uncertain twitch.
He just placed the bag on the floor with a sound that seemed to swallow the room's remaining light.
"It's just some junk," he said, his voice flat and remarkably bored.
He looked like he'd just spent the afternoon haggling over the price of a second-hand cabbage instead of carrying a bag that seemed to defy our surroundings.
"Found a guy in the district who didn't know what he was sitting on. Managed to get some decent raw stock."
Bibi was already circling him like a curious cat, her tail twitching in high-frequency arcs. "Junk? Master, the floor is literally groaning. My ears are ringing just from the weight of it!"
"Is it gold? Did you find more magic gold?"
"Gold is rare, Bibi, not magical." Master reached into the bag and pulled out a dull, matte grey rod. It didn't look like much, but when he placed it on the table, it didn't just sit there—it settled with a vibration that made the chip bowl rattle.
"This is just some Titanium ore-composite. Durable enough to be annoying to work with. Useful for frames, if you don't mind the sweat."
I leaned in, my silver eyes narrowing. I didn't see junk; the density was... wrong. It was far too compact for just 'ore.'
He didn't stop there. One by one, he pulled out the 'scrap', his movements casual and rhythmic, as if he were cataloging dirty laundry. A handful of Gallium flakes, which he tossed onto the rug like they were table salt.
Some Beryllium-coated glass shards, polished so brightly they seemed to steal the light from the room. A few Carbon-fiber scraps that looked like burnt wood but felt like woven spider silk.
"Hydrazine salt, Nitrogen canisters, and some Ion-infused copper grids," he continued, pulling out what looked like a bunch of silver tubes and some rubbery springs. "Oh, and some Xenon-gas canisters. It's basically just high-grade dirt and air that's been compressed enough to be useful."
"Master... these..." I struggled to find the words. He called them 'dirt' and 'scraps,' but the air around them felt like a storm.
"I've read about Dwarvian artifacts in the capital's library, but even they... they didn't have this kind of purity. This isn't just scrap. It's... it's something else."
"It's just materials, Ami. Don't go turning it into a religion." He wiped a smudge of grease from his forearm, a playful, sarcastic smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"I'm just building a doorstop. Maybe a very heavy one to keep the world from moving too much while I'm sleeping."
Bibi picked up one of the rubbery springs, sniffing it and then giving it a tentative lick. "It tastes like metallic broccoli. And it's lighter than a feather!"
"Master, did you pull these out of a dragon's hoard? Or is it some weird Dwarf technology?"
"Neither," he said, giving Bibi a small, patronizing pat on the head. "It's just better engineering. Now, stop licking the materials or you'll end up with diseases, and I'm not paying for the medication."
"Hey! I was just... testing the quality!"
"Sure you were. Now, I need both of you to actually earn your keep today. I'm starting the baseline assembly, and I need a few sets of hands that aren't mine."
"Help? Me?" Bibi perked up, her ears standing at full attention. "Can I hit things with a hammer? I'm very good at hitting things."
Master chuckled, a low, dry sound.
"No hammers, Bibi. For this, I need you to be the... let's call it the 'Structural Support Unit'. Basically, you hold the things I tell you to hold and try not to drop them on your toes. Think of it as being a very energetic helper."
He looked at me, and for a split second, that 'average' mask seemed to slip, replaced by a gaze that felt like it was scanning my very soul.
"I need your eyes, Ami. I need you to measure the gaps. We're working with micron-level tolerances here. If your hand shakes by even a hair's breadth, the whole thing will probably vibrate itself into a very expensive puddle of dust."
"Micron... tolerances?" I whispered.
My heart gave a sharp, frantic beat. He was asking me to work on this? To touch the materials that felt like they belonged to a different age? He looked so normal, sitting there and teasing Bibi about her 'tripod' duties.
He wasn't a scholar. He wasn't a dwarf. He was just... human.
And yet, he was holding the keys to a future I couldn't even calculate.
"Can you do it? Or are you too busy being a kitty?"
"I... I will... literally calculate every millimeter, Master."
"Good. Bibi, you just make sure we don't starve. If you try to help with the mechanical stuff, we'll probably end up with a doorstop that turns into a bomb."
"Hey! I can... I can hold a mirror!"
"We'll see. Let's get to work. Simplicity is value, remember? We're just putting some shiny scrap together."
Just putting shiny scrap together.
Perspective: Bibi
But for me? The room felt like a forge.
Kaiser didn't use a furnace. He didn't use a heavy hammer that made the floor shake. He just cleared the coffee table with a single, practiced sweep and started laying out the parts. The ozone scent was so thick I could practically taste it—sharp, electric, and smelling like a mountain during a thunderstorm.
"Bibi, hold this strut. Don't let it tilt. If it moves more than 3 degrees, the resonance will snap your wrist."
"3 degrees? Kaiser, I don't even know what a degree looks like!" I gripped the Carbon-fiber rod as if my life depended on it. My tail was tucked tight between my legs, sensing the sheer density of the metal. It felt... humming. Not with magic, but with a mechanical heartbeat.
"Just don't move."
I watched him. Really watched him.
He used a small, handheld device that sang a high, ultrasonic note—the kind that made my ears flatten against my skull. He wasn't welding; he was fusing. The ribs of the machine—about 15% done now—locked together in a pattern that looked like a ribcage made of stars.
"How's the economics coming, Ami?" Kaiser asked. He didn't even look up. He was aligning a Beryllium shard with his thumbnail, as casual as if he were cleaning dirt from a nail.
"I... I've hit a wall," Ami whispered from her desk. Her voice sounded small. "The integration of the supply-side variables... it's too complex without a mechanical calculator. I keep getting a remainder that shouldn't exist. It... it would take a team of Imperial scholars months of work to bridge the gap."
"Math is easy," Kaiser chuckled, his fingers moving like a blur of pale skin and grease.
"It's just a puzzle with too many pieces. You're trying to force the numbers to be perfect. Sometimes, you just have to let them be messy."
"But if they're messy, the economy collapses!"
"Then let it collapse. It's more fun to build a new one." He paused, his gaze flicking to the stack of parchment for a fraction of a second.
"The work is over there? Maybe if I have a spare 10 minutes later, I'll take a look. Might find a shortcut."
I nearly dropped the strut. Ami had told me that problem was mathematically impossible for anything other than a high-level magic tool. And he was offering to 'shortcut' it in a ten-minute break?
"Take a break, both of you," Kaiser said, stepping back.
"Oh, thank the Goddess!" I scrambled toward the balcony, my tail poofing out from the stress. "Ami, come on! Before my nose turns into a magnet!"
We stepped out onto the cold balcony. The Sylvaris air was sharp, but compared to the 'storm' inside, it felt like a warm blanket. I leaned against the railing, my heart drumming a frantic rhythm.
"Ami," I hissed, my ears swiveling to make sure Kaiser wasn't listening.
"Did you see his hands?"
"His... hands?"
"The parts, Ami! Look at the edges of that Titanium rib." I gestured back toward the glass.
"Remember the 'Orb of the Sky' those Dwarvian engineers brought to our kingdom's court? The one they said cost 10,000 gold and took three decades to polish?"
Ami's eyes widened. "The Space-Breacher prototype."
"Exactly! The Dwarves needed a mountain-sized furnace and steam-powered files to get those edges smooth," I whispered, the weight of the memory making my throat tight.
I wasn't just awestruck; I was scared.
"But look at Master's parts. They aren't 'bought,' Ami. Someone hand-filed those one micron at a time. No liquidator sells 'scrap' that's been hand-tuned for a void-seal. He isn't just an average guy who found a deal. He's a brilliant, terrifying liar who built a masterpiece while we were eating chips."
Ami looked back at the room, her logic-brain clearly fighting a losing battle. "He's just different, Bibi. He said—"
"He says whatever he needs to keep that mask on!" I gripped the railing until the wood groaned.
"He's not just our master, Ami. He's... he's something that shouldn't exist in a place like this. We're being protected by a monster in a carpenter's coat."
I looked through the glass. Kaiser was leaning over Ami's desk now, flipping through her impossible math sheets with one hand while popping a rogue salt-vinegar chip into his mouth with the other. He looked so lazy. So bored.
He's hiding everything, I thought, a shiver running down my spine. And he's doing it so well I almost believe him.
We walked back inside, but the air felt heavier. Not with metal, but with the secret sitting right in front of us.
"Okay," Kaiser said, snapping a copper grid into place. "Optics are next. Ami, I need those micron-eyes. Bibi, be the tripod."
I took my spot, but I didn't look at the machine. I looked at his hands, wondering what else those grease-stained fingers had built in the shadows.
The hours bled into each other. By the time the clock on the wall ticked toward 10 PM, the apartment felt less like a home and more like a high-altitude laboratory. The montage of the last few hours was a blur of silver and grey: Kaiser's hands moving with a rhythm that was almost hypnotic, the high-pitched *whir* of the fuser, and the quiet, rhythmic tapping of Ami's pencil as she took the measurements he called out.
It was... beautiful.
There was no other word for it. The chassis was a sleek, hexagonal prism made of that matte Titanium, no bigger than a large watermelon. It had these tiny, delicate-looking wings—the Gallium flakes now formed into dark, shimmering panels that seemed to drink the lamplight.
Master fooled Ami, I thought, watching a drop of sweat roll down his temple. She sees the simplicity and thinks it's just 'different'. But I remember Mother.
I remembered her sitting with the Dwarvian ambassadors, their voices booming as they described the 'Dwarvian Eye' that took a century of guild-work to perfect. They spoke of the materials like they were holy relics. They said the precision required would blind a normal man.
Master...
He was currently fitting what looked like a series of tiny, glass-encased copper coils—the radio parts, I guessed—into a slot that clicked with a sickeningly perfect sound. He didn't even use a magnifying glass.
"Done," he whispered.
The 'doorstop' stood on the coffee table. It didn't look like an artifact anymore. It looked like a living thing, its Beryllium optics reflecting the moon through the window.
It was a miniature Space-Breacher, but cleaner. Lighter.
Ami caught my eye and gave a small, conspiratorial wink. We had a plan. We were going to crack this 'average' shell once and for all.
"Master?" I asked, trying to keep my voice casual as I smoothed my tail. "Where did you learn to do... whatever that was? Engineering? The fusing?"
He didn't even look up. He was wiping the machine down with a rag that definitely smelled like cheap industrial oil.
"I'm not an engineer, Bibi. I'm a mechanic. Maybe a carpenter on a good day. You spend enough time fixing broken carts and leaky roofs, you learn how things fit together. It's a hobby."
"A hobby?" I deadpan. I looked at the Ion-grid. I'd bet my last bag of chips that he'd spent the last few days secretly refining those 'scraps' with magic and tools while we were asleep. Some of the parts looked imported, sure, but the way they were joined... that was all him.
"Master," Ami chimed in, stepping forward with her most logical-looking frown. "The Dwarvians said a device like this—a 'Space-Breacher'—costs over 10,000 gold pieces. How much did this... 'junk' cost you?"
Kaiser paused. He looked at the machine, then at us, a playful, mocking glint in his eyes.
"Total? Around 10 gold."
Ten.
My brain did a backflip.
"Ten... gold?" Ami's voice cracked. "Ten thousand? You mean—"
"No. Ten gold. Actually, it was nine for the scraps and a liquidator fee. I spent one gold on the forging mages down in the Lower District to mold the ribs to my designs. They're cheap if you don't ask for a receipt."
I stared at him. He'd taken literal trash and used some bottom-tier mages and his own 'hobby' skills to build a king's toy.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flat, stone-like tablet. It looked like a simplified version of the tablets the high-ranking scholars carried. With a quick click, he connected a wire from the satellite to the tablet.
The screen flickered, but stayed off.
"Alright," Kaiser said, picking the 'thing' up as if it were a bag of groceries. his posture returned to that lazy, unremarkable slump.
"We're finished here. Pack your things. We need to go somewhere remote outside the city. I need a clear line to the sky before dawn."
I followed him out the door, my mind still stuck on that number.
10 gold.
If he could build this for 10 gold, what could he do with a hundred? I shivered, and this time, it wasn't just the cold night air.
We trekked for nearly an hour, slipping through the shadows of the Lower District until the city walls were nothing but a jagged silhouette against the stars. We reached a barren hilltop, a place where the wind howled through the dry grass and the world felt infinitely large.
Kaiser didn't waste time. He set the 'thing' down on a flat stone and pulled a small, silver canister from his belt—the injection rocket. It was barely the size of a wine bottle, but it was etched with fine, geometric lines that didn't look like any magic seal I'd ever seen.
"Ami, help me with the verticality. Bibi, watch for any city patrols."
I took my post, but my eyes were glued to the tablet. The screen finally hummed to life, showing a series of scrolling green lines.
"K.Y.I. link established," Kaiser muttered, his thumb tracing a command on the stone surface.
"K-Kyi?" Ami whispered, her logic-brain kicking into overdrive.
"Master, do you mean Kinetic-Yield Induction? That's... that's a theoretical propagation method from the Old Age of Dwarvian History. They said it was impossible because the atmospheric resonance is too chaotic."
"It's only chaotic if you try to control it with mana," Kaiser said, his voice calm. "I'm using the natural vibration of the air. It's a radio frequency that magic-users can't even perceive. It's a ghost signal."
It hit us both at the same time. The realization didn't come with a bang, but with a cold, terrifying clarity.
"It's a satellite," I breathed, my voice barely audible over the wind.
"A monitoring station. The Valerion Kingdom spent millions building their 'Dragon's Eye' lattice. The Asura Empire has those massive crystal arrays... and you just built one on a coffee table."
Ami's hand went to her mouth. "Master... all the nations use them for war. For monitoring the borders. For spying... and you built a pure one. Without a single drop of state funding."
Kaiser didn't look like a spy. He didn't look like a king. He looked like an 'average' guy who was worried about his battery levels.
But in that moment, I saw the side he never showed—the kindness that led him to build a world-class monitoring tool for a bunch of refugees, and the genius that allowed him to do it with literal scrap.
"It's just a hobby, remember?" he said, but this time, the sarcasm felt a little softer.
He pulled a small vial of blue mana from his inner pocket. He didn't drink it. He didn't chant. He just poured a single drop into the injection rocket's base.
Click.
A tiny spark of white heat erupted. There was no massive roar, no plume of black smoke. Just a sharp, rhythmic hiss as the cold-gas boosters ignited. The canister didn't just fly; it punched through the air, carrying the 10-gold masterpiece into the black void above us.
A white streak cut through the night, a line of light that seemed to connect the hilltop to the stars themselves.
I watched until the streak was nothing but a speck of light, indistinguishable from the constellation of the Great Bear.
Then, the tablet in Kaiser's hand chirped.
The screen stabilized. A bird's-eye view of Sylvaris appeared—cold, sharp, and perfectly clear. I could see the city streets, the glowing hearths of the Upper District, and even the small, flickering light of our own rented apartment.
"Master..." Ami whispered, her silver eyes reflecting the green glow of the screen.
"It's up," Kaiser said, slipping the tablet back into his coat. "Now, we can actually see what's coming for us. Simplicity is value, right?"
I stood there in the dark, my tail tucked, watching the man who had just put a piece of the stars into his pocket.
And he was the most dangerous man I'd ever known.
Perspective: Mixed (Bibi & Ami)
We walked back in silence for a few minutes, the only sound the crunch of gravel and the distant, rhythmic hum of a night-harvester in the fields.
But the silence didn't last. Ami was vibrating—not from the cold, but from the sheer friction of a thousand unanswered questions.
"Master?"
"Hmm?"
"It's impossible."
"It's impossible."
"You said that twice already, Ami."
"No, I mean the resonance. The atmospheric pressure at 60,000 thousand feet... the Dwarvian papers say the mana-drag alone would rip Titanium-composite into shreds. How did the injection rocket—"
"I didn't use mana to stabilize the drag," Kaiser said, his voice light, almost amused.
"I used a negative-pressure cooling system. Basically, I let the heat from the friction power the stabilizers. It's like using a fire to freeze water. Counter-intuitive, but it works if you read the right old papers."
"What old papers?" I chimed in, tripping over a tree root in my haste to keep up. "You've been missing for exactly 1 days!"
"1 day is a long time if you skip the fiction section," Kaiser teased, a lazy smirk visible in the moonlight.
"The Dwarvian Aerospace Team had a theory about 'ghost-propulsion' back in the Silver Age. They never built it because they were too busy trying to make the AI CORES. I just took their math, stripped out the aesthetics, and spent the last two nights planning the assembly."
"You... planned this in two nights?" Ami stopped dead. "K-Kyi Waves... you found them?"
"Found? No. I guessed. I figured if the air has a weight, it has to have a frequency. I just tuned the radio to the 'static' nobody wanted to listen to."
"It's not magic, it's just physics in a simpler way."
"You're a carpenter who happens to understand Silver Age thermodynamics?" I deadpanned.
He didn't answer. He just chuckled and kept walking, his hands in his pockets as if we'd just finished a casual stroll.
It changed something.
As we walked, I felt a weight shift in my chest.
I had looked at Kaiser and seen a savior—an 'average' man who had pulled us out of the darkness of the Lower District and gave us a roof. He was kind, sure. He was our Master.
But seeing that speck of light in the sky... I realized the concept of him being 'average' was the biggest lie of all. He hadn't just saved us from a hell-hole; he was building a world where hell-holes didn't exist.
The adoration remained, but it was tinted now with a deep, vibrating awe.
He wasn't an average person who got lucky. He was a force of nature that had saved us...
By the time we reached the apartment, the first grey light of dawn was creeping over the rooftops. Kaiser stopped at the door, pulling the tablet out one last time. He tapped the screen and showed it to us.
The image had zoomed out. We could see the curve of the horizon now—the blue-grey edge of the world, vast and terrifyingly beautiful.
"In a day or two, when the orbit stabilizes, I'll be able to see the Great Plains," he said softly. "Maybe even Earth."
"Earth?" Ami whispered. "Is that... another kingdom?"
"Something like that." He gave us a tired, genuine smile. "Go to sleep. Both of you. You've earned it."
We stumbled into our room, the adrenaline finally giving way to bone-deep exhaustion. Bibi practically face-planted onto her bed, her tail giving one last, weak swish.
"Ami," she mumbled into the pillow. "He's awesome. Like... actually, scary-awesome."
"I know," I whispered, sitting on the edge of my bed. "I don't think I can ever look at a doorstop the same way again."
Perspective: Ami
I stood up to clear my desk, my eyes heavy. But as I reached for my economics notes, my heart stopped.
The parchment—the one with the 'impossible' market variables—wasn't empty.
I leaned in, my breath catching. The long, jagged lines of numbers I'd been struggling with for weeks were gone. In their place was a series of neat, precise calculations. The integration was complete. The market formulas were solved.
It was 95% done.
At the bottom of the page, written in a lazy, familiar scrawl, was a small note.
'I did what I could. Complete the rest on your own. It's good practice.'
:D
Next to it was a tiny, hand-drawn smiley face.
I stared at the paper, my fingers trembling. He hadn't just solved it; he'd left the last 5% for me so I wouldn't lose the chance to learn.
"Bibi..." I whispered.
"Mmm?"
"He solved it. Most of it."
Bibi scrambled over, her eyes widening as she saw the note. "Wait... he did? Seriously? While we were out?"
"No... he must have done it while we were getting the rocket ready. 10 minutes... he really did it in 10 minutes."
I looked at the calculations, seeing the elegant, brutal efficiency of his logic.
My father was one of the most respected math professors in the Beastkin capital, a man who lived and breathed equations. I remember him spending weeks—weeks—on stability variables for the Royal Treasury.
Even he... even Father couldn't have untangled this in a single sitting, let alone a 10-minute break with a chip in his mouth.
I looked at the window, toward the spot in the sky where the satellite was now circling the world. My mind raced.
Why build it?
Why for 10 gold?
Why solve my homework while building a piece of the stars?
What are you planning to do with that sky-eye, Master?
I didn't have an answer. But as I looked at the math, a new kind of fear—and a new kind of fire—began to burn.
I felt like the world had just gotten a lot smaller.