Elevation of Mana Chapter 172 Bets Against the Future

After my display the other elders left me to my devices, which was good. Perhaps here and there they were voicing their irritation behind closed doors, but none were bringing it to me, and that was excellent too, because I wasn't in the mood to deal with them. I had other far more important things to do.

“Would you like more tea?” asked my daughter, poffering forward the tiny kettle she had, it did actually contain tea too, not just pretend, it was however a cold blend, not a piping hot one.

“Certainly,” I accepted, filling my cup as I looked around at all the small chairs near me, filled with her favorite toys.

Isha had thought I was being silly giving her all these as she grew up, but it was too adorable to me to do otherwise. Adia and I had an almost daily tea party, where she took her time to tell me all about her day and what had been going on.

Most of what she told me was what she and her friends had been doing, or complaints about her lessons from this or that teacher, but I listened to all of it. We lived a long time, and these were years I was never getting back, so I didn't want to miss a single second, not a moment that I could file in my timeless memories to replay when she was older. I didn't want her to miss anything either, for though her daddy might have been a very busy man he always had time for her, and I needed her to know that. After all, she and Isha were the two most important people in my life, wouldn't it do for them to know it?

“I don't want to do more math,” she complained, one I got often.

“I know, but it is useful, and it doesn't take long.”

“How? Why do I need to know it?” What she was on now was really just basic addition and subtraction, but she still hated the lessons.

“You know how your mother keeps track of things, don't you want to know what she's doing?” Isha was of course in charge of the finances for a lot of the compound, managing it like a hawk.

“I've seen the things she does, and this doesn't look like that,” she pouted, motioning to the small numbers written on the blackboard I'd provided for her teachers.

“One thing builds upon another, like making a house of blocks. You need to start with the base first, then you can get to bigger and better things.”

“You don't have to do lessons,” she pointed out.

I laughed at that. “Not like yours, but I am always learning. One day you'll be like that too, learning, but without a teacher to lead you.”

“Want to do that now.”

“Don't wish for that Adia.”

“Why not?”

“Because when you're big like that things won't be the same, and I'll miss these days.”

“Don't understand.”

“One day you will.” I leaned forward and kissed the top of her head.

“Can we play more tomorrow? You've been in your room too much.” That at least was a valid complaint, I had been working a bit more than usual, and a break would be nice.

“I think I can do that, think about what you want to play,” I told her.

She smiled and took a sip of her tea before going on about her friends. She didn't have too many of those, most the children of people who worked for me, or the kids of others whom Isha and I were friends with.

That was a bit sad, but there were relatively few children in the whole city. That was an issue for our whole species, and one I didn't know what to do with. However it was obvious we needed some kind of proper schooling, as many of them knew very little, and with our memories it would be breakneck fast to teach them quite a lot.

Schools and education had been something I'd put forward to the council before, and vetoed out of, but that didn't mean I'd given up. I'd taught a few people some basics, and put them to tutoring the children of my employees, and later my own daughter. Learning these things would bring them forward into real professions sooner, and if we could build the base we could build so high.

Once Adia had finished her explanations I excused myself back to my workrooms. There was a time for everything of course, and with the report we'd gotten I had a few things I wanted to work on.

“You sure this will work boss?” Chien asked as I came in, overlooking some of my plans.

“You've seen the models no?” I asked, pointing to the smaller versions hovering over a patch of the floor, little strings keeping them in place.

“I believe you are the one who told me that when things get bigger they change sometimes.”

“A fair point, and I'm not completely sure, but I think it will do. When should we have the materials for it?” I asked.

“Um... I don't know, the cloth is likely to be the real problem, even if we got all of it for the whole city we'd still be short. I'm also not sure that what we have will work for something so large, even that weird carbon cloth stuff you've made.”

“Well, see what we can do, I'll start work on my version, but we will need a lot. I want this ready in case something goes wrong.”

“Alright boss, I'll get on it.”

The plans for what could only be described as a blimp sprawled across my desk. If I was being honest on much of this I was guessing, working the best I could with what I knew, and it was sure to be a bit rough around the edges. However I wanted something, for if we were getting worse and worse monsters coming from the west I might need to act, and acting from above and at higher speed would be far better than any ground based thing I could think of.

Planes had been an option too, but I knew almost nothing about how to design one of those. Sure, I knew the wing shape, but I also knew they were far more technical, and we didn't have that backing yet. We had no engines, no aluminum for a good body, no proper wing materials, and if it failed it would fall like a stone. With a blimp I was just floating on gasses, gasses that could potentially fail, but I'd give myself much better odds if they did. I also didn't have to explain how I knew a plane would work, something someone would decidedly ask me.

There was another addition I wasn't sure how to put on a plane either, sitting in one corner of my shop. The cannon was massive, built around the idea of contained explosions magically generated. It too was getting tested soon, for if there was something big coming, we'd want something nasty to counter it.