Now that Franklin finds his plan is entering the latter stages, he begins to feel a bit of performance nerves, for this is the lesser validated part of the entire thing and yet the most critical.

He starts by calling up the System menu, selecting Transmute. Then he uses the Decompose command on 50g of limestone, costing 50 AP, to generate a pool of elements into his reservoir so he has material to work with, the reading as such once he is complete:

Material

Quantity (Grams)

O-Points

0

Calcium (Ca, 40)

10

Carbon (C, 12)

3

Oxygen (O, 16)

12

Next, using the Exchange command, he converts calcium (Ca) to hydrogen (H). Given that the conversion rate between calcium and hydrogen is 14:135 against, he spends more calcium mass than hydrogen mass he gets back. Specifically, it costs 9.64g of calcium to Exchange 1g of hydrogen. The action costs him 10 AP as well. The resulting table is as such:

Material

Quantity (Grams)

O-Points

0

Calcium (Ca, 40)

0.357

Carbon (C, 12)

3

Hydrogen (H, 1)

1

Oxygen (O, 16)

12

“Okay, so far so good,” he says, noting that hydrogen has now appeared in the elements list, just under carbon. Finally, he navigates to the Materialize submenu, picking hydrogen (H) as his substance of choice.

Materialize 1 gram of hydrogen. This action will consume 1 AP. Proceed?

He pauses for a moment, walking through his logic and reviewing what he expects to happen. “So Materialize works by selecting the most abundant, naturally occurring form of an element, balancing it with the simplicity. That means for hydrogen, there should just be two realistic possibilities, right? Either hydrogen gas (H2) or water (H2O). The gas is definitely simpler, true, but water isn’t really all that much more complicated. And it’s way more abundant. So... it should manifest as water, right? I hope? Because I really need it to be water... Then again, if it is hydrogen gas, I guess there’s always the swamp water, but then again, I’ll have to create some kind of distillation system, but then again, that might be fun in and of itself, but then again…”

He stops, his eyes deadpan. “[Yes],” he says, and a moment later, a grin captures his face instead, for he feels the slight wetness of a droplet upon the skin of his outstretched palm. Actually, about 1/10th of a drop, to be precise. “Nice. So about 61 AP spent, give or take. Now let’s see how much material that used from the reservoir-”

He pulls up his system, navigating to Show Reservoir again. There, he compares the current values to what they had been, just prior to the Materialize command, computing the differences and adding in some mental annotations to chart:

Material

Quantity (Grams)

O-Points

0

Calcium (Ca, 40)

0.357

Carbon (C, 12)

3

Hydrogen (H, 1)

0 (↓ 1)

Oxygen (O, 16)

4 (↓ 8)

“Okay, so the hydrogen usage makes sense. That’s the element I materialized. But wait... why did oxygen also go down?” he wonders, eyebrow raised. He thinks upon this for a moment before suddenly, a thought hits him, an idea of something to try.

“Wait, has this been happening with every Materialize? I was just experimenting around before, so I didn’t really pay attention to the specific numbers, but maybe...” He decomposes more limestone, then tries to manifest some previously tested elements like iron and silicon, creating hematite and quartz, respectively. Moreover, this time, he actively calculates each change with great care, and what this allows him to realize is that, indeed, each action does in fact also consume a bit of oxygen, in addition to the element he is materializing.

“So… 1g of iron uses an additional 0.429g of oxygen, and 1g of silicon uses an additional 1.142g of oxygen. I mean, no wonder I’ve missed it up until now. These numbers are pretty small. Still, it doesn’t explain the fundamental question though… Wait. Duh! Conservation of mass!”

Well, sort of…

It is weird to use the term, “conservation of mass”, to describe it, for he is clearly bending some rule of the universe through Transmute, but it’s the best analogy he can think of.

“So basically, since hydrogen is manifesting as water, it requires both hydrogen and oxygen as inputs, right? So that must be why the oxygen values drop as well. It’s automatically deducted in the process. So, 1g of hydrogen requires... 8g of water, due to the mass ratio of water being 1:8. I see, I see. Hm, so what happens if there isn’t any oxygen left in the reservoir to utilize?”

He tries this, finding that calcium is consumed instead. “Odd, is it because it’s the cheapest? But if that’s the case… this might be exploitable in the future.” He makes a mental note of it, then proceeds to test something else. Given his experiments with solids previously demonstrated that those tended to materialize in the same spatial position each time, he wonders if it’s the same with liquids, or if he can manifest a liquid directly in a container. He is hoping it’s the latter.

Placing his hand on his clay potato, he executes the command Materialize, selecting hydrogen as his element. He smiles when he sees the prompt, which reads,

Valid Container detected. Materialize 1 gram of hydrogen in Container. This action will consume 1 AP. Proceed?

Feeling vindicated, not just because he can Materialize into a container, but because the system recognizes his clay creation as such, he proceeds with the action, finding a small droplet forming in the cavity of the jar afterwards. He nods to himself, happy with the results. Now, he’d be able to proceed to the fourth and final step of his plan, for in spite of all the detours, he still has in mind the goal of all this, which is to conquer the treacherous slimes of Paradosa Swamp.

“Let’s see,” he begins, inspecting his clay potato-jar, “I guess it holds about half a litre, or a little more than ⅛ of a gallon? And if I exploit the AP asymmetry from before, and use carbon instead of calcium, that’s a… 142-fold savings in AP. So, the math for the amount of limestone I’ll need to Decompose should be...”

He does some quick mental math which, for the numerically inclined, works out as follows:

Density of water = 1g/mL (500 mL = half-litre = ⅛ gallons) x 1g/mL = 500g water needed for 500 mL 500g water x 2 = 1000g water needed due to 50% efficiency of Materialize Molar ratio of water is 2:16 (H:O) for a total of molecular weight = 18 1000g / 18 x 2 = 111g of hydrogen needed 1000g - 111g = 889 of oxygen needed Carbon to hydrogen Exchange rate = 14.73 to 1 (derived from 1989 / 145, see O-Points) Carbon to oxygen Exchange rate = 1989 to 1 111g hydrogen / 14.73 = 7.53g carbon needed for hydrogen Exchange 889g oxygen / 1989 = 0.45g carbon needed for oxygen Exchange 7.53g + 0.45g = 7.98g carbon needed for total Exchange

From prior Decompose, it is known that 4g limestone yields 0.24g carbon

0.24g carbon / 4g limestone = 7.98g carbon / ? limestone

? = 133g limestone needed for Decompose

“... So 133g of limestone needed. And the AP cost is… 133 for the limestone Decompose, 8 for the carbon Exchange and 111 for the hydrogen Materialize. So a total of 252 AP, or about a quarter of the max I have. Not too bad. Okay, let’s do this then.”

Franklin performs the necessary Decompose and Exchange as calculated before placing his hands on his clay potato, executing the Materialize command and selecting hydrogen as his element of choice.

Valid Container detected. Materialize 111 gram of hydrogen in Container. This action will consume 111 AP. Proceed?

“[Yes],” he confirms. An instant later and he smiles, for looking down, he finds, exactly as he has calculated, a container that is now indeed filled with about half a litre of water. “Nice. Now for the trickiest part of all.”