1.8

Other than the short holographic clip, Lawa-Lawa’s rubix did not contain any other helpful data related to the Pocket Furnace. Not a single tutorial on how to use it. Not even a tiny hint on to how to operate it. More importantly, how to charge it. A real shame considering that the cube was basically a hard drive with petabytes worth of storage in it. The old man must have been really pressed for time to not be able to leave anything other than a short clip.

‘What a waste of space.’ Aesa thought after scrolling through the non-existent content of the rubix drive. He just went hopping from tab to tab to see if there was anything, but there really was none.

There, at the center of the workshop, Aesa laid bare on his back against the table top, eyes fixed on the Pocket Furnace, while dangling the trinket directly in front of the bleeding LED light. A pin size red button was flashing every two seconds, most probably indicating that the armbands battery was low. An assumption on his part because for all he knew, the armband could be counting down to zero and blow everything up in the room with him included.

It has been three hours since he first found the trinket and until now, the problem still persisted. Aesa still hasn’t figured out a definitive way to provide auxiliary power to the armband and that fact frustrated him the most. He wanted to start exploring the Pocket Furnace as soon as he laid his eyes on it the very first time. The only problem was, was that he couldn’t. The A.I. wouldn’t allow him to tinker on any of its functions until he charges the armband first to a certain extent.

There were a number of things that fueled his frustration. For starters, the trinket didn’t have any USB port or anything remotely close to a power cord for a plug in. Second, there were no signs of battery compartment anywhere either. And even if there was one, how would he replace such a battery? He’d be very lucky enough if he’d find some spare just lying around the workshop. Other than that, there was practically nothing for him to work on to charge it basically. Aesa thought of all the conventional ways of charging a normal device and every method that he had thought of were obviously an ill fit for this Pocket Furnace.

While Aesa procrastinated endlessly into finding ways on how he could siphon power into the armband, the word ‘conventional’ occupied his thoughts for the most part.

Conventional. Conventional. Conventional.

For the last three hours now, Aesa just realized how he had unknowingly limited his options on the conventional ways of charging the device. He had limited his solution and methods to what an ordinary person would do in the real. He had boxed his thinking entirely under the rules of normality that he had completely forgotten that he was inside the world of virtual reality. That a lot of things here defy normal logic. That there are things here that could be permitted and be created under the structure of impossibility.

Click!

Aesa suddenly had a spark of idea. It immediately became clear to him as to what he needed to do at that point. He got up on his feet and readied himself. To fail or otherwise, there was no harm if he’d give it a try. It has been three hours. He had enough of just staying idle. Here goes~. He psyched himself.

“Computer. Scan for any available power source within the vicinity, find it and immediately begin charging once found.”

Please work. Please work.Please work. He repeated it in his head like a broken mantra.

Seconds later...

Ding Dong!

Computing…

Voice command acknowledged

Scanning…

The last line uttered by the A.I. was everything to Aesa. It made him wore the craziest grin that no one could ever translate on canvas.

The move was a total shot in the dark. He wasn’t sure if it was going to work but it did. He simply played around the idea that since the Pocket Furnace’s A.I. recognized him as new user in the first place, then maybe he could somehow connect to its other functions via voice command. Lo and behold, the A.I. responded.

Immediately after that, multiple fans of red laser lights suddenly exploded from the armband. Criss-crossing beams of lights instantly began sweeping the entire place up, starting from where he was standing from up until the very far end corners of the room. He wasn’t even done being amazed yet but no more than five seconds later, all of the red lights retracted and a new single beam of green light emerged from the armband. Aside from the color, the quality of the beam was different too; it was thicker and was lasso like. From the armband, the green string shot itself directly towards his ragged satchel. It latched itself onto his bag like an octopus’s tentacle, piercing its only cord onto whatever it was that it found as a power source. Did it find something?

Initiating power extraction sequence.

Commencing in 3… 2… 1…

The armband suddenly hummed and vibrated crazily the moment when the countdown ended. Right after that, a small holographic screen of what looked like a power bar appeared directly above the armband. The power bar was in red and had a 7.5% figure plastered on the right corner of the bar. The numbers were flashing in red and it seemed like it was escalating too. It was 7.6% now considering that it only got plugged in a few seconds ago. The armband seemed to be charging in a turbo-like fashion.

Now that it was charging, Aesa has decided to leave the trinket on top of the workstation for a bit. He wanted to see for himself where the green lasso had attached itself to. And more importantly, why his bag of all things?

About five steps later, Aesa found out where the other end of the green rope was. The moment he peeked into the satchel, he realized that the lasso had latched itself onto the rabbit crystal a.k.a. his satiety dampener. It was unintentional, but if he was to put things into perspective, the Pocket Furnace basically robbed him of his food ration for the day.

Tier 1 fully consumed. Previous battery life: 7.5 percent. Current battery life: 8.7 percent. Overall battery status: low. A fifteen percent minimum battery life is needed to access the . Recommendation: add more.

Drawing from the information provided by the Pocket’s A.I., Aesa immediately understood what was needed to be done. He had to gather a minimum of seven more Cayu’s for him to at least access a functional furnace. “Off to farming then.” Aesa commented as he picked up the biggest and the heaviest wrench in the room that he could find. He’d do this caveman style.

The Pocket Furnace or simply Pocket, had a rather simplistic system. In fact, the furnace only has two parts--- the Oculus and the Callus. The Oculus was the main sphere out of the three total spheres of the Pocket. It was lodged at the very center of the other two smaller spheres and had two revolving rings etched with some unreadable runic symbols circumventing it. It also served as the anvil of the Pocket where the mixing, shaping and molding of any material took place. On the other hand, the Callus, or the two smaller spheres on either sides of the Oculus, served as both the hammer and the tong of the Pocket. The two mini-spheres were responsible for all the rigorous fine tuning and detailing made on any article subjected to the Oculus. It was also where the user could insert their hands and control the Oculus’s every movement similar to how a hand-held computer mouse detects two-dimensional motion when swerved on a certain surface.

Some three hours ago, when he had filled up the battery to 38%, Aesa finally gained access to some of the features of the Pocket. He also learned just now that the Pocket Furnace’s A.I. was actually female in orientation. She called herself Tingkal which meant ‘thread’ in the simple Arachnian tongue explained by the A.I. herself.

Anything that Tingkal knew, she would willingly share it with Aesa. He’d ask, she’d tell. For as long as the information was not restricted, Tingkal would willingly provide them.

Aesa was also able to acquaint himself with the names of the parts and even some basic knowledge regarding its system navigation. He learned from Tingkal that the Pocket was in fact a super advanced 3D printer rather than just a smith’s furnace. Everything and anything could be created using it basically. The problem was, he needed two functional hands to be able to operate the Callus. Something that a disable like him would not be able to accomplish. And although an auto-create feature existed, Tingkal explained that a blueprint was needed first in order to activate such a system quirk, He had none at the moment.

I know of a way. Tingkal started.

“A way to what?” Aesa responded. Puzzled by the A.I.’s sudden interjection.

Fix your arm.

“How did you---?“

That’s not important. What is important are the ingredients. Tingkal suggested. I will be needing a few of these--- the A.I. then quickly enumerated every single ingredients that she required of him to pick up. She projected them all directly into the Oculus’s screen.

“What the?---“

A quest has been created. Details are as follows:

Quest Grade: C

Mission: Fabricate A Functional Skeletal Arm

Status: In-progress

Would you like to accept this quest? Yes or No?