John was taking a longboat south with his young entrepreneurs and Walker’s rangers in training. With the harvest done and a lot of work ahead of them for the coming winter, he thought it would be a nice change of pace for them to see the sea, and to talk to some of the other Totonac slaves and see what knowledge they could glean from the captives in Salt Village.

That wasn’t to say they did not deserve the trip. Both groups had been working hard. Walker had done a fantastic job of teaching the other youths how to ride bison and shoot bows. Over the winter, John would begin earnestly teaching all of them how to shoot from the back of a bison. He hoped it would be a cold winter for their sakes because their arms would need some ice for all the archery practice, he was going to give them. As for the entrepreneurs, they were cunning and crafty. They had already designed and built several harnesses so the bison could help them with their work, and as they talked with the Totonac slaves in Texas, they figured out how to make better stone-cutting tools than the first primitive designs John gave them. They truly deserved a reward for all their hard work.

That said, this was an educational trip for both groups of young people, so while they were heading downriver, the future rangers fired their bows while the boat was moving, and the entrepreneurs were doing math. John thought the entrepreneurs had it harder since they had to do math in base ten like John grew up with and base eight like the Totonac learned in their nation. They had to do both since the Totonac building methods all used base eight math, and John’s methods all used base ten math. John figured sooner or later, one of the kids would figure out a way to convert everything to one or the other, but until then, they had to learn both.

They traveled downriver at a leisurely pace; when they were not working, they were fishing, and in the evening, they camped out on the riverbank instead of staying at one of the inns in the villages along the river. It was a pleasant and good time.

When they finally reached Salt Village, John paid for them to stay in one of the inns the merchants used. There was plenty of room since many of the merchants were back home helping with the harvest or returning home with a large salt shipment as an ingredient to turn the harvest into a more valuable good like ketchup.

They spent their first couple of days on the beach, playing in the water, and building things in the sand, although it was a lot of walking to find an area not being used to make salt. Then they spent a few days fishing in the sea. John wanted the youths to get used to being in a boat on the sea. The Trade Alliance had grown greatly since its humble beginnings on one river. Now it was connected by the sea to several rivers, and John wanted boat travel from river, to sea, to river to be normal to these young men, and nothing prepared them for that like fishing in the ocean.

After a week of fun, John decided to get to business, and he looked around for the Totonac slaves. After asking around, he was directed to the end of the salt ponds. When he reached the end, he found the Totonac slaves digging another salt pond.

John asked their overseer, “What are they doing?”

“They are digging a salt pond.”

“But why? Anyone can dig a salt pond. Heck, with the right harness, bison can dig salt ponds. Why do you have the Totonac slaves digging salt ponds?”

“Because they are our slaves, and it's better that they do this work than anyone from our village.”

“But they can do so much more.” John turned to the slaves and spoke badly in their tongue, “Do you know how to shape stone and make into buildings?”

Several of the slaves answered, “Yes.”

John turned back to the overseer, “These men know how to shape stone and make it into buildings. Buildings that are far better than log buildings. In Texas, we are using them to build stone towers and walls that are far superior to their wooden counterpart. Why waste them digging ponds?”

The overseer said, “I would rather they dig the salt ponds than do it myself.”

“So, since you are scared of hard work, you are wasting their talent and knowledge. I am going to go talk to your chief.”

“Go right ahead.”

As John left, he shook his head in frustration. The men they captured and enslaved had so much knowledge that the Trade Alliance didn’t have. It was a waste to do anything except extract that knowledge from them and put them to work in a trade they spent years honing.

When he found the Chief of Salt Village, John said, “Chief Atsadi, I need to talk to you.”

Chief Atsadi looked concerned and said, “Of course, Chief John. What's the problem?”

“Over the last few months, I have worked with my Totonac slaves and learned a lot from them. The thing I was most interested in learning from them was how they built their large stone buildings, and they have shared all the information they had.” John smiled and said, “We were even able to make some improvements to some of their techniques.”

“That sounds great. What do you need me for?”

“Well, I wanted to talk to your Totonac slaves and see if they knew anything mine didn’t, but when I found them, instead of making stone buildings, they were being used to dig more salt ponds.”

“And?”

“They have knowledge and skills your people lack. You should have them doing jobs your people don’t know how to do instead of having them do jobs your children can do.”

“Look, John, I don’t tell you how to run your village, don’t tell me how to run mine.”

“But it's such a waste.”

“Not for us, it isn’t. Because of those slaves, our men have more time to go hunting and fishing. Our men can become better warriors because we have slaves doing a simple job they used to.”

“But you are wasting talent.”

“No, we are growing the talent of our people.”

John was silent for a long moment, then thought of something and said, “One of the reasons why your men spent so much time digging salt ponds is because, after a while, they collapse because they are generally just sand and dirt. A big storm comes by, and you lose a bunch of them. The Totonac slaves know how to shape stone, so you could use these men to make better salt ponds that last lifetimes instead of months or years."

"John, things are going great as they are. There is no need to rock the boat or do anything different than they are already being done.”

John grew angry at Atsadi’s stubbornness and said, “The previous chief, Tonteel, listened to me when I gave a suggestion, and it made your village rich.”

“I am not Tonteel, and my people are content with what they have.”

John realized he would not get anywhere with Chief Atsadi, so he said, “Atsadi, I would ask that you reconsider. Thank you for your time. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Chief John. Return and visit anytime; although we do not agree on this issue, I have not forgotten what you have done for our village and my people.”

After John left, he gathered up the boys, and they began making their way back up the river. Except this time, they stopped at every village. In each village, the Totonac slaves were being used to do the chores the village people didn’t want to do, wasting the Totonac knowledge and skills. John talked to the chiefs, and some listened, and others were content with the way things were.

When John returned home, he began drawing out a new comic. In this comic, he drew out all the amazing things that could be built with stone. Tall walls, homes, granaries, roads, ponds, mills, and other things. He drew villages growing into towns and cities over the years built out of stone. He showed how superior those places would be compared to places built with wood. Then he illustrated a stone village vs. a wooden village in a war. The stone village had no fear of fire or ax.

This was all science fiction to the people of the Trade Alliance. The illustrations John was making were often of buildings more advanced than what the Totonac had built. The men that went with him to rescue his son saw the sturdiness of the Totonac architecture, but John had seen what thousands of years of tinkering could produce. John had seen fortresses, coliseums, cathedrals, skyscrapers, factories, warehouses, and hundreds of other stone structures in person, through books, on the internet, and in other media. What was past to him was the far future to his people. But he had to give them the taste of a possible future. John’s illustrations were filled with hope for the future.

Once John finished his illustrations, he began tapping them into copper sheets and printing them until the copper plate was useless. When he was done, he had over fourteen hundred copies, and he sent them out to every village in the alliance and to his sons. His goal was to encourage the villages of the Trade Alliance to learn from their slaves and begin building in stone. If nothing else, he encouraged the villages to build stone walls as the buffalo raiders and the Totonac nation were still out there.