***Tirnanog, Mount Aerie***

***Magnus***

I chuckled while I finished the latest version of what I decided to call a spatial manipulation device, or SMD. Calling it a simple "storage ring" out of fantasy lore would have been a lot easier, but what I came up with was so much more than that! It was tempting, but it would have been a disservice.

The SMD was fully capable of manipulating the space around it.

So, not only could it 'shrink' practically anything into a spatial pocket for storage, it could serve as an almost perfect battery by preserving the electromagnetic momentum of a dynamo. The only thing I hadn't solved yet was how to deal with the weight problem. While the device was perfectly capable of manipulating space, it wasn't efficient enough to do away with the planet's gravity field.

In addition, it was somewhat limited by the size of the original device. Despite circumventing the laws of physics to a degree, the SMD was still exposed to certain environmental factors like heat. I hadn't solved that particular problem. If there was too much energy to handle at once, the device could melt and fail.

Secondly, anything I put inside the SMD would still exert its full weight on anyone who was carrying the device around.

It was a downside, but a small one compared to the SMD's other functions.

For one, if applied to our iobeetle armour, an SMD could reinforce the structural integrity, making the wondrous material even more impervious to damage as long as there was enough power to prevent a foreign object like a projectile from warping the armour, and with it the space it inhabited.

And then there was the final functionality, which came as a natural consequence of an SMD being able to take any desired shape. Well, it couldn't truly take 'any' shape. Only those that the creator programmed into the device by properly manipulating the space it inhabited.

"Ahem!"

But was it really that hard to come up with some useful designs?

"Ahem!" A hand landed on my shoulder, and I turned to come face-to-face with a very peeved-looking Astra.

"Hi, dear!" I smiled. "I can't remember doing anything wrong – recently. So, what has you in a bad mood?"

"Except for torturing Evanne's partner?" Astra pointed out. "I still don't know how you and the others did it, but the guy is traumatised. He has been on Evanne's heels day and night since your excursion and treats her like some princess."

I blinked. "And that's bad?"

She hesitated. "No, but it drives her crazy, and in turn she drives the rest of our circle crazy."

I nodded sagely, giving my best to convey my sympathy to her. Women had truly dire problems.

Somehow, Astra sensed that discussing this matter with me would lead nowhere, so she threw up her hands and gave up. "Anyway, I think you have been hiding away in Gilbert's workshop for long enough! Time to come home."

"Aw, but there is still so much to explore with this technology!" I grabbed a ball, another application of the SMD tech. "For example, this here might solve all the energy problems our society may ever have – by drawing a star's energy through a wormhole. Sadly, it doesn't work quite right. Not yet, at least. The device is just too small to create a stable wormhole. And I have no idea how to convert the energy efficiently at this point, since establishing a wormhole close to a star would create a lot of radiation and heat. Plus, there are the electromagnetic interferences from solar winds. On second thought, I might need Gaia's help to solve that one."

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Astra narrowed her eyes. "Promise me not to play with something sounding so dangerous without talking about it with others. At least consult Gaia before you try something!"

I pretended to be gravely wounded. "I am not – you."

Astra drew in a sharp breath, clearly preparing for a tirade.

But I knew exactly how to nip it in the bud. I took the newest SMD and activated it, transforming it into a long, bladed shape which was inspired by medieval longswords. Then I used it to chop off a part of a metal steel rod I had prepared as a test subject.

The cut was clean, and except for a short shower of sparks, the weapon passed through without much resistance.

Then I transformed the blade back into a ring and kneeled before my gaping partner, putting it onto her finger. "For you, dear. I made your idea work! Besides, it can also turn into a spear. And I used SMDs to reinforce pretty much all of our armour. So, spending some time on this project was definitely worth it."

Astra quickly closed her mouth and glared at her finger. "You just made that so I wouldn't be mad at you for leaving me alone to look after the kids for days."

"Please don't be mad."

Astra sighed. "I give up. You are as you are. I am afraid there is no changing you. The actual reason why I came here is because we have a mission."

"What mission?" I asked and got back to my feet. The floor of the workshop was full of metal chips, so I also dusted off my trousers.

"Well, I don't know how much attention you have paid to recent developments?" Astra asked with a dubious tone in her voice.

I gave my best to put on an apologetic face. Ever since I got my revenge on Zacharias and that stupid alien, I was a little afloat in terms of what I should do with my time. So when I had the epiphany with the SMDs, I dove headfirst into the project. As a former student of the sciences, returning to my old vocation only felt natural!

"Right, right. You were concerned with your SMDs." Astra thought for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to summarise.

"We have been trying to figure out what we are working with regarding Tirnanog as a whole. A big part of that is finding out what the state of the other colonies might be. For example, whether Earth is still deporting people. Unfortunately, doing so via space observation from the moonbase is hard. We can't even definitively pinpoint our own colonies. Aerie is underground, Hochberg doesn't look much different from a rock, and the Old Camp is too small. And during the night, all our settlements go dark anyway. So, unless you know exactly where to look, there isn't much to learn. I am sure this alien 'Designer' must have the equivalent of a spy satellite somewhere, but if it exists, we haven't found it yet."

I raised a hand. "I get the problem. So what have the elders been doing?"

"They sent scouting teams with the alien teleportation orb. Presumably, to all locations on Tirnanog. The problem is that some of the teams haven't returned."

I frowned. "But the orb did?"

"It apparently has an inbuilt return function," Astra explained.

"What about the control device?" I asked.

"Automatically gets replaced by one of the mentioned molecular printers. It is just two hallways down the teleportation room," Astra explained. "They were in an uproar when the whole machinery came to life and created a replacement entirely on its own. Now everyone is afraid that there might be even more functions we might trigger by accident."

I shrugged, figuring that, except for abandoning the moonbase completely, there was no way to avoid such a scenario. That the moonbase must have a lot of automated functions was a certainty in my mind. These aliens definitely had very different priorities from humans, given the very utilitarian setup I had seen at the base. But I couldn't imagine how one of the things could operate such an installation alone without automation.

Thinking, I pulled at my earlobe. "Oh, and now they want us to risk our necks after others didn't return. What if the shitty device has something like a waste-disposal function and one of those teleportation endpoints is directly above the ocean? So far, I am not a fan of this mission profile."

Astra shrugged. "I get it, but as long as the orb teleports us to a point on Tirnanog, we can jaunt back easily enough. We are the best choice to find out what happened to the scouts."

"Long-distance jaunts aren't as easy as they sound," I pointed out. "We have been doing only a few hundred kilometres so far. You are talking about intercontinental distances."

Astra raised her hand and pointed at the ring on her finger. "And don't we have a fine energy source to power such a trip with ease? We charge it to the brim before we go."

"I guess." I sighed. "I nonetheless refuse to go until I have at least familiarised you with all the SMD's functions. The version I showed to the elders was necessarily limited because others cannot manipulate electric fields. It needs a control panel for people without a zipper mutation."

Then I grinned. "Unlike them, we can control the SMDs directly!"

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