Chapter 273: The Copier
Three months had passed. During this time, the clearing, once squeezed amidst the dense wild forest, had expanded several times over — the wall of trees had retreated far back under the blows of axes, freeing up space for new blocks.
The Main Building was no longer surrounded by that lonely, stretched-out row of thirty-one wooden houses. Neat new structures now rose across the expanded territory — this time built from solid stone and massive timber. They stood according to Iron's strict design: with clear walkways and wide parallel lines, forming the foundational grid of future streets.
At the very edge of the clearing, where the thick smell of fresh resin and sawdust hung in the air, Marek, along with several sturdy men, was harvesting building materials. With a dull crack, another tree crashed down, and the workers immediately set to chopping off the branches, calling out to each other and joking.
Nearby, along the trodden dirt paths between the stone facades, the children of the Voldin settlers ran about laughing. They played tag, weaving around the stacked piles of boards.
A little higher, above the roofs, fluttered Elyria. The spirit examined her creation with pleasure. She ran her tiny hand along the sturdy masonry, smiling in satisfaction.
Deep in the forest, the frequent whistle of air being sliced rang out. Noah was practicing his lightning-fast lunges in solitude.
Meanwhile, Iron stood by his massive desk, leaning forward slightly with his palms resting on its edge. His gaze was fixed on the complex contraption he had been working on non-stop lately.
He lowered his hand and slowly ran his fingers along the base of the device. The chassis was an incredibly heavy slab of perfectly polished dark basalt, roughly the size of a massive open book. The stone felt pleasant and absolutely cool to the touch.
Right in the center of this dark slab sat the key working compartment — a bowl of heat-resistant white ceramic with an inner tungsten coating. Thick copper busbars were coiled around the "crucible" in tight, even loops — an induction circuit designed to instantly melt the raw material.
Iron moved his hand to the left and lightly touched the edge of the left cell. A hemisphere of pure mirror-polished bronze was perfectly embedded into the granite base here. The moment Iron's fingers got near, a barely noticeable blue glow appeared above the bowl — a sign that the high-frequency magnetic scanning field was locked in and ready to work.
Shifting his gaze to the right, Iron examined the second hemisphere. The right cell appeared completely dark, but the air right above it trembled imperceptibly from a faint static charge. It was meant for the final assembly.
Crowning this entire system was a massive U-shaped arch of natural magnetite, which arched over the slab and bridged all three compartments. On the dark surface of this permanent magnet, Iron had personally carved an intricate array of physical formulas and vectors, setting the precise direction for the magnetic field lines.
Looking at the assembled device, Iron ran through the entire process in his head once more.
So in the central crucible, the raw material melts under the induction circuit, turning into ionized gas — that is, into plasma, Iron pushed off from the edge of the desk and continued. Flying through the magnet's field, the accelerated plasma itself generates high-voltage electrical current. The magnetohydrodynamic effect gives the device complete autonomy: as long as there is raw material inside, the apparatus powers itself... damn, how do I even know these words...? Iron shook his head and then continued:
The original is placed in the left cell. A constant magnetic field scans the coin's crystal lattice and turns it into a physical target mask. Flying through this field, the raw material ions are perfectly sorted by mass, charge, and trajectory. Then, let's say... obeying electrostatic attraction, the sorted atoms fly into the right cell onto a negatively charged substrate, recreating the object layer by layer via molecular beam epitaxy. And the heat released during solidification returns back to the center through a closed thermodynamic circuit.
Iron reached out and picked up a Uni coin from the desk. He carefully lowered it into the bluish glow of the left brass hemisphere. The coin settled perfectly onto the bottom, and the light around it flared brighter for a moment, locking onto the crystal structure of the original sample.
Then Iron took a previously prepared chunk of rusted metal and tossed it into the white ceramic of the central crucible. The blank landed on the tungsten bottom with a dry clack.
Iron took a step back, clasped his hands behind his back, and focused his gaze on the device.
"In theory, everything is calculated perfectly, he said quietly to himself. The Copier should work... but..."
Iron sent the impulse. A deep, vibrating hum instantly rolled across the tabletop. The copper busbars of the inductor flared up, and a blinding electric arc ignited in the central crucible with a dry crackle. A pungent, fresh smell of ozone instantly filled the room.
The rusty chunk at the bottom of the tungsten bowl instantly lost its shape, turning into a blinding white drop and then into blazing ionized vapor. From the central compartment toward the right cell, a thin, curved golden thread extended — a directed plume of flying Uni alloy atoms.
But the process barely lasted a couple of seconds.
Suddenly, the golden thread shuddered, lost its sharp edges, and shattered into a hazy cloud with a soft pop. A shower of electric sparks lashed out from the crucible with a furious, deafening screech. The magnetic circuits had lost stability.
And billions of free, uncontrolled alloy atoms flooded out of the crucible in all directions. The air in the office grew murky. In a fraction of a second, the walls, the furniture, the shelves of blueprints were coated in a razor-thin, smooth mirror finish. The room gleamed with a metallic sheen.
At the same time, the right cell remained absolutely empty — not a single atom had settled on the substrate.
Iron himself, however, had preemptively stepped back to a safe distance against the opposite wall, holding his breath and tightly covering his nose and mouth with the thick fabric of his sleeve.
The engineer immediately changed the electrical charge of the central crucible, switching it to "negative," while switching the air and all surrounding surfaces to "positive."
A sharp, hissing whistle rang out. The mirror coating on the walls and tabletop, along with the particles suspended in the air, instantly detached, and billions of free alloy atoms rushed back toward the center of the room in a split second. The entire metallic suspension was sucked right back into the tungsten bowl with a whistle, instantly condensing and pooling at its bottom into a heavy drop, much like liquid mercury.
The office returned to its original state that very instant.
Iron lowered his sleeve, took a calm, deep breath, and stepped closer. He rested his palms on the edge of the desk and stared at the device with a grim expression, finishing his recent thought:
"...but it still doesn't work for shit."
He pushed off the desk, shoved his hands into his pockets, and tilted his head slightly to the side, giving the "Copier" a heavy glare:
"There was an issue with the ionization. There was an issue with the trajectory of the atoms. There was an issue with the temperature. There was an issue with the power... And I fixed all of it... but still nothing."
Walking around the desk, Iron sank heavily into his chair. Propping his elbow on the desk, he rested his cheek on his hand and thoughtfully began to tap his fingers against the tabletop, never taking his eyes off the "Copier."
Glancing at the liquid metal sloshing at the bottom of the crucible, he said aloud quietly:
"Yeah... If I hadn't reacted in time the first time around, I'd have been dead long ago... take one careless breath, and you're a corpse."
Iron leaned forward slightly, interlaced his fingers, and rested his chin on them, peering intently into the tungsten bowl. Then he activated his scanner at full power, trying to spot any sort of defect in the design. But through the scan's glow, the device looked perfect — not the slightest flaw or glitch.
Iron sighed heavily, pulled the blueprints toward him, and picked up his pencil again, getting back to work on refining the design.
"Fucking hell, spending three months on this..." he swore, but the joyful smile on his face never faded.