Hmm, this story is proving to be far longer than the first, the thread already has more posts than the first, and more images. Bigger is better I guess :p
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Blitukus found his emotions torn between joy over his inventions, and the mourning of the death of his mother. His laughter died down, and he sighed through his nose. He was able to make as much metal as he wanted now, but he needed to know how much of what metals. He walked back to his room and sat on his bed, and began to think of what he could possibly make. The mountain never reached as high as heaven. He thought of building a steel tower, piercing into the sky, but upon thinking it through, decided that any such tower of any true height would sway in the wind, and it would topple far before he built high enough to reach heaven. He sat, and let his mind focus to the point of losing touch with the world around him. Several ideas came, and they were all thrown out. He remembered the dream of soaring on the bad, and remembered the bat in the furnace. Was it a hint on how to reach heaven? Did his subconscious have an idea it wished to share? He thought about it. He remembered his mother, remembered how she would dance, remembered one time he saw her sparring. He remembered how her sword glided through the air, as if the air itself were holding the blade up. An idea started to come to him. He took up one of the bands of fabric from his clothes. It was light, but densely woven. Could the force of rushing air hold material up? As air moves faster, it tends to act with less pressure. A surface with a longer path for air above than below would have lower pressure above than below as the air above sped to meet its lower counterpart. This would lift the material. He held the fabric up and blew over the top, watching as the material lifted, forming a curved shape, flattened near the back and curved near the front. The action of deflecting moving air downwards would also cause the equal and opposite reaction of forcing the material upwards. He added it up, and realized what the hints were pointing to.
A bat and a furnace. The bat soars to heaven, and the furnace makes steel. I'll soar to heaven on wings of steel! I shall build a flying machine!
It was the subject of childrens' tales, myths involving gnomes, machines that could lift a person cleanly into the sky. A curved steel surface could produce lift, and a properly angled, spinning steel blade could produce thrust. But, these were a great concept, but the blades had to be spun by something. Steam power came to mind, but it had a very, very difficult obstacle in this application. The boiler, the fuel, all of it was rather heavy. Heavy things tended not to fly very far. A piston was, by itself, possibly light enough, but a piston needed steam to drive it. Where would the steam come from? He left his room, and walked down the tunnel, pondering the problem. He passed the boiler, and began thinking of the fluids passing through to it. Fluids acted in a very odd manner, potentially related to the magic of the world. They move as units of 'flood', permeating all available space around and maintaining perfectly the right volume to fill it. when removed from their source, the fluid seemed to vanish, as if eaten by a material, a material the opposite of flood.
He felt the excitement of the new idea pass, and nearly discarded the idea of a flying machine, the thoughts of fluids seeming irrelevant. Then, another idea occured to him. Flood always perfectly permeates all available space, and when flood of water and flood of magma meet, steam is released as the water is vaporized. Yet, anti-flood and flood permeated the same spaces at the same speeds. A flood and anti-flood could chase one another in a circle, making an infinite loop, and as they permeated branches off from the loop, pulses would exit the loop, for free, with no other input than the loop simply running. If a magma loop and a water loop were allowed to interact, then steam could be produced with no real material input. Steam was energy, and it seemed it could be free. Free energy? He laughed at the idea at first, but eventually he realized, it could really be. He would have to test this idea. If somehow this proved to be true, steam would come freely, no fuel and virtually no boiler would be needed. It would solve the weight problem. He felt a mixture of feelings of insanity and insight. Nobody had ever viewed fluids in this light before, not even the dwarves who worked with it on a daily basis.
Free energy?... Free to try, free to find out...
He thought about how he would set up such an experiment. All it took was two loops, and somewhere for them to meet. Simple enough. He took his pick axe in his hands and, opposite the magma tunnel, began digging a suitable test chamber out of the wall. As he did so, he calculated in his head the cost of it. Each loop would need 2 floodgates, one for an initial feed, one for a control, and one lever each. Each floodgate would need 2 sets of mechanisms to link. The total was 4 floodgates and 12 sets of mechanisms. He dug out the tunnels, smoothed a nook in the wall and dug a small window through it to peer into the test machine while it operated. He then dug a trench where the two loops joined, preventing the magma loop from overwhelming the water one. Now he needed to dig a diversion out of the magma tunnel, which would be full of water to feed the water loop, and full of magma to feed the magma loop. He would have to shut the system down, entirely, in order to safely make these modifications. He pulled both levers, cutting flow to the boiler, and walked down the tunnel to the magma, pulling the third to cut off magma flow. He walked back up the tunnel and waited for the magma to disappear from the anti-flood the closed floodgate let loose. Flood and anti-flood, the idea seemed entirely crazy. It was worth a shot. The magma settled. The system was safe, so he knocked the wall down in line with the inlet for the test, breaching the magma tunnel. As expected, the tunnel was empty. He then began to dig the trenches that would link the tunnel and the machine, and provide for proper space between the inlet and the control to set up a cycling wave of flood and anti-flood. Shortly after the channels were complete. He pulled both boiler levers, flooding the system with water. He would need to bridge the channels, or he would be cutting himself off from his own mines. Then, he continued to produce the components to actually make the machine work. On top of the four floodgates, he would also need two stacks of blocks to make the two bridges out of. He made those, then continued with the mechanisms. Stone was disappearing from the area. This should be the last major stone investment needed anyhow, as his actual machine would be nearly all metal. He finished the blocks and two of the four floodgates, and realized that hauling stone such distances was not productive. He hauled the stack of blocks to one of the channels, and constructed a small arch over it. He then repeated it for the second inlet channel. As he walked past the workshops, he realized, the stone he had saved from tearing down the old furnaces could have been easily recycled. No matter, he would find another use for those blocks somewhere else. Then, he pulled the two levers, cutting the water off. As he finished the second two floodgates, he stopped to eat. As he ate, he pondered if the controls would be quick enough to cause the flood chain. He cleaned up the spores, putting them back in the bag, and finished the floodgates. Next was the mechanisms. It was slow, and uneventful work hauling the stone, but he took great interest and pride and crafting the stone into working sets of mechanisms and levers. Stone disappeared quickly.
It's funny how a lot of dwarves complain about stone littering their fortresses, and here I am, starting to think about needing to make a quarry soon. It's really a shame that I need my steel for other things or I'd mechanize stone working too.
While finishing the last set of mechanisms, he took a break to drink from the river, and then finished afterwards. He now had the components, and it was time to install them. First he installed the levers outside of the machine, against the wall. Then he placed the controller floodgates, as the inlet floodgates would seal the machine in all cases except letting starter material in.
He began to link the floodgates to the levers, but decided to save the work for the day after. Today he had done much, but he had suffered much, and it was time to put the day behind. He went back to his room and lay in bed. He finished reading 'Encased Evils'. The magma moat of hell is meant to keep mortals from breaching the planes of the afterlife, and meant to keep the demons of hell from ascending to earth. He had his mind directed upwards, and had long ago decided not to try to venture into hell to find a path to heaven. That day, he drempt of his childhood. Those simple and free years long passed it seemed, even though he had only recently become an adult. The afternoon after, he awoke, sat up, and yawned. It was no longer new years. This didn't make him any less determined. He got up and immediately continued, letting himself awake fully on the walk to his task. After linking the floodgates to the levers via stone pulleys and line, he installed the inlet floodgates, and linked those to their levers. He was careful not to jam the line of the control floodgates while installing the inlet floodgates, and managed to fit it through around the groove the floodgate slid through. He finished hooking in the last floodgate to its lever, and reopened the water feed. The machine was done, and it was time to test. The water rushed through the tunnels, coming to rest at the inlets. He worked the levers at the front of the machine, but found that, as he predicted, he was not pushing them fast enough. The flood completed and the anti-flood took both routes. He would have to operate both levers nearly simultaneously. He grunted as he reprimed the device, and moved the levers simultaneously. The water seemed to vanish at the floodgate, and rematerialize at the control. The water defied gravity, moving up the slope of the tunnel, and flushing back down the trench. Blitukus had unraveled the secret of flood and anti-flood, and in the process, produced perpetual motion. He felt a slight sensation of insanity at the abstract sight, feeling as if he had not yet awoken from his dream. He laughed to himself, and laughed at the world.
Oops! I think I broke the universe!
The wave continued in circles, but eventually, the flood and anti-flood, not moving at exactly the same rate as expected, ran into one another, and the machine failed. But, during the time it ran, it seemed the laws of physics seemed to be turned upside down. Blitukus continued laughing as he reset the machine. Now it was time to unleash the magma, and since the magma was slower, maybe it would continue forever. He walked down the tunnel, his laughter echoing throughout the tunnel and chasm. He reached the magma, and unleashed the molten rock back into the tunnels. The magma followed behind him as he walked back up the tunnels, steam traveling into the halls at every opening, the statue letting out a breath as if it were alive, sending steam out of its mouth as Blitukus walked by, the gas rising also from its cupped hands, drifting into the air, seemingly weightless. The magma was back as it had been, now feeding also into the test machine. The magma repeated the motion of the water. It radiated heat, and took nothing in. It never faded, and it always moved. It was perpetual motion, infinite energy.
:p
I'm expecting a lot of you will catch the Mythbusters reference :p
Heres the map that was requested: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-1232-blitukushome
As you can see, the coal mine is actually empty. This is because I've been ore-dash-k-ing the thing, as actual coal is way too far away to be practical. For the sake of the story, I cheat and refill it every time coal is needed :p
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Topic: A Kobold's Quest II (Read 76113 times)