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Lightning

Chapter 4 - Happy Workers

By H. A. Kirsch

--

Trevor had forgotten to close the curtain and sunlight beamed into his window via a reflection from the building across the street and woke him up. Once awake, the din of the street below was intense enough to keep him that way. An endless procession of horseshoes on cobblestones and the rattle and clack of coach, carriage, and truck wheels went past the window. Bangs and shouts moved behind the building, which he observed from the tiny back window as dustbin pickup in the alleyway. Finally, as if he weren't already groggily pacing about, there came a furious banging on the front door.

"Hey! Hey! Time to get up... curse Ferrin, I forgot your damn name... Trevor!" That was Lane. Another voice, words unintelligible, though deeper and irritated. Lane piped up again. "Lightning!"

That did it: the maned wolf went downstairs and opened the door. Lane and Fitch stood on the stoop: Lane in trousers, simple pull-on work boots, suspenders, and a turtleneck shirt despite the summer weather thanks to his hairlessness; Fitch in a different outfit from the previous day, no less flagrantly black and leathered with an ornate vest, long gloves with buckled forearms, sailor-front pants with side lacings, and fold-top boots befitting of a character from a swordsman stage play. The panther crossed his arms. "Told you that would work. Nicknames always work."

"Is it really dawn? I don't feel very rested." Trevor rubbed at his eyes, his head-fur, his muzzle. "Also, don't call me that. Trevor's fine." Fitch smirked when he said it.

"Did you drink the water from your sink? That would give anyone hallucinations."

Trevor forgot all about having to get up early. "What is that all about, how is it... where does it come from? Is it rain water?"

"Where do you think water comes from?" Fitch said, angrily, and got a side-eyed look from the sphinx cat. Trevor stared back. "Answer the question," the panther continued.

"I... well, rain cisterns, or a well, I suppose. That's where we got it back home."

Lane got in edgewise before Fitch could make a sound. "There was a terrible outbreak of drying sickness a decade ago, as people kept getting water from the river. Considering that it's the source of the worst of the smell around here, that wasn't smart. With all this mechanical stuff that keeps happening, someone figured out how to drill deep wells and pump ground water with those thundering steam drives. It turns out if you give 'clean' water to poor people, they don't get sick and infect the rich people when making their dinners." He made quotation marks in the air with his fingerless-gloved hands. "Of course, there's drying sickness, and then there's traveler's shit, which is what you'll get if you drink just water anywhere. I'd run a fire in the stove and boil it if you were thirsty enough. And don't bother if it comes out brown, that means they were working on the pipes. I think."

"You think they get it from the ground for this lot? Bet it still comes from the river," Fitch growled. "Working on the pipes, my fucking tail." The panther had an odd lack of accent; his tone was primarily 'aggravated' with the usual hints of Eastern Common.

"Anyway, as you might notice, these houses have been renovated and they added in the water piping and drop sewers when they did that. It's a big improvement. Every time I bathe at a public house, I get patches."

"That's 'cuz you don't have fur, naffy wrinkled cat." Fitch chuffed, then started walking.

Lane rolled his eyes. "Well, you better come along. Don't worry if you haven't eaten, I'm sure something will turn up for lunch. Oh, don't bother with that cloak of yours, it's liable to get caught in something or lit on fire."

Trevor looked back to where he'd left it crumpled on a chair, then shrugged and followed Lane and Fitch out of the house and back to the laboratory. The trio were greeted immediately by sonorous operatic voicing. "Who on earth is singing at this time of the morning?" The guara asked, looking around.

"That's Petrie. He can remember every song he's ever heard. That sounds like a great party trick, doesn't it? He also sings while he works, which is enough to drive fire into you." Lane shrugged.

"Aha!" Altius slid into view, blocking them from heading further into the lab. "Our fine an' green assistant has arrived!" He clapped his hands together, and the loud report echoed about the inside of the space, causing Petrie to falter and then cough as if to cover up the mistake. "Of course, you ain't actually green, I'm the green one, you're jus' new. And as a new assistant, you get to do all the grunt work." The lizard sounded all too pleased to haze Trevor. "So here's a good ol' test for you. You see this list? You gotta get everything in this list from the store room next to Fitch's shop an' assemble it upstairs there, over top of Lane's potion palace."

Lane wrinkled his face even further. "What did you just call it?"

Altius ignored him. "If you can do all of that in a reasonable time, we may be able to repeat an experiment from yesterday that went wrong. Although it is my humble opinion that you can never go wrong with an experiment, you just learn how you didn't go right."

Trevor scanned the list for several moments, and looked up to see Altius, Lane, and Fitch all staring at him.

"Maybe he can't read," Fitch said.

"I can read. I just don't know what any of this stuff is."

"Well, if you can't figure it out, make notes. And either someone did a bad job labelin' the supplies," Altius looked at Fitch who immediately returned the look with a wrinkled-lip snarl, "Or you're a dullhead. An' I'd prefer that not be the case. I do want to make good instructions. A little up-front tidy work makes sure you keep all your body parts attached an' brains inside your head." He tapped at the side of his skull with a talon, then turned on heel and hurried away.

Lane shrugged. "You heard him. Get to it. Get all the stuff up there first and then start on the second page." The cat waited for acknowledgement and then left for his lab again. Fitch had nothing further to add and simply turned and returned to his shop, locking the door.

Trevor rolled up his shirt sleeves, then took the list in hand and started to pick items out of the store room. His initial concern, that he had no idea what he was doing, was allayed by Altius' neat handwriting and the fact that everything in the cavernous store room was organized and labeled. Instead of feeling lost, he felt like he was doing the work of a dullhead.

Helena would probably laugh if she knew what I've gotten into, working the stock in some dubious laboratory. He filled a wooden hand crate with the first set of items - numerous metal plates of two different colors and surface patterns - and went to lift it, only to find that it was almost unbearably heavy. He squatted, picked it up, and quickly hurried it across the warehouse space and up to the second floor room as directed. He set it down with a clatter, which seconds later prompted a dual-voiced, "Be careful!", one the faintly grating voice of Lane and the other sung out by Petrie.

I wonder what Marshall would think, he thought, as he returned to the store room to fill up on another load of metallic pieces. The thought of the cheetah in his parade ride finery took the wind right out of Trevor's sails and replaced it with a longing pang and a firm swell between his legs. He shook his head several times, brushed through his mane ruff, and continued on.

Soon, the upstairs room was filled with an array of glass jars, metal plates, small metal clips, and cork wedge stoppers for the jars. The final items were several oddly shaped glass tubes filled with some type of powdered crystal substance, with metal prongs sticking out the ends.

Altius stuck his head in the doorway. "Looks like you have quite the collection there, my boy!"

"I'm not really a boy," Trevor said quietly, then quickly cleared his throat. "I think I have everything."

"Splendid! Let's get to work. Do as I tell you and this will go twice as fast." Altius was not dressed in any finery, but instead just wore a pair of pants and suspenders along with fingerless leather working gloves.

The task at hand was to fit the metal plates, one of each type, into the cork stoppers with their metal prongs sticking out above; array the glass jars on top of a large wooden table; then fit the stoppers into the jars. Several larger pieces of metal were then set upon them, forming two independent grids with rods that stuck off the end. "This would be much easier to do with metal wire, however, the winding machine is under repair. Fitch has been having a terrible time with it, and I have someone coming by to look at it later in the week," Altius said. "Castin' some metal connection grids took Fitch about an hour."

"What exactly are we doing?" Trevor looked over the array of jars. He couldn't make heads or tails of what it was for.

"Aha, where to start!" Altius beamed. "This electricity that I study here, there are two types that we understand so far. High energy charges, which are like scratchbolts and... erm, lightning. Very high energy, able to leap through the air, tunneling through it, so fierce as to emit light and even a crack of thunder. I suppose we have known about these for as long as we have been able to rub two sticks together, although it helps if one of the sticks is glass and the other is actually a soft furry thing. Here, hold onto the metal end of this tube," the lizard said, and handed one of the pearlescent crystal tubes to Trevor.

Altius then picked up a hollow glass bulb the size of a large bitterfruit and held it by the narrow portion. It was fully enclosed; it wasn't a vessel and looked like a large colorless winterfest tree decoration. "Pardon me," he said, and began rubbing it vigorously around Trevor's bare furry forearm. He then moved it to the guara's mane. "Aha," he said, and then held it away slightly, causing the fur to rise. "Now, over to th' dark corner here." They moved over to the far corner of the room which was shaded from the window light. "Pay attention to the tube."

He moved the bulb close to the metal prong on the unheld end of the tube, and there was a faint sizzle. At the same time, pink flashes erupted inside the tube, like lightning worms through the crystals.

Trevor stared, enraptured. "What's happening?"

"Connite, my boy, at least that's what y'all call it in your language. I'm sure you've only ever heard of it used for gunpowder and cannon shells. If you hit two pieces of connite together, there's a flash inside the crystals. If you grind up connite under water into a paste and then dry it out, then hit it, it explodes in a flash. You can make very reliable blasting caps with it, and that in turn lets you make enclosed bullets that will not explode unless set upon by something else. This is surely one of the reasons everyone wants to plunder Caroy, as almost all of the connite deposits are in my homeland. However, if you expose connite to a scratchbolt, it also glows briefly."

"Uh-huh," Trevor said, allowing the words to circle around inside of his brain. He continued staring at the tube, and held onto the metal prong hard enough that his hand began to cramp. I don't know how to tell him how this makes me feel, he thought. And thus, he said nothing.

"Now, I have come to discover that there is also low-energy electricity. This is very different. You may not even ever notice it. A good portion of my work has been to find ways to detect and measure it. And these glow tubes are an easy way. It turns out that large connite crystals are hard to stimulate, and powderized ones are too easy and burn. Just the right size, like very large grains of sand, and you can excite them. There is a ratio of volume to exciting charge. I fear I am losing you, Trevor."

"Huh? Oh, it's just fascinating, actually," he said, and tilted his ears to the side.

"This contraption here is going to generate low energy electricity. And we are going to measure it, how much energy it has, how much flows, and what happens to the chemical reaction that seems to create it." Altius patted the grid above the jars. "And I won't let a broken wire extruding machine stop me. Lane! Lane, get your bald testicles up here and bring some elsap gear and several carboys of your fearsome acid and steamed water!"

Minutes later, Lane came up with a hand crate full of shiny black overboots, aprons, and long gloves. He then turned tail and left, and instead of coming up the stairs, came up a ratchet lift with a cart that had two large glass containers. One of them had written, all over it in black wax pencil, "DANGEROUS ACID DO NOT TOUCH" and even a drawing of a cat face with its tongue sticking out, x's for eyes, and part of the face melting.

"Now, put on this gear. I suggest taking your boots off first before wearing those. Elsap does not appear to transfer electrical charge, and so we use it to stay insulated from its effects."

I could have used that seven years ago, Trevor thought, while he removed his field boots and pulled on the oversized black ones, then donned the apron and the gloves. Hmm. This is interesting, he thought. Kind of fun. He flexed his hands several times, turned them over, and felt around the apron. "I didn't realize you could wear elsap. I've only seen it made into balls and sealing rings and such."

"I didn't either, until I brought dear Fitch aboard," Altius said. "We use it for making slingshot weapons in Caroy. Now, Lane, just as before, add the solution."

Lane nodded and took a small glass funnel, added it to one of the jars through a hole in the cork, and then prepared two transfer jars. He left one on the table and one on the next empty table over. He marked one with the black pencil, then poured some of the acid carefully into it. Then, he poured that into the funnel, filling the jar by a third. He repeated the process with blank spare jar and the water, filling it to the top curve. He continued on doing this for all of the jars.

Nothing visibly happened. Trevor closed his eyes, and was alarmed to see that each jar glowed faintly with coruscating blue as the hairless cat filled it up, and then after about four of the sixteen jars had been filled, one of the grids began to glow as well.

"Boy," Altius said, and clicked his talons in front of Trevor's face. "What gets into you? You daze off sometimes and you're gonna fall into something or off of something or fry up."

Trevor shook his head out. "My eyes get tired, really I think it's just my left eye, and it's uncomfortable to just squeeze it shut so I just close both," he lied. "I'm fine. I also had nothing to break fast, I slept late."

Once all of the jars were filled, Altius picked up a wooden tongs and worked it open and closed several times, squeaking the peg joint. He then picked up one of the glass tubes with the tongs and carefully set it upon the two metal rails that extended out from the metal grid. There was a spark and a small snapping noise, and the tube began to glow heavily pink, the color swirling about inside.

Trevor backed up and recoiled his gloved arms in front of himself. Not only was the display strange and worrying because he'd never seen anything like it, not only did the spark indicate there was something serious happening, but he could see even with his eyes open, that the blue glow was swirling like sparkling pearl in sunlight inside the tube. It was like watching a river flowing down the prongs, the blue glow much stronger as it flowed into the tube, much weaker on the other side and weaker still back at each of the jar contacts. When he held his gloved hand out, the pink light from the energized connite reflected off the shiny and stretchy elsap, and not the blue light at all.

"Aha, mesmerizing, isn't it? I realize now that I made an error in the setup of this experiment, with the cells chemically energized we can't pull the prongs apart to try putting several tubes in order to test for the level of energy, so we shall just test for flow. It seems that is what caused a problem yesterday," the lizard said.

Lane shook his head. "I don't think so. I think I diluted it incorrectly. One of the conductors dissolved and broke off completely."

Altius took another tube and set it on the metal prongs. It too sparked and began to glow. Lane looked around for a notebook and hurriedly scribbled into it, swore at his pen, and then used the black wax marker. A third tube, and while it also still glowed, something interesting began to happen. The liquid in the jars began to effervesce at one of the metal plates in almost all of them. Lane slipped one of his gloves off and waved his hand palm down over the prong where it left the grid.

"What are you doing?" Trevor groaned, and stepped forward.

"It's not nearly as high-energy enough to spark to me," the cat chuffed, and turned his hand over, holding his more sensitive backs of his fingers. "Hmm. Warm, just like before." He made more notes with the marker. "Hopefully you have nice handwriting. You can transcribe these into better penmanship later."

Altius added a fourth tube, and the solution fizzed more, while yet another thing happened: all four tubes glowed more dimly. Trevor closed his eyes; the blue glow was now rushing intently about the circuit between the two grids, though it too was more dim. He opened them and looked around.

Fitch stood in the doorway, looking pensive at the goings-on.

"Fitch! Would you happen to have any of that braided metal strand you made before the wire making device broke?"

"There's an entire spool of it," the panther said, and crossed his arms. Altius reached to take the tubes off of the metal conductors, and the big cat lifted his shoulders like someone being hit with a strong cold breeze upon stepping outside. His tail curled and the tip twitched behind him. His ears went flat. When nothing happened, he relaxed slightly.

"A spool! Trevor, go help him bring it up here. We shall conduct our series experiment as well."

Fitch chuffed and turned away, and Trevor followed him downstairs and into the shop. "It's over here," the panther said plainly, and walked to one end of the room. Trevor again followed, only to be pushed against the wall, back-first.

"Whuh!" Trevor gasped, and the panther swung up a black-gloved hand and covered his muzzle from the front, then turned and pinched it shut. Instead of speaking or doing anything further physical, he kept one forearm against the guara's chest and proceeded to sniff around his neck.

"You stink," Fitch said, and his tail curled up to the side, tip atwitter again.

"Rruh?" Trevor squinted.

"You smell like dullweed. All of your kind do. We'll never know when it's Lane smoking it when he should be working." He sniffed again. "And cologne. What kind is it? Be quiet about it." He then let go of Trevor's mouth, and instead held him by the throat, only firmly enough to keep him from leaning forward.

Trevor pinned his ears back and his tail smacked the back of his legs. Fitch was breathing hard, and at first he assumed the cat was abruptly angry at him for some unknown or accidental transgression. The panther moved a half step forward, bodily pressing him to the wall, his rubbery apron squeaking against the panther's leather. Then, he realized the panther was not angry at all, from a particular nudge at one of his upper thighs due to his height over Fitch. "Uhh. It's... I think it's a musk one, they're pop... popular out in the country."

"Wear more of it tomorrow. I like it." He then let go of Trevor completely, stepped aside, and kicked at a large object. It was a wooden spool that looked like two small cart wheels, with braided metal cabling wound between them. "Help me with that. We have to hold it like it's going to roll, or else the flanges will come off and you'll break your foot." The brawny feline tipped it onto the edges of the flanges, and then grabbed where there was a notch.

"C-can't we just roll it?" Trevor stammered as he tried to understand what had just happened. Fitch had apparently moved on from whatever his intention had been in cornering the maned wolf.

"No, if it gets away from us, it will break something else. See how heavy it is? One, two, three-"

Trevor quickly bent down and grabbed, and they both lifted. "Unngh! You're quite right," he groaned, and they quickly made for the door, then the ratchet lift. Once they set it down on the floor of the platform, Trevor waited for Fitch to grab for the pulley rope. He did not.

"Well?" The panther said, and crossed his arms again.

"Oh, right, I'm the new guy," Trevor tipped his ears back and started to pull. It was not very hard in terms of brute strength; it just took a severe number of pulls to lift up one floor. He was panting by the end of it, and Fitch continued to watch him. The panther now had a leather apron on, and Trevor casually turned a side glance to the big cat. He realized that aside from being made of leather, and being protective, there was no way of seeing whether the wearer was aroused through it. He quickly looked back to his overhand task at hand, and when they were high enough up, he let go of the rope, breathing hard. As they picked up the spool again, he could see Fitch's nose twitching.

They took the spool over to the experiment room, and Lane and Altius quickly took two segments of the cable off using a small metal saw. Then, to Trevor's worry, they lifted both of the metal grids up off and affixed the cable to them, then set them back. Once finished, they had the cable on the table.

"That is awfully thick," Trevor added. "It looks like it could hold up a ship." He couldn't think of anything else as heavy as what he presumed a ship would weigh.

"And that is one of the reasons we need to get that machine fixed, as adjusting it smaller seems to damage it. Now, Lane, two tubes." Lizard and cat affixed two tubes, end to end, between the cables. As before, they glowed, though half as strong. Trevor closed his eyes and saw the same blue flowing glow, although it was only as strong as it was with one of the tubes in place, and in each of the tubes, it backed the dimmer pink glow by being dimmer by about half. With a third tube in place, it was dimmer yet still. Unlike before, the solution in the jars never started to fizz.

Lane furiously scribbled with the wax marker, until he had run out of paper and had to flip to another page. Trevor dumbly thought he should have gotten a pen while downstairs, and then remembered what happened and quickly turned away as he became helplessly aroused at the thought of being manhandled by the heavy-breathing, black-leathered panther.

Trevor was surprised to see that Fitch had departed. "Oh, where'd he go?"

"Despite being very useful at many things, generally ones involving making things and oddly with sartorial pursuits, Fitch is quite terrified of what we are actually studying. I believe his reason is-"

"It makes my fur feel weird," Fitch yelled from elsewhere, "Stop talking about me." His voice boomed and echoed throughout the warehouse.

To further punctuate the situation, a strange sound came from outside. A slightly melodic series of honking sounds, like a tuned carriage horn, three tones over five notes that dipped down and back up. From the front second-floor room, Petrie barked. "Yes! I am positively famished!"

"Ahh, let's go see what we have today," Altius said, and left the room in a hurry, and Lane followed. Neither bothered to disconnect the tubes. They were already storming down the stairs when the lizard called back: "Trevor, boy, please take those tubes off of that conductor cable. Use the wooden tongs!"

Trevor's heart started to flutter again, as he faced the contraption of metal, glass, and acidic corrosive fluid. I have to what with what? I have to touch it? I, have to touch it? He started to pace back and forth, boots squeaking, hands absently reaching for nothing in space. He finally seized upon the tongs and with a shaky hand, grasped for one of the tubes and pulled it away. It was merely set upon the prongs of the other two, and as soon as he withdrew it, the pink light stopped. He closed his eyes; the blue glow was only on one of the grids, the same as at the start, and concentrated at where the first tube touched it. It also showed up at the disconnected prong of that tube, and indeed throughout the crystalline sand inside. Curiously, the jars were also glowing slightly, with a slight version of the same movement as before.

He removed all three tubes, and set the tongs down, then sighed. Nothing bad had happened. In fact, he felt like he'd learned something. The sense of power gave him a thrill, and the thrill gave him a little more reason to be glad he still wore the elsap apron. He continued looking at the jars, and rubbed at his chin with a gloved hand, once out of thoughtfulness, several more times because it was strangely alluring.

"Lighting! Come get your lunch!" Fitch hollered. Trevor tipped his ears and hurried downstairs.

The others were gathered in the front office area, and they all had oblong things wrapped in brown paper. "What're those?" He asked, and was about to take one when he remembered to remove his gloves. Fitch, who wore his leathers, did not.

"Well, they're bread, and I'm pretty sure this is some sort of meat, so I reckon they are sandwiches," Altius said, peering into his. His accent made him sound patronizing; the way he regarded his sandwich was more truthful, in that it definitely was indeterminate.

"Is this from that place we went yesterday?" Trevor asked, opening his and sniffing at it. Indeed, it was meat and bread. He took a bite; stale bread, cold, and the meat tasted like it was some sort of extremely long-simmered stew, along with a few root vegetables. The bread had been formed around the contents, as they dribbled out as soon as he'd made an opening.

Lane shook his head. "No, it's from, ahh, we have kind of an arrangement elsewhere." Fitch and Altius both gave him a look that settled once he finished his sentence.

Trevor decided not to press the issue, and just ate. He quickly forgot all about the situation with the cat earlier, partly as Lane and Altius enthusiastically discussed their experiment.

"It is obvious that we get more flow when they are connected in parallel, and less energy when they are connected serially." "Four of those tubes seems to be the limit." "Well, we only have four." "Of course, but you saw how they dimmed with the fourth, and with the effervescence? Clearly there is some limit we are reaching with what we've built." "I'm very concerned about that bubbling. We ought to have Fitch make a range of different shapes. The plates are already a drastic improvement." "What we really need is a way to actually measure what's happening. We have barometers for air pressure, we have thermometers for temperature, we have scales for weight, we can dunk things in water for their displacement volume, we cannot easily measure brightness of light, and we are completely in the dark with this low-energy electricity. Even with the high-energy sparks, we can only seem to get an idea based on how long of a spark we can create."

Trevor had trouble following the conversation, as the two kept talking over each other. Fitch looked as irritated with it as Trevor felt, although the expression was hardly different from his usual. Petrie, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to everything but his sandwich.

Until he spoke. "I noticed something odd earlier," he said, and actually dropped his sandwich. "What exactly were you doing in your upstairs lab?"

Altius made a very inhuman noise. "The connite tubes. We were trying to determine the flow versus energy characteristics, hence the discussion about trying to measure-"

"You know how I love all sorts of cartographical things. I just recently got a very fine ship's compass as an antique."

"I was going to ask about that, it seems rather expensive," Altius said, and this time actually sounded patronizing.

"I happened to be walking by, and I noticed that it had deflected slightly. However, I am not wearing anything on my person that is remotely magnetic. Do you think it could have been that spool of cabling you were moving around? That's very metallic."

Fitch shook his head. "Heating metal ruins magnetism, and if it didn't, then heating it and stretching it through that fucking device would."

Trevor was left the only one holding his sandwich, as the other three all went upstairs at an alarming rush. Even Fitch, who sighed and followed the group. The maned wolf continued to eat, and looked up periodically as various thumbs, bangs, and invocations of the gods were made. "This thing is terribly heavy!" "It's full of some sort of oil. And fine wood. And I suppose a rather large magnet." "Petrie, I would like to state that this idea sounds completely naffy." "I don't care, we're supposed to be learning things." "I've never seen you stop putting food in your mouth." "Fitch, can you be nice for one moment?" "No."

Finally, he decided to join the group upstairs. Immediately, Altius stopped him in the doorway. "Did you remove the grid from this... what did Lane call it? Battery?"

"It... well it seemed dangerous just sitting there."

"Do not interfere with experiments," the lizard chided, holding a hand up in front of Trevor's face in a gesture he'd never seen anyone use before. "Also, yes, that was in fact a very good idea. Please do call out for us in the future, though." He then turned away and went up to where they'd moved the compass. Trevor hadn't noticed it in the dog's packed reading room, though it was plainly obvious now, a floor-standing wooden case with a large floating compass dial the size of a supper plate. Altius leaned over it. "How much did you say it moved?"

Petrie stepped over, and had to step up to his toes to point. As it was, he would have had the compass dial in his face if he walked past it closely. "About this far." He made about a half inch gesture.

"That's it?! That's hardly anything! You could have bumped it!"

The dog crossed his arms. "Why don't you do whatever you were doing, again, and stop being so pompous."

Lane and Altius put their gloves back on, and then began setting up the device again. Petrie remained standing close to the compass, while Fitch stood back against one of the walls, glowering and holding his arms crossed over his chest. Trevor approached, cautiously, peering at the compass dial. It did nothing as he got near.

"Is this how things usually are around here?" the maned wolf asked the dog.

Petrie nodded. "Everyone will be working away at very boring things and abruptly something happens. Quite often, it's usually some sort of fire or minor explosion. I generally am not involved in the fires or explosions. Really, I have been doing lots of research. Unfortunately, we are not at a point to have lots of interesting numerics yet."

"Okay, here goes," Lane said, and dropped one of the connite tubes on the metal conductors. The compass dial immediately and fluidly moved a small amount, slightly more than he Petrie had indicated. The compass was about Trevor's height away from the setup.

Petrie barked. "It did it! Why aren't you two looking? I swear, you have only one brain between the two of you sometimes."

Lane stepped over, and Altius removed the tube. The compass returned to pointing North towards the corner of the room. "A...Altius, put it back on." The lizard complied, and the compass turned again. "Ferrin, I can't believe it. What is going on?"

Cat and lizard exchanged places, and repeated. Altius clapped his hands hard. "I jus' don't believe it! Let's move it closer."

They scooted the compass as close to the device as they could get it without touching. Without the tube in place, nothing happened. With the tube in place, the compass immediately turned significantly further than before, such that North now pointed at the tube. "It's somehow creating magnetism! This is unbelievable!"

The gathering devolved into hurried talking and celebration between Altius and his other assistants, even including Fitch, who refused to believe it until he saw it several times. Trevor just hung back, bewildered and now slightly dullheaded from his lunch.

--

Trevor was sent on continual errands around the warehouse as Altius, Lane, and Petrie alternated between fervent experimentation and brainstorming at a skateboard in Petrie's intellectual den. The maned wolf silently resented being used as a go-fer at first, though it was hard to deny that it kept him awake.

He had numerous opportunities to sneak a closed-eye look at the 'battery', driven by curiosity and a sense of knowing just beyond his grasp. If nothing else, the scintillating blue glow was mesmerizing like watching a fire. He was certain he was actually seeing the flow of electrical charge, and he was also confident that none of the others could do the same, as they reacted with enthusiastic mystery when working with it. It was actually much easier to understand it than it was to understand why living things had faint blue glows, something he kept as his own mystery.

The electrical charge flowed in a circuit through the metal grids and between them through whatever was connected at the ends. However, even when the grids were not connected to each other, blue charge seemed to churn about inside of the jars, and moreso as the day went by. By the time the sun was setting down behind the buildings of the city, the blue glow was fading and so was the apparent output of the battery.

"Hmm, well, there's only so much of a reaction we can expect," Lane said, hands on his hips, wrinkled face soured intently. "However, I put a reaction paper in there and it's still quite acidic." He then rumbled. "Oof. I think my stomach is acidic. Those hand-pies weren't very big."

"I concur," Altius said. "We ought to go have a little celebration. Trevor, are you interested?"

Trevor shook his head. "I ought to get all of this junk put away." The others looked between themselves. "What's the use of making a system to organize things if you don't use it? Also, I'm not very hungry. I almost feel off, it's probably just from being in a new place."

The lizard cocked his head in a half-shrug. "Ahh, I suppose you know where t' find food if you want it, seeing as Sharyn's is next to your lodging. Come on, you lousy lot," he said, and led the other three off.

They're going to just leave me here? With this noxious array of jars and metal? Trevor shrugged to himself, and went to ferry miscellaneous equipment back to the store room. The task took much less time than he expected, with only one item - the heavy spool of metal cable - left lying about. He did not try to take the battery array apart, although he did - regardless what Altius told him earlier - take the grids off the top and set them aside.

The lack of things to do rushed in, and he had a seat at one of the work tables in an empty lab room on the second floor. He leaned forward, put his face on his elsap-gloved forearms, and fell fast asleep.

He awakened abruptly, without understanding exactly why. What happened? He looked around; the room he was in was empty, and lit only by the paltry flicker of turned-low gas light. The windows at the far wall were dark. There was a sound. He pondered calling out, though he then heard footsteps. Boot steps. Approaching the room.

Fitch peeked into the doorway. "What are you doing here?"

Trevor stood up and hastily smoothed over himself, then stare at one of his hands as he realized he was rubbing his face while still wearing his protective gloves. "I uh, I was just finishing up putting everything away."

"That was hours ago. We ate dinner, and those three are off drinking and talking about nothing."

"Oh." Trevor felt profoundly embarrassed. "I f-fell asleep."

Fitch, to Trevor's surprise, had no judgemental reaction. "You should go back to your apartment. Take that stuff off first, unless you want anyone you see to think you've had your hands inside a cow."

The maned wolf looked down at himself, still in the overboots, apron, and gloves. "Why would I have my hands inside a cow?" He took the gear off, leaving him back in just his shirt, rough deer trousers, and laced field boots.

The panther didn't answer. He just turned and walked away, but stopped at the end of the upper overlook stairs. When Trevor caught up with him, he continued walking downstairs.

"Ahh, were you looking for me?" the tall canine finally asked, as they started walking along the street. Immediately, Fitch turned into an alley at the end of the warehouse.

"There's a shortcut." He turned and held up his long-gloved hands and drew in the air. "Normally, you go down the street, then left, then over that bridge. You can go straight back behind the building, through another alley, then a woodsy spot to cross the bridge."

"Uh, thanks." Trevor said, and started following again when Fitch walked, although less confidently. The panther was completely correct about the route - they cut through the middle of the couple of industrial blocks before the riverway. The other side was a small urban woods, the extension of the bankside park they had ridden past in the carriage the prior day. There was a small stone archway that looked relatively crumbled, nothing like the larger footbridge. "I see. Uh, why not go up there? It's lit up there." He looked to where he had seen the gaslight posts, and was surprised to see that they were not in fact lit. "Huh."

"It isn't smart to walk over there after dark, Muggers hide under the ends of the bridge. Here, no one wants to totter across a scary old bridge behind a paper mill into the woods over a shit river."

You've got that right, Trevor thought, though Fitch walked across the bridge without issue, just avoiding potholes eaten in from either side. The other side of the bridge had some neglected wooden gate work to try and keep people from walking through it, though it was trivial to circumvent. Once around it, they were in a wooded area thick with underbrush that appeared to lead up to the backs of some buildings. It was hard to see in the rapidly dying light.

After they walked a short way through the bushes, Trevor realized he could no more see the river than where they were headed. Fitch stopped next to a stump where a tree had been sawed down long ago, the flat wooded platform nearly thick enough to lie upon and eroded at the edges. "No one can see anything in here," the panther said, voice above a whisper though not loud.

Trevor, being half a head taller, looked around. He looked back down at Fitch; the panther stepped up close again, and Trevor backed up. He gasped and stifled a bark as the stump caught him up behind the knees and he sat down. Fitch was not small; he was taller than any of the others who worked with Altius including the lizard himself, and he was brawnier than them as well. Every part of his body was powerful, from his jaw down to his large feet. Nonetheless, without some sort of adjustment, Trevor would have to tilt his jaw down to touch one of his eartips when standing.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Trevor whispered, and his heart and stomach rose into his throat.

Fitch leaned forward and sniffed. Then, he leaned back to stand normally, held one of his wide leather coat lapels with a hand, and rested his other squarely on his own groin. His fingers roamed around the drop-flap, though didn't unbutton it. Instead, he adjusted himself, turning what had been a simple male bulge into much more of a banana's curve to one side, and sighed slightly after doing it. "You remember what I said earlier." He paused; Trevor stared. "Wear more of that cologne tomorrow. When you bathe, you don't need to wash everything. You know what I mean."

Trevor did not know what he meant. "Okay." Considering the panther's posture, he could guess.

"There is no lab work on Saturdays. I also don't work on Fridays, not with you all, not for you all."

Trevor squinted. Fitch looked him over. "Is... what..."

"I don't like how you dress. You look like you should be taking coins at a feed shop."

The maned wolf scowled, and his heated confusion coalesced into a moment of defensive anger. "You... you shouldn't talk to me like that." He moved to stand up, and Fitch calmly pulled a knee up and stepped down on Trevor's groin. Not only did it knock against his balls for an instant gut shock; the step squashed his cock against his pubic bone, triggering an instant reflexive throb.

"Come to my apartment Saturday. I'll measure you for a new outfit. Once I'm done with you, you can walk anywhere you want any time of day or night and no one will fuck with you." Fitch rolled the ball of his foot slightly back and forth and side to side, then chuffed. When he did so, he pulled his lips back and up, forming a terrifying feline grin.

"Is that, is what, you..." Trevor looked around again, then dropped his hands to his lap and intended to push Fitch's foot free, though his trembling fingers just slid over the leather, smooth over the toe and around the heel, strap-harnessed at the ankle, buckled up the front and sides of the shaft.

"Do you like it?" Fitch continued slowly pawing at himself, using his thumb and index finger and riding the crook between along his bulge so it was as plainly evident as possible under dark leather and the dim orange glow of city that filtered through the trees.

"I don't kn..."

Fitch picked up his boot and Trevor nearly panicked off of the stump. The panther stepped down on his thigh instead. "Look closer."

The maned wolf curled into a hunch, and looked. "W-what am I..." You idiot, compliment him before he kicks your face in, or worse. "Your boots are really n-nice."

"I'm glad your words agree with you," the panther said, then stepped down. "Come on. You'll see why it's a shortcut." He then turned away and started walking again.

Trevor made a small whining sound and covered his muzzle, then stood up and haltingly followed. He tripped over a root and staggered forward, then barely recovered. Fitch paused, looked back, then kept on.

They reached the edge of the wood which quickly became a dirt yard with several goats in it. "Uh, goats?" In addition to several startled bleats front he animals, a constant roar came from the building. "Wait, this is-"

"We're right behind Sharyn's. Go around like this," Fitch said, and went around to where the access alleyway separated the block. Moments later, Trevor and Fitch were standing on the sidewalk and staring at their rowhouses. "See? It's shorter, and no one will hassle you. They will, even if they haven't yet. You've only been here twenty-four hours. Plenty more time for the classist and racist fucks to get on your case."

"You..." Trevor started to say, and wanted to continue with, 'hassled me', though he bit back his tongue. "Thank you."

"Remember what I told you to do," the panther said, withdrew his keys, and let himself into his apartment's four locks.

Trevor quickly went into his and backed the door shut, then slid down onto the floor right there and started to whimper. He clasped his hands over his muzzle to dampen the sound - he was never able to control the high feral whine when he was overwhelmed. He spent several minutes rewinding back to the woods, to being stepped upon, to the panther's very large and obvious bulge, to Fitch's instructions. What's your problem, you let Marshall suck you in a bush, you licked his boots that one time, you both jerked each other to filthy drawings he'd made in school, what's the problem, Fitch is another cat who wears fancy boots, he's just bigger. Then, he's going to do something terrible and you aren't going to stop him and neither will anyone else. Then, you better do what he says, or you'll keep looking like a stupid feed-store boy.

After quietly sobbing and then sniffling himself back to composure, Trevor decided to have a bath. Despite the apartment having the incomprehensible luxury of running water, it only made having a bath slightly easier because he still had to boil a large pot of water to warm it up, and true to Lane's warning the water was questionable. It tended to spatter, and sometimes came out brown and smelled strongly of metal and occasionally sulfur. Well, I guess the sulfur will be good if I get flake mange again.

The tub was a traditional round one, which left Trevor sitting upright with his knees out of the water, or cross-legged with much of his torso out. Thankfully the kitchen stove had a grate which allowed some heat to bake the bathing room. He tried to relax and his mind kept reeling around to events. He couldn't avoid thinking of Fitch, and when he tried to replace Fitch with Marshall, he then got the nauseating feeling of being aroused by the wrong thing as his mind inevitably came back to the black panther trodding upon his cock like a walker stomping out a snake. He then tried to think about what had happened at the laboratory, and couldn't stop thinking about how he was watching things happen that no one else was.

When he finally got those thoughts to stop, his nauseating feeling continued and he had to end his bath early to try out the interior toilet. Definitely traveler's sickness, he thought, and made the error of opening the flap while he had his post-vomit face over the bowl. Not only did sewer stench pelt him in the face and trigger another round, but the cat's warning about sewer flies was very apt and he spent half an hour trying to chase them out a window.

Exhausted and hungry and quivering with cramps, he retired to his bed and fished out some writing paper and his dip pen. He cowered by candlelight under his blanket and started to pen a letter.

"Dear Helena and Sam,

I have arrived in Castleton sound of mind and body. I am to work for some shady folks on things that can kill me. If they do not kill me, a black panther will. I have traveler's sickness and am miserable."

He then crumpled it up and tossed it into the fireplace, where it flashed up to ash. He took a small lockbox out of his luggage and opened it up to the stench of dullweed. He withdrew a small metal pipe, stuffed it with the material, and lit it from the candle. Trevor was not particularly fond of getting dazed, however dullweed had the useful tendency to quell gut cramps and he always kept some with him when traveling. Let's see if this can work when I'm in a big, disgusting city.

Within about ten minutes, his eyes felt dry and scratchy, his heart had changed from pattering from the cramps to thumping from the euphoric rush. He took out another piece of paper and dipped his pen, then used his luggage case as a bed desk.

"Dear Helena and Sam,

I have arrived in Castleton sound of mind and body. Dr. Brasseri has an interesting laboratory in the industrial part of the city. It is quite smelly and rough in the area, though the building is cavernous and has equipment in it that I can hardly describe. Ask Sam to describe the contraption from the fair; then imagine that it is taller than the church spire in town.

The other assistants are a strange lot. Lane, a hairless housecat who I thought to be standoffish at the fair though perhaps he was just tired of the crowd - he enjoys chemistry, or as the chantries like to call it, 'Practical Alchemy'. Petrie, a corgi dog - have you ever seen one? They are dwarven! If he ran into me while walking, his muzzle would get stuck in my navel. He is extremely fond of maths and singing loudly at all times, a combination of stage tunes and melodies assigned to whatever he is thinking about at the time. Fitch-"

He paused writing and swallowed dryly. He immediately called to mind the panther in his ominous black leathers, standing against a wall, hunched and uncomfortable and staring as the others prodded at the corrosive battery.

"- is a large and intimidating black panther with a terrible attitude and unusual dress. He makes things, and frowns."

Thanks in part to the dullweed, instead of the overwhelming worry he felt before, he instead grew erect and the bottom of the case pressed uncomfortable at the sensitive top of his shaft. He continued on.

"Altius, that would be Dr. Brasseri, is bombastic and pompous and yet entirely hands-on with everything. He would just as soon gesture about as stick his fingers into the internals of something hazardous. He also wears a strange amount of purple clothing."

"I have an apartment around the corner from the laboratory. It is small but fine. The furnishings don't seem diseased, and there is even this fantastic thing of running water. You open a valve like on a beer keg, and water comes out! Indefinitely, as far as I can tell. Lane explained it and I cannot quite remember how it worked." That was partly due to the dullweed making his brain run quicker and all over the place, and partly because he had legitimately forgotten. "It is half of a row house, literally half, as if someone had put a wall right down the middle of ones like by the church."

He looked around the bedroom. Now that he had slightly more time to pay attention, and the dullweed had livened his senses - the name was something of a hypocrisy - he realized that the apartment was in rather poor repair. Nothing seemed square, there were numerous gaps and only some of them were stuffed with sealing putty, and the dividing wall had been put directly down the middle of a window and sealed with mud and paper. He inspected the bed, and found that in the past someone had broken it in half, and it had been sistered with unmatched wood. I wonder how that happened. Hope they had fun. Likewise, the night table had been made by someone who had the barest sense of how to put wood together, and it was kept sturdy and flat by what looked like broken pieces of redwood shingle under two of the legs.

The dullweed definitely did its job at quelling his internal upset. He tapped the back of the pen against the paper, and then when he turned it around to write, found that his black finger fur had disguised a dribble of ink that smeared messily on the page. He sighed, looked at the fireplace, then continued on.

"I have some traveling sickness and so there is proof that dullweed is making me well and yet stupid," he wrote, and then drew an arrow to the splotch.

"Hopefully you two are well. I have not seen any toads; we are near an effluent river and I imagine there would be some there. Perhaps they would be hardy due to the conditions.

Sincerely, Trevor."

Before he forgot, he picked out an envelope and folded the letter into it, then tipped the candle on the back and mashed the wax about with his finger for a seal. He blew out the candle and curled back up in bed, and soon fell asleep despite the relentless thoughts and unsettled guts.