AN: Happy fathers day everyone! If you're still deliberating over gifts to get, I recommend a large sword. Or a Bowie knife. And make sure its nice and sharp. It's boring otherwise. Night vision is also a nice gift, especially when paired with a home defense hatchet.
Anyway, here's some art of the twins, Kwon on right, Song on left! Hope you enjoy!
October 25th, 629
“Ah, Boris. It’s good to see you.
“It’s good to see you too, sir. We’ve been waiting for your return.”
I shook hands with my old assistant. Although replaced by Erhan as the man who tended to my logistical needs, Boris had proven himself a competent manager underneath me and was eventually placed into a high position within Wonderland. He had been on this island for some time to manage certain projects after we initially took it over.
He would be the one to get me up to speed.
The main Wonderland facility on the island was built into the central palace at the center of the city, the same palace that the Death Shrine had grown into and made its own. After so much time, it had been completely restored and every corner and secret hole had been brightened and revealed.
Shades hadn’t been a problem for some time, even if that wasn’t true of other parts of the island yet to be treaded. They had all been killed as they popped up, and safeguards had been developed to protect against those still lingering in dark corners. Thanks to demolition efforts throughout the city, it had been rendered just about completely safe.
The main palace itself was the safest. Its surface level structure was refurbished and renovated. Kept intact so as not to destroy a piece of history, it looked like it had any ages ago. As for the rest of the items throughout it, they had been extracted and preserved in other areas, allowing Wonderland to move in and make it their own.
It was now Wonderland’s biggest laboratory and research center, even bigger than the original main complex outside the Whetted City. That wasn’t even considering how deep it went. The chambers underground where the Death Shrine had resided were hundreds of feet under the surface. Those structures had given our teams more space than they initially knew what to do with, only now being filled as the original Wonderland was decommissioned and sterilized.
Now that everything was here, rooms were being filled. Boris had worked tirelessly as one of those project managers who needed to help situate everyone.
Thankfully most people were summoners. It made the process significantly smoother than it otherwise would be.
With my arrival, Boris had prepared to welcome me. Most projects had come to a screeching halt with my public dissolution and Iron Legion’s changing strategy. All projects had been granted a specific purpose by me, and now that those purposes were gone, direction needed to change. I was here to do exactly that.
Boris drove Umara and I to the Palace where we disembarked and entered what was previously a ballroom, now repurposed into a place of gathering, meetings, and presentations for the researchers here.
There were thousands of people inside when I entered, the majority of them summoners, but a large chunk being warlocks responsible for enchanting. Most eyes turned to me when we walked through the door, and everyone was observant enough to know who I was even without seeing my face.
With Umara and Boris, I walked to the stage at the front of the ballroom, equipped with a podium and tools for presentations. The entire room quieted as I did, and I decided that there was little need for pleasantries, not that I had been in the mood for it anyway.
Tapping the microphone, my voice echoed into everyone’s ears.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Wonderland, my name is John Cooper. I’m here today in order to discuss the future direction of our research and development.”
My eyes glanced over the crowd, observing their rapt attention. There seemed to be mixed emotions, but generally people were rather calm.
News had already spread, and these people had their time to figure out their thoughts on my new status as Traitor. All of them were obviously in the know about the kind of work we did even if they all worked on different projects. They also knew enough about Sector 4 to mute their surprise at their feats within the Kingdom.
All of them were weapons and tech developers responsible for arming the very force responsible for the accused atrocities. They saw things from a particular perspective.
“With Iron Legion moving away from direct battle and shoring up in friendly territory, our priorities have changed. The Kingdom now carries the responsibility for holding the frontlines against the Scourge, which allows our army some well earned rest. However, the same rest cannot be afforded to us in the same amounts. The Scourge continues to evolve almost as fast as we develop new technologies, which is why we need to shift toward new avenues of research while we have the room to do so.
“Weapons technology is born from our delves into the deepest extremes of science. As we unlock secrets of the universe, we become capable of wielding those infinite forces by the will of our intelligence. Just a week ago, we prioritized stuffing magical forces into the confines of metal armament. It was crude. We lacked the technique and flair to take full advantage of the most extreme forces available to us, but we also lacked the leeway to shore up our deficiencies. Now, we have the time we need to fix that.
“Over the next week I will be reforming teams and disseminating scientific material that all of you will be responsible for learning and applying. We will develop new tools and labs designed around principles of precision and purity. While the extent of our specializations will be limited by manpower, the strides we make toward the depths will still open the door to levels of worldly control that borders on the supernatural. All of you will learn what the concept of creation entails. It will be more than just magic, more than just science. The fusion of everything we’ve become capable of will generate an entirely new discipline.
“While these reforms occur, most projects will continue to remain on pause. New projects will be gradually introduced and centered around certain fields and technologies, all of which will be dictated in the coming weeks. Until then, all of you will have reduced schedules, allowing you more downtime. As for the situation in the Kingdom regarding myself and certain political ramifications, all I can recommend is that no attention be paid to it. Our work will continue with or without the Kingdom’s permission or grace, as it has ever since Wonderland was founded. All of you should understand by now that our obligation is to no nation, but humanity’s survival as a whole. Everything we do is to the end of preserving life against the evil that threatens to corrupt it, and we will do so utilizing any and all means available to us, including the most extreme forms of science, magic, and their weapons mankind can and will comprehend.”
I paused my words, seeing looks of expectation on the faces of those before me. All of them had seen the fruits that their labors had borne, as well as the feats they had accomplished in the field.
I smiled a bit.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we are the world’s most elite force of researchers and developers, engineers and thinkers. I want you all to continue understanding that never before in all of human history has there ever been a gathering of minds like ours. Let not pride guide your thoughts, yet know the burden that is our task. We will preserve humanity, yes, but what comes after is the ultimate fruit of all our struggles. When we surpass our foes and declare victory over our enemy, we will be the minds who will have thrust mankind into a golden age unlike any that has ever been seen. Nay, nobody in this world truly knows what a golden age is. It will be our job to show them.”
I let out a breath, satisfied with what I had to say.
“That will be all.”
I stepped down, linking arms with Umara once more, Boris escorting us out of the ballroom.
“Allow me to show you to your workshop, sir and madam.”
He took us to a facility of teleporters. With Umara’s Skipper technology allowing objects to be teleported to vehicles and mobile supply systems, improvements were made to general teleportation. Breaking the Great Barrier wasn’t necessary for comprehending the technology of teleporters, which was why the Talerria Duchy was a major designer for city-scale teleportation systems.
Having received her family’s signature texts on teleportation magic, Umara was able to implement her new ideas to be used in our own facilities. The result was local scale teleportation. Instead of massive facilities for teleporting across the continent, these teleporters could be used for inter-facility movement. Most importantly, their cost for operation scaled down with their size, meaning they were cheap enough to be used as a particularly lavish elevator.
The teleporter we went to brought us into a hallway with a pair of doors at its end. Filled with the most secure enchantments available to Wonderland, Boris provided his identity and granted us access.
We entered the workshop designed specifically for Umara and I. Although our estate had its own, that one was more so for my small scale personal projects, or those I didn’t want to expose even to Wonderland personnel.
This place not only had larger facilities, but more specialized devices that I could use which simply wouldn’t fit in the confines of my personal workshop. Not to mention, with the rest of Wonderland around me, I could access other services from other project teams, working in tandem. I would be doing so for my prosthetics project for Graves and Invocation study, both of which would have entire teams dedicated.
Seeing everything, I nodded and turned back to Boris.
“You’ve done good work. Sit with me. I want to go over how we’ll proceed from here.”
I guided Umara to a large metal table, Boris sitting across from us as I tapped the surface, a projected screen popping up.
Letting my systems take everything over and guiding it with my mind, I brought up a large list pertaining to operations at Wonderland, explaining as I went.
The list largely contained certain key pieces of technology I wished to develop, mostly as alluded to during my earlier speech. Some examples of the tech I wanted to get made were certain precision tools, and accordingly, they were almost entirely physical devices, little magic to be found in their schematics.
The sciences in this world had been somewhat developed, just enough to build things neatly. For example, the concept of “flatness” in surfaces demanded certain mathematics, which allowed one to calculate and devise tools to create those flat surfaces where human hands would fail. Such things had already been made by the time I got here and were utilized by enchanters who wanted their creations to be closer to perfect and uniform.
I had already brought another layer of complexity to top those things off. Where they had rudimentary tools, I brought specializations. Lathes were one. Machining metal had become a crucial process in the development of aircraft, and with some magic to cheat, this world was as close to true machining as it could get without creating proper computers and automated machinery.
Now though, I was introducing another realm. Precision could only be as good as the tools that measured it, and by this point, we needed precision in both engineering and magical enchanting.
That meant we needed to make machines. More perfect than human hands, we needed devices to not just compensate or improve, but carry out the process entirely. Put a certain way, my vision was to turn a warlock into nothing but the power source that drove a machine to enchant.
I also wanted to implement a system of templates. The idea had already been worked on at Sawn Industries, but the ability to mass produce enchantments still eluded even the best minds. It was simply a matter of taking the skill of enchanting out of the hands of the warlock, and doing so had proven impossible, or at least not feasible with current ideas.
I had two ideas, however. The first was to guide the warlock using what was basically superficial mind control, ensuring that their actions didn’t fall out of the specified template, giving more exact, but still potentially imperfect results.
The second idea was to build a device that could lay the enchantments itself. The warlock would provide the enchantment to the device, which would then apply it to whatever it needed to. After that, the precision of a machine could be utilized during application, forming a theoretically perfect, or at least identical, enchantment every single time.
We already had assembly line procedures, but if we could figure out how to mechanize enchanting, it would boost production by magnitudes.
Even then, the principal benefit would be the level of precision we could engage. Becoming capable of creating planes with the power of a rocket and the efficiency of a jet would finally be within reach. Those engines that exploded due to the sheer power of the physical forces acting upon the tiniest flaws would finally become usable products. Speeds exceeding 20 thousand miles an hour would be within reach.
But this was just a surface level application. There were improvements to be made in all kinds of fields. Teleportation was one of them. Umara would be hard at work trying to scale her new teleporters for operations out of the Declaration. I could already imagine it. Troops on the ground being teleported straight into the plane, no transmitter facility necessary. Such things needed extreme precision.
Perhaps the most important need for it though stemmed from my own techniques. Quantum Psionics was an obscenely complex system of Psykic spellcraft, a system currently impossible to use outside of my own spells. If I wanted those things to be enchanted to something, to take advantage of its capabilities in my tools, then we needed massive improvements to enchanting as a whole. No warlock was capable of handling my spellcraft, so I needed to eliminate the variable of skill, or at least lessen it significantly.
At the end of the day, if I took things far enough, perhaps there would come a time where I could build and enchant things by myself. With nothing but my Psykic prowess, I dreamed of applying my own enchantments.
While I’d have teams dedicated to working on those ideas, I still had potential solutions waiting to be explored. I’d be working here at Wonderland for some time to solve temporary projects, but after that, I’d be off to find the technology I was looking for.
For now, after explaining things to Boris, I sent him off to form the teams, simultaneously assembling and distributing all of the knowledge I needed the entirety of Wonderland to start applying. The faster they learned and moved, the faster I could get my Crown, the faster Graves would get his mechanical limbs, and then the faster I could leave this place for darker pastures.