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Stories from the Verse
In Version
Chapter 139: Kondor 254
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 248
“Eat up, captain,” Kondor heard, and looked down at his cafeteria plate. He had been stirring the meat and smashed roots around in circles. “I know it’s hard, what with her being gone,” Zeke continued as he finished sitting down across the table from him. Kondor felt heat flush to his eyes, and tears threatened. Leah was gone.
“That’s not it, Zeke.”
“Oh?” The other shoved some food into his mouth, and waited.
“The college wants me to fix the flying saucers. I can see their point--they are very useful. But they seem to think I’ll then be on my merry way to making more of them. I keep telling them, you don’t have the tools to make the tools to make a saucer, but they don’t hear me. They want so badly to fly in space.”
“I think they just want the power,” Zeke said dryly. Kondor nodded. It could well be the case. He knew that right now he was not the best at understanding or having empathy for the Parakeets. He had expected them to behave better with regard to the coastal cities damaged by the tsunami, and they had disappointed him.
He began to eat as he laid out the problem to Zeke. Work on a saucer, or work on the next tech that would be widely usable. They had telegraph, and radio, gatling guns, and mass production. What else?
“Cook stoves, and hot water heaters as well. Trains and individual steam cars too. What’s a big problem they have that we could solve?” Zeke asked, and Kondor nodded. That was the question.
After a bit, he began to sketch out some ideas.
“Doctors like to claim all the benefits of health increases are due to us, but in truth, clean water, sewer systems, and garbage disposal played a huge role. So we need to see what they have in those lines, and see if we can improve it.” Kondor looked out across the cafeteria, and this sparked an idea. “Oh, food storage. We need to see what the situation is with glass. And I recall that you absolutely need a proper seal on lids or you could get botulism; that’s a specific disease, but there’s probably something like it in this world. So, canning--we’ll start with high acid stuff. Mmmm, pickles and jellies I think will do the trick. Tasty, interesting, pretty to look at, and both will help with keeping good diets in the winter.”
“We have water in the houses,” Zeke objected.
“Yes, but how clean?” Kondor nodded to himself. He would work on the flying saucers half the day, but on the other half, he’d work on things that could help the ordinary parakeets. No matter how badly the dean wanted it, there was no way there were going to be huge numbers of flying saucers in the sky anytime soon. Which meant he needed to tell the aircraft designers to keep on working on their projects.
He had things to do, and for that he was grateful.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
