[Original Novel] Champion of the Little People, Part 3

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The discretion part assumed some way of concealing the train. I thought piping might do the trick but could find nothing like that in the garage and had no money to buy it with. What I did find were stacks and stacks of plastic gutter dad meant to install last Summer, putting it off until he simply forgot about it. I knew there’d be questions about what happened to it eventually, but the pressing short term needs of my tiny friends came before such concerns.

By turning the sections of gutter over, a sort of tunnel resulted which I could then pile dirt on top of. The trick would be to dig a shallow trench first so the roof of the tunnel would be flush with the ground. Reasoning that the tunnel would need a rigid floor to glue the train tracks to, I found some corrugated plastic signs from an environmental activism thing mom was involved in for a while and cut those up into strips with the appropriate footprint.

In this manner, one at a time I built and buried sections of tunnel with interlocking lengths of train tracks inside. The set was electrical and a track that long simply wouldn’t supply the necessary power over such a distance, so I opened the engine with one of the fine screwdrivers dad uses to fix his glasses and rigged it to run on a pair of double A batteries.

The car behind it would carry spares that could be added to the circuit just by connecting the appropriate wires. This way if they ran out halfway through the tunnel, they wouldn’t be stranded. After the sun went down I got out my wagon, jacket and flashlight, then lugged a set of four cinderblock houses out to the spot I’d chosen.

I worried whether the little buddies I’d left in those houses would have what they needed to get comfortable, but when Saturday came and both mom and dad left to attend a fundraiser, I headed out to the settlement only to find thin trails of smoke issuing forth from each home’s chimney.

I’d left them with a bottlecap of water which turned out to be unnecessary as they could collect as much dew as they needed each morning, to say nothing of groundwater available in the lower levels of the burrow. So I lugged out the other four cinderblock houses I’d built so far, and spent the next several hours burying sections of track.

If not for the necessity of stealth I might’ve completed the railroad in the span of a few days. Instead it took roughly a month, stealing chances here and there to bury another tunnel section, until finally it reached a spot just outside the gate between the back yard and the field behind it. The gradual construction turned out to be a boon as it allowed time for fresh grass to grow over each newly buried tunnel section, such that it blended in with the field.

At the settlement, the tunnel emptied out into a long loop around the settlement itself, with a switchable Y junction at the mouth so the train could carry supplies around the colony before returning the way it came. There wasn’t room for a loop on my end that wouldn’t be noticed, so each time it arrived I’d have to take the train off the tracks one car at a time, then reassemble it facing in the other direction before sending it back.

It was a momentous Sunday when everything was finally in place to send the train on its maiden voyage. I used a reel of twine to measure how far it made it down the tunnel each time before snagging on something so I knew where to dig up a tunnel section and make corrections. By the end of the day, exhausted and covered in dirt, I nonetheless danced like a fool when I saw the train exit the tunnel and circle the settlement for the first time.

This greatly simplified and accelerated development of their colony. I no longer needed to wait for opportunities to visit the woods unnoticed in order to deliver supplies. Each way took an hour and eighteen minutes according to my stopwatch, and if I wasn’t around to receive them on my end, I’d supplied an additional partially buried cinderblock house where the ones who rode the train could safely stay until I had time to meet with them.

The ones who rode the train back to me always came with drawings of what they needed. Crushed cereal proved popular, as did shredded jerky. Dried berries less so, as the ones who’d spent a year underwater in the sealed jug subsisted largely on similar berries from the small bush growing inside.

This set me to thinking about the other jars I’d not yet fished out the of lake. With the beginnings of a town up and running, and the train finally operational, I felt it might make sense to bring more of them to the surface at some point.

Mom and Dad could tell something was up, but most of it was explicable as a newfound interest in various hobbies. Explaining the disappearance of the train set was more difficult. I don’t like fibbing but I couldn’t very well tell them I’d built a subway for lilliputians. So I claimed to have traded it for the various other materials that now cluttered my room, with which I’d spent many busy weekends building new amenities to ship to the burgeoning town.

I was content to accept whatever punishment Dad deemed appropriate for that, but he confided in me that he regards Aunt Lina more or less the way I do, and only tolerates her for Mom’s sake. There are times when I feel like we understand each other, however fleeting. Later that evening he gifted me an erector set in exchange for recent good grades.

I was indifferent until I saw this particular set included a fully functional scale model steam engine. I nearly leapt out of my seat in delight. Glancing back at Dad he seemed a bit confused that I liked it so much. “I quite like small machines, they’re fascinating to build” I offered, with some degree of hidden strategy. If I could get my hands on more stuff like this, the settlement could generate its own power, industrialize, and who knows what else!

As soon as I could get away without raising suspicion, I headed for the forest, steam engine in hand. My excitement dwindled as I approached the settlement. The houses’ windows were dark and no smoke came from the chimneys. One was upturned and the train track around the settlement was twisted scrap.

Tyrants. I knew they would eventually find this place but had hoped for more time to set up defenses. The little fellows took refuge in the burrow beneath the tree as planned. Excavations amidst the tree’s tangled roots testified to frustrated efforts by Tyrants to dig their way inside. I devised a nasty surprise for the next set.

Crushing a glass bottle beneath my boot, I mixed the glass shards in with loose soil which I then used to fill in the excavated spots. The next time they dug at it, they’d soon wish they hadn’t. When the hatch to the burrow opened, only one of them came out to greet me. He unfurled a drawing of three Tyrants laying waste to their village. I spent the next hour or so drawing various ideas for walls, fences and minefields while my little consultant looked on and nodded thoughtfully.

For the time being, I glued grass fragments to the outside of each cinderblock house to make it harder to lift or tip without injury. Then advised the Homunculi to remain in the shelter while I figured out a solution.

I headed back to the house and dug through the garage. Nothing looked applicable to the problem until I uncovered an old disused bug zapper. Not terribly helpful in its present form, but the circuit inside could electrify any pair of wire loops provided they were close enough.

The next two hours were spent building a crude but functional electric fence. Each pylon two feet high, with wire looped around spaced just right so that anything touching or passing through would cause an electrical arc. The problem was supplying enough power for the whole mess. For the time being I ran an extension cord out to it and buried it alongside the train tunnel.

That wouldn’t cut it long term. Dad would eventually notice. Plan B was to save my allowance until I could buy a pair of car batteries. As I didn’t need to power the bulb which normally attracts insects, the zapper only really pulled current when frying something. It could run for days on one of the batteries while the other charged at home. Then on the weekend, I’d swap ‘em.

This worked so well it was tempting to supply for the rest of their needs this way. But batteries are expensive and eventually need replacement. Ideally I wanted to set them up in such a way that they could provide for themselves indefinitely. So, I got to work building them a powerplant. The first iteration consisted of the model steam engine mated to the dynamo from a hand-cranked emergency radio.

I tried powering the fence with it directly. It didn’t pack much of a punch. After having the little guys load some chopped twigs into it, set them ablaze and get the contraption up and running, I tested the fence with a hot dog on a stick. It fizzled. Eventually I mustered the bravery to try it with my hand. The shock only barely stung. Not remotely sufficient.

What I could do with it, however, was charge the battery. As the fence drew next to no current most of the time, the battery could be trickle charged by the makeshift steam generator until full. I housed the electronics, battery and steam engine in an upturned plastic bin with a hole cut in the roof for the smokestack. Didn’t want rain shorting any of it out.

It was a bit of a chore instructing the Homunculi in its use. They had no familiarity with electricity and regarded it as magical. I pointed out the voltmeter I’d affixed to the circuit which displayed the battery’s state of charge and, through a long series of drawings, explained that the fence would only work while the battery was charged and that keeping the steam engine running was the only way to do that.

The one I was dealing with disseminated this understanding to the rest, then assigned six of the others to keeping the steam engine supplied with firewood and water, carrying away the ash, and monitoring charge level. Another ten were added to kindling detail as their need for twigs had just sharply increased.

As a final precaution, I nicked the flare gun out of a neighbor’s boat and rigged it facing upwards at a break in the forest canopy. Fishing line from the trigger allowed a few Homunculi tugging on it to fire the flare skyward. It took only two drawings to make it clear to them what it was for and when to use it.

The sun now low on the horizon, I trekked across the field and found to my relief that Mom and Dad were not yet home. I suspected Dad knew by now, but had grown tired of punishing me for it. Mom was the one I had to worry about. According to her, I could easily be eaten alive by bears anywhere outside of the suburb. And grownups are supposed to be the rational ones.

Problems quickly arose with both the steam engine and the fence. First, being fenced in limited the area they could forage in. For all sorts of things, but most importantly kindling. I gathered twigs from our yard for a while and sent bundles to them by train until I could fit a small switch between the battery and zapper circuit. This allowed them to turn off the fence briefly, permittng parties of foragers through.

The steam engine, being an educational model, was never intended to run continuously much less for days at a time. The little fellows proved extremely resourceful at jerry rigging repairs to it, but could only do so much without the ability to smelt metals.

So, I drew some pictures of how to build a medieval blacksmith’s forge. It wasn’t clear to me just how smart they are until I studied their repairs to the steam engine, but after that it came as no surprise when they managed to set up their own forge in a matter of days.

All I had to do was show them an explicit drawing of some mechanism and they soon built it. Problem was, I had to truly understand in detail how it worked because they’d build it exactly according to the drawing, so if I got something wrong, so did they.

By this time I was regularly swiping batteries from the TV remote and various appliances to keep the train running. I knew that wasn’t sustainable so I dropped some allowance money on a four pack of rechargeable batteries and a charger.

I wasted no time taking the charger apart, fitting the train engine with the rechargeable cells, and wiring it such that the train could be plugged into the steam engine/car battery assembly in the settlement to juice it back up. I didn’t like drawing on the car battery for this as it was crucial for their safety but saw no other workable solution.

Next was a replacement power supply. Asking around revealed that solar panels of the size needed were priced out of my reach. Anyway, the forest canopy prevented enough sunlight from reaching the settlement for panels to do any good. For lack of a better idea I biked to the library one Saturday and came back with a book about electrical science fair projects.

One was a variant on the familiar lemon battery. It turned out the lemon wasn’t strictly necessary, but that sticking two dissimilar metals into soil would also generate current. Not very much, but pairs of nails, tent stakes or whatever else could be wired up in series to achieve the desired voltage, and in parallel to achieve the desired amperage.

I briefly worried that the whole mess would be outside of the fence and thus vulnerable to the Tyrants before realizing I could bury all of it such that they’d never know it was there. I wound up buying a few boxes of magnesium fire starting rods and thick, three inch long lengths of copper wiring I’d had the guy at the hardware store cut for me from a spool.

Once the work of driving them into the ground in pairs and wiring them up was finished, all told they produced fourteen volts and a little over three amps. The area of forest floor the whole mess took up was impressive, although after I’d layered some soil on top of it all you couldn’t tell anything was there.

According to the book, this was how morse code relay stations were once powered in areas with no electrical infrastructure. It went on to say that if the draw were continuous, the bacterial action in the soil would not be sufficient to replenish the acidity for longer than four or five months.

I dreaded the prospect of having to find some alternative down the line, but then since the draw would be intermittent and rare I hoped my own setup might last a good deal longer. If nothing else, it would buy me time to figure out a more permanent solution.

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