Making Trax
The dragon lady said And so we did. By judicious dropping of hints, and tidbits of juicy rumors here and there we enforced the mythos of the dreaded TONG. After a while one wanted to mess with us.
She looked around a smiled a bit.
And that was pretty much it for a while. In the meantime our future lord and master, the soon to be Arch-Mage was laying the groundwork. Take it away Shelby. You’ve rested enough.
Huh...that wasn’t a very long break. I hadn’t drank near enough coffee and all that talk of eating breakfast had given me the munchies.
Oh.
Well.
Back to the salt mines...to continue with the story.
So it went. I quit running the dirty glass bead machine. I located a space further down the old building with an outside entry. Sam had stressed that point. An outside entry was important. I had no idea why, but Sam was the boss.
The old factory was almost littered with building materials left over from older, more prosperous days. There were racks of lumber and stacks of plywood of all kinds. There was even a complete metal shop. I appropriated what I wanted for my undertaking. I built a cozy showroom and a shop then I stocked it with materials and tools that I found laying around for the sake of appearance. I used the materials but I didn’t need the tools. I had my own way of building stuff using my SoulStone generated abilities.
No one needed to know that.
I began making trax chairs. As I suspected none of the other amputee’s were strong enough to use them manually as easily as I could, so I added electric motors and joystick controls. I made some very powerful nanotech batteries too. The batteries were rechargeable by solar panels integrated on Bimini tops as well as by more conventional means...like plugging them into an electrical outlet.
The news was full of solar this and solar that lately. Almost all of which was pure bovine excretion. More than likely my products were the only ones on the market that weren’t a sham. My stuff actually worked. My trax-chairs were solar powered, with very advanced technology derived from the SoulStone. My chairs were ‘green’.
At first I provided track chairs almost exclusively to my fellow workers. Eventually word of mouth got out and brought in ‘civilians’. Non-veterans, wheelchair users from all walks of life who had heard about the new stair-crawlers and wanted one. I had all the work that I could handle. I belatedly realized why Sam had insisted on a separate entrance for my shop. It made sense, my customers would be interfering with the main business of Sam’s factory otherwise.
Sadly, for me, there came the day when the increased business meant that I absolutely had to have a phone. I hated that idea with a passion. I disliked the damn things intensely, or so I thought. I didn’t get out much but when I did all I saw were people with their eyes glued to their phones. It was unnatural. Unfortunately I really needed one for the business and the old steel mill no longer had land lines. I needed a cell phone, badly. I finally broke down and bought one. Since I would be using it for business, I purchased the best smartphone the phone store had.
Neural Interface
I dangled the chain from my fingers. Elvira had just grown it. The workmanship was impressive. Blood-Nanites could do that. If I looked really close I could just make out an inscription on one of the larger links. It said Dragon Force.
SoulStone Tech. Elvira said. It’s an inductive neural interface. If you recall you’ve had to turn away people who wanted a service robot?
Yeah I have I recalled I hadn’t wanted to. Some of the guys (and gals) could really use an extra set of hands. Theirs were missing. Not just legs like me.
This will do it Elvira told me. It’s a non invasive neural link. When worn around the neck it connects by induction to the brain-stem. With a little practice they can (almost) become as good as you are.
A little gaudy perhaps? I stated dubiously.
Chicks dig it Elvira said. It’ll be just fine.
To Be Continued
Yarn
.
Perhaps you might also enjoy
Other Books
that I have written.
.
AND
.
Follow me @everittdmickey
.
That's my Blog
in which I pontificate on Technology,
Philosophy, Religion,Politics, Economics
and occasionally
ShantyBoats
.
In my Blog I write about,
and hopefully engage my readers in discussions about,
the possible lifestyles that we will encounter after
TEOTWAWKI happens.
.
It WILL happen, one way or another,
probably something in between.
One thing is for sure and for certain though,
the world will NOT remain the same.
.
So Come on Down!
Sit a spell.
I got the Coffee on.
The Hobo Picture is a Public Domain image from
Samantha at the Worlds Fair
by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
Illustrated by
Baron C. De Grimm published by
Funk and Wagnall's Company 1893
Unless noted
All other Illustrations are from
Pixabay