"So, did you come with the real pieces this time or just another reflection?" Barda asked when he saw Lady Arnea enter the workshop.
"Where are your manners, no greetings?" Lady Arnea asked before freezing for a moment, 'Was Krib rubbing off on her?'
"I came with something better," she quickly went on as she dismissed that scary thought.
"How better?"
"This spell can summon one object out of the 5 I show you." Lady Arnea said as she pulled out a trinket the size of a coin. It was unlike anything he had seen. It had a smooth surface, almost like a rock from the river bed.
"Five? I thought you said you had them all?"
"So, there are more than five? How many are there?" Lady Arnea queried. Barda hadn't guessed it was a probe. He still hadn't even known about how they found these pieces. Barda didn't even answer, just sighed.
Arnea then proceeded to chant some incantation to activate the trinket. Like a projector, 5 different objects popped out.
"Is this all you have?" Barda looked them over the objects with a disappointed look on his face.
"We have more if what you are looking for is not here," Lady Arnea wondered what Barda wanted. Truthfully, Barda was dancing and having a great time inside, for he had just seen the object he so desired the most. He couldn't believe it had survived.
"You have them, rather, their reflections here?" Barda probed.
"No, but I did bring the biggest one here though," Lady Arnea sounded more like a hawker peddling second-rate products than a dignified lady. Coincidentally, the piece that Barda wanted to pick was the biggest one since it was fully intact. It was none other than the black box.
Barda smiled to himself as he analyzed the quality of the black box. He had known that though there were no absolutes, the black box was nigh indestructible. However, he had thought the same about the pod. However, he wouldn't let Lady Arnea see that.
"Fine, I'll have it," Barda looked sullen, as though the part he had wanted to pick out was not part of it. He did a hash-up job at trying to conceal the emotion so that Lady Arnea could not think it too obvious. She summoned the black box and placed it in front of him. He handed her the essence she wanted.
"If you want, you can still pick one more item but at a cost of another one of these," She offered as she picked the orb.
"No thanks, unless I get to pick the item next, I am not interested in trading," Barda said as he stood, signaling her to leave. As she left, Barda felt that mysterious energy remain behind. He didn't know about Krib.
After his return to headquarters, Krib had received a different task. The seniors wanted to find out what Barda was doing with the pieces they were giving him. It was only natural that one would willingly trade such an important commodity as an essence for something of equal or greater value. Perhaps what they were giving away was of more value than what they were receiving.
Therefore, after Lady Arnea left, he remained behind. Barda whacked his mind on how to get rid of that mysterious power, but try as he might, he couldn't. He had moved around the city for a while, tried running very fast, but he couldn't separate himself from that feeling.
Barda thought Lady Arnea was tracking him somehow, and because of this, he was conflicted about whether he should move forward. After giving much thought, Barda decided that the benefits outweighed whatever fallout that might come from being seen at work. Already, Lady Arnea and her people seemed to know more about him than they were letting on. Besides, what would they see anyway, just some guy working on a piece of equipment?
Barda had received the object from Lady Arnea in the afternoon and had been loitering around until dusk. He finally got back to the workshop and placed the black box in front of him. By placing his palm on the biometric lock, he sent a signal unique to himself. Just as humans had fingerprints, androids had electrical signals to be identified with.
Since he was the administrator, the black box accepted his communication and started interfacing. Barda could communicate with it even without physical contact within a 20-meter ranger. Knowing there were eyes on him, Barda decided to pretend to take a brief nap, it had been a while anyway.
As he was 'napping', Barda was analyzing the data from the black box. He was very impressed by its mode of recording, all factors pointing to a smooth flight.
Suddenly, Barda noticed it. A gaping hole in his historical data. At first, he thought it was a fluke since such a thing should not happen, but for some reason, the black box missed huge chunks of data. Barda had the record of the first 231 years and the last 102 years. In between, more than a century of data was missing.
No matter how he looked at it, something was fishy, but he decided not to dwell on it. In space, there were a lot of unexplained phenomena. If one chose to do an unexpected thing like travel across the galaxy for hundreds of years in a liferaft-like space pod, something unexpected was bound to happen.
Next, Barda moved on to the real reason he desired the black box. There were a lot of juicy blueprints he needed. It wasn't that Barda had stored any blueprints there, but it was the first fully-functional computing device Barda had. What's more, it had powerful network chips and drivers installed. If not anything else, the black box would offer him a template to work from while creating his computing devices. This was especially useful for Barda since he was not an engineer in his past life.
Having gotten all that he could, Barda got to work recreating components of a computer. All computing systems need the following components: input, output, storage, and processing. Luckily, since he could interface directly with the hardware he was creating, the input and output were taken care of.
He had learned to create the chips, which handled the processing bit. Now he needed to learn how to create storage devices, figure out how to power the device and cool it down when it overheats. With his work cut out for him, Barda began.
Barda needed to create 2 devices. One was to be sent up in the sky, where it would send a deep space signal. The other was to be on land, buffed up by the signals he was emitting.
The ideal choice would have been to fly to space and send the deep-space signal himself, but since he couldn't, he chose the next best thing. He was going to fit a small computer in a flying device then deploy to orbit, which meant that he had to figure out how to make a flying object, and that was the easy part.
Since the computer that would be flying up would need a more complex chip, Barda half considered sending the black box's chip, since it was the most advanced he had at his disposal. However, he discarded the idea since he still needed to do further investigation. He had to make a very quality machine for the first time.
Barda made 2 large balloons. He then created a reactor that was able to extract hydrogen from water, solving his flight problem, to a point. The balloons would take the computing payload almost all the way, but for the final part, Barda had to get creative. Balloons usually burst before they can cross the atmosphere into orbit. If the package was not in orbit by the time the balloons burst, it would come crashing down.
Using fuel obtained from crude oil, Barda made something like an antique jet-fighter. It would be activated when the balloons burst. The fuel would be consumed to propel the container forward until it got into orbit.
For the ground signal, Barda needed to make a giant satellite dish to communicate with the computer he was shooting up. Only then could he be able to pass the instructions he needed to the computer he had sent up.
The dish itself had a diameter of 50 feet, the width of a basketball court. It wouldn't be a simple construction since he was not proficient at nanotechnology. Barda also needed to set it up on an elevated place, which meant that he had to climb a mountain. He couldn't have the construction anywhere near the city since it would be too conspicuous.