after a couple of days, Daniel's routine became sleeping in the morning, experimenting in the afternoon, and school at night
this cycle continued, in the meantime, Vincent was still going after Sophia, and Phoebe was still pissed she couldn't go after the "damn terrorist" as she called them, while Joseph was doing his best to support her, but both of them had their hands full with Daniel
at first, his experiments were really innocent, with some hiccups and little pops, but nothing major, then he started studying batteries for the robots he wanted to build for labor, after finding a book about robotics on the tablet
Daniel thought that the robots would allow him to be more independent when moving things around, but maybe it was a little ambitious for a first project because that's when the nightmare started, the laboratory had exploded 3 times and the fourth time, they forced him to close it, and said to him to do experiments elsewhere
at this point Daniel had a much deeper understanding of Tickles, and had studied a lot, in a couple of weeks a new building sprouted in the specter dimension, in an empty piece of land to the right side of the castle, completely built by Tickles in industrial style following Daniel's blueprint complete with a roof full of solar panels
and talking about Tickles, Daniel had long noticed that it seemed to have infinite energy, but he was too advanced, and Daniel couldn't understand anything about how he worked, so he left it be for the moment, and went back to research batteries
his idea was to have three batteries inside each robot, possibly not in a dumb and exposed position like the ones in S.L.B automatons, that worked together and could give energy not only to the robot system but also to the tools the robot held since they were being built for labor
for it to work though, the batteries needed to be rechargeable since they would be buried in one of the thickest parts of the robot's armored chest, and this was a big problem for daniel, he found many motors and generators blueprints but very few books about batteries and because of that he had to find a solution himself
the few blueprints he found were pitiful as the main direction of the civilization rose was a part of used mostly fuels and gasses to power their technology and the batteries they put inside things like tablets and personal devices would last very little with the kind of needs something as heavy as a robot had
Daniel had many options if he wanted to put a fuel engine on the robot, in that case, the problem would have been easily solved but a new one would rise, fuels were really hard to come by in a society of cultivators
and personally, Daniel wanted a more green solution after all those stories about scientific civilizations killing themselves with pollution, luckily the solar panels he already had were much more advanced than he originally imagined and not that complicated, especially with a blueprint in hand to follow
to resume, what Daniel wanted, for now, was to build robots that could do anything from moving heavy loads to assembling parts and operating machinery according to what instrument they had installed, while being recharged with 'clean' solar energy
the cycle of study and experiments continued and before Daniel realized the day of his fourth birthday arrived and since Vincent wasn't present, Andrea came to bring him to the formation and said "so Daniel are you ready to go?"
Daniel asked "I will have the body of a 4 years old later right?"
Andrea said "yes, why do you ask?"
Daniel asked "can't I directly grow older?"
Andrea said "no, the seal as to adapt to the growing energy in your body, so it's 1 year growth after 1 year of adaptation"
Daniel asked "and how many times will I be able to grow?" he knew that there was a limit, but didn't know what it was
Phoebe said to Andrea with a telepathic message "we haven't talked about it"
Andrea responded to her also with a telepathic message "I'll respect your decision, but I must say he seems more mature than many adults, and I think being honest is the best option, but who knows how he will react"
Joseph and Phoebe nodded while looking at each other and Phoebe said "I guess there isn't a good time to tell him"
than Phoebe looked at Daniel and said "your limit sadly is 10, it's probably because both your father and I are at the peak of the seventh stage, but yours is the worst case ever recorded"
Daniel was shocked to the core and didn't know what to say, even if it was something they couldn't control he felt that they shouldn't have kept this from him, but he was still more sad than angry, at the thought that he would remain a little kid forever
after all, he was looking forward to growing up since Vincent told him that he had to at least be 5 years old to catch the tasty fishes in the lake, Phoebe and Joseph tried to talk him up, but it was useless his mind was already in a dark place
in the end, Daniel went with Andrea and like usual he mysteriously fell asleep before the formation was activated, but this time he didn't have the spare energy to worry about that, and when he woke up he was back at home with a 4-year-old body, his cyan eyes had an even deeper color and he would definitely be adorable if he behaved his age
sadly Daniel hadn't said a word since he woke up, he just went to the lab and started testing different cathodes, anodes, and electrolytic solutions, like he was starting back from scratch
and in the end, he just created something he knew would explode, to test the reinforced room he had made in the lab and entertain himself as explosions were always fun to watch
but to his dismay, it didn't, and after making every test he knew, the battery Daniel made wanting to blow up something ended up working perfectly, apparently, the reason he failed until now was because of proportions, and when he exaggerated to build something that would explode he nailed the right amount
Daniel wasn't happy at all, in his mind this stroke of luck was a failure, but he now knew that it worked and was useless to waste more time on batteries, so after making a few little adjustments and preparing a better blueprint he ordered tickles to craft 15 of them to start
while playing in the lab, Daniel learned even more stuff about Tickles, like the fact that he didn't need to use a 100% of himself to do anything and could easily divide himself into 15 different smaller Tickles crafting all the 15 batteries together, this did make it slower but he would still do everything perfectly
this prompted Daniel's new decision, most of Tickles would remain with him at all times, while a part would stay in the lab and work every time he needed to keep crafting something overnight, so he didn't need to interrupt it to go to school or when he needed to eat, Daniel didn't even consider leaving him behind to work, Tickles had to always be by his side
he also realized that in the future when the robots or any other thing was built he could use a very small part of tickles as an operating system and Artificial Intelligence, so he wouldn't need to use the time to program anything that could be hacked or rebel against his creator like Andromeda
this way everything he made will always be an extension of Tickles that was basically an extension of himself, technically he wouldn't even need physical controls to drive a spaceship as Daniel could do everything with his mind through Tickles
after the batteries problem was solved, Daniel initiated the second phase, the robot body, which started by experimenting, with the robotic arms and legs blueprints he found in a book, they were technically made for amputees, but whatever a robotic limb was a robotic limb, it just needed to be modified some stuff had to be removed but it was better than starting from nothing
a week later, Daniel was still silently working in the lab, drowning his sorrow in research, he didn't come out the whole week, not even for school, he was even eating in the lab, worrying both Phoebe and Joseph, that really didn't know how to talk to him, and ended up giving him space
in fact, every living thing started giving Daniel space even the insect and the birds stayed away from the lab, but no one noticed that
at the same time, far away, in the cold darkness of space, a dashing middle-aged man on board an astral whale was chasing a meteor, and with a purple and white flash he teleported in the meteor trajectory, stopped it with his hands, and ripped it open, to found a scrawny and very weak looking woman who at the moment because of the curse and the lack of energy looked like a mummy the dehydrated corpse kind not the bandaged kind, anyway this was Sophia who was finally being saved after 6 months and four thousand-ish years
Sophia said "you finally arrived, what happened?"
Vincent said "the material the meteor is made of masked your vital signal, it took us a while, to locate you"
Maya said "I'm happy to see you master" in her sweet kiddy voice
Sophia said "I missed you too Maya, but that's not what I meant, what happened at home? Daniel came to talk to me every 2 to 3 days, and now it's a week that he hasn't come"
Vincent said "well you don't know, but I lied to our children, and hid the fact that it wasn't a seal but a curse, after I lied I couldn't tell them to be honest with Daniel, who just discovered a week ago, that he can't grow older than 10"
Sophia said "only 10? how? why?" she was struggling to find the words, after all, she communicated only with Daniel, who couldn't tell what he didn't know
Vincent started explaining "when he was born, everybody in the solar system felt him, his mutation is the strongest ever recorded, Andrea used a tenth stage curse, that's why she gave him the great sun soul-nurturing sutra" he proceeded to fill the blanks, in all the detail she didn't know
Sophia said "so that was him, I had no idea, but a situation like this is dangerous, we need to go back now"
Vincent said "we can't be back faster than 4 months, maybe even 4 and a half, wait, you said you felt it?"
Sophia said "barely, but it's not important now, Maya maximum speed, let's go home"
Maya said "yes master, get ready to jump"
as they traveled Sophia could finally tend to her wounds since Vincent brought medicines with him, but she didn't have the ability to remove the curse so recuperating her cultivation base was impossible for now and she had to count on Maya and Vincent to fasten the pace
Daniel kept working on his robot limbs day and night, he managed to modify the amputee versions to make them stronger, bigger and transfer energy, all he needed now was a torso to connect everything together, after all, heads were just an option for robots, all the important hardware will still be in the heavily armored torso, with or without one
but there was a problem, in the books he read, there was no complete robot or robot torso blueprint, so he had to create one himself, and after the battery fiasco, he didn't feel very confident, in fact, most of his sadness at this point was because of this one failure
Tok Tok
somebody knocked on the door, of the lab, Tickles stopped making the robot's left leg and went to open it