Chapter 2: Chapter 2Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Despite my big proclamation, I had a lot I had to do before I did anything really Earth shattering.
First things first, I had to do was give this boy a name. The surname was easy; he would have mine, Zulu. Yeah, I liked that.
Zulu meant both 'heaven' and 'sky' so that had the nice bonus of calling back into his origins of having fallen literally from above. The first name was a trickier prospect. Names were important things. While suitable names were not exactly lauded, unsuitable names would follow someone their whole lives'.
My own name came from the fact that my family was Christian. My father's name was Abraham and in the Old Testament, Isaac was the son of Abraham. So I being the son of Abraham was named Isaac. I didn't consider myself very religious but that seemed like a good theme for the kids' name.
"Your name will be Esau Zulu as Esau and Jacob were the sons of Isaac." I proclaimed, in a semi-grandiose manner. He giggled. After making sure he was swaddled properly, I let him sit in my arms and decided to get a read on what I had to do, what I could do and what I should do. The distinction between the three was very slight but a lack of attention could very well result in Esau and I dying. Needless to say, that outcome was undesirable.
I heard somewhere once that if you give a person the potential to do anything, you risk the person getting stuck doing nothing. I was starting to see how true that was. I had so much I had to do, so much I wanted to do and so much I could do. So much potential, but even with the omni-tool, Esau or I could still die because I forgot something basic. This meant that I had to prioritise, but how? Then it hit me: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
It felt a bit strange using a model traditionally used for business to decide something that was life or death, but I guess businessmen would call business a life or death endeavour.
The most basic thing that Maslow's Hierarchy describes is physiological need, so my focus should be food, water and health. Obvious when you think about it, but the sheer shock of everything I had experienced today was a lot to think through.
So! Water, then food, then our health.
I turned the omni-tool on and a holographic interface jumped up at me. After I got over my surprise-it was future tech, of course it had a holographic interface-I got to business. Everything on the omni-tool was in English, thankfully, but had references to things I had no context for. Occasionally, I would look at a program or design present and there would be the occasional preference to the design being of 'Asari make or 'preferred by the Krogan' which certainly meant something but was largely meaningless to me. What I was able to infer however, from the variety of tools available was that the designers for this omni-tool had designed it so that anybody that had one would be capable of surviving in inhospitable environments without support.
Scrolling through the functions in omni-tool, I was able to find the 'fabricate' option. When I opened it up, I was able to see the designs of things I could make along with a list of the materials that would use up, in terms of omni-gel and energy. I currently had 100 percent battery life but that was sure not to last. So first thing I had to do was fabricate a power source so I could recharge the omni-tool. I searched through the database for power sources. I found references to 'element zero power cores' but I found no designs for them. Eventually, after some I found a design for solar panels.
Ridiculously advanced future-tech solar panels. They would take about five minutes to produce and would provide me power in excess of 10 kilowatts per day. That was more power than some coal power stations could produce per day. The science of how this could happen went over my head but it involved the solar panels being made of a material that allowed extreme amounts of energy absorption.
So much absorption, in fact that you could probably darken a room by lining its walls with this material.
The omni-tool fabricated the panels in hexagonal blocks about the size of my fist that had hooks on all sides, allowing for modular assembly. As each hexagon was printed, I assembled them until I had a large solar panel, the size of my chest. The omni-tool was almost out of material so I set the panels up, plugged them into my omni-tool via a fabricated set of cables to check if everything was working as it should and the moment I conformed it, I moved Esau so that I could pick up material and feed it into the omni-tool without hurting him.
After about 30 minutes of waiting, the omni-tool finally finished using the energy being collected by the solar panels to liquefy the plastics and metals collected into omni-gel and begin fabricating a battery. This battery would be used to store power from the solar panels and power things like lights that I would make in the future. It was rated to be able to store up to one megawatt of power, which was absolutely ridiculous.
That done, I fabricated two plastic bottles, and then a portable moisture collector.
While the omni-tool contained references to more powerful tools for finding and obtaining water, including a variety of sensors, the omni-tool had no actual designs for them. Annoying, but the moisture collector would allow me to collect up to a litre or so of water every thirty minutes depending on the moisture already present in the air. It didn't matter that I was in a desert in the middle of nowhere. There was some moisture so the moisture collector would be able to collect water regardless.
While the collector worked to gather water, I finally set out to make a shelter. The process was simple, now that I could fabricate near everything I wanted to. The mountain had been laid near flat by Esau's pod, so that meant that I could lay down a foundation to build on near anywhere. If I was building in a place like Johannesburg, I have to consider stuff like placing the shelter near stores and schools but in these wastes any space was just as good as another.
I searched through the omni-tool yet again, looking for designs that I had skipped past at first because the resources required were too much to afford. I found them and smiled; I could finally afford to build constructor drones.
Each one built would take about a quarter of the omni-tools' battery power, but that was no longer a problem now that the solar panels and batteries were up and running. The constructor drones would also need a store of omni-gel for use in converting materials into more usable forms. I plugged the battery into the omni-tool and I fabricated four drones. Each one was the size of my fist and looked more like a semi-circle with some circuitry than anything else. Despite their small size and relatively unimpressive design, each one could work fast enough that I could have a house built by the end of the house. Provided I kept them charged and ensured that they had enough material. That would be no problem at all.
After the drones were fabricated, I had to design a home for me and Esau. This was more difficult than it sounded. The designs present in the omni-tool were for temporary shelters like tents, which could work for now but I had a literal baby I had to take care of. A tent wouldn't do. I didn't know a single thing about how homes were built besides the fact that a foundation had to be dug and that most houses had four or more walls. Would I need to include columns or other structural components in the design tool on the omni-tool? Honestly, I had no idea.
Besides that, I had to figure out how to use the damn design tool in the first place. It was like your boss asking you to design something for a work poster on Photoshop despite your job description being in a completely different field. Except this Photoshop doesn't have any recognizable tool icons like a magnifying glass for zoom. Instead you had to pinch the screen and open your fingers. While intuitive for anyone who has ever used a smartphone, this information isn't told to me anywhere. I just had to figure it out.
While I fought the design tool, Esau left his place on my lap. I was so enthralled by my work with the design tool that I only noticed when he spoke.
"Father, what is this?" he asked. I froze and looked over at where he stood. He was pointing at one of the drones waiting for my instructions. I blinked. Esau was standing up and talking despite being a baby just minutes ago. He also looked more like a boy of around seven or eight years of age instead of the literal baby he was just minutes ago.
This was unnatural. An obvious statement, I know, but I had just carried this boy in my arms but minutes ago. Despite the obvious strangeness of the situation I had found myself in, I was in awe. And in my awe, I answered his question. Later, I would realize that awe was the default emotion experienced by anyone who met Esau.
"Well, that is a drone." At his look, I continued. "It's a kind of machine that has no intelligence like you or me. Specifically, these drones are built for construction." Even though he should have had no context to inform him on what a machine was, I knew somehow that he understood anyway.
He nodded and walked over to the moisture collector where he switched out a full bottle for an empty one. He approached me with the bottle.
"May I drink this?" he said. I nodded. "Go ahead." Regardless of how strange everything was, I could barely deny a child water, especially when I had collected it for his consumption in the first place. Still, I had many questions.
"Esau?" I called. He was transfixed, watching the drones in their idle flight. In fact, he seemed transfixed by everything, as if he was looking at everything for the first time. Probably because he was. He turned his head to me.
"Father?"
"I have a few questions I want to ask you - if you don't mind that is." He shook his head.
"I do not mind." Okay, let's start simple.
"How can you speak? I only just found you an hour ago and you were a baby then, you could barely form sounds then, now you speak almost as well as I can." I did mean almost, despite Esau clearly knowing the words, he didn't seem to know the proper pronunciation for some of the words he spoke.
"For that matter-" I continued, "How're you so big now and how do you know to walk in the first place?"
"I do not know father." Well, that was unsatisfying. He frowned. Not because he was upset at the questions, but from the look on his face, it was because he did not know the answer.
"From my perspective,-" he continued. "I just opened my eyes and just…knew. Similarly, I knew how to walk. I also do not know why I am growing as I am but I am." he shook his head again.
"I am sorry father." He said. His tone of voice told me that he felt disappointment in himself and expected me to feel the same. Not even a day old and already he felt like he was forced to live up to impossible expectations. I had to stem that as soon as possible before it developed into some sort of complex.
"That's alright, son." Despite myself I was surprised by how natural that felt to say. Just yesterday I was a bachelor just going through the motions of attempting to complete a chemistry degree, today I was working with technology that many people would kill to have and I had a son. This was a crazy day.
"No need to beat yourself up. You were a literal baby just minutes ago. Remarkable as you are, you are a child still. It would have been impossible for you to know such things." Probably. I had no idea what the hell Esau was, and I had no idea what he could or couldn't do.
"Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out together." I stood up and stretched, casting a glance at him. He still looked disappointed but seemed less inclined to blame himself for not knowing.
"Still, we need to get you in some clothes ASAP." Luckily, the omni-tool had a variety of designs for clothes in various sizes, including armour. From the look of things, the clothes were designed for humans and a variety of alien races.
I would have been more amazed by the fact that I had irrefutable proof of the existence of Alien race but again. It had been a crazy day.
Some were relatively human looking with relatively minor alterations in the case of Asari and Turian designs while some were real strange in the case of Quarian designs. I chose an assortment of shirts with armoured pants and boots for both me and Esau for fabrication. The armouring was to make sure that the metal sicking out all over the place wouldn't cut us.
"ASAP?" he asked.
"Ah. It's an acronym. Acronyms are words created to convey a sentence or phase in one short word. It means as soon as possible." He nodded and returned to being transfixed by the drones. This time he was poking them with his finger. He was doing so very carefully, as if they would explode at his very touch.
I fabricated the clothes and a screen before asking Esau to change into them behind it. I was sure to choose a relatively comfy and stretchy material in case Esau had a sudden growth spurt again. While he changed I continued to grapple with the design tool on my omni-tool. Fortunately the omni-tool had RAM upwards of a terabyte which meant that it could store the design I was working on even if I didn't explicitly save it before fabricating the clothes.
I had gotten to the point of having designed a 5 by 5 by 5 metre wire frame work which the drones would build around by attaching plates of metal, ceramics and plastics to it. I figured that was a good enough design so I set the drones to it. While they worked, I walked over to the moisture collector and drank the liquid that had pooled into the bottle. The water was largely tasteless without the quirks of flavour brought about by having minerals added to it at a water treatment plant. Regardless of the lack of actual taste, it was the best bottle of water I had ever had. I almost wanted to dehydrate myself just to drink the water again.
"Father, may I have one of the drones after they are done building?" Esau said, distracting me from potentially very dangerous thoughts.
It took a moment before I realized what he was talking about before I considered it. It was unlikely that he could do any harm with it and it was unlikely that he would hurt himself with it. The drones were robust and relatively harmless. Unless he pulled it apart and rebuilt it into a bomb, it would do nothing to him. Even if he destroyed it, the lost omni-gel would be a pain to replace but it wasn't a significant draw in my resources. I set my omni-tool to fabricate another drone for him.
"You may have one now." I didn't really know why he wanted a drone so much. Besides the fact that he obviously thought that they were cool. I couldn't blame him. They were very cool. Maybe he wanted to use it as a toy. That was more than fair enough. Honestly if that was all he wanted after saving me literal years of changing diapers, I was more than ok with it.
When it was done, I gave it to him. Despite keeping the rest of his face stoic, his eyes lit up as he took it. That was reward enough for me, I think. I smiled as I watched him buzz with excitement as it started its boot sequence and start to float gently.
He stared at the drone for minutes that felt like hours. Then he turned to me and asked in the most innocent of voices asked;
"Father, may I have a set of tools?" Of course, I was immediately suspicious.
"Why do you need tools for, Esau?"
"I would like to open up the drone and see how it works." Christ. Was this what my parents felt every time I came home with toys broken from long days of crashing them against each other? My immediate knee-jerk answer was a 'no' but then I thought about it. I give him the tools and then what? Esau becomes occupied working with the drones and I get to figure out more of the mystery that was Esau.
Even if it is likely that he breaks the drones I could always just make more. Omni-gel conversion wasn't necessarily an infinite resource because there is a need of for an input of materials to make more but making a few drones would only make a relatively small dip into our resources now that I had the power up and running.
So I requested the drones to find me materials to turn into omni-gel which I then used to fabricate a 'standard engineer toolset' as described by the database on the omni-tool. It was comprised of a small electric suite with things like solders and small sensors for checking things like changes in the potential difference of electric devices. It also included more standard tools like screwdrivers, metal files with rubber handles and pliers for what I guessed was the more involved work of breaking open stuff that was sealed shut. Fabrication done, I gave them to him.
He took the tools and immediately set to work. First he removed rubble from a small area near where the drones were building. Here, I first saw an example of Esau's strength. He was lifting rocks the size of my torso like they were nothing. Each one had to be in the realm of a dozen kilograms but he handled them like they were nothing. Being unable to find a good place to put them, he simply proceeded to throw them like tennis balls to remove them from his way. Needless to say, I was flabbergasted.
The visual was surreal to see. A boy no bigger than a toddler throwing rocks that even grown men couldn't handle. My feelings of awe slowly turned to horror as I realized that as he was far from fully grown, his strength was also far from fully realized.
This was both a blessing and a curse. Esau being as strong as he was meant that he was likely to survive any threats we would encounter in this god-forsaken place. On the other hand it also meant that he would be a nightmare to reign back when he makes impulsive decisions that all children do.
Having been done removing the rocks from his work area, he laid down a length of plastic on the floor before sitting down. Then he got to work. In minutes, he had already disassembled the drone and it lay in its composite pieces in front of him. He barely got a look at the composite parts before a thoughtful look plastered itself on his face. He started to reassemble it in what looked to be a completely different form.
We were both transfixed as both he and I realized that he knew what he was doing. He wasn't guessing, like a normal child. He knew. Occasionally though, he would encounter something that made no sense and get frustrated. When he did, he would get carefully disassemble the offending part where he would do strange things to the part. He would sniff the part, lick it or throw it and catch it on one arm. When he did, a dawning look of comprehension would appear on his face, as if the theories he silently had, had been proven correct.
He arranged the parts in multiple configurations, by my count five, before he reached something he was satisfied with. The new configuration was dome shaped but had circuitry on the outside and a small screen that had come from somewhere. I didn't remember the drones having any glass components but there it was. Maybe he had the drone fabricate it during the building process? After he was done, he presented the item to me. I could tell he was filled with nervous energy at what I thought of it.
"What is it?" I asked.
[Action: Disappointing the Primarch of the II Legion.
Reward: None]
Immediately, the nervous energy disappeared and the shine in his eyes was replaced with a look better placed on a dead fish. It didn't take a genius to realize that he was disappointed. He was disappointed in me, specifically. I could tell, somehow. I think he felt that the object's function was self-evident. To me, it looked like a crazy mechanism that was obviously incredible, but otherwise was impossible to define. Still, I had to fix this.
Was this how my parents felt? This constant feeling of a heavy weight laying across your shoulders? Where every word you say might make or break your child's future? If this was what they had to go through, I had a new respect for them.
"Talk me through the process of making it." I said. It seemed like the thing I could say that that would get me back in his good graces. It would also get me a good look into his thought processes. After a few moments of quiet, he asked if he could have another drone to demonstrate.
"You memorized the entire process?" I asked, stunned. He seemed offended I would even ask.
"Of course I did." Other children would have been smug or prideful about their abilities, I know I would, but Esau seemed to default to disappointment as his first emotion. Disappointment in himself and in others. He expected to know everything and was disappointed when he didn't. He expected others to know what he knew as well and was disappointed when they did not. He was developing a habit of comparing himself and others to a standard that was impossible to reach. Each time he did, he found himself and others wanting. He found me wanting.
I hated that. I hated the feeling that I was constantly being compared to somebody or something that I would never compare to, no matter what I did. Briefly, I had the thought of asking him who exactly he was comparing me to but even if he knew, I doubt he would tell me. A day old and he was already going through a teenage rebellion phase.
I took one of the drones of building duty. They were almost done anyway. I gave it to him.
"Go on then, Esau."
He took out his tools and laid them out before me. Then he began and I finally, finally understood the depths of his genius. Esau was clearly an autodidact and one of unparalleled ability.
He was learning, theorizing, testing and confirming theories with each action. Frequently, I had to ask him to slow down and explain his reasoning for some of his actions. This visibly frustrated him, but he acquiesced. Most of his work went over my head but occasionally I would see mistakes borne from incorrect assumptions.
These, I did my best to correct. They were relatively minor, things like having to ground a screwdriver before using it on an electric component. I did so carefully, of course. I made sure not to show any emotion or opinion that could be construed as me looking down at him.
Though initially frustrated, Esau grew to appreciate my help. Even though both of us knew he was smarter, he began to look past himself. More importantly, he began to look past his feelings of inadequacy and he started asking me questions. About what I knew about what he was doing, where I had learnt it and who I had learnt it from.
Quickly, the talk moved away from mechanics, where I was weakest, to physics and chemistry, which I knew more about, to topics like philosophy after I told him how the most influential scientists were also philosophers. I was beginning to tell him about how chemistry and alchemy were considered the same thing by scientists and scholars when an idea struck me.
I opened up my omni-tools' interface and looked for any information relating to the topics I was explaining. Here I struck gold. Because this omni-tool was apparently built for colonisation purposes, it had information that was relevant to immediate colony survival. This included primers on chemistry, basic survival techniques, first aid, engineering, geology and physics with associated example images and video files.
This allowed me to turn our impromptu symposium into an actual teaching and learning session where we would talk about nearly everything. Slowly, I could see him leave his shell. He hadn't stopped comparing both of us to some invisible perfect comparison point, but he had stopped caring so much about whether he lived up to it. Even though he still cared to some extent, he had started to laugh more and scowl less. It wasn't ideal, and I still had a long road to travel before I crossed the finish line but it was a start.
This had apparently been a great achievement because the Forge saw fit to reward me. I didn't see how; I was just doing my duty as a father.
[Action: Be a father to the Primarch of the II Legion.
Reward: SCIENCE! (Megamind)]
Like a wave, knowledge flowed from the Forge and into me. The sheer amount of the knowledge that suddenly made itself available to me was immense. I was now an expert in the sciences. All of them.
I could now access many lifetimes' work on any scientific topic I could think of. Medicine, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Statistics, Mathematics and many more scientific fields. All of it was available to me and I knew each subject as if I had worked on it myself.
I found myself collapsing. This was almost too much to process. Esau caught me.
"Father? Are you ill?" His dour demeanour was forgotten as he asked the question. He consulted the omni-tool in my hands for first aid procedures and he checked my pulse. This would not do. A father was supposed to take care of his son, not the other way around. I steadied myself. Slowly, I tried to stand up and the pressure eased.
"I'm alright, son. Just a bit overwhelmed." At his worried glance, I was about to explain what had happened before an epiphany struck me.
"You built an omni-tool?" I picked up the device from the ground at looked at it with new eyes. It was an omni-tool. Esau had reverse engineered super powerful computer and 3D printer in less than an hour of work. How? Then it hit me.
"You used the omni-tool's connection to the drones to request the properties of the omni-tool from the omni-tool itself. The challenge wasn't building the omni-tool. It was making the parts of the drone fit the functions of components of the omni-tool." Wow. I could see the truth of every word I had said on his face. This was what he was trying to tell me in his explanations of his process.
"You really are a genius. You know that?" I could see the beginnings of a blush on his face. I made sure that I didn't mention it of course. "Give your father a hug."
After a moments' hesitation, he came in for one.
"I'm proud of you." That was probably the wrong thing to say, because he squeezed harder at hearing those words and I got first-hand experience of Esau's strength.
I barely got the chance to get him to release me when we were covered in shadow. Immediately, both of us looked up. It seemed that whatever force had spat Esau from the sky wasn't done yet. It was raining meteors. Quickly, I lifted Esau and ran into the now completed shelter. It provided relatively little shelter if any of those meteors rammed into us but it was better that sitting out in the open.
As soon as we got in the shelter, which was more a ship container with a vault door than a house, I got on the omni-tool and got the drones to get our belongings. Priority was given to Esau's omni-tool and the half assembled one. Besides the fact that they were of great sentimental value, they were undeniable resource boost. That done, Esau closed the door and turned on the lights in the shelter.
I fabricated some furniture then me and Esau watched the meteor shower threw a thick pane of bulletproof glass. Whatever was happening was dropping colossal amounts of debris down onto this planet's surface. I had been curious as to where all the plastic and metal that lay around us came from if there were no people. Now I had an answer.
As we watched the meteors pocket the landscape around us, an ache reminded me of the cut I had sustained earlier in the day. Fortunately, the omni-tool had an answer for that too. Besides a store of omni-gel, omni tools had stores of medi-gel. As the name suggested, it was a medical mixture that was part disinfectant, part topical medicine and painkiller. Where omni-gel was created from inorganic materials such as plastics and metals, medi-gel was created from organic components which were the one thing we had very little of.
I slathered it on the wound and felt a cool relief. I had no idea if the medi-gel could kill any germs that had found their way into my wound but it was my best shot.
As the meteor shower slowed down, Esau turned his attention to me.
"What caused you to collapse out there?" Briefly, I played with the idea of messing with him but, that wouldn't fly. I could tell. He wanted a serious answer and nothing I would say would mollify him until he got the truth.
So I told him the truth, about how I had woken up in the middle of the desert. About how I found him, about the Forge and my new knowledge.
"You expect me to believe that you have a connection with some invisible, omnipotent being that seemingly randomly gives you abilities?" When he put it like that…
"Why would I lie to you?"
"So you would seem less insane." I laughed.
"You got me there. Still, I'm telling you the truth."
"I know you are." I was incredulous.
"Then why do you argue the point?"
"Because as far as I know, it is the truth as you know it. It may not be the truth of the situation."
That was…fair. I told him as much. He nodded. Then he smirked.
"I was going to say I would find the truth of the matter, but guess we'll find the truth out together." A day old, and he was using my own words against me.
"Sure Esau. That sounds good. Now, let's get something to eat."
I had Esau fabricate bowls on his personally built omni-tool while I used the medi-gel store on mine to make us a meal. The only thing I could reliably make with the material on the omni-tool was a hard biscuit that doubled as cereal when mixed with water or milk.
My first meal with my son was the worst cereal I ever had in my life. Still, it was a meal. Esau and I consumed it with a ferocity that only animals could match. We both ended up needing seconds and Esau needed a third bowl so our medi-gel stores were non-existent. We needed organic materials soon, otherwise we would starve.
As if in answer, the skies cleared. The meteor shower was over. For now. Esau and I fabricated beds and I decided to turn in for now. This planet had two suns, so it seemed impractical to wait for night-time to arrive. I had also gotten Esau's word that he wouldn't go exploring without me. As soon as I got to bed, sleep came to me almost immediately.
I was woken from a dreamless sleep by large crashing sound in the distance. It seemed that the meteor shower had restarted in my sleep.
"How long was I asleep?" I asked no one in particular.
"You have been asleep for over six hours." I almost jumped in my surprise. I had forgotten I was not alone. Esau was laying down on his cot, reading primers on his omni-tool.
"You haven't slept at all." It wasn't a question. He was reading an advanced book on bio-chemistry that would need a doctorate at least to understand, unparalleled genius notwithstanding. Esau was a sponge had to have been at it for hours to be reading at that level. He sat up.
"No. I have found that I can let parts of my brain fall asleep in lieu of a proper sleep schedule." I searched his face for any hint of joviality. He wasn't joking. What the hell? We had to figure out what was up with his physiology ASAP.
"I see that the meteor shower returned during my sleep." I said after I gave up on forming a response.
"It didn't."
"Then what were the sounds I heard?"
"Violence."
"What?" In lieu of any further explanation, he pointed outside the window. I looked out of it and saw an image that chilled me to my core.
In the distance, a green skinned humanoid figure, dressed in rags with massive tusks jutting out from the bottom of its jaw, stood hunched over a figure in black armour. The figure in black was attempting to crawl away from it. The green…thing seemed amused by the attempt and lifted its foot before bringing it down on the black figure's head. The figure in black stopped moving. Then the thing in green did it again, and again and again. Soon, all that was left of the black figure's head was a red paste.
Then it raised its arms in victory and bellowed out a sound that would haunt my dreams for years to come.
"Waaaaaagh!"
Notes:
2.1. Perk(s) earned in this chapter
Domain: Knowledge: Mundane - SCIENCE! (Megamind) (100CP): You can do science! Mad science is your bread and butter, but that sort of thing can't be done if you don't have the basics first. This perk provides you an extensive, vast knowledge in every branch of science that exists in the world, from maths to biology to astrophysics to everything in between! No matter what it may be, if it can be called a science, you have skills and knowledge equivalent to a lifetime's worth of study and research in it. This carries over to future worlds, but the extent of your knowledge and skills reduces the more complicated and esoteric the science in question gets. You'll always have a novice's level of skill, anyway.
A/N: My schedule allows me to publish a chapter once a week so the weekend is when chapters should be expected.