Hammering In An Unacceptable Amount of Silence.

Hello...  unsure where to begin, really.  Honestly, this is more of an attempt to settle my mind, or perhaps get things out of it so I can clear the space necessary for thought and study.  I'm sure you know how it can be when you're overburdened with the minutiae of the world around you.  It can set up a din in one's mind that can barely be shouted through.  And I suppose that's what's going on here.  Like with some devices, a pressure release mechanism can be good for the mind.  Allowing it to release the dross of random thought.

I'm also aware of what my old classmates from Primaschola think of me, these last three years.  Withdrawn... serious.  And they're right.  Maybe this is my way of speaking to people without my standards getting in the way.  Putting it all down to be understood without the necessity of awkward social interaction.  Maybe I'm just sick to my heart of having no-one to talk to.  Which to a large degree is my own fault.  If I'm to dig out of a bit of my own isolation, this is as good a spade as any.

I go back to NWM soon.  And while I am somewhat closer to my goals, concept and design-wise...  I still am no closer to gathering materials and being able to sit down for actual fabrication of same.  The stipend from the agency is not what you'd call a research budget.  It's more along the lines of a thing meant to keep one fed so you don't slowly starve on conjured food.  Power and water are no problem.  Refreshing the motion charms on the generators out in the shed keeps the lights on.  Water's in the well, and thus far as not been soured or fouled.  That I have to check that bothers me.  But one has to be careful nowadays.

The house is still secure, and none of my alarms or indicators have been set off around the perimeter.  It's still not real to me here at times.  I expect to see mom over in her red reading chair firing through some mind magic treatise.  Or maybe hear dad frotzing something into its component atoms and cursing at it creatively.  Having the place to myself is unnerving, even after two and a half years.  I tend to have my playlist going simply to have some kind of noise to defeat this ghastly silence.

I'm getting my thoughts together, in as much as that is possible nowadays.  I'm going to need funding for the golem research.  I'm only able to go so far with the printed circuit designs on the golem control plates without proper materials.  Orichalcum in the most minute amounts costs the earth.  But simple or even enchanted iron-mongery or even platinum tends to overheat or crack the plates.  Don't even ask me how I got the platinum to test this.  Happily I was able to smelt what little I had back into usable ingots for later use.

It's too bad I can't get in touch with Tenebrae's Silicon Golems, wherever it is they went.  I've contacted the Tenebrae estate, but his notes and research were confiscated following what happened to him after his experiment.  (UGH)  I should start charging government agencies money to stonewall me.  That would fund my research just fine with perhaps enough to look into some of the solar solutions I've had ideas for when it comes to component miniaturization.  But that's a whole other thing.  Tenebrae's Golems are in the wind, and I'm thinking unlikely to speak to me in this regard.  It's worth talking about publicly.  Maybe they cruise the internet and look for mentions of themselves.  If you're out there, I don't mean you any harm.  I just want to see if I can build on, and maybe improve upon your design.  I'd welcome any collaboration or correspondance you'd care to enter into.

There's a message in a bottle for you.  I suppose that officially makes me desperate.  Which I suppose is a different thing to be desperate about.  How refreshing.

In other news, my playlist is expanding nicely for work.  I have to make sure to put on the more stately flow-y kind of music nowadays.  When I fire up the industrial, that's really not conducive to delicate work.  Industrial's for when the hammers come out and we're working on endoskeletons and musculature. 

Speaking of musculature, I'm not sure if I'm going in the right direction with that.  I'm getting nice amounts of success with the tensile strength of enchanted silkworm fiber and giant spider-webbing.  There's a nice amount of give and tensile elasticity there.   The problem is getting the stuff to expand and contract like muscle fibers do.  There's several species of expanding and contracting creeper with the same tensile strength, but the problem there is that it adds weight and mass that the species of silk and web don't.  There's also the problem of plant matter moisture.  Spider-silk's probably my best weight/mass solution.  I'm going to want to avail myself of the libraries at NWM to see about enchantments that can cause expand/contract effects on command.  If a command can be keyed to that, maybe the CPU of the golem can issue those commands in a numeric string internally.  Which again, begs the need for a fast conducting material capable of sending spell-active instructions to enchanted materials.  And we're back to Orichalcum again.  UGH.

Money blows.  Don't let the rich folk tell you different.  When you don't have it, it blows.

Two  ideas for possible funding: 

     Avernus Prison.  I'm betting that in terms of costs and public relations, security golem without the benefit of sentient level AI would probably save them a lot in the long run.  No more crypto-rights activists painting them as modern day slavers for using chupacabras as their guards.  And while they'd have maintenance costs to consider, not having to farm or outright buy the beasts from Chupa-Farmers or feed the things would be something of a boon.  And it's not like a limited AI is going to be any less nuanced in its decision making capabilities.  And as guards, they could be enchanted with all manner of spell resistances or materials effective against meta-humans who've contracted vampirism or lycanthropy.

Divinatory Companies.  This is maybe more of a long shot.  Golem don't HAVE to be ambulatory.  Baked into the mechanism for a dedicated cosmic or divination observatory, such a thing could adjust the position of elements, focuses, or material elements necessary to any ritual or seance down to the inch or decimal point.  Diviners could free their minds to let in whatever they're seeing or dowsing while the AI takes care of remembering what planet is in what position or is in retrograde to what other planet might be relevant.  So seeking out 3rd years who may have contacts in professional divination houses may be a good way to go.

Probably want to steer clear of the more traditionalist purebred.  No society that wouldn't have a mix like me as a member is going to fund my research unless they're the sort of people that use and throw away people callously and grow rich on their stolen labor.  The idea is to open up opportunity to everyone.  Not help to entrench the elect or the elite.  I need to keep an eye out for the more philanthropic sort of patron.  Someone who wants to bring change to the world in a big way.  With the right resources, I think I can make that happen.

OREO (tentatively)

Speaking of resources...  Got an owl today.  Anonymous sender.  It was a little gray barn owl with a white face.  Cute little guy.  If I see him again, I'm officially calling him Oreo.  It would appear to be an invitation, after a fashion.  It's encoded and I'm running some algorithms on it right now to see if it matches anything.  Not in the computer.  Right now, I'm just using a sketchbook to do the diagrams necessary.  It might be ensorcelled to reject a mechanical solution.  In any case, I'm not scanning that into my home machine.  I haven't got the money for a new one.  This seems like a test.  We'll have to see. 

This could also be a trap.  But it doesn't fit the M.O. from THE INCIDENT.  Logically it doesn't follow that someone would encode an invitation only to get me to someplace in order to do me harm.  If they wanted to do that, all they'd have to do is enchant the owl they sent it with to explode.  Or write the invitation in exploding runes.  So given that I'm still in one piece, I think I'll keep researching this... whatever it is.

This reminds me of a piece of music.  It's a lovely piece, which I think was written, or at least played by J.J.Abrams when he was doing Fringe.  Essentially an equation in the form of music that when used right, opened the way between walls.  There's a nice poetic sentiment there.  Included here is the piece it reminded me of, and an expanded one that includes other recognizable themes for those familiar with the darker side of mundane science fiction.