Chapter 15 – Progress

“I need a break.” Callum rubbed at his eyes, seeing wireframes and labels whenever he blinked. “You do this stuff for fun? It’s worse than doing building layouts.”

Lucy laughed. They had sort of swapped jobs, or at least hobbies. He was the one bent over a computer, while Lucy was potting plants. Hibiscus and bromeliads, to brighten up the porch and decorate the room. Alex was even helping, inasmuch as an almost-two-year-old could. Enough time had passed that they were trying for a second one, but things would happen as they did.

“It does take a bit of getting used to,” Lucy admitted. “Though it’s easier when you’re indoors. Glare does not help with the eyestrain.”

“But it’s so nice out!” Callum objected. Mexico didn’t really have late fall as such, but it was pleasant enough that he liked being outside when he worked.

“Then you just brought it on yourself,” Lucy said mercilessly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Callum replied, slipping out of the chair and going over to join his wife and son. “I hope your machine learning stuff works because I don’t even know what to look for.”

“Well I can’t guarantee it’ll help, but it won’t hurt,” Lucy said.

Callum had managed to barely, barely eke out an opening with the small dimensional portal experiments he’d been doing. Each one took enough juice that he couldn’t do more than one or two attempts a day, and those attempts were not particularly fruitful. On the few occasions he managed to create a full opening, they’d collapsed again before Callum had managed to glimpse anything on the other side.

His guess, solely based on gut instinct, was that whatever he was connecting to was just too alien. Something like Mictlān, only more so. It wasn’t the same one every time, either, because unless he duplicated every last detail of the construct perfectly, it acted slightly differently. He actually hadn’t been able to manage that kind of reproduction until the third or fourth time he’d recorded one, due to just entering some fraction of an angle wrong.

Occasionally some puff of gas escaped from the pinhole sized portals, so perhaps one fourth of the portals he’d opened were in an atmosphere. The rest were either vacuum or something solid, and if they were vacuum that would explain why nobody tended to open dimensional holes on Earth. Most mages wouldn’t have the option of operating at the remove Callum could manage, and if they were making person-sized portals then the results would be unpleasant.

He wasn’t up into the hundreds that a good machine learning program needed, but there was enough to start doing fancy topological analysis on them. He was hoping to get some idea about the similarities and differences, the patterns and randomness that contributed to whether and where it would open.

“At this rate, it’s going to be a very long time before I can fuel the moon base, let alone open something useful for Shahey,” Callum grumped, pulling Alex onto his lap. That resulted in his shirt getting almost instantly covered in potting soil as Alexander thrust some unidentifiable plant toward his face, but he hardly minded. It reminded him of why he was spending so much time grinding away at the problem.

“What’s this, kiddo?” He asked.

“Salad,” Alex said seriously, and mouthed a piece of leaf before spitting it out. Callum just laughed.

“Real lettuce is tastier,” Callum said. “We’ll get you some in a bit.”

In the end, he wanted a world that was safe for his wife and his son. One without vampires, or predatory fae or tyrannical mages. He was under no illusions that he could remove every threat, because the world just didn’t work that way. But at the very least he could eliminate ones that should never have existed in the first place.

“You should at least tell him you’ve gotten started. Maybe he can loan something to help. Heck, maybe opening these things inside portal worlds is easier,” Lucy suggested.

“Maybe so,” Callum admitted. They could probably use the Deep Wilds for that kind of practice, but if he accidentally spawned a black hole that would be a problem. He was pretty sure that the dragons could snuff out any potential threat that might happen in the dragon lands, though. “Okay, do we even have contact information for him directly? Or is it through Chester?”

“He literally has a public phone number,” Lucy said, shaking her head at him. “You know, because he owns a gym. You told me that yourself!”

“Grabbity ride!” Alexander demanded before Callum could answer. He laughed and slung Alex onto his shoulders, lowering the gravity so they could bounce around.

“I guess I’m getting old. I completely forgot about that,” he said, as Alex laughed gleefully. “Right, I’ll call him in a bit.”

Once Alex had gotten bored with the low-gravity bounding and wandered off to focus on some toy cars and trucks, Callum pulled up Lucy’s VOIP program to put a call through to Shahey’s gym. He surprised himself by actually remembering the number by heart, even though it was lifetimes ago that he had to last dial the number.

“Shahey’s Fitness Center, how can I help you?” It was Shahey’s voice and, knowing what Callum did, he still found it odd that Shahey was just answering phones like an ordinary person.

“It’s me,” he said, trusting that Shahey would recognize him in turn. “I’ve made some progress on your request but it’s not quite there yet. I’d like a proper discussion about it when you have the time.”

“Ah, excellent!” Shahey said, loudly and happily. “Monday will do. We can meet at our mutual friend’s place.”

“Sure,” Callum said. “Thanks.” The line went dead and he looked over to Lucy, somewhat nonplussed. “That was easy.”

“Dragonblooded seem a lot more casual than mages,” Lucy agreed. “Shahey is, anyway.”

“And thank goodness for it,” Callum said, leaning over to give Lucy a kiss before turning back to work, glare or not.

When Monday rolled around, Callum headed over to Chester’s compound. Pragmatically they had a small second house there, or at least a few dedicated rooms, which felt like an imposition. There was more than enough room in the compound, though, and it wasn’t like Callum wasn’t earning his keep. Extra teleports and even some early attempts at full portal frames meant that Chester’s American Alliance had a lot more flexibility than anyone would expect.

While he hadn’t specified a time, Shahey showed up in the morning, though it wasn’t the Shahey Callum knew. The dragon had made an avatar that looked like he had taken inspiration from cartoons and movies, almost a perfect match for the generic wise old man. Except, of course, with scales and fins rather than skin and hair, though even the scales were somehow a little bit wrinkled.

“Do you like it?” Shahey said, waving a hand to indicate his current form. “It seemed appropriate for an advisory role.”

“It’s certainly something,” Callum agreed, a little amused. He knew Shahey had a certain flair for theatrics, but he hadn’t been expecting that. “I’d easily believe that you give out quests.”

“I might start doing that,” Shahey agreed. “Like the one I gave you, hmm?”

“I’m not so sure that’s a quest, as such,” Callum demurred. “Though I don’t think I’d have started without your suggestion. So far we’ve only been getting very small and very temporary portals, that self-destruct right away. Still working on that, but I’m thinking it might be a good idea to practice it somewhere other than the vacuum of space.”

“You’re making portals in space?” Shahey asked, hairless brows raised.

“Sure,” Callum said, realizing that neither he nor Lucy had really discussed their moon nexus with anyone. And it would stay that way, even if he doubted Shahey would spill such a tidbit. “Safest that way. But the, ah, fabric of space in space,” he said, making a face at his own tortured locution. “It isn’t the same as in a portal world, so I was wondering if we could do some testing in the dragonlands, where you’d want it put anyway. I’m pretty sure you could deal with anything that might potentially come through.”

“That is not unreasonable,” Shahey admitted. “I will have to ask the others, just to be certain.”

“There isn’t a rush,” Callum assured him. “And it’s not like I don’t want to figure out how to do it right. Just thought I’d keep you up to date.”

“Well, they’ve agreed,” Shahey said, flashing his teeth in a smug smile. “We’ll allot a region and you can do your testing there.”

“That was fast,” Callum said. Of course, Shahey’s real body was off in the dragon lands and, presumably, he wasn’t all that far from his fellow dragons. The avatars were a lot like Callum’s anchors, and he had to imagine that the dragons realized how powerful that kind of remote presence was. “Great, we can take care of that whenever you like.”

“I presume you will be using one of your devices?” Shahey asked, and Callum nodded. “Then I will have someone waiting at the portal.”

“Works for me,” Callum said, and started to sort through the various drones he had scattered around. But Shahey wasn’t done.

“While I’m here, I should tell you that I was recently approached by someone on behalf of, not GAR, but the Archmage’s Council. The coalition of Houses. They’re apparently intending to take more of a hand in things on Earth, do more with other supernaturals.” Shahey snorted. “They tried to bribe me with loosening the restrictions on the agreements dragonblooded operate under. It seems they didn’t realize those restrictions are just as much for our benefit as theirs.”

“That doesn’t seem good,” Callum said. He wasn’t quite surprised. Since GAR had become weaker, that meant there was a power vacuum that someone would step into. Obviously what he was seeing from the fae and the vampires was part of that, but he’d assumed there was more. “Any specifics? I guess you’ve passed this on to Chester already. Seems more his thing than mine.”

“For some reason, the person they sent seemed to be shy about getting into particulars,” Shahey said with amusement. “Just telling you is skirting the bounds of what I should be doing, but I suspect it’s not really news for you anyway.”

“Maybe not, but I appreciate it.” It also gave more urgency to Callum’s quest to remove the vampires. He had no illusions that he could easily target or even find a bunch of conspiring Houses, but he could remove a tool and leave them toothless. “Which reminds me, I have something that I wanted to give you. Which I’m surprised you didn’t ask for before.”

He reached into the cave-cache and pulled out a pair of circles wrought from steel. They were about large enough for someone to pass through, and appropriately heavy. He’d put footers at the bottom so they could stand freely, but there were brackets all the way around if Shahey wanted to mount it to something.

“A portal pair,” he explained. “Teleporting supernaturals has a lot of problems so I’m falling back on portals. This thing requires a lot of juice, but I hope you can manage that much. Though I did add a socket for one of those mana capacitors the Guild of Enchanting makes if you have access.”

Originally the portal frames were intended to be a bit of a bribe for getting access to the dragonlands. It was an expensive piece of machinery, though part of that expense was the time investment in learning how to make it properly in the first place. There were differences between tiny portals and large ones, at least when it came to how enchantments were structured. The big ones needed a lot more support to stay open.

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From a strictly budgetary viewpoint, it wasn’t worth just giving one way. But the dragonblooded were, despite being officially neutral, fairly close to being allies and with Callum working on closing a dimensional portal, he had to consider other people trying to do the same. He wasn’t sure what they might have purchased from the Guild of Enchanting before, but an extra, off-the-books way for an ally to get to Earth was certainly worth it.

“Now that is a princely gift,” Shahey said, eyes sparkling. “As you point out, it is difficult for us to use teleporters, and the portal frames that the BSE used have been a more recent invention. This sort of backup is beyond useful.”

Callum had to wonder how recent person-size portals actually were. Recent could mean anything from a few years to a few decades to maybe a century, considering how long-lived everyone involved was. If Shahey’s place he would have gotten one as soon as possible, but with Duvall’s monopoly there might be some kind of blacklist in place.

To his amusement, Shahey didn’t lift up the portal frames with magic, but rather materialized an ordinary cargo dolly. Just like the last time he saw dragon magic in action, it was a rather terrifying flex of an immense amount of vis, but it was used only to make something simple and common. It seemed to be a theme of Shahey’s.

“I can teleport them over when my drone gets there,” Callum offered, but Shahey shook his head.

“It’s better that I bring them myself,” the dragonblooded said, and Callum let it go. It was probably something to do with dragon rules or maybe Shahey just wanted to screen it for traps or flaws prior to letting it into the portal world. He didn’t object. He would have too, just the same way he analyzed every single thing he got from the Guild of Enchantment.