OOCLol... "Rival the ones in the astronomy tower"? I dunno 'bout all that... I imagine those were made by experts, whereas I'm only competent. But I'll do the best I can!!!Another OOCI hope you don't mind I kind of went crazy with my first post here. Thinking about telescopes got me thinking about eyes, and lenses, and... Well you can see the results! I hope you enjoy... This post took me HOURS!Tock couldn't see good.
She'd known this for years, but never felt the urge to do anything about it. She hadn't exactly grown up in an intellectual environment, and when she had left Sunberth, she'd barely known how to read. She'd learned more over the years, during her apprenticeship with Archimaneus, and various other exploits. But even then, she wasn't much of a
reader.
Though she did occasionally like to read one of the various publications of
"The Adventures of Jillian Smythe, Lady Adventurer!"The problem was, when she
did read, she tended to need her nose to be stuck right in the book. She also had a habit of leaning really,
really close to her carvings and other projects, in order to see what she was doing. It had become enough of a problem lately that she finally had to break down and admit that she was near-sighted.
Not that she would accept such a limitation.
She had decided to tackle the problem the same way she handled all of her problems: build something.
Sure, she
could have just bought a pair of spectacles and called it a day. But that wasn't Tock. She wouldn't just do things the normal way. She had to do them the
Tock way.
So a few days ago she had bought her supplies and set to work. First had been a trip down to the glassworks. Except this time, instead of getting
glass spider eyes, she got something to help her own eyes. She also bought a sighting lens; a small, hand-held device like a simplified version of a telescope, made with two glass lenses mounted within a leather cone. On her way home she also bought a leather belt, blissfully unaware of the strange looks the shopkeeper was giving her as she checked to make sure it would fit around her forehead.
Once home, she had begun working on modifications. First came an elaborate set of blueprints. She measured her head, the spectacles, the sighting lens, the width of her eyes, and everything else, carefully jotting down numbers as she went along. She spent some time holding up strips of wood and testing out lengths, strapping them to her head with the leather belt, measuring, and jotting down more numbers.
She drew out a sketch of her head with the envisioned device on it, sketching out each line in precise detail and at 100% scale. Graphing lines outlined the entire diagram, noting lengths and widths, lines of numbers crawling alongside the device's image.
Blueprints complete, she set to carving. First came a wooden piece about the same size and precisely the same dimensions as the spectacles. At the end where the spectacles would slip over the ears were two broad round discs. She cut the piece from a single piece of wood, carefully measuring, etching the design in place, then cutting the U-shaped piece out by hand. Then she carved the shape out, with narrow grooves along the inner edge measured to be a precise fit for the spectacles, right down to the square holes in the front that were the exact size and shape of the glass lenses.
The round pieces on the end were carved out with grooves that would fit onto a second set of pieces, allowing for a rotating joint. These other two pieces she cut from two smaller bits of wood, round on top with a buckle-like shape cut into the bottom. The buckles she carefully smoothed and shaped, testing the fit on the leather belt to be sure they would slide on neat and clean.
Once the first set of pieces were complete, and the connecting parts carefully smoothed to ensure fluid movement, she slid the buckles on and attached the front piece. She strapped the whole thing to her face, with the leather belt strapped around her forehead, and the wooden piece setting over her eyes like spectacles. She made some adjustments for comfort, then once she was satisfied with the fit, screwed tiny screws through the leather into the buckles to lock them in place. She then carefully fit the spectacles into the grooves she had carved, fitting them snugly inside and then screwing little strips across the frames with care to hold them in place.
She now had a leather headband that would hold the spectacles in place, or allow her to push them up out of the way. But she was just getting started.
Next she started carving out a series of wooden segments that would fit together to make six adjustable arms. Each segment was two inches long, and she carved them with hinge joints at either end so that the pieces could fit together with a small metal rod screwed through the hinges to hold them together. She spent a long while carving out several dozen identical pieces, connecting them together a piece at a time until she had six identical flexible arms, each a foot long. The hinges allowed them to fold up neatly into a short stack, or unfold and move outwards or up and down with a certain amount of flexibility.
Two of these arms would hold the sighting lens, which she carefully cut out of the leather tube that it came in. She measured the lenses and cut fresh pieces of wood, which she carved out to rounded shapes as frames the lenses could fit into. Each lens got a front and back frame piece, with grooves carved on the insides to the precise measurements of the lenses. They were then fit inside, the frames snapped together, and screwed front to back to securely hold the lenses within. Each frame was then attached to the end hinge of one of the arms, which were in turn attached to another wooden buckle fit just over the place where Tock's right eye would be while she was wearing the device. The flexible arm allowed the lenses to be held up out of the way when not needed, or held out arched over the spectacles when they needed to be lowered into place. They could also be adjusted to change the alignment of the lenses to adjust the focus and magnification.
The other four arms were attached at the temples, each at slightly different alignments so they could all reach in front of her face at different angles. For each of these she carved different end pieces. Two were simply small pieces of wood with holes carved into them, so she could slip things into them like the handle of a magnifying glass or a small tool. The other two, she carved a pair of simple wooden clips that could be clamped down over a piece of paper or something else lightweight, so it could be held up before her face and free up her hands from having to hold blueprints.
It took several days to carve out each part, assemble them, and adjust the alignment to make sure everything moved smoothly. She made sure all the arms were adjustable the way she wanted them, and that the arms could all be adjusted by hand into the positions she wanted.
Not that she was going to adjust them by hand. That's what the magic was for.
Only was she was satisfied with the creation and well-rested at the start of a new day, did she take it to her Animation circles. She had to refresh her Glyphs, and pulled out her notes and drawings to copy off of. She wasn't confident enough in her Glyphing ability to do this from memory alone. She spent a few hours that morning applying the Glyphs, etching each one with great precision onto the wooden floor. She looked at the Glyphs the way she saw her diagrams and blueprints; they had a certain form, and precision was key.
At the center of each circle she drew two runes that represented equality. They would aid in balance, making the transfer of Djed, thought, and energy more fluid and natural. The balancing runes would make it so the knowledge she wanted to transfer
wanted to flow across the connection, making the transfer much easier. The flow was also aided by two linking runes on the line that connected the circles. These runes maximized the energy flow, keeping it directed down that path.
Finally were the runes that went on the perimeter of the circles themselves. Satevis had originally taught her to place two of these on each circle, lined up across from each other and perpendicular to the connecting line. After growing more skilled in her Animation practices, she had decided this wasn't the best way. Instead she now put three on each circle. One was directly across from and in perfect line with the connecting line between the two circles. She even measured from the wall to be sure the alignment was precise and perfect. Then with great care she calculated sixty degree angles and aligned the other two runes on equilateral points, so that a perfect triangle was shaped along the lines measured between each rune. The other circle received a mirror image of this design, the runes laid out with careful mathematical precision. This precision was important, since these runes helped contain the Djed flows in the circles, and prevent any from leaking out into the room. But the containment had to be balanced and aligned, or else the Djed flow would become erratic within the circles.
With all the careful measurements and calculations, and the time it took for her to carefully sketch each of the nine runes, she had spent hours preparing the circles. But it would be hours well spent, for it would save her more time than that in the transfer process.
Finally ready, she started the Animation process with a drop of blood. The glow of spiritual energy surrounded her, and the transfer began. With the aid of the runes, the Soulcore formed almost effortlessly. The transfer of knowledge then began, with Tock first forming a Directive of obedience to her as she did with all of her creations. She never gave them complete free will; people with free will might choose to leave, and she had lost enough in her life as it is. No living people ever tended to stick around.
The rest of what her creation needed to know was fairly simple. She spent time teaching it basic language so that it could understand her commands, including all the phrases she might use to command it to adjust its arms and spectacles. She had to teach it the words for its own own parts, so it would understand the words she used when she commanded it to lower a lens or clasp into position. All these words came with strong memories of the past few days she had spent lovingly assembling those very parts.
Next she taught it about the things she would need to study while wearing it. She made sure it knew what books and tools were, so it would know when she held such things up that it needed to lower the spectacles or lenses into place. She would be able to command it verbally or by touch, but by teaching it to understand her needs, it would be able to anticipate her desires and react before she needed to command it.
She spent a few days instilling knowledge into her new eyes, making them her smartest creation yet. Still not as intelligent as a full human, they were still smarter than most of her other babies that needed to be commanded every step of the way. She also worked the device through the muscle memory it would need, using her hands to mimic the movements she had used when learning to adjust the wooden arms by hand. This was one of the reasons she made each and every part from scratch; by having carved each hinge, she knew precisely how they moved, what their capabilities and limits were. As she moved her hands in front of her face as if adjusting the parts, her memories of making those adjustments during the construction process were transferred, instilling the device with memories of itself moving. The arms started moving and adjusting in unison with her movements, the process further aided by the balancing Glyphs in the center of each circle that made the energy flow more fluid and easy. Soon it was like looking in a mirror, the arms matching every movement as if her hands were physically moving them. She even taught it to strap itself in place, so that all she would have to do was place it on her head, and let it attach itself.
After days of construction and more days of imbuing it with knowledge, she gave it the final lifespark and named it simply, "Eyes."
* * *
When the stranger arrived at her door, Tock was in the middle of studying for her next project. When she opened the door she wore an annoyed frown. She looked up at him with Eyes strapped to her head, peering at him through the spectacles that were held in front of her face by the wooden frame. Hanging from one of the little wooden arms on the right side of her face was a pink seashell, with the two sighting lenses focused on it. To the left another arm held a page of notes where it could be kept in her view. She also had
Handy, her wooden third hand, strapped to her right wrist, holding a book she'd borrowed from the library detailing coral. All this freed up her own hands, one of which held a second book on oysters and pearls, the other holding an ink stained quill.
She looked the stranger over, Eyes' sighting lenses following her gaze and adjusting to focus on the stranger. "Whaddya want?" she asked impatiently.
