The Laptop - Ch.37 - Rested & Recharged (Patreon)

"So that settlement is definitely Hoag's Hole," Chelsea said as we studied the little ASCII map on the laptop again.

Her ears were angled forward but her tail hung down low and swayed slowly back and forth as she continued, "Thanks to Annie we know exactly how far away it is, although that doesn't actually help us much. The river will make a good landmark when we find it, but right now we have nothing to tell us which direction to start out in."

Gwen frowned, "It's north though, right? Or north-east. Isn't that good enough to get us started?"

I shook my head, "This map doesn't have any indications on it about cardinal directions. We're assuming 'up' is 'north' because that's what we're used to, but we have no way of knowing if that's true on Daearen."

"Can you use the laptop to conjure us up a compass?" the little catgirl asked.

"Sure," I shrugged. "Although we don't know yet if this world has a magnetic field. And if it does, we don't know what direction it points."

Chelsea's ears and shoulders drooped as she sighed, "Right."

It only took a moment for me to realize there was probably an easy way to get those answers. I smiled as I exited the Expeditions program then opened the Realm Editor instead. Sure enough it opened to the 'current realm' screen again, which wasn't Earth-742 anymore.

The realm alias was now listed as 'Daearen-2605', and that number left me thinking. When I first saw Earth-742 I'd assumed that meant there were hundreds or thousands of different Earths. So did this mean there were at least two and a half thousand other Daearens?

I figured that was possible, but something told me it wasn't the case. Which meant the numeric suffix had to mean something else. I hadn't come across anything to suggest what it actually referred to though, but I figured if it was important it'd probably be in the big SysAdmin Handbook.

For now I started scrolling through all the information on this realm, and a few other things stood out to me right away. Like this planet's local sun was pretty similar to the one we were familiar with back home. Same with the over-all size of the world, and its distance from the sun was only a tiny bit less than ours. That accounted for the sun looking like we were used to and gravity being the same.

Daearen spun on its axis a little more slowly than Earth did though, so the days here were about twenty-five hours long. I knew that would probably start messing with us before long, but there wasn't much we could do about it right now. The land to water ratio was even lower here, with about eighty percent of the planet covered by a vast ocean. The other twenty percent was divided between two continents. The big one was home to most of the planet's inhabitants, while the remaining land came in the form of a small 'legendary' far-off island.

The realm summary information was interesting, with the 'general configuration' being more or less what I already told my companions. This was a post-tech agrarian / pastoral world, with a very low population density and plenty of magic. Supernatural flora and fauna were also fairly common. And while technology was very rare, what little there was would be considered advanced to people like us.

The 'subjective experiences' section also sounded pretty good. It seemed to describe a fairly positive world, where the population were generally happy and most of them lived peaceful lives. That didn't mean it was some kind of paradise or that nothing bad ever happened on Daearen, but it still sounded a lot better than the place we came from.

I continued scrolling through the endless fields and sections before finally locating the stuff I was actually looking for, then pointed to the screen. "Here we go. There's no stable magnetic field so we can forget compasses. There is a stable magic field, so maybe that could be used to work out directions?"

"It doesn't match our idea of north and south though," I added with a frown. "The field mostly flows sideways, or what we'd call east to west. Like the sun."

Chelsea nodded slowly as she studied the text on the screen, "Dawnward, evewise, loorwise, and serenward."

"Huh?" Gwen asked.

Chels flicked her ears and explained, "East is their most important direction, because that's where the sun rises and where magic flows from. They don't call it east though, they say Dawnward. So the village isn't north of us. It's what we'd call east, but here they refer to that as dawnward."

"Evewise is the opposite," I added. "That's what we'd call west, it just means in the direction the sun sets."

Chelsea took over again, "Loorwise is basically their word for what we'd call north. It refers to the direction of the moons, which all generally cross the sky to the north of this landmass. So technically we're in the southern hemisphere, not that it means much when there's only the one continent."

"And serenward is their word for what we'd call south. Apparently it's based on the name of a star in that direction, maybe like their version of our world's north star?" I concluded.

Our mage still seemed confused, "So the map's wrong? Or not wrong, but sideways?"

"Not really," Chels shrugged. "It's like Lisa said, we're used to maps facing a certain way but that's not how they do it here. We just have to remember that 'up' on a map here is the direction the sun comes from."

Then with her ears and tails standing up she added, "Which means now we know how to find Hoag's Hole. We just have to head out in the direction of the rising sun. Walk towards the sun in the morning, and away from the sun in the afternoon."

Gwen grimaced, "I'll take your word for it. So does that mean we're packing up and heading out right now?"

Chelsea's tail flicked back and forth as she gave me a look that said she wanted me to make that decision.

I hesitated for a moment, uncertain what to do next. I almost wanted to leave it up to Chels to make the call, since she had way more experience with this sort of thing than either Gwen or myself. Or at least, she knew more about camping and hiking than either of us. Obviously she'd never travelled to other worlds before, that was a new one for all of us.

As for why both she and Gwen kept looking to me to make these sorts of decisions, that was probably because I was the one with the laptop and the SysAdmin title. Well, that and the fact that Chelsea was now my pet kitten and my tamed beast friend, while Gwen was my maid. That didn't mean I was qualified to make those kinds of leadership choices though, at least not with any degree of confidence.

With that thought it finally dawned on me that my artificially-enhanced confidence seemed to have taken a hit. And it wasn't hard to figure out when, and why. It was during that first chat with Annie, when I found out that something I'd done with the laptop resulted in my friends and I ending up in mortal danger.

The whole situation was kind of like something Chels mentioned on Sunday, about how I couldn't relax and enjoy myself because I was scared of getting in trouble. I'd been afraid of making some mistake with the laptop and screwing things up, and that's exactly what happened. I messed up and put my girlfriends and I in danger. In fact the only reason we were even alive right now was thanks to Annie's intervention.

"Lisa?" the catgirl asked after I'd been quiet a little too long. "What are you thinking? Should we pack up and set out now?"

I took a deep breath then let it out in a long slow sigh as I quietly tried to convince myself that our brush with death wasn't my fault. I didn't know about that canary business, so I couldn't have known to avoid it. For that matter I still didn't know anything about it, other than it existed. Annie hadn't answered those questions yet.

Thinking back to that first text conversation with her, she actually admitted that the whole situation was her fault. She gave me the tools but didn't provide any warnings or safety information, she treated the whole thing more like a game or a mystery for me to solve.

On the other hand Annie commented on how quickly I figured out some aspects of the laptop. Even Frank said I worked fast. And recalling all those details actually helped me regain some of that lost confidence, which in turn made it easier for me to make a decision. So I looked at my girlfriends and shook my head.

"No," I told them. "Chelsea you said we could cover that distance in a week, Annie said the same thing. That gives us a few days of leeway, before whatever's supposed to happen that we need to be there for. So we're going to stay here for one more day."

I pointed at the solar panel that was still plugged into the laptop, "We won't be able to use those panels while we're hiking through the woods, so I want to top up the laptop's battery as much as possible before we set out. We've got good weather today and the meadow means clear sky overhead. We can use the other panel to top up our phones while we're here. And it gives us all day today and tonight to get more rest, and adjust to the whole camping lifestyle."

"We'll plan on setting out tomorrow morning though," I added. "First thing after breakfast we'll pack up and get moving."

The little catgirl nodded slowly, "Sounds good. So apart from charging up the electronics, is there anything else we need to do today?"

"Or maybe we can all just relax and have a little fun?" she added with a suggestive smirk, while her tail swished around.

"Perhaps," I replied with a little smile, before my expression became serious again. "I'm going to message Annie again, before I do anything else. She ignored most of my questions, and I'd really like some answers. Or an explanation as to why she's avoiding them."

As I switched from the expeditions program back to the messaging app I commented, mostly to myself, "I never did finish reading all the documentation on this thing. Maybe I should focus on that today, while we have the benefit of using the solar power? I don't want to run the battery down while we're hiking."

Gwen asked, "Is there anything else on there you don't know how to use yet? And if you're not going to use it at all for the next week, maybe we should figure out if there's anything else we need to use it for today."

"The only app I haven't touched yet is called Localizations," I replied. "I haven't even looked at the manual for it."

My best friend frowned, "Localizations is usually about language stuff. That might actually be important, considering we're on a whole new world and we don't know what they speak here."

"Good point," Chels nodded as she flicked her ears. "If we need to learn a new language, we'll probably want to do that before we show up in town."

I nodded, "Right. So as soon as I've sent this message off I'll have a quick look at the manual for that program. And if that's what it does, then I'll make sure all three of us are fluent in the local language."

"Is there anything else either of you can think of, that we might need the laptop for?"

The little catgirl replied immediately, "Cream! I'm so done with black coffee. If that thing can conjure up solar panels then surely you can use it to get us some cream."

I frowned, "I'm sure I could. But it's not going to stay fresh very long if every day's as warm as this."

"And I'm not booting up the laptop every morning just to summon up a pot of cream," I added. "I already said I want to conserve the battery power while we're not able to recharge it."

Chels pouted, "Kitty wants her cream. There must be some way we can make this work."

That's when both Chelsea and I noticed the elf girl was blushing again. I decided to ignore that and focused instead on the message I was writing to Annie. I figured it was up to Gwen to say what was on her mind, or maybe Chels would coax it out of her.

It only took another minute or so to finish my message, then I gave it a quick read before sending it off.

"Hi Annie. We'll be at Hoag's Hole in eight or nine days. Will we have a language issue when we get there? And I'm still waiting for answers on my other questions. What about the 'canary' stuff? How will we know when it's safe to go back home? I'm guessing it won't be safe for at least ten days, otherwise you wouldn't be sending us to that village. I'd really appreciate some actual answers this time. Thank you."

With the message sent I exited that program then launched the document reader so I could read up on that localizations app. I had a feeling that's what my elusive predecessor was going to suggest anyways, so I figured I may as well get a head start on it.

My girlfriends were still talking about cream and supplies and plans for today, but I tuned them out as I opened up 'Looking Good with Localizations' and started reading. Except I only made it as far as the first couple paragraphs before I realized it had nothing to do with language.

The 'looking good' part of the title was the big clue, that program was for adapting my SysAdmin tools to blend in with whatever realm I was working on.

I'd already noticed that the laptop seemed to be immune to the effects of the inventory editor, it never changed or updated itself when I messed with my inventory. In fact I was pretty sure the pink laptop didn't even appear in my inventory list. I hadn't really questioned that, I just assumed it was a special case and the normal rules didn't apply to it. Which turned out to be true, more or less.

The Localizations program was sort of like a special inventory editor for SysAdmin tools. And with it I could turn my little pink laptop into something more appropriate for Daearen. Except I was comfortable with it being a laptop, even with its weird one-off operating system and all the other little quirks. And after all the time I'd spent learning how to use it, the last thing I wanted was to have to start over familiarizing myself with some brand new replacement.

I hadn't forgotten Annie's warning from the other night either, to never lose the laptop. So for now I decided not to risk messing around with it. After all, it was our only way home. And potentially our only source of food, supplies, and local currency.

Just as I quit the document reader the message alert LED started blinking again, so I opened up the Connections program once more and found another text from Annie. And I couldn't help frowning when I saw she'd avoided answering almost all of my questions again.

"Have to keep this brief since I can't really talk right now Lisa," she wrote. "I know you've got questions and I promise you'll get your answers in due time. For now just don't use the laptop on any locals. It's safe to use on yourself and your girlfriends though. And don't worry about the language, that won't be an issue. Just get yourselves to Hoag's Hole, you'll find your answers there in ten days. I'm going to be offline for a while. Good luck, and stay safe!"

I sighed and shook my head, but didn't bother sending her another message. It was clear she either wouldn't or couldn't go into any more details now. So I exited the messaging app and was just about to put the laptop to sleep when I realized my girlfriends had both gone quiet. Gwen was blushing again, while Chelsea had another naughty mischievous look on her face.

With her ears and tail perked up and a smirk on her face the little catgirl announced, "Hey Lisa! Gwyneth's got an idea for how we could have fresh cream whenever we wanted!"