Soft cursing pulled me out of the darkness. “Where the fuck do these lines even go?” I opened my eyes to find that I wasn’t in my room.

  It took me a second to remember where I was and what I had been doing. Long enough for the constant cursing to pull my attention to a table. One with my drone sitting on it as someone fiddled with a screen.

  I don’t know why, but it took me a bit of time to realize who was standing there, fiddling with my drone. Of course, after I figured out who it was, I had to wonder what Shar was doing that had her so agitated. “That entire circuit makes no sense. Just in the hell did this ever work?”

  My eyes drifted to the screen to see my drone’s mana circuit system. The screen was zoomed out enough that I was able to see a decent amount of the drone’s circuitry. To my surprise, she was right. There were loops and dead ends all over the place.

  But for some reason, I somehow knew they had a reason to be there. A purpose that she was missing. It wasn’t something I could put words to.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I was up and next to her. The image zoomed out a bit more. Then, with a tap, the image started to rotate in three-dimensional space. Circuits, hidden by the various layers, appeared as others vanished. According to the information on the bottom of the display, every one hundred and fifteen or so degrees, the previous circuits vanished to reveal a whole new circuit board design.

  The oddest part was the fact that every edge teemed with connections. Wires wrapped around the circuit board to reach their neighbors. And something told me that if I were to move into the object, the center would crawl with wires.

  I had no idea what to think about the whole design. This was the first time I was seeing the circuit board in this way. One of the benefits of a full manual system I guess.

  Unlike me, Shar looked amazed. “How did you even think to go with a dodecahedron for your circuit board?” She reached up with a hand and took control of the spinning. Moving it this way and that as she looked at various points. “So that is where that wire goes.”

  “What did Eli do this time?” Bert’s voice was a welcome distraction from the chaotic oddness that was my drone. The food that he and Marcy carried was enough to get me moving to join the two at a folding table.

  “How long have you two been awake?” I tried to shift the focus off whatever I had managed to do.

  “Only about an hour. And I have no clue when she woke up.” Marcy gestured at Shar as Bert started to set out the various packages of goodies.

  “I have been up for most of the night. I just couldn’t sleep.” Shar waved off whatever Marcy was about to say. “Unlike Eli, I know my limits.” Something told me that wasn’t entirely true.

  “As long as you sleep more than an hour every day you have a project to work on, you are better than Eli.”

  “Hey!” I shot a mock glare at Bert. “That was only when we had an emergency order.”

  “Every order must have been an emergency then.” He wasn’t wrong. Sometimes, every order that came in was an emergency. I simply shrugged the whole thing off and ignored Bert’s laughter as he scooped up a small pile of pancakes onto his plate. “But, back to my original question. What did he do this time?”

  “He somehow made a three-dimensional mana circuit and had it repeat. And I don’t mean once or twice. There had to be a few million of the damned things in there.” Wait, what? I only saw one of the odd circuits. Where were the rest? My obvious confusion must have confused her. “Surely you know what you did to that board?”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t even realize it was in a dodecahedron. It was only after seeing the dead ends that I even had the idea to move the view.”

  “Just…how…you know what, it doesn’t matter.” She took a bite of some hashbrowns. “Believe it or not, the design you have is fairly efficient. Piled together in such a way that their faces almost, but not quite, touch. Close enough that each circuit could connect to those around it without overlapping, even when the board flexes. Sharing and distributing the load across the entire design. The only thing I cannot seem to understand is how you got the various physically installed parts to act in the same way.”

  “What do you mean?” Bert asked.

  “There is only one processor. Yet it is somehow wired into the system as though there were millions of them working in parallel. Granted, each is tiny and not under any real load, but as a whole, the entire system is loaded more than the processor is designed to handle.”

  “Parallel processing?” It was the only answer I could think of that would account for so many desperate threads running at the same time.

  She shook her head. “It isn’t just the processor. The four motor units have something similar going on, and there is no physical way for them to work like that. Not unless they have millions of separate motors inside each unit. I honestly have no clue what they are doing, let alone how they are doing it.”

  Great. While I could see my mana working with the magical interface to produce one of the dodecahedrons. There was no way I could have used it to make whole sheets of the things.

  Then again, did I have to understand what I did to modify it? I was pretty sure I didn’t. And if I recalled what I had been thinking at the time I had been building the circuit, I didn’t even have to modify all that much. Just one face of the circuit dealt with the motors and all the commands associated with them.

  I made sure to pile more pancakes onto my plate before making my way over to the device. A sheet of alternating shapes filled the space as the layer shifted. If I had to guess based on how the objects moved, the screen was scanning through the layers.

  While I didn’t know what circuit we had been working on, the device had a button to reset the screen. As soon as I pressed it, the face that I had been working on popped up. With my goal in mind, I got to work. Only stopping every once in a while to check that the wires connected to the other faces when and as needed.

  Time flew as I worked. Shar pointed out a few issues and ideas as we chugged our way through the task. Eventually, we finished connecting the two flight modes on one of the circuits. Which was the easy part. Now came the hard task of verifying that the control system worked as well as add a way to control the drone without the need for my makeshift device.

  That was a bit trickier as it required the movement, modification, and outright removal of various pieces and sections from two different faces. Eventually, Shar got annoyed enough that she grabbed a second machine and focused on one of the faces while I took the other. While we made progress, it was tedious and full of cursing as one or both of us realized that a specific line needed to connect to another face.

  I was grateful for Bert and Marcy, as they kept us fed and forced us to take breaks. Even going so far as to turn off my holographic interface when I refused to leave. The reason why they forced me to move became apparent when I passed out on the bench moments after sitting down.

  And the worst part of all this was the fact that Bert was never going to let me live this down. But at least I wouldn’t be alone. Not so long as Shar stuck around.

  Speaking of Shar, I had no idea what to think about her. She went from practically kissing up to me to being practically hostile, only to turn around and work with me without any issue. While I didn’t like it, I understood the reason she had changed tone that first time. But the second? I had no clue.

  After about the third day of changing circuits, I realized the task was impossible. That there had to be a better way. I mean, it wasn’t like I had made each of these one at a time.

  With a vague idea of what I needed, I started to search through the needle in the haystack that was the drone’s systems. And I found it. It wasn’t at the center or any of the random places I searched. The circuit that scanned and rebuilt everything was set against the wall to the side. Just outside the layout, but not enough to really be noticed.

  I took a bit to look it over. To see how it worked. And it was simple. The system circuit was attached to it and pulled along while it worked. The top edge erased what it passed over while the bottom edge rebuilt it from the updated template. As a result, the old system was erased while the new system was built just below the old location. With an annoyed huff at what was a bunch of pointless work, I rebuilt the circuit that would be copied and let the circuit go to work.

  Even as it chomped away at a decent pace, there were a lot of them for it to get through. During which there was little I could do to the drone. But that was fine. I needed to make a small application for my pad as well as one for my watch. So much to do.