10th Rotation of En'trag

El'en phase – 2nd Galactic step

Age of Science

Scientist La'pa's Cave

G'lal Colony

Chemach

Epsilon Point

La'pa was desperate to recover his fame. It was but a single Sor ago, that he was revered as a great scientist. He had been praised by the Assembly of Glondair and recognised as a member of their fine arts. He had been awarded a steel globe on the wall of science with his image carved upon it and given a dedicated nameplate above his home that read 'Scientist.' Yet now he was forgotten.

His rise to fame may have been by accident, but nobody but La'pa knew that little secret. For if the Assembly had heard what the true intention of his greatest achievement was supposed to be, they would probably strip him of his awards and banish him from their group. They did not need to know that the device he had built was originally supposed to be an incubator to help bring Chemachie eggs to full term faster. He had hoped to address the proposed science that said eggs that were hatched at eighty degrees of warmth bore female Chemachies, and eggs that hatched at ninety degrees of warmth bore males. However, rather than gently heating the egg to the required temperature via the help of many heat panels, metal plates, and a reservoir of Cha'len'su, the device actually incinerated anything within the container into nothingness.

While this would have been disastrous if La'pa had ever tried to use it on a live egg, he had instead just been testing it on his left-over garbage and things that he deemed not to be useful at the time. It was probably quite by chance that earlier that same day, there had been an announcement from the Assembly of Glondair that they were seeking a new method of waste disposal, as the caverns of D'rek'ta were reaching overflowing levels of trash and mould. Realising that if his new creation could be installed in every Chemachie abode, it would mean that every residential cave would become net zero waste practically instantly. Therefore, La'Pa submitted his work for approval and just hid away his original designs for the incubator.

The Assembly had marvelled at the device, once of course his submission made it before the committee, which was sometime later that Sor. He had been heralded the saviour of the colony, defender of the environment and eradicator of stink. The caves of D'rek'ta were emptied and repurposed in a short time thanks to La'Pa's new incubator/incinerator. This freed up many of the refuse workers from the caverns to pursue their own scientific endeavours. Although La'pa had heard that many had been ungrateful for the change, which he could not understand at all.

The Assembly of Glondair was amazing La'pa thought, it was a much better way of governing a Colony, compared to the old Sovereigns from the Age of Honour that ruled by fear and power. While the Assembly was a lot slower at deliberating a decision than an old crowned scarlet lizardman might have been, it did achieve better results in the long term. Of course, La'pa was a bit biased towards the Assembly, for he had watched his sire La'tap fight against the old Sovereign of the G'lal Colony when he was just a young hatchling.

He had loved listening to his elders tell tales of the battles against the old Sovereign and his troops that were dedicated to the old ways of the Kali-Kastro. His own sire had sat him on his knee and told him the time that he took down three blue-scaled guards with ease. The reason for that was nothing to do with La'tap's skill as a fighter, but rather that he had in his possession a weapon called a Hai'sen. A Hai'sen worked by emitting a pulse of pinkish Cha'len'su energy that stunned an opponent, rendering them incapable of movement. The weapon was born in the infernal depths and was the key to the mutiny that followed where the old ways of honour were replaced by the ways of science. La'tap had then said, that once he had incapacitated the soldiers, he had tied them up with the ceremonial scarves that adorned their own weapons, the deadly triple bladed spears known as Talibs. It was certainly a tale that inspired La'pa, and heavily influenced his fondness for the Assembly of Glondair.

Each colony had an Assembly, and each Assembly was formed of the five greatest scientists that inhabited the colony. La'pa would love to join the Assembly for G'lal Colony, but he knew in his scaled heart that he did not really deserve it, as his own first achievement had come from luck rather than science. His naturally inquisitive nature was fuelled by the desire to make new science, but he certainly did struggle to come up with new ideas that could be worthy of recognition.

All he really had to do was look at the current list of problems facing the G'lal Colony and try to envision a device that could fix the problem. Therefore, he picked up the latest communique from the Assembly and read it from start to finish, twice. From what he could tell, there were three main problems, firstly the issue with egg quality and gestation to full term, which had been the problem he was originally trying to solve, but he was not inclined to continue that work after building an egg death machine. The second problem related to the skies above the colonies, where some crazy lizard thought that it might be possible to fly between colonies but lacked the knowledge to make Chemachies grow wings. The third problem, which related to the growing colonies and the lack of space within the honeycomb of caves, seemed the most interesting to La'pa, but he just could not see how to fix it.

The housing problem was caused by the increase in Chemachie population, for as their numbers grew, the cave system they lived in did not. The mass of caves was originally created during the Age of Strife according to the old records, where the world was new, and volcanos pushed oozing molten lava upwards. The white-hot liquid melted through softer types of rock as it quested its way upwards in search of release from the cramped confines of the ground below. Eventually, that burning lava reached the surface and spluttered forth creating mountain ranges, with hollowed out caverns for the Chemachies to live within. The Age of Strife came to an end when the planet cooled and stabilised enough that the volcanoes became inactive and were unlikely to send their hot gurgling blood upwards again.

This suggested to La'Pa that maybe the solution to the space problem could not be solved by squeezing more Chemachies into less space, or making dwellings smaller, but rather that the caves should be expanded. He could not however, go in search of restarting the volcano below G'lal colony, for that would most likely doom them all. The only other way that had been recorded within the science annuals of the Assembly of Glondair that could expand caves, was via erosion. Now water was very uncommon on the planet Chemach, it only resided in two places, at the high pole of the world's zenith, and the low pole at the planet's nadir point. These two great bodies of water were sufficient to cause the occasional storm front to descend into the red desserts, and the rains did last many cycles, but they did not happen often enough to cause the level of erosion that La'pa needed.

So, if he could not use lava or water to expand the caves, he needed something else. Clutching his bronze head between his claws he tried kneading the ideas into his brain. The pressure felt nice on his crested head but did little to encourage some new scientific breakthrough that could restore his fame. If only he could just be told what to do?

That last thought reminded him of the old tales his sire had told him, about the saviours from the depths that discovered the Cha'len'su and built the current society of science. La'tap had said that they had worked with the Cha'len'su, discovering new sciences by communing with the liquid in the Infernal Depths.

This posed a great problem to La'pa, for he knew that the pink glowing gelatinous goo lacked a face, let alone a mouth to communicate with. Therefore, it would be impossible to ask it to tell him the answers to his problems. Or would it?

La'pa's eyes had fell upon his scribing pads, and in his mind, he saw the contraption he wanted to construct. Working diligently and swiftly with his clawed hands, La'pa had combined one scribing pad with a movable scrying stick, and then dropped the device into a fresh container of Cha'len'su. He had been careful to ensure that the pad could be seen through the viewing window on the side of the container. Then using a second scribing pad, which was connected to the first via a coiled bundle of wires, he swallowed and wrote a single word with his own writing stick.

'Hello?'

Nothing happened at first, and just when La'pa was about to throw the jar and the pads across the room in frustration, glowing pink letters appeared on the pad inside the jar.

'Aim?'

La'pa was so jubilant that he had got a response from the gel, that he completely missed that the words had appeared on the screen without the scrying stick moving even a little. He was much more concerned with the word that the Cha'len'su had used. What was he supposed to be aiming at?

'I do not wish to shoot anything. What do you mean aim?' he wrote on his pad.

'Aim? What is the purpose of the investigation? Oh, thought La'pa, the Cha'len'su was just seeking to discover what he wanted by using a strange phrase. It was a nice term though, La'pa thought, what a simple way to scientifically state the principle of an inquiry.

'I seek to increase the size of this cave." La'pa replied, trying to be as simplistic as possible so that the goo might understand his needs.

'Methods... Erosion, Explosion, Excavation, dissolution...' Many more words followed, and a long list of unknown vocabulary appeared. La'pa was shocked at the goo's knowledge but felt like he should not show the Cha'len'su that he was any less smart than it was. Therefore, he picked the first entry from the list that he did not recognise, excavation.

'Excavation is the act or process of digging or mining for materials.' La'pa read aloud. He was not really looking for materials but digging and mining sounded interesting. The thought of digging out more caves, seemed so simple suddenly, yet no previous Chemachies had even considered it. Probably because the network of caves in each colony goes down forever, almost to the mantle of the world. There had never previously been a need to make any of the colonies bigger before, hence this problem had never been considered before.

'How do I build something that digs?' La'pa quickly wrote on his pad, imagining presenting his new device to the Assembly as soon as possible. Before he had finished writing, the second submerged pad sprang to life and started drawing a complex diagram of something called a drill. La'pa's big round glistening eyes went as wide as they possibly could, as he looked at the plans that would help him recapture his fame.

He started building, working nimbly with his long-clawed fingers. He deftly combined wires, metal plates and circuity. His reptilian jaw shifted upwards at the corners, and he smiled as he worked with precision and expediency to copy the instructions on the pink glowing schematics. He loved to build things, almost as much as he enjoyed the notoriety that came with being a scientist. Time slipped away while he built the conical shaped device using all the spare parts in his workshop.

Stopping only to visit the feeding caverns, so he could hunt some juicy grubs and fill his famished stomach, he soon completed the drill. Or as he called it, a La'pa'rill. All he needed now was to power it up.

He went to his Cha'len'su supply locker in his dwelling. It was empty. La'pa guessed he must have used up his entire allowance of the wonderous goo already. He turned his head sharply to the left, towards his desk and sighed. It meant the only supply of clean energy production left in his possession was the jar of pink liquid that currently had the plans for the drill inside it.

"Hmmm..." he mumbled aloud, looking back between the instructions in the jar and the sleek looking drill.

Then without a second thought, he removed the old scribing pad from the jar of glistening pink energy juice and tossed it aside. He then tipped the Cha'len'su that had once been his instructor into the drill unit's fuel tank. Then he watched the device begin to glow pinkish, and as all the components clicked and fused into place. Even the conical drill end, seemed suddenly sharper than when constructed, and it was humming with energy.

La'pa lifted the device up, noting its heavy weight and that it took both hands to hold the device to waist height, with the drill end pointing forward away from his lithe reptilian body. La'pa twisted the throttle control that was under his right hand and the drill surged to life, spinning at an incredible rate, making the air around the tip of the drill shimmer and spark with bright cerise flickers.

He had to test it on the rock surface of course, so he turned the device against his own cavern wall and smiled as the fast-spinning drill cut into the rock with minimal effort. He pushed the device further, until there was a small tunnel forming. The drill suddenly made a cracking noise and light shown back from the end of the small tunnel, making La'pa release the trigger. Pulling the drill back, he investigated the tunnel and saw straight into his neighbours bathing cavern, where there stood a rather shocked looking blue-skinned lizardman.

"Oh... My apologies, La'pa shouted and promptly pulled back from the opening.

His embarrassment was short however, as he looked at the La'pa'rill in his hands. This device was sure to be the key to regaining his fame, and in the eyes of the Assembly of Glondair he would be renowned as the one Chemachie that had solved a major problem of the colony. He grinned wide, as he nonchalantly tidied up his workstation, tossing items he no longer needed, including the old scribing pad and wires into the incinerator without a care. All that mattered now was that he was going to be famous for a second time.

Following the creation of the La'pa'rill, La'pa was indeed praised and congratulated for his work. He was installed as a direct member of the assembly and spent his time listening to other lower-class scientists bring all sorts of inventions and science to him. He loved that they would offer him such praise as they offered their work for La'pa to either approve or discard as worthless. This was the power and the fame that he had sought all along.

The La'pa'rill was used extensively by the new excavator organisations of the G'lal colony. It allowed them to build many more caves within the huge red stone mountain and the Chemachie population grew larger. The organization was praised for their work, until various caverns and tunnels collapsed due to insufficient testing of the La'pa'rill, along with insufficient knowledge about the full purpose of excavation and the need to support any newly created shafts to avoid potential cave-ins. This presented a new problem for the science of the Chemachies to solve...