The Labors of Jasper Episode 22
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The Labors Of Jasper, Episode 12 free porn video
20Jas0012, The Labors of Jasper
Episode 12; 4171 words
Finding a game trail that went to Glastonbury was difficult. Many of the
trails went north-south, following streams and rivers. All of them
meandered. They traveled up and down hills. They followed streams,
looking for places to cross. Sometimes the group had to double back.
Ruka flew her drones often enough that she started to worry about fuel.
They walked the chevalines through a flock of turkeys. The birds seemed
unconcerned. One even flew up and roosted on Jas's wounded chevaline.
Sheena notched an arrow in her bow. "Turkey for dinner?" She picked a
small one, killing it with an arrow designed for deer or small wolves.
The other turkeys investigated.
"How stupid are they?" Sheena asked.
"No fear of man," Eruca said.
Sheena hopped down from the chevaline.
The turkeys scattered, some running away, others flying a short distance.
Sheena picked up the dead bird by the neck.
Turkeys flew in. They mobbed Sheena.
Jas blasted the horn on Sheena's chevaline. She trotted towards her.
The turkeys dispersed.
"Attacked by turkeys," Sheena said, picking feathers from her clothing.
"That's a story for the ages."
Eruca said, "They can break your legs."
"Really?"
They camped a short distance from a fallen tree that bridged a river that
Eruca called the Willamantic. They ate turkey and a box of cereal that
Sheena had brought along.
"If we stay here, we have to find food with vitamin C," Eruca said.
"Raspberries?" Sheena said. "We had some yesterday."
Eruca shrugged.
Jas said, "A thin spot. And we'll be home." She snapped a pylon together.
Solid green when she dialed in coordinates for Earth 9. When she dialed
in the numbers for Earth Prime, it flickered yellow but then went red.
"Better than yesterday," she said. She turned the pylon off and pulled it
apart.
They heard cat cries in the night. A big cat.
At least it wasn't the roar of a lion.
None of them slept well. They chatted quietly.
"What's your story?" Sheena asked Eruca.
"Military then public safety. Retired cop. I taught Criminology, Crime
Scene Management, stuff like that. Still do. Then I got sucked into this
project. Biomechanics, von Neumann machines, magic, many-worlds physics.
Initially, I was just an authority figure for an undisciplined tribe of
brainiacs. The things we talk about over coffee. Boggles me."
Sheena explained the trials of growing up in foster homes. She talked
about Steve, Morgana, SCA moots and Stones and Scepters. She talked about
Jas and Melissa.
Jas eventually stopped listening. Mosquitos, big cats, and a curious
raccoon all interrupted her sleep. The wind picked up. It grew cold that
night.
Frost on the ground the next morning.
They bagged everything in waterproof sacks or grocery sacks. Each of them
made several trips across the river on that tree. Then they sent Eruca's
chevaline wading in the water. The river was deep enough to submerge most
of the chevaline. It made it across. Sheena's chevaline also made it. Jas
held her breath as her wounded chevaline limped into the water. It made
it to the other side but couldn't get up the slope.
They pulled it up, using utility net and the other chevalines.
Jas checked the dressings on her chevaline. All but the deepest scratches
were healed. The tissue they'd cut to pull out Hive matter still oozed
something that looked like sap but smelled like blood. She ran a
diagnostic.
Still a three-legged beast. It could support ten percent of its weight on
that hind leg and the left-rear leg was now 100%.
Better.
No big-game trail on this side of the river. Eruca consulted her compass.
She shook it. She checked the sun.
"Huh. Magnetic poles are switched on this Earth." She picked a direction.
East, by compass. Opposite the sunrise.
The weather turned bitterly cold. Windy, rainy. Sleet.
Mars-rated clothing? Ha. Maybe it was Mars-rated inside an environmental
suit. Jas wrapped up with a blanket, in addition to her winter jacket.
She huddled close to Sheena.
Sheena cranked up the heat. Their feet and hands stayed warm.
Nose and ears? Painfully cold.
A cat the size of a panther attacked Jas's chevaline. The chevaline
dropped. It went down with a bleat from it's car horn.
Sheena turned her beast around. Jas fumbled with a bang stick.
The cat ran off. It had huge tusk-like teeth.
"Was that a saber-tooth?" Sheena asked.
"Dunno," Eruca said. "Didn't see it."
Jas checked the damage. More puncture wounds, up by the neck of the
chevaline. The steering bar was broken. The upholstery was shredded. The
cargo rail was scratched.
Diagnostics said he needed a new steering bar. It provided a part number.
The upholstery would heal.
Autodrive. Jas cut the steering bar off, and some of the ruined
upholstery. He threw it on the ground.
The chevalines crowded around. They ate the material. Watching them eat
was instructive. Beak-like pinchers on an arm stuffed food and whatnot in
an orifice in the chevaline's 'chest.' A chevaline ran like a horse but
ate like an elephant. It had eyes and other sensors on its feeding arm
but also had eyes on the main body. It could look around corners exposing
only a few square centimeters of hauswood.
They made it to a place the professor announced was Glastonbury,
somewhere near Fort Hoop. It was mid-afternoon.
Jas assembled a pylon. Red, flickering to yellow. She led them on a hunt
for a thin place. They found a place that went solid yellow, but not
green.
Jas opened a rip. Small. Big enough for a dog, maybe.
"We could crawl," Jas suggested.
"Let me send a drone." Eruca lofted her drone. She flew it through the
rip, and brought it back. "That's Earth Prime," she announced. "Or a
nearby alternate Earth."
The rip closed. The pylon ran out of mana.
Eruca said, "Pack a small bag. ID, wallet, bank card if you have one.
Essentials for traveling by bus."
Jas checked the cobbed-together network of her three remaining pylons. It
should work.
They had enough mana for one momentary man-sized rip or for a longer-
lived dog-sized rip.
They were abandoning their other gear.
She checked bulk space again. Yellow, flickering to green. "Say when."
Eruca conferred with Sheena. She nodded to Jas.
A rip opened. Eruca scampered through first. Sheena followed.
The rip dissipated behind Sheena.
Jas checked the pylons.
Dead. Lo batt. No mana.
She groaned.
She called the chevalines over. Maybe she could jump-start the pylons?
No.
Magic used static charges, low amperage, high frequency to communicate
with daemons, nanites, von Neumann machines. The nanites themselves did
most of the work.
She'd sent most of her nanites into neighboring branes to open that rip.
She might not have enough 'mana' left to start a small campfire.
She ripped apart the pylons and thought. They should charge, siphoning
mana from Earth Nine.
Something was wrong with the network. Or with her understanding of it.
Four of her pylons were so depleted they were essentially dead.
First things, first. Survival. Jas took a quick inventory of what she
had. MREs, groceries, supplies. She found a shotgun and a box of shells.
Sheena's bow, two quivers of arrows. Camp gear, blankets, a first-aid
kit. Three bang sticks, a half-empty box of bullets. Water containers. A
water filter.
Now, what?
She needed to survive the night. Winter weather. Lions, tigers and bears.
"Welcome to Oz," she said. "Where's my yellow brick road?"
She found the professor's drones. No controller. She synched her specs
with the drones.
Oh, good. They weren't encrypted.
She lofted one. Up, and around. She had good sight lines through all the
bare trees.
Not much fuel. 25% batteries.
There was a river a few kilometers west. A big one. Nearly flat land in a
broad river valley. Streams all around. A stream-cut gorge south and
east.
The drone had infrared vision. The deer were huge. So were the beavers.
Wolves down by the river. A large cat sunning itself on a rock. No bears,
at least none she could see.
Food. That would be her long-term problem. Water was freely available, as
was firewood. She had the vehicles for shelter. As long as her chevalines
could find forage, there would be heat. She worried a bit about wolves,
bears, and whatnot, but building a large shelter that was also bear-
proof? Lion-proof?
She'd need smaller trees for a palisade. These trees were monstrously
huge.
Besides, she might have to travel as far as Lake Champlain, or farther. A
permanent camp here?
Nah.
If she could figure a way to recharge the pylons, she could port out.
Her pylons weren't pirating mana from the Green worlds.
Why?
Jas spent the next ninety minutes making a simple V-shaped fish trap,
hammering stakes into a stream. She pulled up cattail roots and scavenged
acorns.
Most of the acorns she collected floated, meaning they'd gone bad.
She set up camp the way Morgana had taught them to do in 'dragon
country.' One hundred Roman paces from sleeping area to kitchen. A
hundred Roman paces from these places to her food cache, which she hung
five meters from the ground.
The bears here were huge. She wasn't sure five meters would be high
enough.
She had coffee for lunch. Each of the chevalines dropped acorns at her
feet. They'd been gathering them while she did other things.
"Wow. Thanks. These are good? They're not wormy?"
Text appeared on her specs.
*Good acorns.*
"I'm not eating your food, am I?"
*There is enough for all.*
She caught a brook trout. While that was frying, she boiled acorns. She
used the bitter water for a bucket bath. The hot water felt good,
although it chilled her afterwards.
Again, the green pylon wouldn't collect mana. She reassembled it as a red
pylon.
That lit up. She turned it off and disassembled it.
"Did I just invite trouble?" she wondered. More than half of her spells
used red mana. Green spells could run off of red mana, and vice-versa,
although not efficiently.
Groaning, Jas pulled down her food cache. She packed it on one of the
chevalines. Then she packed her pot of acorns on another chevaline,
doused her fire and abandoned her camp.
After some thought, she sent a drone back. She attached a streamer of
duct tape to the top of a tree near where she had activated the pylon.
She found a hill where she could see that tree and the ground beneath.
She assigned one of her chevalines to watch that spot. "Let me know if a
rip opens." She had to repeat the instructions in Green language.
Eradi?
That's what the house had called it.
She made a new camp on the slope facing away from her old camp.
Dinner was cattail root, fish, and fried acorn mash, seasoned with lake
salt.
What was mana, anyway? She dug into her notes. Nanomachines, daemons,
von-Neumann devices. Green daemons coexisted with living things, trading
efficiency in an effort to remain benign. Red daemons infested living
things, or infected them. These daemons made an attempt to coexist
symbiotically. Both types of daemon infested machinery. Of the two, red
daemons caused the least damage to machines, causing less corrosion, and
existing long-term without gumming up mechanisms.
Jas could construct mana factories. By springtime, this forest and
everything in it would be infested with daemons, and magic would work
here.
She'd been able to call a vulture and see with its eyes only because the
vulture was infested.
Jas used a bit of mana to see what around her was infested with green or
red daemons.
She was infested. No surprise there. Her clothes were not. The chevalines
were not. Her coin and her weapons were not infested.
Did that make them magic-resistant?
Hmmn. No sign of mana anywhere here, not in the trees, the soil.... It
wasn't that her clothes were resistant. They were just not infused with
magic.
Yet.
Jas made two magzi seeds with the tiny bit of mana she that remained in
her pylons. She planted the green factory at the site where she'd opened
a rip. She planted the red factory at the site where she had first set up
camp.
It snowed that night. Jas used the time to figure out how to make and use
a Red rip.
In the morning, her secretary reminded her to dose herself with
valentine. Jas did this without thinking. She used a charge from her
coin. Plenty of charges left. She shouldn't run out of....
Wait.
The coin used magic. But it didn't use mana.
What did it use? Could she program it to activate Green spells? Like a
rip?
She pictured herself masturbating to charge up the coin enough to power a
rip.
She chuckled at that thought, then shuddered.
Why did sex charge this coin?
Some research required. Did she have enough mana to open the toolbox that
Team Five had given her?
Yes.
The next few weeks passed slowly. She spent half of each day surviving.
Fishing. Digging up roots in the frigid ground. Setting up camp or moving
it. Avoiding predators. She spent some part of each day researching the
magic the Red Witch had gifted her with.
It was easy enough to rewrite code so that Green or Red spells activated
with the coin, but each type of spell still needed mana. The coin held
very little of its own version of mana. Neither did the sword, scabbard,
or bow.
Could she make a factory for that type of mana?
Not yet. She wasn't yet certain it was mana.
She soon tired of fish, roots, and acorns. She hunted squirrels and
rabbits. Small animals in her part of the forest learned to avoid her.
She lost two of Sheena's arrows, and broke another.
"When I get back, first thing, I'm loading up my specs on edible plants
of North America."
Her secretary recommended that she also load up poisonous plants of North
America.
She moved camp after the first week.
She rediscovered that her chevalines had a hot and cold water dispenser.
She drank hot water on cold days. White tea, she called it. Water from
the water tit had an odor. Leathery. It tasted of iron.
She also drank the water she boiled cattail roots in.
It tasted like a weak solution of instant mashed potato. But it probably
had calories.
A sabre-toothed cat attacked one of her chevalines. She shot the cat and
killed it.
She skinned the cougar-sized animal.
She added 'how to tan hides' to her wish-list for when she could Google
again. She scraped fat from the hide and saved it. She butchered the cat
and cooked its meat that night.
It was tough. It tasted rotten and gamy. She saved its claws. Cutting out
its teeth was more work than she thought it would be. She saved one
oversized canine. She broke the other.
The liver was tasty. The next day she dropped most of that cat into the
river.
She washed herself and her clothes that day, using a bit of mana for
bathhouse and washerwoman spells. She changed campsites again.
She fried cattail roots and acorn mash in tiger grease. It tasted horrid.
She ate it anyway. The next day she buried the rest of the fat with her
other waste.
She made a digging bar from a branch. It worked better than a knife.
On her list, shovel or pickaxe. Big pot for bathing. Or for boiling tiger
meat in until it was tender.
She unlocked the secrets to Red Witch mana. Yes, it used mana. Different
frequencies. Fey mana used infrared or terahertz waves to communicate.
The witch used ultraviolet light. All fey tech used quantum processes but
the witch's nanobots were smaller and difficult to detect unless they
formed a quorum. Much more advanced than fey tech.
How could one witch outpace a whole society of wizards?
Maybe it wasn't just one witch. The Red Witch's tech was fully compatible
with human tech. Was she collaborating with government labs? With Morgana
and others? Was the Red Witch actually a Gray?
Or, had she simply continued researching and innovating when the rest of
society stopped?
Jas discovered that she could plant a Red Witch factory in any one of her
chevalines. Her clothes. Herself. She could also seed the forest around
her.
Red Witch nanites could coopt other less-advanced nanites.
Still, it would take time.
Springtime.
Could she reprogram her pylons to port in Red Witch mana?
Whoa. Red Witch mana was similar to Hive mana. Different frequencies.
Digital coding instead of analog. Was the Hive more advanced than Red or
Green society?
Scary thought.
Would activating a Red Witch pylon attract Hive monsters?
In those weeks, Jas's chevaline healed completely. It had the hauswood
equivalent to scar tissue, but even that looked beautiful. Jas seeded all
three chevalines. She seeded herself, her clothes, and her human tech.
She also seeded the forest around her latest campsite. Then she moved
campsites.
Again.
A howling snow storm dumped a meter of snow on the forest around Jas. Jas
ate an MRE that day. She also used the last of her store of mana to
modify a Hive pylon to port in Red Witch mana.
Her pasocon lit up. Wifi signal.
Internet access!
Jas turned on the wifi on her specs. She called Sheena.
"Jas! You made it!"
"Not yet. But I can make phone calls now. I take it you're back on Earth.
Earth Prime?"
"Yeah. If this is an alternate reality, it sucks in all the ways our home
reality sucks."
"Is Steve still Stevie?"
"Yup. A bit strange, living with a girl again. Haven't done that since
college."
"Are you guys still boyfriend-girlfriend?"
"Um. No. I'm still working coffee carts. Stevie's working the truck stop.
When she's not in a casino."
"Did he get rid of his glyphs? Er, she. Did she get rid of her glyphs?"
"Kind of. The succubus manifested here once. Couldn't get her to move.
But she did let Stevie strand the imps in the game universe. Gotta play
that fucking game, though. Every day. How are you?"
"I'm cold. Surviving. The wolves have learned to avoid me. Cats are still
a problem."
"Can't you open a rip?"
"No mana. I used it up. I have enough for a phone call, though."
"Any hope?"
"Spring. Maybe. Growing my own stores of mana here."
"Be careful, ya?"
"It should be easier, now that I can Google. I saw mastodons yesterday.
Or mammoths. Not sure which."
"Gomphotheres?"
"No. Tusks were different. Taller, bigger. Heads were different. Fur."
"Send pictures."
"Didn't think of it. Next time I see one, I guess. Ice on the river now.
I'd kill for a latte and a pizza. Um. Got another call."
"It's the professor. I texted her as soon as you called. Love you. Bye."
"Love you, too," Jas said. She tapped her specs.
A view of the professor showed up. "Princess! Where are you?"
"Still on Earth 127." She looked around. "I'm calling it Oz."
"You numbered it."
"Yuh. I know exactly which alternate Earth I'm on. Lost Earth."
"Can't be too lost. You're making phone calls."
"Figured out how to make a link. I can't open a rip yet."
"You're going to be rich, Jasper. Certain folks in three-letter agencies
are very interested."
"I won't get rich working for the gov."
"You can get obscenely rich selling things to them. Friend, you need a
patent attorney. Soonest."
Jas said, "Set me up. I'll give you a percentage of my sales, or.... Aw,
fuck. A rip opened. I gotta go." Jas hung up. She checked the display on
her chevaline.
Someone, or something stood at that first campsite where Jas had
activated a Red pylon. Jas shut off the pylon in her hand. She
disassembled it. She doused her cookfire, covering it with snow. She told
her chevaline to continue watching the Red while she piled things onto
other chevalines.
She was three kilometers away from the Red campsite.
The Red released birds into the air. Jas hopped onto a chevaline. She
dropped down into a gorge and trotted northeast. She switched off
electronics, disconnecting wifi. She checked to make certain the aerostat
links were still disabled.
They were.
She turned off radar, lidar, and T-wave. She cocked her bow and notched a
dragon-killer arrow.
An hour into her ride, Jas heard explosions behind her. Distant
explosions. She climbed up out of the gorge, found a high spot, and
peered to the southwest with the professor's monocular.
It looked like there was a battle going on. Lots of combatants.
Pyrotechnics.
Lake Champlain was west and north. They had planned on heading south to
the coast, finding the Hudson River and following it north. New plan. She
would head north and then west. How far north? That was the trick, ya? No
road signs in this wilderness.
She would follow game trails. If there was a pass through the mountains
to Lake Champlain, Jas trusted that it would be well-traveled. Amerind
trails had followed big-game trails to some extent.
She rode through the night, stopping only once to take a shit in the
snow. She ate the last of the MREs that night. The game trail zigzagged
across the river wherever there were fords. She followed the trail.
Wolves followed her for a few miles, but gave up the chase when she moved
from a trot to a canter.
In the morning, she found a river that came from the northwest. She
followed that river.
She was starting to nod off in her seat. Coffee no longer helped.
The chevalines stopped.
"No. We have to push on."
A message flashed on her specs. *Destination?*
"Lake Champlain."
*We are off track.* A map appeared, highlighting their originally planned
route.
"New plan. Look for a pass through these mountains. Do you know where we
are?"
*Best match.* It showed her a highway map from Earth Prime. A little west
of Brattleboro, Vermont.
"Right. Some of these roads follow rivers. Some of them find mountain
passes. Find me a mountain pass."
The display highlighted a route to Manchester, then on to Lake Champlain.
"Looks good. Change the route if this one doesn't work."
*We must walk. Fuel is twenty percent.*
"Okay. Conserve fuel. Best speed while maintaining a ten percent reserve.
I want to be able to run if wolves start following us again. Trot when
you can. Radio silence. No active transmission. Visual only." Last night,
they'd navigated using ambient light. Ultraviolet had been most useful,
although infrared highlighted ambush predators. "Wake me if there are
predators. Or anything flying overhead that doesn't look like a bird.
Wake me if you have to ford a river. Avoid bears and whatever that was
that hid in the snow last night. Okay?"
*Will comply.*
Jas slept fitfully. She woke every time they broke into a jog and also
every time they slowed to a walk. Each time she woke, she checked the
display, then looked around. Then she checked the skies.
It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny.
She'd rather it was snowing.
She woke up hungry and cold. She ate the last of her store-bought cereal,
and all of her maker bacon. She washed it down with a cup of hot water.
No more coffee. No more hot chocolate. She checked her supplies. She was
almost out of food again. All that remained was some acorn meat that
needed a few more hours on the boil.
*Coffee is available.*
"No, guys. I'm out of coffee."
*Coffee is available. Haus fruit is available.*
"You guys have a secret stash? Wait. Haus fruit?"
The glove box opened. Inside was a thing that looked like a pear,
attached to a stem, like it grew there.
It probably had. She twisted the stem to detach the fruit.
It tasted like strawberries and banana.
"Where's the coffee tit?"
*By the hot water dispenser.*
"I've been eating muddy roots, acorns, and cat meat."
*You expressed a wish for latte. We comply.*
"You grew a coffee tit because I asked Sheena for some of her Debbie Does
Coffee?"
*Yes.*
"Thank you. How much fuel did this set you back?"
*We are eating enough.*
"Fucking magical."
*Human engineering. No magic.*
Jas stopped to pee in a place they called Manchester.
It didn't look any different from all the other mountain valleys. The
snow was deep here, but melting. The river was high. If you could call it
a river.
Jas thought about avalanches. Did they have avalanches in Vermont?
It started raining.
She really wanted to stop and camp someplace. But she didn't dare light a
fire.
They pushed on.
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