Chapter Two: This Is Definitely Still Engineering
It did not take long for people to begin asking questions.
Questions such as:
"Olizza, why is there an imp following you?"
"Olizza, why are your hands glowing?"
And, rather rudely:
"Olizza... are you a warlock?"
The answer, of course, was no.
Olizza was an engineer.
Specifically, she was now an Engineer Specializing in Applied Interdimensional Mechanics.
There was a very important distinction.
Warlocks summoned demons using magic.
Olizza had summoned a demon using a mechanical squirrel.
Therefore, what Olizza was doing was clearly engineering.
The logic was flawless.
Unfortunately, not everyone seemed capable of understanding it.
The loss of Nibbles had created several important research questions.
Where had he gone?
Why had the portal appeared?
Why had an imp come through it?
And, perhaps most importantly:
Could it be done again?
The responsible engineering approach would have been to carefully reconstruct the original experiment under controlled laboratory conditions.
Olizza did not do this.
Instead, she began experimenting.
There were soul shards.
There were strange energies.
There were spells that Olizza absolutely refused to call spells.
And there were considerably more demons than had previously been present in her engineering career.
Every discovery simply created another question.
What other creatures existed beyond these dimensional boundaries?
Could they be summoned reliably?
Could they be controlled?
Could they carry tools?
Could they locate mineral deposits?
Could they make tea?
The tea question remained surprisingly difficult.
As her research progressed, Olizza discovered several new techniques.
Other people called them things like Corruption, Shadow Bolt, and Bane of Agony.
Olizza found these names unnecessarily dramatic.
They were obviously examples of interdimensional material degradation, directed energy transfer, and long-duration structural destabilization.
Much more scientific.
And considerably less likely to result in someone shouting:
"THAT GNOME IS A WARLOCK!"
Which was beginning to happen with irritating frequency.
There was, however, one aspect of Applied Interdimensional Mechanics that Olizza had not anticipated.
She liked it.
Engineering had always been unpredictable.
Sometimes machines worked.
Sometimes they exploded.
Sometimes they worked and then exploded, which was generally more exciting.
But when an engineering experiment went catastrophically wrong, people tended to ask uncomfortable questions.
"Was it supposed to do that?"
"Why is the ceiling on fire?"
"Where did my toolbox go?"
Applied Interdimensional Mechanics was different.
When something glowed purple, screamed, caught fire, or emerged unexpectedly from another dimension...
everyone simply assumed that was supposed to happen.
Olizza found this enormously liberating.
For the first time in her engineering career, catastrophic failure and successful experimentation were almost indistinguishable.
She had finally found her field.
There was only one problem.
Somewhere, in some unknown corner of the universe, there was still a mechanical squirrel named Nibbles.
And Olizza intended to find him.
Eventually.
Right after she figured out how to make the demons carry her mining equipment.
For science. 🔧🐿️💥
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