It had been three years since the trade agreement between Ferret Productions and the Collective. The services of the former proved to be invaluable for the operation of the Collective's only habitable world, as it was something that the machine beings could not replicate. Tasks like cooking and general service work were basically alien concepts to them.
At the end of this time period, a message was wired to the Collective regarding payment methods. Unfortunately, the irony of that name soon became apparent. Since they essentially lack any kind of central authority, the creatures took a whole two weeks to respond.
But, just as it seemed as if the Collective was trying to cheat the trade, a message was sent back in response:
"Wired to: Oliver Marius of Ferret Productions
Greetings. We wish to thank you for your service. The tasks at New Tolbi have been, and still are something that we are incapable of preforming ourselves. So, your continued assistance in the matter has been invaluable.
I'm aware that a great deal of time has passed since you first wired us your message. I must apologize. My brothers, sisters, and I are, by the standards of most an incredibly disorganized bunch. It took a full twelve Earth days for this message to reach me.
And for the past two, I've been contemplating what would be a good payment. We couldn't really match with information on culinary arts, since we have none of our own. However, I've made a decision to give you something quite valuable. It's essentially the closest thing that we have to "Food". A Procne by the name of Zresi should arrive within the next two Earth days with the payment.
Be forewarned, the delivery consists of a large crate, and contains radioactive materials. I'm aware that radiation in certain wavelengths is dangerous to many, so the crate in question is adequately shielded. Just be sure to open it in a safe enviornment for testing and experimentation.
It might seem odd that we need to send you material objects in order to give information. However, the information in question requires experimentation in order to get working, as implied earlier. So, we've sent examples of this system working properly alongside all of the proper documentation needed.
We hope that this payment is to your satisfaction.
- Descendant Ericsson"
The presence of radioactive material in this "Payment" would probably be somewhat worrying. Either way, the Procne craft in question eventually arrives, this time only being one day late.
After stopping over the landing site and hovering in place under seemingly no engine power, the living aircraft drops off a large, heavy steel box that it carried in its talon-like landing gear.
Upon being opened (Hopefully in a quarantined lab enviornment) the box is revealed to contain mostly a heavy concrete lining, clearly just for the radiation shielding.This protective layer definitely accounted for a majority of the weight of the crate, however. As only a few objects resided past it. Amongst them being containers with what appeared to be radioactive samples, and a large machine that appeared to resemble a generator:
Upon close inspection, the device seemed to be some kind of radioisotope battery. Though, it seemed to be outputting quite a bit more power than what one would expect from such a system. The documentation provided explained:
"Greetings. This is a kit that should teach the method for replicating Mother's greatest creation. It's quite likely that your people have already discovered how to use the temperature gradient from a decaying element to generate electrical power. However, the inherent problem with this system is exactly that. While the power is indeed long-lived, that radioactive element will decay over time, eventually forming into a cold, lifeless core that can no longer produce life-giving radiation.
And it's not just that one element. All radioactive elements will eventually decay from lively heat into freezing death. This was the great problem that Mother faced, and she managed to solve it. With this information, you should be able to do the same.
The generator included is a simple radioisotope thermoelectric assembly. But there's one simple difference; the plutonium-238 core has been given infinite life. It will never decay despite endlessly emitting life-giving radiation. This is indeed in violation of the tyranny of thermodynamics, the great enemy that Mother conquered and destroyed.
The first part of this guide documents how to replicate this process. It can be preformed on any element that experiences decay. Once complete, the state of the matter will be paused indefinitely. It will continue emitting the same amount of radiation forever, but will never decay into other elements any further. Raw samples of both regular plutonium-238 and plutonium-238 that has undergone the process have been provided for examples and your own experimentation.
The second part of this guide documents how to replicate the generator provided. We understand that radiation is not exactly as good for you as it is for us, so we have tried to make its design as safe as possible. However, you might be able to preform better than us in this respect by altering it, since you most likely have more experience with containing radiation as opposed to basking in it.
..."
The instructions go on to list a bizarre set of actions to complete this "Process". Probably rather unsettlingly, some portions of it almost seem like rituals and are generally quite nonsensical. These portions also seemed to reference this "Mother" quite a bit more often than the rest.
But if followed correctly, despite all expectations it seems to actually work. With processed materials indeed emitting energy from nowhere. There probably could be many applications for this. Though almost all of them are likely not very useful for the industries that Ferret Productions is in, unfortunately.
Future Tech. Dim-witted living starship creatures in their equivalent to the stone age, attempting to form a civilization. This nation got massively re-written a few years ago. Any posts from this nation before 2017 are eligible for cringe and losing subscriber.
Things could have been going better for Oliver Marius, things could have also been worse but that was how life was going to be now it seemed. The Ferret Productions project had for the most part become stagnate, it did not get much attention abroad but where it did had made the whole effort worthwhile. It was just a slow path of finishing up the current agreements and seeing what was offered to them from there. Other things managed to keep him busy off the late replies from whom they had agreed to work for, like the Sports project or the ever growing noose of a lack of resources making itself more and more apparent. Something that was going to end up sending his brother and fellow peer out into the old unknown with some satellite maps draw up from another government project. And in the end all it felt like was just noise to help keep busy and not really fix the problems.
Thus it was a pleasant surprise to see that the services they had managed to provide to the Collective had not been forgotten. With just an added positive that they were continuing to enjoy the culinary service without any complaints. While the news that the mixed up payment would be a material gain was a little concerning, at this point he was really in no position to be a choosy beggar. It was something that they had done on their own monetary units, and breaking the bank on, with some of the stuff sold at Gizmos and Gadgets Surplus. Which reminded him that he was still waiting on anything Excidium Planetis had to say on their completed trial. Something that they would get to eventually was all that he could hope for.
Oliver, despite not needing to rush as they were given some Sol day’s before the stated package arrival, got Eilionoir Runa to discuss just what to do with such a thing or even if they should accept it. At the end of it, it was decided simply because according to the message it could be used for educational purposes and they had done something like that before it would probably pay off. Problem came then to where to place something that was ‘large’ by a group that Ferrets already considered ‘large’, something that was ‘large’ to a ‘large’ thing was going to be a pain for them to move. Though they would just have to get to that issue when it came, so they waited. There would not be much in the way of a greeting for Zresi when it arrived, just a please go there, hello, thank you, and goodbye. Which in hindsight was kind of a shame cause their world did not ever really get to play host to guests anymore.
Oliver Marius, position of what most would call CEO and voice of business in the government, along with Eilionoir Runa, position closest to being called Dean with a paw in all educational affairs, stood in front of their ‘payment’. Now a large crate, or box, whatever word fit it more was pretty large to them, but at least it was not shipping container large. After a small engineering feat of getting it to where they figured it would be the most safe to open, which would be under the Colony’s coal fired power plant, safe and at the same time if something went wrong the most horrible place to have it happen. Once in the proper location to horribly die if everything went wrong the two leads of this inspection got to look over the painted steel container more closely while dressing up in more radiation protective garments.
“Radioactive, written in Universal Ferrune, well aren’t they thoughtful. Guess going back to some cultural roots paid off for Ferret Productions.”
“That or they simply asked one or some of the three hundred Ferrets working for them about our language. Unless they are putting in some unnecessary effort to spy on us.”
Opening the container once the pair were ready to go to reveal the real ‘payment’, they were not blown away by the first impressions. Which was probably a good thing, as being blown away under these circumstances would mean death. It was a pleasant gift on top of the payment to find that their employers took the extra step to have everything written on what they got in their native language. Even if it was simple words like off and on. Reading the instructions and the what this was suppose to be held some rather dark humor to them, they as a species were barely able to learn what nuclear power was until about over a Sol year ago which was largely solely used up by their military presence in space. That was not a lot, instead they had relied on the coal fired power plant above them and the coal mines below to keep the modern production of electricity going. Understanding that they could now take this and turn it into an unlimited power source would take some time to comprehend, on top of the near religious instructions on how to do it.
“Well, do you think that this is worth three hundred Ferrets working for five Sol years?”
Oliver was a little ashamed that he could not return the favor linguistically to the Collective. But with a short reply sent out the mix up was one less thing he had to worry about. And it would be one agreement that if everything went good they would have three more Sol years in business with them and then hopefully some more after that. However that was just a little too far into the future to worry about with a plate of other things to start focusing on in the present.
Currently traveling across the United States. Still up for any conversations though.
by Ferret Civilization » Sun Dec 17, 2017 9:06 pm 
