Devil's Paradise

10: Wizard's Workshop: Waldos

When Delilah was not present, I talked to Merlin about his idea for a time machine. His concept was to build a large doorway, around which he created the plates which would create what amounted to an electromagnetic bottle holding a gravitational charge creating the time field. This involved what seemed to be new theories about how such a charge could be created and what made up a time field.

Once the plates were fully charged, the machine was ready. It could open the time field, or it could be the endpoint for a time field already open. The same charge could send or receive, to travel to past or future. According to Merlin, the polarity changed by going through the doorway in the opposite direction. One direction connects to the past; the other the future.

We never specifically discussed where I would travel in this hypothetical time machine, but I knew. I would rescue Alicia and Martin, and nothing would stand in my way.

Merlin made no comment about Delilah's participation in the lab, but answered her questions when she asked, and guided her work in the same way he guided mine.

Delilah sometimes had trouble understanding what Merlin was saying. This got her frustrated, and at one point, she asked me if I could make Merlin more human.

"I don't know," I said, as I was soldering a board that was giving me trouble. I wiped sweat out of my eye and refocused on the soldering point. "Merlin, could you make yourself more human?"

"It is probable. How human would you like me to become?"

"As human as you can," said Delilah.

"Louis?" said Merlin after a few seconds.

"Sure," I said absently, pulling my hands back from the current soldering point and resetting. "Go for it. Now don't joggle my elbow."

Both waited until I finished, then Merlin said, "Louis, I recommend a change in how we go about this."

"Okay," I said, standing up and wiping the sweat off my face. I needed to stretch my aching back. "What do you recommend?"

"You have three thousand two hundred and seventy-seven more connections to solder like the one you just finished,"—I groaned—"and another four thousand and twenty-six simpler ones. I think we should shift your efforts to building me a set of waldos, so I can do the soldering."

"Waldos?" said Delilah.

"Artificial hands," I said, "so he can do precision work."

Delilah shrugged. "Makes sense."

So we shifted directions in mid-project. Building the waldos turned out to be fairly easy compared to the helmet, and we finished the first one from Merlin's plans in only two months. Breadboarding the waldo controls from his plans only took another week. After that, Merlin controlled one waldo and helped us complete the second waldo. With his help, we finished the second one in two weeks. After another week, he had finished rebuilding the control boards for both waldos.

We resumed building the helmet, but Merlin took over all the fine soldering and precision work. Delilah and I (and sometimes Tony) worked on the larger portions. When we left each day, we made sure Merlin had sufficient supplies for his waldos to work through the night.

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