Dome of Souls (Book 2 of 2, after Story Less Told)

Ch5: The Attack

Greg perched on the stone rim of the roof, peering down at the pool area and mentally calculating the distance to the Jacuzzi, where Izzy was reading a book.

"I am a falcon of destruction." he whispered to himself, sneering as the 80 feet of open air gently flowed under him. He judged the distance, factored the angle of descent, and leapt off the edge. He extended his arms like a 650 pound bird, soaring to the pool below to cause the tsunami of chlorinated water to rain destruction on the fragile paper and ink of Izzy's novel. He closed his eyes, nearing his target and just before he met the water, a sphere of green transparent energy appeared. He slammed face-first into it, bouncing off and sending him into the gigantic poolside TV screen, cracking the glass and reflecting him into the other end of the pool. Izzy jumped up and darted out of the way as the massive TV slowly fell forward into the pool and sparks flew, landing on Greg like a massive fly-swatter.

"That was amazing." Rika chuckled as Greg hung his head and dried off in the den.

"Who the hell carries a personal defense shield to the pool?" he barked abruptly.

"Apparently Aunt Izzy does." she smiled.

"A 4 meter effective range? That's excessive, someone could get hurt. What if someone was just walking by and set it off?" he asked.

"I think they only activate if something is moving fast enough, so you'd have to be sprinting or swinging a weapon...or falling from a rooftop apparently.

"Okay, what if someone was jogging around the pool? I'm reporting that as a safety violation." he insisted.

"You can't; you removed all safety protocols when you moved here. You got them to agree to wave safety codes on the first day." Rika reminded.

"Who's gonna fix my TV?" he asked.

"Pretty sure you could just print another and have it installed the same day."

"What about the details? I hand carved those rails myself and they aren't in the printing files. That took hours of careful craftsmanship and artistic thought."

"Cant you just approximate them from security videos and print them too?"

"No, because I disabled the cameras the first day I was here. It's my home; I don't want anyone watching me that isn't invited." He growled.

"So carve a new rail." she shrugged.

"That's not the point. You kids and you're printing everything. Sometimes it's good to just make something by hand. It makes it special, personal. Little details you changed your mind on midway and little errors that turned into neat features as you tried to fix your mistakes."

"Don't you just make things because you are bored and stuck in a snow-globe?" she asked.

"God, I miss snow. Actual snow." he sighed.

"So set the weather to snow." she shrugged.

"Not the same. This house isn't designed to handle snow, it's got no roof. The pool would be filled heaping over, and everyone would be freezing their asses off and sloshing around miserable telling me to turn the heat back up."

"Why didn't you make a roof?" Rika asked.

"Because the weather is programmable, the roof was never finished, it was a rush-job top get me in here and they just dropped me from the top, right into the pool. It's a sealed ecosystem. There's no bugs or thunderstorms so they didn't print the house blank with a roof. I've been meaning to make one but I'd have to print off a bunch of crane parts and build the crane, I don't wanna screw up the tiles." he shrugged.