CHAPTER 496: A FRESH EYE

It turned out—much longer than I hoped. Our anti-tree squads were effective, but slow. They were cutting thousands upon thousands of trees by hand. Their numbers were large, but not large enough, and reinforcements took their sweet time to gather.

At least they didn’t suffer losses. Besides the cold—which they were immune to—the mountains were an almost safe place. Most of the dangerous creatures either didn’t live there or had already died from the ice-hole trees.

By the estimates of my Advisers, in a month, there will be enough ice-hole tree wood in the Bee Empire to give basic prosthetics to everybody who needed them. Craftsmen Bees have already started the work on them. Tabletina’s Physicians used the experimental knowledge they gathered from earlier prosthetic implanting to write instructions and guides about ice-hole wood prosthetics to bees all over the Empire.

This all sounded so nice that I felt bad for humans. They could never get prosthetics from ice-hole wood—there weren’t pieces of it large enough for something like this. Humans were too giant.

An ice-hole wood prosthesis could be made from several pieces of wood, but not from a hundred. That would be plywood, not ice-hole wood!

Too bad for humans, but I was too happy for thousands of my girls to worry about them.

***

After the Council session left, I retired to my office and asked not to be disturbed.

There, I asked the system about the message seen by Tabletina, not really expecting an answer. But to my shock, I received one—and it had information!

A message ’error: connection error’ means that a connection was lost between the main and peripheral parts of the user’s system. A possible reason for this might be: the distance between the locations of the system parts, an incorrect installation path, or trans-dimensional barriers.

Not all of this information made sense to me, though.

’What do you mean, "an incorrect installation path"? I’m not a computer!’

One of the reasons for a connection error might be that a part of your system, user, was installed in a place not suitable for it.

’This... Does this mean something like installing an eye part on a leg?’

Apologies, but I don’t understand your question, user.

’Forget it. Just tell me, how can I fix all these errors?’

Make sure the main part of the system is within connection distance to all peripheral parts and in the same dimensions, and that all system parts are installed in suitable places. After this, give a "reset connection" command to try to connect the system again.

This sounded like an instruction I could follow.

’Just one more thing—what is the connection distance?’

It equals the range at which you can transfer your thoughts, user.

My eyes widened.

’So it should be just my body by default... but telepathy boosts it?’

Yes, user.

I clicked my tongue, feeling speechless.

I already had a theory that the system used some other method of transferring data between its parts instead of neural pathways. But to use my telepathy? This was... incredible.

And incredibly boosted!

’Thanks, system!’

I immediately had to speak with Tabletina. So much so, that instead of asking her to come to my office, I came to HERS!

***

"Father? Why have you come here—I mean, this is very unexpected. You didn’t even send me a message beforehand," Tabletina said.

I caught her in her office, doing paperwork—some things were just universal. Normally, I really would’ve at least warned her, and now she was worried about my rush and my excited state...

But I was too agitated to worry about that.

’System, reset connection!’

Understood, user. Connection reset is in progress.

In the next instant, the status panel over Tabletina’s head and my own have disappeared. A wave of unpleasant tingles went over my body; an instant later, the system window reappeared and felt no different from before.

I pointed at Tabletina’s eyes.

"My dear, my girl, take off your bandages. Just do it! You will see. Or not..."

Tabletina blinked with the sole eye not hidden by bandages, but obeyed without further questions. Half a minute later, her bandage fell on the table and she stared at me with wide, shocked eyes: shiny black and matte blue.

"I see... more text! Numbers!" she said. "Father, is this the system that you always describe? Did you fix it?"

I nodded, grinning.

"Hell yeah! It must’ve failed to connect when you first installed the eye because it was in wood—we were in range of my telepathy all the time back then. Look, if you walk farther away from me than the distance at which I can message you, the connection will get lost again."

Tabletina nodded, but her attention was clearly on my status.

I chuckled. Well, she would remember what I said either way, thanks to her absolute memory, so I continued without fear of having to repeat myself.

"It should work on others in a similar way. For now, you should just test your eye on others. Can you touch any of the panels you see?"

Tabletina nodded slowly, then reached out for something invisible.

"Ah. My hand passes through... There are buttons, but I can’t press any of them."

"This must be because you only have a visual part of the system. It’s for the better. Can you see any of my notifications or secondary windows I open?"

As I asked, I opened my morphotyping window, but Tabletina shook her head.

Her version of the system was very limited. Still incredible, but potentially useless if the limitations were too large.

"Then you should test your eye on the statuses of other people," I said. "And enjoy yourself, I suppose."

"Thank you, Father," Tabletina said. Her hands went to her chest, then one pair of them moved to cover her mouth. "This is unscientific, but I will hope ahead of time that my wooden eye keeps working... I must look at so many people with it!"

"Have fun, dear!"