The first thing in using a new engine, I assume, is mounting it and testing it. I don't have personal experience in this, but it seems reasonable, since I'll also be making the fuel connection, the battery connection, the throttle and so on.

To that end I picked one of the simpler desk recipes, threw it together and planted it outside the workshop. Based on the blueprints I drilled holes where the mounts should go. I should maybe have waited for the engine to be delivered and measured where the mounts actually were, but I wanted something to do, and thought I'd warm people up to the idea of my latest project.

Sam came out with a couple bottles of cider. Based on past experience, this seemed to be protocol for Talking About Something. But he didn't seem to be in a hurry; he just sat on the bench and watched me drill.

When I finished I joined him on the bench. He handed me a bottle and gestured to the desk with his. "That don't look like an airplane."

"Yeah, it's a desk I was planning to set up in the workshop, but for now I'm gonna use it as a mount for testing an engine." I took a sip of cider. "Tsu'na mentioned the ultralight, then?"

"Yep. She's a bit worried about it."

"I'm betting she'll feel differently when she tries it out herself. It'll beat the hell out of bicycles, that's for sure."

"Ya couldn't just fix up a bug bus or somethin'?"

"That'd take a license. Which, for reasons I'd rather not get into, we don't have."

"Got it. An' you really gotta travel."

"Well, yeah...I grew up on the east coast, and there's a lot of the country I haven't seen. Lot more that she hasn't seen. I figure we can see it together."

I was a little confused. Sure, the airplane is unusual, but I didn't see how this was a Cider Topic.

"While yer out lookin' for mythril."

Ah.

I chuckled. "Mythril, yeah. That's what we called it."

"You 'n yer wife?"

"People out on deployment. It was an alloy some of our gear was made of. Titanium, aluminum, carbon, couple silicates...I'm sure there's a fancy chemical name for it, and the defense industry probably has a brand name, but, you know...light, strong, silvery with a bluish tint..." I shrugged. "Mythril."

"If it's an alloy, how can you go lookin' for it?"

"You can't. But you can look for the formula. Which requires having enough of the raw materials to play with. Which requires travel. We've got a line on bauxite in Arkansas..."

"Bauxite."

"It's the source for aluminum. And there's titanium over in Utah."

"An' yer just gonna go...dig it up?"

"With any luck we can find it on parkland. We're not looking for industrial quantity, so we should be able to keep our footprint small."

"You've done this before."

"We make our own steel."

"Don't that take, like, a forge? Don't recall seein' one in the shed."

"You said you didn't want flammable stuff in the shed. So there's a building shell north of here we use for that sort of thing. We made an arrangement with the security guard."

"Guessin' that's where you been makin' yer gas too."

"Right. That's our shell station."

He gave me a pointed look. I smiled.

"So, y'all ain't really goin' out lookin' for mythril."

"Oh, hey, we'd love to be able to just pop over to Moria and source our own, but, you know. Balrogs."

"An' ya can't just buy this stuff somewhere?"

"Maybe from the military? We're not exactly on speaking terms right now."

Sam nodded, studying the bottle in his hand.

Mission accomplished? Crisis averted? Question dodged?

"It's the dee-tails."

"Sorry...?"

"Yer tell. It's the dee-tails. Yer wife, she's different. She just hesitates sometimes, when she wants to say one thing an' has to make herself say somethin' else..."

He looked up at me. "But you don't do that. You tell a story. Lotsa dee-tails. Usually it's a good story, an' you tell it well, an' there's prob'ly a lotta true bits in it, cuz that's how you tell a good story...but it's still a story. Somethin' you want me to b'lieve."

We faced each other for a moment.

I finally asked, "You sure you're not a Russian sleeper agent?"

"Just a guy who runs a bar. Meets lotsa people. Hears lotsa stories."

"Plays poker on the side?"

"You lookin' for a game?"

"No, I don't think I am." I wondered exactly what I should do with this feedback. "You want me to go back to saying 'classified'?"

"Say whatever you want. Not gonna call you on it or report it to anyone. I just wanna be able to make sense o' things. 'Specially when it comes to folks who can pick up my truck."

"You know...there might be times when there's not a lot of sense of things to make..."

"Try to keep me outta them, okay?"

"That's the plan."

He was quiet for a bit, then asked, "Do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Tell me one true thing. Just so's I know what it looks like."

I wondered what I could offer him. The golden circle? Eorzea? Aether?

I looked him in the eye.

"If I told you the truth, you'd think I was on drugs. If I proved I was telling the truth, you'd think you were on drugs."

He blinked a couple times as he studied my face. "I believe you."

"Does that...help at all?"

"Guess it'll have to do." We sat, we drank, we mulled over the situation. "So...were you on the level with all that stuff 'bout mythril?"

"Nah. We could totally take a balrog."