“Colin, do you want to walk out to my tractor with me and then hang out while I get the ground work started? We’ll plow today.”

  His eyes lit up, and he looked towards his mother, who nodded her okay. Then he said, “That would be great! I know you keep saying we can do all the plowing in one day, but I’ll have to see it to believe it.”

  I laughed. “We’re gonna plow 60 acres. It’ll take us until around dinner time. Funny thing is my plow is so big it might be a bit of a pain in the rear to turn around. If there was anything in the way it would be an issue, no fences this year will help us.”

  On our hour-long walk, we talked about the land, the weather, and even a little about Albion. Colin had been eleven when they left. Their family hadn’t been poor-poor, but they weren’t too far off from it.

  That made sense; people didn’t leave their homes because they wanted to. In the time before modern communication, it often meant you never heard from, and definitely never saw, the family that you left behind ever again.

  Albion certainly sounded eerily like England in the Victorian Age, just with a System added in. Too bad the System didn’t materially improve most people’s lives as much as I often read about.

  Leveling was surprisingly hard for most professions. The ruling classes kept support classes expensive, and the government and priests somehow controlled them. It often took several years for the System to decide you were proficient enough in a particular job to get a class naturally. Unless you had an apprenticeship or money, the first class the System often gave out was a generic Laborer, or Farmhand if you worked on a farm as a kid.

  Honestly, the way things had been described made me question whether the System was being fully controlled by the elites somehow. I suspected I would probably never find out.

  When we made it to the tractor, I fired it up and checked out the computer screen to make sure everything was good. Just like the day before everything that didn’t need an outside signal was fine.

  Colin was giddy as he watched things light up. “Is the System doing this? Can I interact with it?”

  For now, I decided to lie, “Yup, the System. And I’m sorry, right now I’m the only one who can touch these screens. I’ll let you help me with the hoses we will hook up though, okay?”

  Luckily, he couldn’t kick dirt in here. He said, “Okay,” even if it wasn’t with any enthusiasm.

  We backed the tractor up to the massive 14-blade Salford 8214 moldboard plow. This plow wasn’t set up the way I would have liked it to be. I preferred a reversible plow. They had six or eight blades on the top of the plow, and the same on the bottom. When you turned around at the end of a field, you could just use hydraulics to flip the plow the other way and then you’d just start plowing right next to where you had plowed previously. Once the blades were flipped, then the furrow that the plow created would be filled in.

  This tractor had so much power that those smaller plows just weren’t a good idea. It wasn’t too hard to break them since they didn’t have a frame to help hold the blades in place.

  The plow had a central frame with six plow blades that were welded in place. Then it had an additional eight plows that would go into place with hydraulics. As you plowed with all fourteen blades, they slanted backwards behind the tractor. Even this 14-bottom plow didn’t tax this tractor.

  The whole thing used hydraulics to function. The hydraulic hoses fascinated Colin. He had me explain in detail how they ?raised and lowered the hydraulic cylinders that attached to the wheels on the frame of the plow. The hoses’ ability to handle such extreme pressures had amazed him.

  After I hooked the first hose up to the tractor, I had him hook the rest up in the order I showed him. He was surprisingly good at it right away. When I was a teenager, I’d often thought I had the hoses seated, only to have the hose blow off as soon as I hit the hydraulic switch. Then I’d have to climb out of the tractor and make sure the hose was firmly in the port. It was a ?bit of an art form. You pushed it into the seating, and then put all of your weight into it a couple more times, giving it a little extra push at the end to be safe.

  The hydraulic hoses would likely be the weak point in this system. The blades of the plow were tempered steel. They’d last me for years with the limited ground we were working. The hoses would start to rot in as little as three years. This plow wasn’t just a simple thing that could work without the hydraulics. It would need major renovations. That ended up high on my list of things to find a workaround for. The plow weighed right around 20,000 lbs, so just picking it up would not be an option.

  A much smaller reversible plow would probably be better in this world. It raised and lowered with the 3 point hitch system on the back of the tractor. The hydraulics? were just used to flip the plow over.

  Oh well, sometimes that was just the way things went. It felt ridiculous that I had a modern tractor in a world with 1880s tech, and magic. Couldn’t forget the magic.

  The thing that fascinated Colin the most was the air conditioning.

  Even large tractor cabs basically acted as greenhouses. There was a solid roof, and then four posts and a doorframe, but otherwise they were all glass. I’d done tractor work in November when it was barely above freezing, but it was sunny, so I still needed to run the AC.

  Colin was sitting next to me, looking like a big dog, with his face up against one of the vents blowing cold air.

  I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.

  Colin turned to me with a sheepish smile. “Sir, I know that there’s a magical ice box that’ll keep things cold. But they cost at least a thousand gold, maybe more. I never thought I’d feel this.”

  My laughter abruptly stopped. “Wait, what? Is there magical refrigeration? Also, don’t call me sir.”

  “Sorry sir. Wait. Sorry! Yes John. There’s magical refrigeration if that’s what it’s called. They make a magically lined ice box that has ice that’s been enchanted to stay cold. But only level 20 Ice Path Wizards can make ice that’ll stay cold for very long. There are only a few in the entire territory. Probably just a couple in the garrison in Riverton, or maybe the fort to the South. I think they can enchant rooms that’ll keep things cool, if not really cold.”

  “Huh. Well, that’s good info maybe for later.” That was a creature comfort I would love to have one day.

  “Well Colin, enjoy it while you can. We certainly won’t be using this tractor much after the next few days. We don’t have the fuel to just sit in the AC, even if we’d like to.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  He nodded but said, “You should at least show Ma. Maybe she can ride with you a bit when you run that second piece of equipment. You said it’s called a John Deere? That’s weird to name a piece of equipment after a guy like that.”

  I laughed again at that one. “The piece of equipment is a disc ripper. The model is a 2720 John Deere. Don’t worry about that; just call it a disc ripper. It basically acts like a plow like this, but with extra stuff. We’re not using it this year because it isn’t as good in the grass. It won’t cut as deeply, and the ripper tines get clogged up with grass really badly. That’ll push the blades out of the ground. After we use this plow, we’ll take that big disc harrow, the one with the plate-like discs.”

  “Wait,” Colin interrupted. “The disc has that round thing on the back too right?”

  “Yes, that’s my disc harrow. We will probably use that after we plow this first time. It’ll help break up clods and then smooth out the ground for us. Got it?” I said.

  “Then what’s the other one that’s just a roller with metal spikes? That’s the cultivator?” Colin said, with a look of concentration on his face.

  “Yup,” I said. “I’ll use the cultivator more after I use the disc ripper. When I don’t need to get so deep. We won’t use it this year. It’s for when the soil is more broken up already. Listen. Don’t worry too much about all of this. I know what we need to do, your job is to learn.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “But, I’m gonna try one more time.” He had his right hand up and began putting fingers up as he counted up. “First this plow. Second, the disc harrow. Third, we will use the corrugator to make furrows in the ground. The potato planter has its own corrugator attached though. Then we’re going to dig a ditch so we can bring water to it? That everything?”

  I put my hand up for a high-five. I don’t know if it was a thing in this world, but he got what I wanted pretty quickly and returned my high-five with one of his own.

  Then he asked, “You said you only have 460 gallons of fuel, and 66 of the one called DEF, Diesel Exhaust Fluid. Can we do all of that with this amount of fuel?”

  I sighed. “I believe so. We should be burning around seventeen gallons of diesel per hour for four hours to plow. That’s seventy gallons. Fifty more to use the disc. Then planting and corrugating will be nothing. Probably around eight gallons per hour for another ten total maybe. Probably less, but ten is a safe guess though. Now, I am counting on our fuel efficiency bonus with these numbers.”

  “But if everything goes perfectly we could use as little as two hundred gallons of diesel to do this. I’m hoping worst-case scenario is two hundred and fifty gallons. Then another fifty or so for grabbing trees. We will just have to take things one day at a time and hope we’re good.”

  By this point we’d made it to where my UI said was the first plot. I lined the plow up with the northeastern corner, turned the RPMs up to 1750, and began moving forward as I raised the hydraulic arms holding the tires up. The teeth of the plow quickly bit into the soil, and I felt the RPMs on the tractor ever so briefly fall. With my modern throttle control, it quickly stabilized. I moved along at six miles per hour. That was a light jogging speed.

  Even sitting in an enclosed cab, with top-of-the-line cab filters, I could immediately smell fresh turned soil and cut grass. I’d always loved that smell. It was a sign of hope and progress to me for so many years. It didn’t matter whether it was done in the fall or the spring. If a field was being plowed, then it would be farmed.

  I had always loved farming. The uncertainty of what I was going to do after this farming season on Earth was just as painful to me as my divorce. This smell right now just uplifted my spirits in a way nothing else could have.

  Within a few minutes, I heard the familiar screech of seagulls. That brought back the nostalgia just as much as the scent of the soil had. I was heartened to see that this world still had seagulls.

  Ever since I was a kid, I had associated seagulls with plowing. They were no doubt eating all of my wonderful worms that had been brought to the surface, but that was just the way things were.

  I plowed all forty acres of the first two plots, then raised the plow and moved around the homestead fence and plowed the southern plot before just driving all the way back to the beginning and making another straight line. This way, my furrow eventually ended at the ends of the fields. This would be the beginning of my ditch as well. On the other side, it would serve as a drainage ditch once the water had made it through the rows we would create.

  It was obvious to both of us that this wasn’t “normal” but Colin said nothing about it, so I didn’t either. He took right to the advanced controls, and he had no trouble reading the computer screen, so maybe we really were reading in English? That was a whole can of worms in itself. Arthur and Merlin had spoken Gaelic, or maybe Welsh? One of the two for sure, as far as the myths went.

  When we were finished, I put the plow behind the house for now.

  I was extremely happy to see that I’d only used around fifty-five of fuel for the three plots. It should have been closer to seventy. That meant that the 20% energy reduction worked for my tractor too! We were going to go grab more trees and get some building done this summer.

  After we got done with plowing, it was dinnertime. More trout and kale, but in stew form. Our new supplies hadn’t arrived yet, but I was going to have to get used to a little less variety now that I couldn’t just hit a grocery store or restaurant.

  To forestall any awkwardness, I told them I was going to take the tractor back out to the forest so I could bring back another piece of equipment in the morning. Once we had time I’d figure out a proper sleeping arrangement, but my tractor wasn’t the worst place I’d ever slept.

  I’d also have time to read my almanac for a bit. I decided that for tonight I’d look at the history of the System since there was a section on it.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Arturo and Marlotus first came into the annals of history in what is now called 0 CE. Nothing is known for sure about their early lives, though there have been many scholarly careers built on such speculation. Neither man ever spoke definitively about their origins, and no one who actually met either man put any knowledge they may have had to writing.

  The most popular theory as of the time of this writing is that they were brought to this world to install the System on Talamh. If so, they would be neither the first nor the last to be brought over through a portal from another world.

  Whatever their provenance, they are widely accepted as the first men to possess the Champion and Wizard classes.

  For more than three years, the two men led a guerrilla campaign against the orc Black Hand Chieftainate as they helped humans gain classes.

  Once they’d amassed a small army of several hundred men and women who were able to achieve level 5 or higher, they struck their first true blow in the massacre at the orc village of White Rock. They then liberated the sizable human population held in bondage in the surrounding areas.

  From there, they led a brutal campaign of liberation for the next two years until they had managed to liberate a full half of the eastern portion of the Fahal Nazdan continent.

  At some point, however, the orcs unlocked the System for themselves, and Arturos and Merlotus’ advance was stopped at the Battle of the Big River.

  Two more years of indecisive battles followed. Humanity's plight looked bleak when the orcs unexpectedly offered a truce if the humans would leave the continent.

  Arturos and Merlotus accepted the offer. They had been fighting for over seven years at this point and were worried that humanity had no path to a lasting victory.

  They called for all the liberated humans to meet on the shores of the Oceanicus Gallus and told the people that they knew of a great island they could emigrate to. The people built seafaring vessels and sailed to these lands and carved out their homeland.

  Author’s Note: The exact location of battles and the location of villages is unknown today. The Albion Imperial Libraries do not have copies of the original maps, and it has been more than 1,600 years since these events took place. No orcs have been found on the continent since the forces of the Albion Empire Expeditionary Force landed on the shores during the Reconquista.

  Excerpt from On Histories and Legends by the Archbishop Thomas Smythe the Second. Full book available on the Albion Shop Interface.