Matt watched as the girls and their mother marched out of the clearing and towards the jungle, past the mounds of rubble that were all that remained of the previous civilization that had claimed this land, and out into the wilds where monsters roamed and he couldn't protect them.

His gut churned as Olivia, last in line and still holding onto her new fireball staff like it was Christmas morning, vanished into the treeline behind the rest of them. He stayed where he was, watching the place where they'd disappeared from view, trying not to wonder if it was the last time he'd see any of them.

It was always like this. Every time. It didn't matter if he was at the airport watching the plane fly away, or back at their house holding the door so his wife could get her kit out the door. As soon as he lost sight of her, of them, it was like a ball of acid opened up in his gut and started spitting.

You'd think, after twenty years married to a combat soldier, he'd be used to it by now.

You'd be wrong. You never got used to wondering if someone you loved would come home on their own feet, in a chair, or in a flag-covered box.

"Hey, Dad, you okay?" Lucas' voice cut through the melancholia and snapped Matt back to the present. He sucked in a breath and blew it out hard. Right. Right. Alejandra and the girls had a job to do, and that job was out in the field maybe shooting monsters. But he had a job to do, and that was making sure they had a home to come back to. Matt turned from the treeline and looked back at Luc, who was standing next to Harry, the big six-legged green wooly mammoth he'd gotten as an animal companion through his class. Both of them were looking at him with signs of worry in their eyes.

"Yeah bud, I'm good," Matt said, only partly lying. "You ready to get to work?"

"Been ready since before you and Mom woke up, Dad," Luc said, grinning. "I wanna see what kinds of cool magic stuff we can do with those crafting stations. I also wanna make a sword. Because swords are awesome."

"That might be a bit premature, buddy," Matt laughed, "but we'll see what we can do. You with us, Toraline?"

"I am here, Consul," Toraline said from where she rested against the log, her cold cup of tea still in front of her. "I have been reviewing my memories for any useful recipes, as Consul Olivia suggested. Do you know what you wish to create?"

"Not yet," Matt said, walking over and picking the sword up, sliding it into his belt in what was becoming her customary place. "I want to check the, uh, 'stations', first. See what they have and what I can learn about them before I actually start trying to make anything. A craftsman is only as good as his tools, after all. And If I need to know my tools."

"A wise course of action. It is likely that their functions have shifted slightly from what I am used to as well, given the way the Systems are shifting as you and the others interact with it."

Their first stop was the crafting bench. Unlike the spartan workbenches Matt was used to on the construction site–which more often than not were just a couple two-by-fours laid across a pair of sawhorses–this was a massive affair of dark wood and two sets of a dozen or more drawers on either side of the actual work surface. The drawers went from small at the very top, with four or five set in a single row, to one massive one at the very bottom that took up the entire space. Out of curiosity, Matt pulled the right-most big drawer open.

It was empty.

Feeling his eyebrows raise, Matt pulled open the next drawer up. Also empty. And ditto for the next few he opened.

"These had tools in them last night," he muttered, feeling his eyebrows beetle. "What changed?"

"Dad. Coin." Lucas said, holding one up. "Remember? Gotta invest a coin before it'll give you what you want."

"It didn't have a coin in it last night though," Matt pointed out.

"Likely it was still operating off of the energy it brought with it from summoning," Toraline said, her voice making the sword's blade buzz against his thigh. "The energy would have dissipated with the rising of the sun, and likely needs to be renewed."

"Coin-operated tools should not be a thing," Matt groused. He pulled one of his own coins from Somewhere and placed it against the desk. There was a soft flash, the coin disappeared, and the draws glowed for a moment.

"Alright, now let's see…" Matt pulled open the big drawer again–and nothing.

"I believe you have to open a drawer with intent, Consul," Toraline said after Matt stopped grumbling. "Merely opening a drawer to 'see what is there' will likely produce nothing usable because the system does not know what you actually want. I would suggest you actually envisioning the tool you wish to pull out."

"Coin-operated psychic workbench. Even better." Matt sighed and closed his eyes, thinking for a moment, before opening them and trying the big drawer again. This time a large double-headed woodsman's axe was waiting for him. The head was good quality steel and razor sharp, and the handle was heavy polished ashwood, and fit into Matt's palm like it had been made for it. He took the heavy tool out of the drawer and gave it an experimental heft. Good weight, good balance… This would easily have been a top-of-the-line tool back on earth.

A quick check of other drawers, with specific tools in mind, brought out top-tier examples of other hand tools. Augers, planers, chisels, even phillips-head screwdrivers, though he had no screws to go with them. There didn't seem to be a limit on the type of tools he could ask the bench to conjure up. There was, he discovered, a limit to the amount. Drawers remained empty after more than about five tools were out at a time, though Toraline suggested that might be because he only invested a single coin into the bench.

A suggestion that proved out as Matt invested a second coin, and this time he was able to get twelve individual tools of varying sizes and types before the drawers ran dry. Good. That meant, when the girls weren't off hunting, he'd be able to conjure up tools enough for everyone to work productively.

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"Try crafting something on it, Dad," Luc said, hefting a one-handed sledge. "Tori, what kind of crafting recipes do you know?"

"I… am unsure what you mean by 'recipes', but I have the requirements for several different things that might be useful in the coming days for you. Many of them require milled lumber, however, and Consul Matthew lacks the industry to make such things at this time."

"Besides, I don't have time right now, bud," Matt said, starting to put the tools away. "I want to check the other stations, see what stuff they have available."

"Okay yeah, but it's a crafting bench," Luc said, coming up and laying the hammer down on the workbench. "Like, he should be able to make stuff on it, right? Like, it should make it easy to craft stuff? So why not use the bench to make that milled lumber stuff, if we're gonna need it anyway? Be a good test drive, right Dad?"

"I… suppose?" Matt frowned and looked down at the burnished surface of the bench. "Toraline, would that work? Will crafting specifically on this bench make things easier to make?"

There was a long silence from the sword, then an uncertain buzz. "I… Am not sure."

"Come again?"

"Consul, the fabric of the System is shifting around me. In Caesar's time, this crafting bench would have been a pre-requisite to making a variety of useful implements, materials, and constructions. But it would not have made the work easier, merely possible. But that System is dead and gone, and a new one is rising in its place, shaped by the direction you and your family push it. It is… Not unthinkable that, by wishing it to function differently, that it will function differently than what I am accustomed to."

"Oh cool!" Luc said, grinning wide. "We're totally making it up as we go along! Go ahead Dad, try to make something. I bet it'll work, just like in Minecraft."

Matt blinked, then looked down at the bench. "Okay, but if any suicide shrubs start coming after me, I'm telling tu madre that it was your idea."

Luc blinked. "Wait. You know Minecraft?"

Matt grinned. "You don't know everything about me, kiddo. But alright, let's see… Okay, go have Harry grab one of those rough logs I made and bring it to the table. Let's see if we can turn it into milled lumber."

"Okay!" Lucas dashed off with Harry in close tow. The big mastodon easily plucked up one of the logs that Matt had felled not that long ago with his trunk and brought it over to the table, laying the rough lumber onto the tabletop–and Matt blinked as the workbench glowed and expanded before his eyes until it was long enough to accommodate the ten-foot log.

"Well that's a good start." Matt frowned at the log, then reached into a drawer and took out a hand axe, a saw, and a planer. "I… Don't really know what I'm supposed to do now."

"Try just starting working, Dad," Luc said, leaning in to watch. "The whole 'instinct' thing again, maybe?"

Matt shrugged. It was worth a shot. He grabbed the axe first. He barely knew the first thing about actually milling lumber. As interested as he'd been in pioneer techniques, those had all been green lumber techniques, none of them had focused on milling lumber and actually getting it down into boards and the like. That was an entirely different skillset. He honestly had no idea what he was doing.

He raised the axe up… And stopped, frowning.

"What's wrong?" Luc asked.

"It doesn't feel right," Matt said, lowering the axe. "Something's missing."

"Everything you have done to this point," said a leafy breath of a voice rustling from above Matt's head, "has required the investiture of a coin. Perhaps that is what is missing?"

Matt considered Billy the Tree's words. "Could be. It'd fit with everything else that's going on. Let's see…" Another coin appeared in his hand, and this time he pressed it against the wood on the bench, where it glowed briefly before disappearing. The wood sparkled for a moment before returning to its original dull appearance. Matt raised the axe again–

Golden light sprang up from the ground, arcing through the craft bench, the wood, and into and up Matt's body and into the axe. Matt yelped as warmth and power suffused him. He instinctively tried to drop the axe, but his fingers wouldn't obey his commands. Instead, they gripped the axe even tighter, his arm came up, and the axe came down.

The small hand-axe bit through the log like butter. In a dozen quick strokes Matt had the log in four individual pieces, perfectly straight and level with each other. His hands, still moving of their own accord, reached out and grabbed the planer, setting the axe down where it was out of the way but still close at hand. The four rough boards flopped over face-up on the now even-larger workbench. The planer went zwip-zwip over the face of each one, then Matt's hands flipped them over and did the same thing to the other side.

Matt stared in fascination as the green lumber glowed and shrank, moisture bleeding from it like a time-lapse movie. The wood didn't warp or buckle, it just cured, going from rough green lumber to dry finished planks in seconds even as the planar went swip-zwip again, removing burrs and splinters from the wood in one fast motion. Sawdust fell from the workbench in a great clump, and then the golden light faded away leaving Matt standing staring and breathless.

Four perfect ten-foot planks lay side by side on the top of the workbench, dry and ready for use in finish construction. Any one of the planks would have cost Matt fifty bucks or more back on Earth, and he would have paid for it gladly because it was some of the finest work he had ever seen.

"Holy crap," he breathed.

"Holy crap," Luc agreed, his eyes wide and round. "That was awesome! It's totally Minecraft!"

"No, it's different," Matt said, his brain speeding down what had just happened and offering up its insights. "I don't think it's 'recipes', I think it operates on… 'what I want'. I wanted finished lumber, and the power made it happen. I think if I'd asked it for poles, or panels, it would have done that too just with different tools."

"Wait, are you saying the system is thinking? Giving you what it knows you want?" Luc let out a whistle. "Okay, that's totally cool, and like, that opens up all kinds of possibilities. Right?"

"Yeah," Matt nodded thoughtfully. He was definitely going to have to talk to the others about this when they got back. For now though…

"Hey bud," Matt grinned. "Wanna try it out?"

"Oh heck yeah!" Luc whooped. "C'mon Harry, let's get another log! I wanna try making something different though. Let's see if it works like that!"

"Toraline," Matt murmured as Luc went off with Harry to grab another log. "If the system really is giving us what we want, is that going to be dangerous to us? I don't want my kids thinking "I want a bomb", and the system giving them one."

"I find it likely that the System will not act in a capricious manner. But I also find it unlikely that it will actively work to curtail what it gives you. In times past, it has been a servant of the Sojourners, giving power but not declaring the limits of its use."

"One more thing to think about, then," Matt said as Harry and Luc came back with their log. "This place really is going to take some getting used to, isn't it?"

"For all of us, I daresay, Consul. For all of us."

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