Ore samples. The rock type on the left appeared to be chock full of chalcopyrite, copper iron sulfide

Now it is morning, the day after my last furnace firing before the end of this session. The fire has been cooling all night. There may or may not be a lump of metallic copper at the base of the pit. I have no way of knowing if my fire was hot enough, if my ore was what I thought it was. Everthing hinges on this copper; with it, I can leap from the neolithic to chacolithic to the information age in a day, without it, I’m still a caveman with big dreams. Staring into the fire for five hours, intimately pumping air into this fire, I saw a better future for myself in the same way that the first coppersmiths must have. The fire was so clean and dry, modern and transformative, that I understood, beyond practicality, the human desire to change our situation.
From here, if I can extend my metallurgy to zinc or iron, I will have electrical voltage. A full telegraph system would be a simple matter. A new research thread initiated by conversations on the web hints that even a wireless radio system may be possible, using a spark gap transmitter and galena crystal reciever. In short, I am on the cusp of modernity, hinging on what lies in the bottom of a pile of ash.