Rigorous Inquiry
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:08 pm
A • P R I O R I
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A • P O S T E R I O R I
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A • P O S T E R I O R I
Ash 72, 121 Age of Steel
For months Anton worked, dutifully filling out both his official logbook and a far more personal journal. He had thoroughly examined every member of the lab since first joining the project team, and had determined to his satisfaction that none were mages. Indeed, none of them even seemed to own an aether glass. These men of science and reason had no recourse of anything as backwards and superstitious as magic which was Anton's shield as well as his trump card. Where they had to make due with the paltry data that their primitive instruments could record, guided only by the theorems and formulas refined in Imperial academies that still bedeviled Zaichaeri scholars, Anton could cheat.
His secret journal as he had come to think of it contained all the insights that Semblance had graced him with, along with his feverish attempts to work backwards from this arcanely intuited knowledge to arrive at the pure mathematics his colleagues expected as proof. Every day at the laboratory was an exercise in wonder and frustration, as he could so clearly see the inner truths of the work they were doing, but could tell no one of it. Worse, he could tell no one how to improve upon their work, how to take it beyond merely reversing the table scraps the Gelerians had given them and achieving true understanding.
Even Professor Haber had hit a wall with the furnace's design, unable to advance its production capacity without the most brutish and straightforward of methods. Increasing the power available was certainly one solution, and one that the State would greedily take up if none else presented themselves in their quest to further the warmaking capacity of Zaichaer, but it impugned upon the very fire that had driven the academics to conduct this work in the first place to have to fall upon so simple a recourse. They knew they were missing something, some technique or design that the Imperials had kept to themselves when shipping their broken furnaces and obsolete units to Karnor, but could not figure out what.
Days at the lab frequently devolved into ignoring the physical furnace entirely, the professor and his gaggle of students were often found huddled around blackboards with chalk and eraser flying instead of iron and lightning, producing equations instead of steel. It was here that Anton permitted himself to shine, suggesting novel derivations that he had painstakingly created from observing the aether of the arc traveling throughout the device. While it would have been far simpler to open his secret journal and let them see what he had observed, such was risky in the extreme. Men of science had little time for the Order, but they had less for witches, and it was uncertain if they would consider an unregistered mage as such. Even one who had been their colleague for months.
Besides, a part of Anton admitted that working backwards like this was rather fun. It was, after all, what the rest of them were doing anyway - he could just see more of the picture than they could. No doubt if the professor had the Cardinal Rune, he could've derived the same equations, and surely done so faster and in a more elegant fashion than his erstwhile undergrad could've imagined. But alas, the man had not lick of magic about him, and had to make do with his meticulously recorded data and carefully drawn diagrams.
What they failed to realize however, the key insight that eluded them with their half-training, was the elusive nature of electricity itself. Oh, true, they had received books and monographs detailing the fundamental equations that Imperial scientists claimed covered the force - Anton was personally interested in their conscious usage of the word flux, a term typically reserved for aether in classical scholarly tomes - but were habitually stymied in their attempts to acquire any actual applications of those equations. Anton, however, could see the application - which was good, for the math was frankly far above him. Starting with the answer however allowed him to put something passable upon the board, which those more learned in the science could then refine into something actionable. He felt like something of a cheat, being praised for his clever ideas and ingenious wit when the real work came from his magic, but he persevered with the knowledge that he was helping increase genuine understanding of the field.
Ultimately, they were wasting the vast majority of the energy that they were pumping into the furnace. The arc of electricity flowed out from the device at an incredible heat, melting solid metal incredibly swiftly, but then the residual current simply drained away. Headed to ground, it heated the entire assembly as it went, before dispersing harmlessly. Such power could be harnessed however, redirected, even tamed. He had come to the idea relatively early on, but struggled on how to conceptualize it to his peers without them regarding it as a foolish flight of fancy or utter derangement.
The electricity flowed into the cooling layer at the bottom of the furnace upon its own accord, this Anton saw when no one else could be certain. Some had suggested such, but just as many others contended that it likely flowed within the magnetic metal within the chamber. Guiding his peers to the right answer over time, they had eventually come around to the suggestion from the 'precocious student' that proper cladding could redirect the current to flow circularly, heating the metal not only more efficiently, but also more evenly.
Out of alternatives, and with many having taken a shine to the young undergraduate's work ethic and incisive thoughts, the required work was done with gusto. It helped that little manual effort was actually needed, the process of adding the conductive bottom lining to the furnace chamber taking significantly less time than designing it. That, too, was a struggle in its own right - but one that Anton was both all too happy to defer to his more seasoned peers upon and frankly had little practical advice to give. His sight simply told him where the electricity went, not how it would act in new circumstances. That understanding still lay with those who had mastered the subject, though the lordling took a measure of comfort in the fact that he could at least immediately identify flaws when tests actually began.
That day had at least arrived, and excitement had infected the lab again. With a genuinely novel approach, no mere tweaks this time, there was a measure of academic prestige inherent in being the recorder for the data. The scut work that Anton had been given upon first arriving had taken on a new color, and while anyone else in the room had the ability to pull rank and have their name be next to the newest results, none did so. No explicit acknowledgement was given, but there was an understanding that the student was far more than an upjumped noble who used his father's name to secure entry to a prestigious position. He was integral to their work, and had even begun to be considered by some a friend. The fact that the most friendly towards him were military cadets hopeful for his father's good word did not weigh on him heavily, considering the nature of the game that society played. He was simply grateful that he was finally somewhere he felt like he belonged.
Standing behind the blast curtain with his colleagues, Anton was just as giddy with anticipation as the workmen loaded the first of the scrap metal into the maw of the newly modified beast. With that familiar roar of power, electricity surged into being, scouring the bay clean of impurities as it melted the material back down into their rawest and most primal form and then - kept going. The soaring wails that he knew now to be the lightning thrown not by gods but by man was trapped by his hand, its song forced into a loop as the current traced a circuit. The metal heated all the faster under the continued assault, and when the results were in a cheer came from the assembled scientists.
"Well then ladies and gentlemen," Professor Haber said when all was said and done, the man holding his hands behind his back. "I believe this calls for a toast!" he cried, revealing a bottle of champagne which was quickly uncorked. As the cheers died down and glasses were handed out, the normally reserved man had a large smile upon his face. "This, of course, means that next week we begin compiling our notes for the paper."
To most stern and serious Zaichaeri, military men who believed in reason but little dabbled in science themselves, the cheers that followed were as alien as Kalzasi's worship of magic. For those who had devoted their lives to the endeavor of exploring the natural world however, it was one of the highest honors imaginable so early in their careers - especially for young Anton. He considered, if ever so briefly, that he could perhaps mark a place for himself without regard for politicking or bloodshed.