POV: Jacob
Since the disappearance of Sammuel, Samantha, Quinn, and Wald have been working tirelessly to recreate his work. The sooner we can chase after Sammuel into this other world the better.
They’ve progressed a fair amount with the help of Sammuel’s notes. Unfortunately, Sammuel’s writing is almost illegible, the words are written clearly, but the meaning behind them isn’t clear.
Sammuel has a very particular way of thinking, a way that makes it difficult for others to tell exactly what he means when he tries to explain things in detail. It’s this annoying aspect of him that’s holding us back from completing the mana manipulation machine.
Regardless, the progress so far is still immense, in just a few short weeks we’ve already managed to replicate two of the three machines that took Sammuel nearly seven years to make, and it shouldn’t be much longer until we finish the final, and most important machine. We decided to go in the order that Sammuel took his research, since trying to jump ahead would likely get us nowhere.
The strange thing is that the machines aren’t perfect, they have defects, issues that Sammuel typically wouldn’t keep in anything he made. My only theories about this are that either Sammuel was pressured to complete the machines quickly, and thus neglected the finer details of his work, or we haven’t perfectly replicated his work.
According to Samantha, the entire concept of what they’re doing defies all known laws of energy, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they’ve made a few mistakes in recreating the machines. None of this is on too much concern however, since once we get to Sammuel, we can get the completed version.
Deciding to check up on their progress, I make my way over to the group’s lab. Heading inside I’m met with the same awful stench as always.
Samantha is sitting at her desk reading what I assume to be Sammuel’s research notes. Neither Quinn, nor Wald are in the room. Samantha doesn’t notice as I come in, or if she does she doesn’t care.
“Samantha, progress report”
“Again? I tell you the same thing every day, stop coming”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Samantha, watch your tone”
“Right, my deepest apologies Mr. King sir”
Samantha goes into a deep, and very exaggerated bow. She really ought to care more for my position. But I can’t afford to get rid of her, and she knows that, that’s why she’s able to get away with this kind of behavior.
“Just give me the report”
“Well, like I said, it’s the same as yesterday. Im trying to decipher this nonsense, while morons one and two screw around with the sensory equipment trying to figure out how this mana shit works”
“Okay, and you’re certain that there’s nothing else to take note of?”
“Other than how I’m driven closer and closer to suicide every moment I have to read this gibberish? Well there’s also that I’m growing more unsure about your plan every day. How do you know that Sammuel will side with us? For all you know he might take a liking to that place”
“I know that he’ll side with me because of his character. Sammuel is a very logical person, he does what benefits him most, and in this case, that would be following me. He has nothing to gain from that world that we can’t offer him once we take it”
Sammuel is indeed logical to an unreasonable degree. He’s thinks almost like a machine, not a human. He takes the pros and cons of a situation and weighs them on a scale to decide what to do, he doesn’t do anything based on emotion. If he were run over, he wouldn’t worry for his health, he’d be upset about the time spent in the hospital.
That isn’t to say that he doesn’t value his health, it’s just that to him, as long as he’s alive, with all limbs intact and functioning, nothing else matters. Even in situations that threaten his life, he looks at it as if he were a spectator, judging things methodically, and taking the most appropriate course of action to achieve his goals.
Sammuel’s personality is a tricky one, I can only imagine what caused him to develop such a strange thought process.
“Right, and what makes you so sure that we will win? How can you be sure that we won’t be overpowered by the other world’s armies?”
“Because even with the limited glimpse I got of the other world, I could see that their technology is extremely primitive. They used carriages instead of cars, and there wasn’t a single thing that was powered with electricity. There were even people wearing plate armor and holding swords. The only thing they have over us is a potentially higher understanding of mana, but we can overcome that if you do your job”
“Alright sure, so can you please leave so that I can kill more if my braincells trying to decipher this crap? And please don’t come back tomorrow expecting things to have changed”
Samantha’s right, there’s no point in sticking around, so I should probably leave. And I should probably stop checking every day, it’s a waste of time at this point.
“Alright then, I’ll come back in two weeks to check up on your progress”
“Nice, that’s much more reasonable than every fucking day. Don’t expect me to contact you if we accomplish something, you’ll have to learn about it in two weeks”
With that, I take my leave and head back over to my room, where there is undoubtedly work to be done.