We start off confused and end up confused on a higher level.

Pre-Fall Philosopher

Johanna woke up in total darkness with a start. For a few moments, she listened, wondering what had brought her up. But the silence was the only answer. She listened longer, without much success. She forced herself to relax, slowly and methodically, and curled herself around the bulk of Tom.

She woke up again with a start, but this time, it was because Tom was shifting, and small rays of light were coming through the slats.

This time, she swore she’d take the day off. Well, not off, but doing nothing related to Talents, expeditions, organizing, or anything. Just shopping, because the apartment they’d rented was still pretty bare. She had money…

…and then she remembered all the planning, organization, and future expenses. And the meeting at the seller later. She sighed enough to finish waking up Tom, who turned and looked at her.

“I was hoping for a day off. But nobody’s cooperating.”

“Your choice. Tell them to sod off. Light the hand if they insist.”

She laughed.

“You make it simple.”

She felt the shrug from his arms as they wrapped around her.

She was still finishing breakfast and noting she needed to do some market shopping because she deserved more than finishing expedition rations when a knock on the door came.

What is it this time? she thought.

To her surprise, it was Ulrich and another man she did not recognize. Unlike Ulrich, the white in his hair had everything to do with age and not with the Changed species. The man was much older, as attested by the cane he used, and the lines carved on his face.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting surprise guests this early. Come in.”

She pulled the last chairs she had, as Tom excused himself.

“Want something?”

“I’m good,” Ulrich replied. His companion nodded, raising a hand in denegation.

“May I introduce you to Ernesto Gomez from Nashville, the foremost scholar of Talents of the modern age.”

The man – Gomez, obviously – puffed and snorted at the introduction. But that was a name that triggered some memories for Johanna.

“I think I heard about you. Elena spoke about some theories of cumulative Talents or something?”

“Well, that’d be me, correct. And if by Elena, you refer to Mrs. Worchester, she sent me a tantalizing letter about you and your mind-sorceress friend Donnall, only to clamp up later. Imagine my surprise when Mr. Sengfield sent me a letter on your behalf to see if I could provide some expertise. Everyone wants a bit of it these days.”

She turned to the thirster who merely nodded.

“Well, you said you did not know how Talents were managed, could be attributed, and such. I told you I had a lead. I’m guessing Professor Gomez here is the perfect person to help you in this endeavor,” Ulrich said.

“Not the perfect. Perfection does not exist. But the best thing you’ll get, maybe,” the scholar replied, before adding, “Given that I’m probably the only one on this continent who tries to apply a semblance of the scientific method to what everyone says is not a scientific matter.”

Ulrich immediately added, “And she’s outright stating it is so.”

“Is it, Mrs. Milton?”

“Talents being linked to the Ancients – and more importantly, the Fall – is not something new,” Gomez said after she started explaining.

“Oh?” Johanna replied.

“I haven’t published that article yet, but I’ve been making some statistical analysis on sorcerous abilities these days. They’re a lot easier to measure than most. Notably, I’ve been comparing ability magnitudes, and measuring things among adepts.”

“They’re the lowest-tiered abilities, you mean,” Johanna said.

“And adepts are far more numerous than full-fledged sorcerers. One of the temptations of a scholar is to apply some of the Ancient physics tools to the modern world. Notably the principle of mediocrity and the famous Occam’s Razor…”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He sighed at seeing Johanna’s glazing eyes, before continuing, “But if you take some simple, basic, common-place skill like the refrigeration effect – what’s labeled as ‘cooler’ in the Society of Mage’s compendium…”

“Ah, Frostbite.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s the, well, real name of that.”

Johanna saw the look of half-confusion from the older scholar and waved it away.

“Not important.”

“The point is, I’ve gotten data collected across the Union by almost two dozen of those refrigeration – or maybe Frostbite? – adepts. And they all fell into four categories. Those that sustain it for 16 seconds, those that do for 25, those that can squeeze 36 seconds, and one that did 49. Now, Mrs. Milton, what does that means to you?”

“Uh… I’m not that good at advanced math and stuff,” she replied, immediately adding, “Although I remember when Petra was doing that one. Looks like it was 25 seconds?”

“Well, I’m not expecting even the performance of my students in Nashville. But that’s simply the square of numbers. 4 squared, 5 squared, and so on.”

“O… okay?”

“If you’re familiar with Ancient physics, notably, quantum mechanics, you expect things to occur in discrete intervals. Which is what prompted my currently unpublished paper. But the discrete intervals are a – what it’s called? – red herring.”

“About what?” Johanna asked, finding herself drawn to the scholar’s evident depth of interest.

“About the fact that it’s a square number of seconds.”

“Uh?”

“Because when you study physics, both the Ancient version and the distorted and somewhat revised version of the modern world, you quickly understand that commonplace units are awful for physics.”

Johanna’s blank look of complete incomprehension must have shown because Eduardo sighed.

“The second of time we know and use is a contrived convention. Distantly based on Sumerian preference for numbers that could be divided by lots of things and the rotation of Earth. When you go into real physics, you need all sorts of constant multipliers to use seconds, because the universe does not care about ancient Mesopotamia or Earth. Same thing for feet or inches. They’re historical artifacts of measurement from centuries before the Fall, and they were not even consistent across ages. Yet… measurable effects ranges are in almost perfect multiple of feet.”

“So, you’re saying that Talents use… Ancient measurement units? That’s it?” she asked.

“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. And why I’m mildly unpopular among the scientific academia. Because it’s a given in science that human – Ancient or modern – perspective is arbitrary. But when it comes to Talents… it clearly is not.”

Johanna startled. She’d been taking it for granted that the Ancient could give them Talents, for some reason she did not dwell upon. But now, she realized that the Ancients – or maybe The Ancient – might be the source of the existence of the Talents themselves.

“So… you’re saying that Talents are made by the Ancients.”

“I am not saying that. But when you’re claiming that an Ancient is behind your Talents… it’s not as surprising to me as it could be to someone else.”

Gomez looked her in the eyes and started to smile.

“So… Mrs. Milton. What else do you have to show me?”

The spread parchments were a sight. But what had been surprising was the sheer variety of those that Gomez had been able to activate. He could activate all of the single qualities or the Level one when he held them, which was not a big surprise for Johanna if she trusted Laura’s model of accumulating currency. An older man like Professor Gomez ought to have lots of spare.

No, the real surprise was that, while he could not activate any of the four representing their own Talent sets, nor Monger, Maker, Explorer, or Duelist, he seemingly qualified for both Fixer and Sentinel. That surprised Johanna, who had somehow expected that each person would have a very specific specialization available… and nothing else. Petra being shifted from a water-slash-ice adept to an Earth Shaper instead was part of the source of that idea.

Not only that, but he had been able to activate only a handful of the Talent parchments that had been made alongside those two, but not all of them.

“That’s not something I’d ever expected to see. Because even if you study Talents, and get sometimes to do interviews and see first-hand actual magic… those insane-feeling parchments of yours are something else. I mean, it looks almost like paper, but it isn’t, not truly.”

“Our guess is that they’re like Artifacts. They have that same better-than-Ancient feel.”

“And just the fact that those ‘specializations’ won’t light when I hold them is an interesting fact as well.”

“How so?”

“Each element in them is something separate, I’d guess, given that you can have them individually. But the parchment is a whole. You need to be able to, well, make use of all the parts to make use of one. You don’t happen to have a Level and quality combined parchment without anything else?”

“Uh, no.”

Then Johanna realized she had something else to offer.

“I have a notebook where I recorded all the combinations we got, not just the ones left over, though.”

“Oh, you did? I commend you. Half of my students wouldn’t even think of doing that, I’m afraid.”

The professor was looking cursorily through the notebook.

“Just browsing that, I already get a few interesting ideas. And frankly, weird ones too.”

“It’s all we got. So far, that is. But we have names, some matches to the Mage compendium, and some correlations, at least,” Johanna replied.

“Hmm… You’re sure of those Shaper variants?”

“At least twice, I’ve seen the basic Shaper designation appear. And we had one sort-of graduate to Fire Shaper. Based on that, I think the other Shaper – someone we granted powers back in the Montana – can become a Metal Shaper one day.”

“Hmmm…” Gomez muttered. “That’s interesting.”

“In what way?” she asked.

“What do you know of Erlangs?” he asked back, almost off-handedly.

“Tall with three eyes. Supposed to be more magical than most. And of course, the two expatriates that are listed in the Mages of America.”

“Well, the Erlang have a high council. The foremost five mages of that species that are currently alive, one per sphere of magic. Those spheres are Fire, Earth, Water… Wood. And Metal.”

“So, they’ve guessed at some of the Shaper specializations?”

“These five spheres of magic are an old part of the Chinese philosophy, which is the Erlang’s Ancient homeland. Their five elements theory predates the Fall – and Talents – by thousands of years.”

Johanna stopped, looking at the scholar in incredulity.

“Strange, isn’t it? Your five magic specializations directly echo Chinese magic. And China seems to have the most prosperous and most magical Changed Species.”

She blinked.

“Congratulations, Mrs. Milton. You are making this academic very, very confused, and thus, very, very happy.”