CHAPTER FOUR:
RUBBER DUCK
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Adi rolled from counter to counter, touching gemstones. At first, nothing happened. But then she found there was a repeating set of stones at regular intervals, like stations in a computer room. Situated at the center and back of each was a large, clear stone. When she touched those, finally screens started appearing, lighting up the walls. Soon, she had every wall lit up.
The displays, almost like webpage directories, were dedicated to different categories, if the items on the lists were anything to judge by. There were panels for communications, diagnostics, local information, general subroutines, and a few others.
It took her a little longer to figure out how to maneuver around the screen and select things. She smacked a lot of gems, trying to get anything to happen, beginning to worry that the stations took magical proficiency to operate. But eventually, she discovered a gemstone in the middle of a spread that rolled in place, causing a target cursor to pop up on the screen. Finally, she navigated into a folder and kept clicking on things until finally, she got to a program that filled the screen with symbology and meaningless words. Aha. She couldn't say for sure, but this looked like code, and code was something she could do.
"What makes up the 1s and 0s of magic?" Adi wanted to know. Eurias, enraptured, didn't look up from the book, even at his name. Using her foot, she pushed off the counter and rolled across the floor to him. He started when she nudged him. Now with his ears fully focused on her, she repeated her question.
"Plenty of scholars have gone over the mathematical harmonies, implications, and usages of magic," Eurias said, shifting to flip through the book. "I don't think this has any information on—"
"No, no," Adi said. "I meant the binary. What is the basis of magic?"
"Mana, of course."
"I'm pretty sure mana is the power source, like the battery."
He blinked slowly at her, as if she'd said something inane. "Yes."
Adi steepled her fingers, angling them at him. "It's not both," she said. "Mana is what makes it go, not what tells it what to do."
"That's what spells are for," Eurias said, attention starting to drift back to the book.
"No—uh, yes, but no. This—" She gestured around at the ground. "Is what we can understand. This isn't how magic talks, because there are multiple magic languages."
The serthyen's head tilted. "Magic languages," he repeated slowly, then straightened. "You mean how different races shape mana in varying ways."
"Yes," she said. "So this is like, human magic, right? And serthyens have serthyen magic or whatever."
"Serthyens aren't [Magical]," he said, chest puffing once again in pride. "But I understand. Continue."
Adi started up again, but paused. "Races don't have multiple magical languages?"
"No, of course not. That would be inefficient."
"So every race is equally good at every area of magic?"
Eurias' eyes narrowed as if sensing a trap, but his ears were still forward in attention. "...No. [XRACE]'s offensive magic is considered the speediest, and [YRACE]'s healing spells are beyond compare."
"See?" Adi said. "The magical languages process information of the magical binary differently."
"What is this binary you keep mentioning?"
"We had things called computers," Adi said. "They operate on two numbers: 1 and 0. That's the binary."
Eurias' nose scrunched. "They must not be very complicated at all."
"You wouldn't think so, but they are," she said. "You can program anything with 1 and 0, on or off, true or false, yes or no. Magical languages are analogous to computer languages. The higher level the computer languages are, like Python or HTML, the easier it is for the user to learn and use. But though they're harder to learn, lower level languages give you a lot of control, like sometimes too much."
"I understood almost none of that."
"That's okay, just be my rubber duck. We're missing something that translates spells into magic executables, some kind of magic compiler. What's the origin of magic?"
Eurias' nose scrunched. "Magic... is," he said. "It's fundamental."
"But how did anybody first learn to tap into it?"
"The System, obviously."
"Magic was used to make the System." She gestured at the floor.
Eurias' ears went back as he considered the spellwork, and he clasped his hands in front of himself. "The System wasn't... it can't have been created. That's not what..." He struggled. "It's always been. It's supposed to be all-powerful. But..." He sat back in his seat unhappily. "If it needs someone to fix it, it can't be omnipotent."
She nodded. "The sentient races now—they've always had the System?"
He looked down at his hands. "As far as there's written or oral record."
"Then this universe's humans probably went extinct before any of you ever came to be," Adi said. The thought of it—to create something so huge and amazing for the explicit purpose of cultivating new intelligent life, then to die before it ever came to fruition—was tragic.
"That probably means that if there's any kind of compiler, it's on this planet. Maybe these CPUs store them." She sighed as she looked around. "Now if only I could make sense of any of it." She should have asked the System for a manual.
"This teaches the components of magical spells," Eurias said, patting the book. "It's more in-depth than I've ever seen."
"Really?" She reached over and slid the book away from him, flipping to the front. He crowded in over her shoulder.
"The index is in the back," he said when it became clear she was looking for something.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Adi went to the back instead, grumbling about tables of contents, then started looking over the topics. After a brief search, she found that nothing matched what she saw on the screens, though she could see similarities in the painted spell work of the room.
"This must be higher level," she mumbled to herself, looking at the screen. "What's on the CPUs is more like C or Fortran. But if it doesn't have the ability to maintain itself, or wasn't meant to for long, there's gotta be instructions somewhere."
Eurias took her moment of distraction to steal back the book. Rolling away, she started going through files on the general subroutines and diagnostic stations.
"Aha!" she said as she clicked on 'Help Manual' in a pathway in the diagnostic folders. "Thank god—noooooo, fucking hell." Adi groaned and softly thudded her head against the counter top.
A clip-clip proceeded Eurias zipping over. "'Fornicating eternal punishment' is an interesting exclamation. What is the issue?"
She gestured in disgust at the screen in front of her, which had gone blank save for the words 'Network Unavailable.' "It's a link. Because why store important servicing information locally? That would be too easy."
The serthyen took a moment to puzzle through her words. "A reference to where?"
"A damn good question," she sighed. "It could be anywhere on the planet."
"That's... bad news."
Adi laughed with a groan. "Yeah." Sitting up and back, she rubbed her temples. "Alright. I need a notebook." She rolled over to her bag, and stuck her arm in. The System had taken her advice and granted her several magical items, including the dimensional bag. Adi had to admit it was pretty sick. She pulled out a leather journal and some colored pens—a few last-minute add-ons in negotiations.
Leaving the first few pages for her Table of Contents, she titled her blank page "SOFTWARE TO-DO" with a pink pen and made a list:
1. Find a fucking manual
2. Learn magical code
3. Restore global? network
4. Outline System code
5. Fix System bugs and shit
Even if she could get a printout of the code, it was too much to go through. The System's code was too much for one person. The original project had likely had hundreds, if not thousands, of people working on it, just for the sheer scope of it. She scribbled on her list again.
2. and Teach Eurias how to code
"Global network," she mumbled. "Maybe I can..." Zipping to the communications station, she dove into the folders.
"Finally!" Adi said. "Now we're getting somewhere."
Eurias, perhaps becoming more invested in what she was doing, scooted over again. "'Site-to-site network'?"
"With any luck..." Adi said, opening up 'Processors in Network.' The file filled the page.
In the center of the screen was "CPU 1138" above a sky blue dot. Another blue dot was off to the left, and four on the other side were grayed out.
"Gentlemen, we have our heading," Adi said in her best Jack Sparrow voice. "One of these four, anyways." She moused over each of them, the message 'Unreachable' popping up for each of them.
"What do the colors mean?" Eurias wanted to know.
"These ones are online," she said, pointing. "We're this one here, and we can communicate with CPU 4803. These other four—613, 1070, 2023, 2409—are offline. They're not broadcasting a signal." There was a tab off to the left with an arrow, and she clicked to expand it. A column of icons appeared. One was labeled 'options.' Thank god they had some decent GUI.
Adi hit 'show distance' and arrow lines popped up between the dots with measurements. "Looks like this world went metric," she mumbled to herself, wondering how the influence of magic might change history. "Nice."
"How vast is a single kilometer?" Eurias asked with that odd inflection on 'kilometer.'
Adi ran her fingers through her braids as she sat back. "Assuming that this world's measurements are the same as mine, a meter is about as big as a yard, which is three feet, if a kilo is 1000, then a kilometer is like 3000 feet. I think a mile is like 5000 feet?"
Eurias attempted to parse through that, eyes narrowed slightly. "Do you use your own feet as measurement?"
Adi laughed. "Some dead guy's foot, I think. Um, a single foot is like ... this big." She held her hands up in approximation. "This room is like... 15 by 25 feet."
"And a kilometer is... 3000 of these."
"I was never very good with distance," she confessed. "But this one is the closest." She pointed at CPU 1070. "53 kilometers is uh..." She flipped to an empty page in her journal, doing a quick calculation. "Like 33 miles. Average human walks..."
Adi searched around the desk, under her journal and around the edges. It took her a second to realize she was looking for her phone. She stopped and sighed. "I miss Google."
"If an average human can survive months without food," Eurias said nervously, "I am not sure I would like to know your average speed."
"Okay, it's probably not months, more like weeks, and it's not like we operate well when we're hungry." She tapped her fingers against the counter. "I bet we can do ten miles in a day." Provided they could find food. Adi hoped her 9 ranks in Woodland Survival would be enough to get them by.
"We can't leave." Adi looked at him. He held up a graceful hand to forestall her objections. "I've resigned myself to traveling, but we need time to learn and make a few readied items. Something to cast with would be wise, as this is a written language and I, for one, shouldn't like to kneel in the dirt."
"Oh. What do we need?"
"A stone," he said. "The harder and more translucent, the better."
"Probably not gonna find a diamond around here," Adi said. Then she stopped, glancing up at Eurias' jewelry. "What kind of rocks you got on there?"
Eurias held a protective hand up. "No! They're too small. The most they're useful for is mana storage."
The claim was dubious, but Adi let it slide. "Okay, how big are we talking?"
He rounded his thumb and index finger, touching them together to about the size of a nickel or quarter. "I believe roughly this size for a wand. That should let us cast and store a couple of spells. Bigger is fine, but it might become somewhat unwieldy. Hardly fashionable, that."
"I know basically nothing about rocks," Adi said. "Or magic, since you've hoarded the book."
"You've been busy!" Eurias said defensively.
Adi laughed. "Which is more important: clearness or hardness? I'm sure I can find hard rocks on the beach, but I'm not sure about clear ones."
The serthyen scratched his cheek. "I think clarity is more about impurities." He turned his attention back to the book, flipping to some part in the middle. From it, using a finger to follow along, he read: "Sediment or flaws creates fissures from which mana can escape. To ensure casting success and accuracy, use gemstones that are clear and hard. Enhance gemstone capabilities through lapidary."
"The hell is lapidary?"
"Gem cutting," he said. "Too bad we don't have any lapidaries. It says here quartz is the most common gemstone used in casting, and it appears in a variety of colors and forms. Diamonds are preferable due to their extreme hardness, but they are riskier to secure and thus reserved for higher class spells." He rubbed his nose. "Diamonds are prettier anyways; no sense using them for basic spellwork."
"Did the book say that?"
"No, that was me."
"Nerd."
Eurias opened his mouth, then closed it. "How can 'smart' be (derogatory)?"
She puzzled over the question, then laughed. There was no equivalent in his language, so the translation had provided context. "'Nerd' used to be an insult. Like, a nerdy person was an uncool, obsessive social shut-in."
"Oh," Eurias said, ears falling fractionally.
"No no no," Adi said. "Even if you are an obsessive shut-in it's not really an insult anymore. Unless you're like, twelve. And—" She stopped, once again remembering she didn't know his age. "You're not twelve, right? Not an adolescent?"
"I'm an adult," he said, voice offended though his ears didn't show it. "I'm twenty-three by Sistrosie. Serthyens are considered fully maturated at nineteen."
"You're older than me? No way."
Eurias looked pleased by the information, chest puffing. "And how old would you be?"
"Twenty-two. Depends on the country, but eighteen to twenty-one is considered adulthood." She didn't tell him that human brains didn't stop developing until late twenties. His ego didn't need help. "What did you mean 'by Sistrosie'?"
"Sistrosie has a cycle of 378 days," he said. "It is used as the common metric for age."
"Oh, that would make you..." She scribbled a quick calculation on her pages. "About seventy days younger than twenty-four in Earth years. Our years are 365 days." Another calculation let her see she was twenty-one-and-a-quarter by Eurias' metric.
The two of them chatted a little more before Adi ushered them back to work, remembering their limited rations. She needed to record every detail of this place—the layout of the stations, the kind of stations, the gemstones used (Eurias was handy, there), the physical spells connecting everything, the distances between the CPU buildings and their current statuses, and the symbols in the CPU's code.