Dave Cameron was the scientist leading the team tasked with unveiling the intricate mysteries of magic. He was supposed to understand the nature mana as an agent of the universe, to discern whether mana was a particle, a force, or anything in between. He was supposed to come up with a theory of it, a sort of foundation upon which to build everything that would come afterwards.
Of course, this was all wrong. The best approximation of a theory that he had was phenomenological, not fundamental. He had done experiments with the magic manipulation tools he had been given and had recorded the data, formulating hypotheses but coming no closer to understanding exactly what mana was than he was before he even knew of its existence.
“You don’t know jack shit, is what you are saying.” Lloyd Cromwell said, eyeing Dave with a sadistic smirk.
“We only have phenomenological evidence of certain processes. And even then, not all experiments agree with each other. If only we could figure out an experiment to reveal the fundamental nature of mana as either a lepton, or a boson…”
“Then you would have nothing. Look at actual physics. There is no magic involved there, it should be easy, right? Instead, all you have is a bloated, complicated model full of particles you don’t understand working in ways you don’t understand.”
“But it gives us tremendous predicting powers.” Dave shot back.
“True that. But what was it built upon?” Lloyd asked.
Dave inhaled. The man was leading him towards something, wasn’t he? “A paradigm shift from classical physics onto the quantum world.”
Lloyd shook his head. “Nu-hu. The paradigm shift is a myth. The building blocks for quantum physics were already there well before the photoelectric effect in Einstein’s paper. They got as close as defining mass-energy equivalence well before special relativity. It was still classical mechanics and yet, it was oh-so-close. If only they abandoned the concept of the Ether, they could have beat Einstein to it.”
“What’s your point?”
“You shouldn’t try to build a model from the bottom, if you don’t know anything about what you are studying. String theory did that and failed multiple times.”
“…I shouldn’t disregard phenomenological studies.”
“Correct. You have the opportunity to be the next Aristotle. Just don’t make the same mistake of assuming things you don’t know. His botched acceleration equations cost us centuries of scientific advancement.”
“But… it would be an incomplete and approximate theory.”
“And yet, without the incomplete theory we wouldn’t have the more complete one. Which, I remind you, is still not complete. Just focus on not being utterly wrong and it’s fine.”
“I understand.”
“We built a whole industrial society well before the quantum revolution, son. Don’t try to invent quantum processors before transistors, alright? We don’t know anything about magic yet, except that it’s different than anything we have seen before. Apply the scientific method as what it is, a method, and don’t let the pitfalls of modern particle physics slow you down. What do we know?”
“Okay.” Dave paused to gather his thoughts. “From my observations, magic responds to intent. At the same time, it also appears to have some rudimentary form of intent of its own. The Lair seems to agree. In fact, it said that it’s looking for a neuroscientist with the right background to join the team.”
“Great! That’s great progress, son. Really good. See? It wasn’t so hard.”
“Thank you, sir. And, please, forgive me if I disrespected you earlier.”
“It’s okay. We are all grown men here. Old men, in my case. Now, how are we on measuring mana amounts, and how much mana it takes to do things?”
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“We are using your grandson’s units of measurement, sir. FU, Fireball Units. It seemed appropriate.”
“That’s nice.”
“We have found a way to detect the amount of FU contained in the wands, and it matches what the Lair claims it’s putting in when it recharges them. We are struggling to find a direct correlation between FU amounts and the wand’s effectiveness on the environment, however.”
“Did you set up an experiment?”
“We have. We found out that the same Level-one fireball, shot by the same person, delivers a variable amount of energy to a target. This fluctuation becomes a full order of magnitude bigger when we change subjects.”
“It’s related to intent.”
“Mental image seems to be an influence. We are waiting for the neuroscientist and an MRI machine to conduct further experiments.”
“Great! Keep up the good work.”
***
The shift in attitude was exactly what Dave needed, turning frustrating experiments into exciting opportunities to learn. While before he felt defeated by the ineffable nature of this strange phenomenon, which eluded all attempts at confining it within a theory, now he felt like a pioneer in a field that was as vast as was exciting.
The prospects of all he could learn, of the power that could be harnessed from magic, were intoxicating.
The only limit was imagination. How could someone come up with a set of rules to explain a phenomenon that by definition acted outside all rules? He didn't know, yet. But he didn't need to. For now, all that mattered was finding new and exciting ways to use magic.
Could he turn his prototype detectors into tools to manipulate raw magic? What could he do then? Could he change what the wands did? Make new ones? Could he shape mana into circuits, make it perform intent-guided computation?
The only way to find out was to try, and with each failed or successful attempt, more data was gathered towards the creation of a working model for magic. The same experiment could be repeated by multiple people and even by the same person but under different conditions. What if a computer used a wand? What if a magic entity, made out of mana, used one?
Could a normal human be turned into a magic user somehow?
Dave didn't know, but he couldn't wait to find out. There was a lot of work to do, and no time to waste!
Dave's previous closed mindset had been the result of many years of particle physics. A skewed approach to science was common in the field, where many fellow scientists fell into the trap of thinking that perhaps, maybe just one more variable, one more equation, one more particle would fix their incomplete model of the universe. It was only when he came back to the lab, however, that he finally understood why Lloyd had been so harsh with his lecture.
"Did we incorporate the Cromwell data?" He asked a fellow researcher.
"The HDF data the boss gave us? No. It's bad data."
Dave's face scrunched up. "What do you mean bad data? Did she set up the experiments wrong?"
"No, but they are all outliers. They don't fit well."
Dave scoffed. "There is no such thing as bad data unless the experiment was done wrong. It's just data. We can't just ignore it because it doesn't fit nicely with our models!"
The other researcher paused. She adjusted her glasses, looking at Dave like he was the antichrist. Now he understood.
He took a deep breath, and began his lecture. "We are trying to build a model from the bottom, you know? It's the wrong approach..."
***
Samantha Cromwell walked towards the Tower. She headed for the portal straight away, answering the summon from her father. She could have teleported, but with a limited supply of wands she only used spells when it was strictly necessary. They could always be recharged, of course, but with one having already broken down she now knew she had a dwindling supply.
There were teams of scientists working at Site A devoted to finding a way to replicate wands, but so far none of them had delivered any tangible results. They had managed, in the last few weeks, to weakly infuse a material with mana, improving the tensile strength of a bar of steel by 5% after a team of mana-attuned researchers infused it for 12 days straight. But that was that. Something Albert did in less than an afternoon took them weeks to do, making progress quite slow.
“Look at this.” Lloyd said as soon as she entered the room.
“A storm over Tryte. What's the news? It's been like this for weeks.”
“Look better.” He said.
“Let's see. Oh. I see it now. A secondary vortex. That's not good.” Samantha said, adjusting her glasses and shifting her weight to her hands as she leaned on the steel desk.
“A localized secondary vortex.” Lloyd corrected her.
“Can we switch to magic sight?”
“That's the problem. There is an HDF satellite in a geostationary orbit right up above Tryte. Guess what? Unscheduled maintenance. Suspicious, no?” The old man shook his head.
“Quite.”
“We need to do something about it, Sam.”
Samantha inhaled. “We are planning to do our own satellite launches, dad. But it’s a long process. I just got the okay from the CEO to build a site in California, then we need to either take control of a company that has space launch capabilities or open yet another division at Site A. Then… other stuff. You know the drill.”
“Right.”
“In the meantime, we still have a pretty good picture. It looks like… something is leaking out of the exclusion zone near one of the pylons.”
“…Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a plan, Sam?”