With renewed vigour of leading the “discovery” of the century/millenia, I grab the paper again and start sketching a coil of wire. I try to illustrate that the wire itself creates a magnetic field around it, circularly, and by coiling it, it adds per coil.
Looking at the others, they are nodding, but none of them are looking at me. Instead, they are looking at the electromagnet I made.
Changing tactics, I pass them the electromagnet, still hooked to my phone. Very carefully, Thallion grabs the coil with another cloth and examines it. Seeing no moving parts, he brings it close to the coins, which move and stick to it.
“I’ve never seen anything like it! Motion at a distance. No contact, no connection. The ability to transfer energy over distance with this technology is immense!”
I lean in to correct him that it cannot transfer energy or material over long distances, but then I remember the electric grid, and maglevs, and just nod and shrug in agreement. If only I could talk to them more easily! This is becoming painful to continue! All these ideas and no way to transfer them!
Putting that aside for now, I zone back in seeing that they have all passed the magnet around and played with it a bit. I then unplug it from my phone to save as much power as possible.
Going back to offline wikipedia, I open up the entry on DC motors. They are a bit simpler to make, and do not require DC power to run unlike synchronous AC, although I will have to replace it with a synchronous in the future. I start sketching a very crude example of the stator, with its 2 curved magnets inside a hollow tube. I see Silvra taking notes, doing a better job of sketching what I am making than what I am making myself. How? No clue, another question to ask once I figure out how to communicate verbally. Anyways, I start sketching the rotor. I am doing a very basic 2 pole design, with only a current in and current out, with many loops in that one section.
“Looking at this, it looks like it should spin…” Silvra notes, continuing to sketch.
“Yes!” I exclaim, nodding my head.
“But why do you want to make something spin? That won’t help you. And at this scale, spinning anything is not worth losing whatever the glowy brick is doing to give you these ideas.”
I stop. Taking a deep breath, I start a new sketch, with a river, turning into a waterfall and flowing rapidly. I then draw a water wheel, and an arrow pointing my motor sketch to its centre.
“Well that’s not going to do much, spinning a thing in the water will not make it flow faster,” Silvra remarks.
“No… but the water will spin the wheel.” Thallion states ponderously.
Suddenly Lena bursts out, “You mean that this thing is reversible?!”
Nodding again, I finish my sketch by adding wires coming off of the motor, turned generator, and into my phone. Drawing a little battery symbol and happy face to top it off.
“If we can make
She continues: “What do we need to do this? Materials, people, anything! This is not just a toy, this could feed an entire paradigm shift”
Thallion, hearing paradigm shift, replies: “Let’s not get too hasty, so far we have just a sketch on some paper, and for all we know, this has some other limit that prevents it from working long term.”
I shake my head, thinking of the generators whose hearts have been going for almost a century with just maintenance and a lot of grease.
“No?! Then how.. Where… what… you are very lost. You have limitless supplies of free energy, capable of doing all the things we do, but without living cost. The light you made glow, that was at the level of an elf being accepted into the mage academy, they could only maintain it for a few seconds. Your brick did more than that before you stopped it. How much energy are we talking about here?”
I begin to draw, first a house, then multiple houses, stacked on top of each other, I draw a tower, a building, a skyscraper, each using the house as scale. I then take the skyscraper and group them together, forming a city, drawing roads between them.
I then draw a map of what I have seen of the village, a few houses, Kidman’s place, the schoolhouse and the river.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
I draw a circle around that, showing the size of the village. Placing a smaller circle next to it, and an arrow pointing between the 2, I try and communicate scaling down. Thallion nods along. Lena, now seeing maps, catches on quickly. I then draw circles beside the first, representing small towns, cities, and finally large cities. I then draw a circle filling the entire page representing fractions of metropolises such as Tokyo, London, Toronto, New York, etc.
“B.. B.. But that many people… each with their own brick… and the ability to create that much living space… you truly are the summon. No one with this much power could be on the same planet as us without seeing us as weak, conquering us in days flat.” Thallion stammers out.
I nod as well, my facial expression souring based on the realization how much power I just showed them.
“But it still took centuries to get to that point, something we don’t have to worry about, so let’s get a list,” lena cheerfully interjects.
I start tallying. 1, 5 ,10 and circling the 10, I write “10” below it. Then I show 10 “10”s, and label that 100.
Thallion clues in immediately. “You’re base ten as well?! Great! That will make math translation so much easier!”
I circle the 100, and draw a picture of the sun, and a circle for the planet. I draw a circle around the sun, going through the planet.
“No, no way… only one hundred?” Thallion remarks
“One hundred what?” Lena chimes in.
“His society went from us to that, in one hundred years. Because of what he just showed us.”
“WHAT?!” Lena and Silvra interject.
“Yes. At least from what I understand. Assuming he drew the sun and the object going around it is us, which is still debated in research, it took 100 cycles to do that. 100 cycles is one. Hundred. Years. That’s it.”
I nod, confirming what he said. Sure there were a few large cities pre electrification, but it is due to the ability to transmit this energy we have mega cities.
Thallion goes over and collapses into the chair, realizing what I just shared. Lena and Silvra are equally stunned, but remain on their feet, possibly not grasping the full impact of what I have shown them.
“I don’t know if I want to go through with this.” Thallion states, forehead on hands in deep contemplation and fear. “The amount of power he just showed, and if this goes wrong, the amount of power that can go to the wrong side…”
I start backing away from him, grabbing my phone and backpack, getting ready to run if it does come down to that.
“I am not going to hurt you. The damage is done. We know it’s possible. We know the scale of change this will do.”
I settle down a bit, less scared for my life than I was a few seconds ago.
“Look, Thal, we saw the level of change it can cause, but it does not have to.”
“It does, energy is power. Literally, and what he is saying is that we can have limitless power with no living involvement. Next he’ll say that it can occur with nothing more than a basic button and run forever, travel across vast distances and literally be nothing but water! That amount of power diverted into anything is terrifying! And to have it without needing intent, desire, or any knowledge or wisdom about it is insane! We know he does not need intent, he put the brick down and passed the device! It is alive and lives beyond his control. Technically with Silvra’s readings, it is more alive than he is!”
“I want to learn more, but right now, unleashing this on the world without realizing what it could do is just asking for a catastrophe.”
Thinking about all of the death and destruction, famine, overshoot, climate issues and how much the planet is dying, I nod slowly in minor agreement.
“You are a teacher!” Silvra suddenly interjects. “Where is your love of knowledge, the thirst for wisdom, and the desire to ask why and how?! You are different than most scholars, you know what can happen, but what if we don’t? Do you want to live like this forever, in some small village, teaching the same things over and over again? Never learning something new? We are here to learn! Just because we now have access to a small sliver does not mean we won’t learn the lessons his people went through! In fact, he will probably tell us!”
“That’s the issue! We will learn why, but not grasp it! The difference between knowledge and wisdom is not the info, but how it is held. Knowledge can be lost, made, found, used, transferred! Wisdom is structured knowledge. We need to learn the past to build the present. Sure we can get some fancy information, but unless we truly understand in our hearts what we are doing, with the full intent of it, we truly do not know. We have, but do not grasp!”
Thallion, collapses back onto the chair, rubbing his knee and chest, coughing slightly.
“Then we make the wisdom on the way!” Lena states, talking for the first time in a long while. “We may not have the wisdom, but without knowledge we are nothing, and if we have access to the knowledge, we can steer what happens. We can pass the info along, noting and teaching as needed. I would be dead if I had to figure out that the grackle berry bushes were poisonous after they turn red, but are extremely valuable as food when green or blue! I learned that from our mother! I did not need to learn the lesson directly, but by getting the full story.”
“We bit the apple long ago, might as well eat the rest, and approach with caution and humility, for this much power can corrupt, but can also be molded into something much better.”
Sighing, Thallion repositions himself in his chair. “Sister, you are right. We should not give up just because we can see a possible path. The pages of the future are not written yet, but let’s approach with caution, writing down everything, good and bad that comes of this.”
Seeing resolution and it not involving killing me, I settle back down, and continue to sketch the rotor.