Jeb watched his hours of work go up in flames. As beautiful as it was to watch the flickering light, he did have a slight concern about having a fire in the middle of the Stacks. When he saw that Margaret was not concerned, however, Jeb stopped thinking about the potential side effects of the pages catching fire and started thinking about the side effects in the runes that had led to the page catching fire. Try as he might, though, Jeb could not find an answer. The fact that his Professor had cycled through all different colors of light made him assume that the error came from some color.
Professor Bearson took pity on him and explained, “the runes you used were only meant to work over visible light. There are infinite shades of light that are not visible. You did a fantastic job of foreseeing many edge cases, but runes are not fundamental because of their standard usage. They are fundamental because they cover every possible edge case inherently.”
“So I was wrong?” Jeb asked, gesturing at the page, “this is a complete set of fundamental runes?”
Bearson bobbed his head, as though debating how to answer. “Not quite,” he admitted, “though not for the reason you proposed. In fact, this set of runes is not taught as a complete set. It is missing this fundamental rune,” he quickly drew another shape on the page, “which only comes up very rarely. I do not imagine that you will need it for your project, but I do believe in rewarding inquiry.”
“What does this rune do?” Jeb asked. Nothing in his System seemed to give any clues, but something inside of Jeb instinctively flinched away from it.
“How much do you want me to answer that question?” Bearson asked, tone suddenly serious.
“Not that much?” Jeb replied quickly. “I was simply curious.”
“Both of our lives will become more difficult for the next few years if I give you the answer to that question. With that in mind, I will not answer it at this time, though please do feel free to ask again in the future if it becomes relevant later.”
The two stood around for a few moments, both clearly feeling somewhat awkward about that interaction. Margaret finally piped up, “how do you plan to start this project?”
Both Jeb and Bearson jumped slightly. They had clearly forgotten that she was in the room with them.
“Right now!” Jeb said excitedly, turning to make sure that the Professor agreed with his enthusiasm. Bearson was nodding along, and turned to face Jeb.
“How would you begin?” the Professor asked him.
“Monitoring the health of a plant seems like the most important place,” Jeb responded hesitantly. Seeing the Professor continue to nod approvingly, he started to sketch out a potential way to monitor the health of a plant, glossing over most of the details. Bearson put a large hand on above the page, interrupting Jeb’s work.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Jeb frowned, “working on an Enchantment to monitor the health of a plant. Is that not where I should start?”
“No, it is,” Bearson replied, “but why are you recreating one from first principles? Any of these texts,” he gestured to the pile of books that seemed to have grown, “has at least half a dozen different Enchantments to identify living objects. Truthfully, I would be shocked if most of these books did not have an Enchantment designed specifically to monitor a plant.”
Jeb held up a finger, ready to rebut what the Professor had said. Try as he might, though, Jeb was unable to think of a reason that he should remake the Enchantment from scratch. Bearson smiled.
“Although I do believe that the way we teach Theoretical Enchanting includes vital pedagogy for developing Enchanters, it does predispose students to certain blind spots. The thought that every project needs to be reinvented from the lowest possible level is one of them. Imagine you were trying to dig a hole. Would you go purchase a shovel, or would you build a forge, find ores in the earth, and then refine them into metal, before forging it into a shovel?”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Jeb thought he understood the metaphor that the Professor was aiming for, but just to be certain, he replied, “if I was trying to dig a hole in the ground, I would likely just use a Glyph to move the soil.”
Professor Bearson let out a deep sigh. Margaret let out a small chuckle.
Jeb continued, “I think that I see your point, however. There’s no point in repeating a derivation when all I care about is the result.” He opened the book on the top of the pile and started flipping through it. Looking at the options, Jeb quickly realized that he was not actually interested in something which monitored the health of a plant. Any Enchantment he could make would only tell him something that he could see with his own eyes. Next to an Enchantment which would monitor the plant’s health, he found an Enchantment to measure the moisture content in the soil.
“Aha!” Jeb said, quickly noting the page down. Flipping through the book with a renewed vigor, he found Enchantments which would measure the temperature and air content of the soil. As he went through the rest of the books, Jeb was able to find Enchantments for nearly every aspect of the ground. Of course, different Enchanters started from different fundamental sets of runes. More than that, though, each Enchanter had their own style for crafting an Enchantment. Whether it was as small as a seemingly decorative swirl in one rune, or something as fundamental as the syntax they used to connect the words, it made Jeb nervous to try to assemble them all into a single large Enchantment.
Bearson spoke up, “is something the matter?”
“I don’t have any idea how I can combine all of these Enchantments into a single piece,” Jeb said.
The Professor walked over, frowning slightly. “Is there a reason that you are so focused on soil health, rather than the health of a plant?” he asked.
“Um,” Jeb began, “I thought that it was more important to measure the health of the soil, because that will be most of what makes plants healthy. If the soil is too dry, the plant will start to dry out.”
“So you have decided to shift to measuring at a larger scope, rather than monitoring the instantaneous health of the plants you grow?”
Jeb grimaced. “When you frame it like that, no, that does not sound like my ideal.”
“It seems as though you have an Enchantment to measure each element of the soil independently. Would you be able to assemble a similar list for what parts of a plant you would be interested in measuring?”
Jeb pulled out another sheet of paper and began to write the different needs of plants. Every plant needed the proper nutrients at the proper amount, of course. They needed to have the right hydration, and each needed to get the proper amount of sunlight. That would suffice for mundane plants.
For Magical plants, however, there were other considerations. Alchemical plants needed to have the proper Essences surrounding them, and plants for Alchemy needed to have the proper Mana Attunements and the right density of Mana. How, exactly, Jeb could measure those, he was less sure.
Professor Bearson nodded at the list. “What comes next?”
Jeb thought about it. “My first instinct would just be to monitor the different levels in aggregate over the entire field.”
Bearson raised a hand, but Jeb hurried to continue, “I see where that will not work, however. If I put a solid chunk of phosphorus in the middle of the field, then the plants closest to it will be exposed to far too much. The plants at the edges of the field, by contrast, are unlikely to feel any of the new mineral. However, I also do not think that I need to measure every individual plant,” he continued, thinking aloud. “If two plants are directly next to each other, they should be experiencing very similar environments. If they are not, then I probably have larger issues than I would trust to an automated Enchantment.”
“You can wait to decide on the size of the Enchantment,” Bearson said, pulling Jeb out of the weeds. “Measuring the different levels of nutrients is only part of your goal, correct?”
Jeb nodded. “Ideally, the system would correct deficiencies.”
“And how would you do that?”
Jeb paused. “Is there a reason that ‘add more of the missing nutrient’ would not work?”
Professor Bearson shrugged. “I will be honest, I do not have much experience with the maintenance of plant health.”
“Then yes, I think that it would be best to just add the nutrient.” Jeb started flipping through the book to find an Enchantment to create water or light or any of the different other minerals.
“What are you doing?” Bearson asked. Jeb explained, and Bearson shook his head. “It would be far easier to make an Enchantment which simply distributes the different minerals, assuming that it is not difficult to procure the different materials.”
“Why?” Jeb asked.
“Two reasons,” Bearson held up his thick fingers, “producing materials is very Magically intensive, especially compared to simply moving them. As long as you are planning to monitor the Enchantment, at least slightly, there is no reason that you would need to prepare the Enchantment to work indefinetely. More importantly, though, the fewer pieces that can break in a prototype, the better. Even if the final version of this independent study results in you creating the materials, it is best to leave that for later.”
Jeb nodded and started sketching out the newest version of the Enchantment.