---James---
James was trying. Trying to get stronger. His goal was to learn ‘all about’ aether.
'R' had even helped direct him – the little gnome had told him to go to some classes. For some reason, the city he had been directed to had free drop-in schooling from an elementary level to what he could only refer to as ‘university level’ – all in the same place that simply translated to ‘school’.
And so that was one of the first places they went to as soon as they reached the city.
Stable was…different. It was a city in the truest sense – with hundreds of large metal and glass skyscrapers but immediately stuff looked ‘off’. The outer section was surrounded by laser turrets like something out of a real time strategy game. Once you entered the city the differences looked even more off.
The first landmark that drew the eye was the center of the city. A single skyscraper towered above the rest in roughly the center of settlement. It had to be 800 to 900 meters tall at least. Nearly a kilometer to the 100-150m of the rest of the skyscrapers.
The second point to focus on was the architecture. Every single ‘skyscraper’ was a triangle – not a pyramid, a triangular prism going up dozens of floors. Some had a tiny pointy pyramid on top like an obelisk, but most were simply clean boxy prisms.
The floorplan of the ‘city’ was…almost honeycomb esque. Parallel ‘streets’ in three different planes created equilateral triangles around each tower. The next major fact of this city was the streets themselves – they weren’t built with vehicles in mind. Instead of cement sidewalks rimming two to four lanes of traffic, the middle of every ‘street’ contained four lanes of constantly moving sidewalk. There were a few suspended monorail-style trains but the majority of people just stood on the sidewalks. The sidewalks were simple things – less closed off than the ones at airports and more fluid somehow. Fast lanes in the middle slow lanes on the outside. Weirdly shaped roundabouts at every single intersection that passed traffic between the lines and let you switch directions – supposedly you were supposed to turn around at a roundabout rather than 'crossing the middle' of the street but many jumped between the two sections without a care for safety.
James, the player who seemed unnecessarily interested in him – he had introduced himself as ‘Richard’ – and a ‘guide’ they had been given by the city, all stepped onto a moving sidewalk and sped up quickly.
As they ‘flew’ through the urban sprawl, James found himself staring about despite himself. This was…a hell of a lot more exciting than Toronto. There was a certain kind of freedom to cities – in towns you always had to worry that someone that knew you might be watching and judging but, in a city, so many people were out it was almost like you wrapped around to being alone.
None of the people paid them any mind – the fashion spread was huge and what they were wearing didn't stand out. Richard had been given a pair of jean-like pants and a hoody as soon as he mentioned to the natives his fashion wasn't by choice. James didn’t normally care about clothes or fashion, but some of the residents had positively fantastical outfits. Flaming hair and clothing. Bands of ‘invisible’ material that made them look like their torso floated 50cm or so above their legs. Neon stripes running down their pants and jackets like something out of a cyberpunk movie – or even just subdued, simple, black business suits.
…James was never going back to being an office worker. The suits reminded him of his old job and his mood soured slightly.
Let’s just get to the school and see what we can learn as painlessly as possible.
…
They finally arrived at the ‘school’ – a bright skyscraper that took up three blocks, the triangles merging into a larger triangle.
As they walked towards the glass doors their guide quickly explained how the building was set up.
Kindergarten-level content was called a tier 0 class, while university-level content was referred to as a tier 16 or 17 class. The building was an eccentric shape – a corkscrew with only ‘one’ floor and a set of elevators in the center.
Peeking into room after room, James saw how the slightly sloped floor let teachers stand at the ‘bottom’ all the desks able to see above the people in front of them. The room shapes near the center of the tower were all much weirder than those at the edge – but those were strange as well no doubt due to the design choice to put a spiral in a triangular prism. This would have worked better as a cylinder if they really wanted a corkscrew, wouldn’t it? Why were none of the rooms square? It made everything feel strange…
Due to their age and partial citizenship, the classes weren’t ‘locked’ behind previous tiered prerequisites…but stepping into random rooms felt like being thrown into the deep end.
…
“In theoretical aether analysis, all forms of energy may be transformed into the aether domain with a series of simple formulas. In our previous class you may have remembered a quick review of Laplace and Fourier transforms. We will be building upon that today with Eriel and Lime transforms, applicable towards most P-type energies displayed in standard form. If we have time by the end of the session, we will review the inverse formulas and how energy may be extracted from the aether domain back to P-type energies.” A slightly robotic voice rang out in the classroom.
James pulled his head back out of tier 14 class and made to head to a new door.
“I remember Fourier transforms…they made more? Who’s this Lime fellow? That doesn’t sound like a real name.” Richard muttered beside him.
[Closed room theory is an important area of study – its important for all aether engineering but shows particular relevance in dungeon formation and direction. Can anyone give me a brief description of the model and some simple limitations currently preventing it from acquiring more practical use?] A wizened old woman spoke in a raspy untranslated tone while writing down her speech – her personal tablet translated the text up onto the board behind her. Pointing out a particularly peppy looking kid who couldn’t be much older than 12, the kid excitedly began to respond.
Closed room theory states, that by closing off a system such that no energy can be added or removed, the potential for aether to affect the system is exponentially increased.
As long as the total energy in the room doesn’t change, the amount of work applied by said energy is much larger than classically possible. Its why most dungeons have either a door or energy reflective fabric on the entrance. Its to help keep the system as a separate area. If it weren’t for the observity paradox this model would be used even more often.
[And what’s the observantly paradox?] The teacher asked smiling wildly.
The observity paradox states, that the ability for aether to effect an object is negatively effected by each observer added. A closed system can reach 100% efficiency if treated as a black box. However, if you can see what the aether is doing, or attempt to measure it, the efficiency is lowered.
Theoretically an aether system completely cut off from all human interference has the maximum potential. This phenomena is known as a paradox, because aether only works around life and only shows its true potential while linked to a human or other complex organism…it needs an observer to function despite being negatively effected by them – that’s also why there are so few remote controlled mechs or serious vehicles. Without an aether warrior directly connecting to the machine, its efficiency is lowered – a majority of the time to the point of uselessness.
The kid spoke with a slight smirk the entire time. He looked proud of himself and his knowledge shifting his eyes back and forth to his classmates as if seeking their approval.
Basically teach. Aether appears contradictory in terms of function. Furthermore with a low number of observers aether can appear to act erratically – single warriors and small groups in aether dense locations have been known to come across implausible seeming situations – they have reported impossible sounding and unrepeatable effects while far from witnesses. Some people claim those effects are simply illusions or delusions while others claim they are ‘magic’ – as stupid as that sounds. Magic does not exist – anything you think is magic is simply something you cannot explain –
The kid was cut off by the teacher in a kind but firm manner.
[Thank you Kevin, you’ve definitely done your homework. Next time you do not need to continue quite this far past my question – I know you are excited, but some of the topics you’ve brought up aren’t supposed to be covered till weeks from now. Now, I’m distributing handouts to your personal devices, please have them done by the end of the day I will be available for any questions you may have.] she wrote.
…much better. It felt weird to be surrounded by children but at least now James understood what was being said.
----------------------------------------
---Richard---
Richard was…confused. His worldview was currently being slightly shattered and he felt incredibly lost as he tried to pick up the remains of it. Each time he felt like he was gathering his mental state back, a new person came along and smashed it to bits with a metaphorical hammer.
This last one was definitely the worse today.
The kid’s words resonated with him. “Magic is simply what you don’t understand.”. While treating reality like a game it had been incredibly easy to ignore all the fantastical stuff happening around him. Why does this powder break physics? Magic. Why do people have lightsabers and energy weapons like something out of a tv series? Techy magic. Its just a game mechanic. Why bother figuring out why it worked that way.
Now well...How had he been transported to this ‘game’ – this ‘colonization effort’?
If he listened to his truth ‘for real this time’. Actually stopped to think about it…he didn’t know.
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How the fuck did they manage that? Were we knocked out, placed on an alien ship and brought here? How close to earth are we? There was something about us never being able to go back…is that just because FTL travel? Were we frozen like popsicles and dethawed here after hundreds of years had passed?
Fuck. Before it was so easy to brush off wasn’t it? ‘A wizard did it’ – that’s how. Can I just continue to pretend I believe that?
… it's so hard to ignore once I’ve opened pandoras shitty box isn’t it? A wizard didn’t do it. This is reality. This is…unless there’s something to do with alternative dimensions, this is somewhere in the universe. What happened to us can be explained – we just don’t know how yet.
Richard remembered how much he loved science. Chemistry was his favorite, but physics also had some sway. He liked the results much more than the nitty gritty – its why he had gone into chemical engineering in the first place. Practical applications of chemistry instead of some theoretical mumbo jumbo that no one actually cared about.
Richard reached out to his handler for the first time on his road to understanding.
“Hey, sorry I didn’t catch your name. How is there so much energy being used in this city? Isn’t it wasteful? How do you power everything?”
The woman smiled and responded as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They seemed to have splurged for the variation of translator that converted to sound. It felt like they were a native English speaker.
“I’m glad to see you are interested in our infrastructure! That bodes well. The cheapest theoretically infinite source of energy is gravity. The central tower in the city is our gravity well.” she laughed.
Richard winced. That’s… not how gravity works. Gravity is a force. “How can you harvest gravity? Please explain how you can get infinite energy from that – explain like I know regular physics but don’t know anything about aether.” I'm going to get to the bottom of something.
She paused as if confused for a moment then lit up and started her explanation.
“Okay! You want a classical description of the system. I think I can do that. So! Mass at a height has potential energy right? A large amount of mass at a high enough height has a large amount of potential energy. When you let that mass fall, you can convert potential energy into mechanical energy. Put a bunch of wheels in the path of the mass and you can create electrical energy from the rotating magnetic fields – or convert it directly to ‘physical’ energy. An incredibly ancient form of this is the water wheel used in water mills or the ones placed in dams to collect hydroelectric power. Are you following me so far?” the guide asked.
“Yep, simple enough.” Richard responded. Not quite an ‘explain like I’m five’ but well below his knowledge level.
“Once the mass reaches the ground its potential energy is zero. It's “spent”. Picking the mass up and bringing it back to the top of the tower while its still mass – no matter how clever you try to carry it, is simply spending energy to store it as potential once again. That’s because gravity pulls mass – the same useful trait for generating energy works against you while trying to reset the system.”
Richard nodded. Everything checked out so far.
“To get around this limitation you have to understand a fundamental principle of the universe. Mass is simply energy in a different form. You can convert mass to another type of energy – for example electrical – and then run that electrical energy up a conductive wire to the top of the tower – in case you didn’t know electrical energy doesn’t really care about gravity – before converting it back to mass. Drop it back down the tower and you can collect more energy before sending it back up. Obviously, in a real system this is all happening continuously… but that’s the basic idea behind the ‘well’.” The woman ended.
…see that’s where she lost Richard. Somewhere in the last bit she started bringing up something full of holes. That’s…that wouldn’t work would it? There’s something there that should be breaking physics somewhere right? You couldn’t just make infinite energy – that was impossible. One of the basic problems people who didn’t understand physics like to imagine they’d discovered.
Richard tried to think of loopholes.
“Okay, but the gravity does effect electricity even if just a little. Electricity is electrons and they have a teeny tiny bit of mass so even if they aren’t affected much it should still add up. Also you’d have to keep the wire superconductive otherwise it would lose so much energy traveling up the wire.”
“Pretend instead of electricity, the mass is being converted to light. Then, that light flies up, is converted back to mass. Drops down. Gets converted again. Rinse and repeat.” – the woman looked incredibly pleased by her response. Was she reading off a prompt? Was this a standard problem?
…that…okay sure, light is also affected by gravity warping around black holes and stuff but…
“Converting mass to energy creates a massive amount of radiation and converting energy to mass is really fucking inefficient?” Richard started feeling slightly panicked. This was breaking his worldview in a different way.
“And that’s why everything is done by Aether. I’m sorry I really can’t describe how the generator works without it much longer. There isn’t actually ‘little wheels’ or something spinning all along the tunnel. No, the kinetic momentum is sapped directly into energy skipping something as redundant as electricity with kinetic induction. The mass isn’t fully ‘mass’ and the transported energy is not fully ‘energy’ from a classical non aether standpoint…even if that’s how they look from a result standpoint.
“Basically the tower is a loop with the part being looped about being shifted into a heavy super dense liquid near the top and then an energy-dense 'not affected by gravity and easily transported' form near the bottom. Because of the specific ‘forms’ used at both ends, this back and forth conversion is over 99.99% effective – and most of the by-products are recaptured to either shove back in or extract from the system as the final product. It's also set up so the state transference is as cheap as possible – the part that converts it to mass synergises with the part that converts it back to energy and nothing is really lost in that loop.
“Clean nearly free energy! It does need a human operator with a slot to operate at a positive energy output…and it is incredibly incredibly expensive to make at the start. But, in exchange, power output is billions of times more effective then simply having someone create the energy directly.
“That’s the important point.
“The operator isn’t actually creating any energy! They are just increasing the conversion efficiency for the system by cycling fresh aether and making sure the efficiency is as close to 100% on the loop as possible…like a maintenance worker walking around tightening screws. Any other questions?”
Richard…didn’t know enough to say anything else and that annoyed him. He hated feeling fucking stupid – he wanted to learn more.
“Is there a better way to learn all of this than jumping into random classes?” Richard found himself asking.
“Many find hands-on learning the best, but we have free tablets you can read through if that’s a better learning style for you.” The woman responded seeming somewhat put out by the idea.
“Let’s go” James spoke up for the first time – he seemed to light up at the mention of a book instead.
“Alright, I’ll continue guiding you in case you have any questions.” The woman really seemed confused by their choices, but led them toward the library anyways.
…
----------------------------------------
---James---
Got it! James could just check the internet/free library of textbooks for required information. That was so much faster and easier than taking classes. It felt like a dream come true.
Finding the tablet – a large touch screen the size of a desk – and beginning to manipulate it James found himself reading up on aether on his own terms. Sure the explosive tag along – Richard – was there as well. Sure he would randomly take control of the screen at times. But, this was still the optimal way of learning.
Aether had essentially three main fields or ‘abilities’ each with dozens of sub fields and rules or quirks to its effects – each of which also tied into each other in different capacities.
James separated them out into a physics, a chemistry, and a biology equivalent.
Aether conversion was the physics equivalent. The ability to transform different types of energy from one form to another. How that conversion took place involved dozens of different techniques… but as a high level overview it was simple enough. It was like how electricity could be converted to magnetism and vise versa. Electricity could be converted to an aether form and back, or converted from electricity to aether, and then finally to magnetism. It could also be converted from magnetism to aether and then to heat, or from heat to movement. All stuff classical physics could do!
All aether was doing was providing more options – most of them more efficient. Actually getting those conversions to take place usually involved using the ‘second field’, or materials made with the second or third field but the results were all easy to understand.
Getting more ‘applied’, the second field of study was Aether reactions. This was essentially the chemistry equivalent of this aether knowledge. The main 'ability’ this field of study focused on was the ability for aether to change the properties of matter and energy. Ignoring the ‘how’ of things, aether could change different physical properties of elements and matter. It could change the specific heat capacity, or the tensile strength, or the viscosity. It was hard for aether to effect these changes on a general scale – most of these physical changes only really effected certain types of materials…like the ability to make water – and only water – react explosively with air. Another example was the ability to momentarily melt cellulose and bend trees into weird shapes – Another to create exotic states of matter.
The ‘how’ of things was much more complicated.
Essentially, from what James understood, aether reacted with matter. Using vague knowledge of ‘sp hybridization’ from high school to fill in the gaps, James could vaguely see how it all worked. Aether bonded with atoms and groups of atoms then changed the shape of their energy fields. It twisted the blobby probability fields into knots or increased and decreased their size.
From what James could remember, carbon was incredibly important because of its ‘plus or minus four something’ letting it form four bonds to other atoms…he couldn’t remember why carbon was better than say silicone – just that there was a reason all life used it as its main building block instead of anything else.
Aether changed things.
If a molecule was bonded with aether it could and more likely ‘would’ be ‘effected’ in a massive way. Something like gold could be massaged to having the same ‘bonding’ capabilities as carbon. Life with magnesium as its main building block. With sulfur. Quite a few monsters had parts of their body using strange elements – blue blood was famously due to titanium blood cells instead of iron ones.
Now that James read up on it, quite a few monsters were poisonous to eat and of the ones that weren’t, many didn’t provide any nutrition. Their base muscles and fats and stuff were all using different non digestible or toxic elements and compounds.
How was James eating meat just fine? Was it just because of his stomach’s poison defense?
A question for him to figure out later – he was not going to stop now, especially as his newest ability doubled down on eating monster meat to improve himself.
No matter how simple changing the energy level of different molecules sounded, this whole system became more and more complicated the more molecules were in play. There was the number of potential compounds without aether times a billion. Trillions of potential materials – many unviable or hard to create, many more incredibly useful or effective and a massive amount unknown.
The final side effect was almost in afterthought, but aether could stabilize some elements that were impossible or nearly impossible to create otherwise. Something like a theoretic element with atomic number 160 or 200 – or even 300 – could become stable at room temperature and with specific (only occasionally unique) properties.
The final ‘level’ shown at the library, was aether’s biology equivalent. ‘Applied’ to the point of not understanding it – just its effects.
This field was called Psionics and wasn’t even fully an ‘aether’ field. Not in the same way the other two were. Essentially what it addressed was how Skills, monsters, and human run aether devices could affect things ‘at range’. They could redirect or convert force from across a room, could perform any of the reactions in the previous section from meters away or manipulate materials through the air about them. Not how aether effected things but how living creatures could manipulate aether.
General telekinesis was one of the purest forms of this phenomena and something many high level aether warriors managed…but so was literally every unbroken or naturally grown skill even if they were limited to what could be effected. There was also several rare abilities like Telepathy or Psychometry that fell under this category – abilities that didn’t cost aether to use but theoretically interacted with aether in some way shape or form. Anyone with a developed psychic ability was called an Esper and supposedly hundreds of years ago they were hunted down and experimented on – a ‘barbaric’ practice the government cracked down hard on in recent times.
There were a few different theories as to how psionics actually worked. Some stated there was a field of aether suffusing all of reality – the astrosphere – that certain people could work in…others stated there was an entirely separate dimension to reality – the aether dimension – and, with an invisible aether limb, skill utilizing people could interact with stuff through that realm.
Others stated all psionic effects were explainable using radio wave equivalents – that instead of a separate realm you were simply pushing the effect through regular space where it manifested. Long distance skills were a type of radiation and all that.
“Ahhhhhhh. Okay! That’s enough studying, lets go see about sticking our heads into the gravity well or something fun like that. I’m getting stir crazy.” Richard loudly spoke from beside him – untranslated so the guide couldn’t hear.
He turned to grin at James then stage whispered his next words “Want to get some achievements?”