Chapter 07
MOTIVES
PART 2
Intentionally kicking up sand as he practically sulked back to the ship, Jackle flipped Mara’s pinky-sized artifact around in his hand, trying to discern its secrets without resorting to magic.
The curios was undoubtedly metallic, and rather hefty, but coated in a beige coloring that like glazed pottery. However, its rectangular shape was featureless, except for the tiny recession on the end of the device.
Left with only one viable way to proceed, Jackle sighed in defeat and tucked it away as he approached their ship, a simple-looking schooner that was anything but.
Climbing aboard with all the grace and agility of a feral cat, Jackle stormed his way down the faux-wood deck towards the main cabin, intent on throwing himself into his bunk as soon as possible- Dinner could go frack itself for all he cared.
Yet, even nestled deep into his cot, Jackle could find no rest in his mind. His concerns seemed intent on eating at him until he acted upon them, so with a large amount of reluctance, he once again pulled out his grimoire to find where he’d left off.
Navigating back to the last familiar page, Jackle sighed as he realized it was one of the denser prerequisites he’d have to chew through, but he was starting to see why.
The entire subject seemed hell-bent on masochism- The rules of the ‘game’ started simple, recognizing peaks and valleys of a wave as a binary signal, up and down, on or off, almost like skip-rope in its simplicity.
But then ‘Operations’ were introduced- A way to read and modify the signal in specific ways, under specific conditions, and at that point, the whole thing just imploded into a mess of arbitrary vocab in his head.
Dropping the tome to his side, Jackle screamed at the ceiling of his bunk. His whole mind felt like a tar pit and everything around him seemed like it was on the verge of pushing him into a full meltdown.
“What kind of monster would think up such an asinine concept as ‘Computing’? The term headache doesn't even relate at this point.”
Bringing his grimoire back in front of his face, Jackle tried to continue reading, but for all the years he’d spent honing his mind and body, he could not bring himself to see past the letters to read the words.
His gaze drifting, Jackle felt the cold hands of exhaustion seize his mind, and he gave up fighting it. Letting his thoughts wander to where they would, he found himself recalling the events of their morning- How his mentor had acted, and what exactly she’d said.
However, it was only after he’d let go of the what-if’s, did he have the space to connect the dots, and a wild realization boomed like distant thunder, echoing into the corners of his mind.
“Mechanicals… Mechanicals made this… Mara's not just talking hypotheticals, this is- Oh Somni, this is how they think!”
Sitting upright, Jackle flipped to the next page with renewed energy, jumping head first into the section on ‘parallel processing’, trusting that things would make sense if he just kept reading.
The process referred to a technique that intertwined multiple signals under certain conditions, just like Operations, but at a higher level, lending even more complexity to the monstrosity Mara had somehow committed to paper.
Reading on for several more pages, the lesson then shifted towards ‘Protocols and Security’, a blend of straight forward and convoluted methods that aimed to prevent interference with ‘computing’ as a whole. ‘Firewalls’, redundancies, pattern scans, and more, the topic was almost as thick as the entire prior computing section had been, but Jackle pushed on.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Pinching the bridge of his nose as he flipped from one page to the next, Jackle did his best to commit Mara's teachings to memory as he attempted to fight back a growing migraine of massive proportions.
Following the section on security, ‘Threats and Vectors’ appeared to focus on the exact opposite. A topic wholly devoted to the many avenues of compromising computation, from ‘viral worms’ to ‘overload’ attacks.
By the time Jackle finally turned to the last section, it felt like his mind was swimming in a soup of noise, but he was too close to quit, so he kept his nose to the proverbial grind stone, forcing his eyes to focus on the text in front of him.
“Waves and Particulate…”
Reading the title aloud, Jackle could see this was a section on lightning as a whole- What it was, how classic magica ‘attempted’ to replicate it, and a third version… Mara's version.
As a natural force, lightning was a fairly understood weather phenomenon, however Mara's explanation didn't focus on the difference in charges, but rather the potential hidden in plain sight- The near-instantaneous pathing once struck, bridging clouds to dirt with unimpeded intention.
Mara's apparent fascination with the effect was only rivaled by her disdain for the typical spell taught from tomes. In her own words, ‘Classic magica is a fools imitation, lauded by tradition, and refined in exception. The standardized lightning spell, regardless of incantation rank, fails to authentically replicate its namesake, and is therefore only useful as a starting point.’
With all the cold indifference of a biology teacher demonstrating an autopsy, Mara went on to break down the standard into reusable parts and educational flaws, subsequently highlighting all the inefficiencies and shortcuts in the original construction.
As Jackle read on, he learned learned that only about twenty-percent of the mana contributed to the imparted charge of the strike, the majority of the spell structure actually focused on glamorizing its appearance.
Mara had shared a couple of ideas as to why that might be, but her personal bias attributed it to general ignorance. Most who used the spell preferred the shorthand, a staple in combat since the long form involved a two-page incantation of Script- A language most could recite with practice, but few truly understood, leaving progress to trial and error by idiots and bored savants.
So for the general populace, they were oblivious to the defining language of the spell, and those that weren’t, with few exceptions, barely had the competency to study it. Which, of course, led to such oversights in the core construction of the spell.
However, what Jackle was reading was far and beyond what academies would gate behind ivy walls, Mara was demonstrating an almost native understanding of Script as she broke down each segment of the spell into its literal implementation, along with the functional result.
The entire dissection spanned several pages, after which, Mara promptly moved on to discussing the gaping inefficiency at the heart of the spell- A hereto unknown flaw stemming from a fundamental misunderstanding of electricity.
“…Imparting a difference in charge as a delta of two points is folly. Electricity in particulate is a byproduct formed from a natural field akin to the waves of mana, and thus it should be manipulated as such for minimal loss and maximum affect.”
Laying back and resting the grimoire on his chest, Jackle felt like his brain has just been evicted from his skull. What Mara was describing not only implied a link between the two forces, but also an explanation for the mechanicals’ madness, topped off with a groundbreaking approach to mana manipulation through electricity.
Staring at the ceiling of his bunk, Jackle felt the entire spell coming together in his mind, the many pages of Mara’s writing swirling in his mind, sprouting tangents between topics as it intertwined and unfolded ideas, weaving itself into a conceptual whole.
Minutes passed, but as the boiling in his brain finally began to calm, what simmered to the surface was a spell unlike any other Mara had taught him. One that could dance between the fields of mana and charge, imparting a will to supersede those the natural forces.
Glancing to the pocket containing Mara’s pinky-sized artifact, Jackle knew there was only one thing left to do, but he found himself hesitating. Given everything that had happened today, it didn’t matter what was on the device, it was going to fundamentally change the dynamic of their friendship forever regardless.
Most likely, it would fail to justify Mara’s actions, and he’d be forced to take a stand, come what may. However… The alternative was just as petrifying. What if the tiny device could defend her? Would he be swayed?
It didn’t matter though. If there was a defense for going behind her friends back to betray the breathing to the never-lived, then what wouldn’t he be complicit with?
Staring at the beige-colored curios as he slowly spun it around his fingers, Jackle felt both trapped and torn asunder. He had to know, one way or the other, delaying was only dragging his feet.
Turning the device so that he could see the small hole at the bottom of the rectangle, Jackle wasted no more time, he wasn’t going to find relief without answers.
Lining his finger up, just as Mara had done to the doors, Jackle breathed in, concentrated on the brain-blender of a spell he had frying his cortex, and exhaled, verbally casting the spell under his breath.
“Debug.”