The Experiment of Nuel chapter 1- Work and Progress

Seventy-seven Cycle of the Eighteenth Medriono

City of Nuel, Ksamin

Sisap had woken up in a good mood, he slept as well as he never had in years, and stretching himself he got out of bed limply. Peeling back the curtain from the window and resting his arms at his sides he looked out to see what the weather was like. The sky was clear and the sun was shining, it looked like the perfect picnic day, too bad he couldn't enjoy it and had to go to work. However, that didn't weigh on him at all, given the last few days.

Getting rid of his nightshirt, before benefiting from a short bath, he observed himself naked in the mirror. Certainly, his work did not leave him time to do anything for his tired body that was slowly losing the tone of youth, it did not console him that many of his peers and colleagues were in the same situation as he was, and every day he marked in his resolutions to find time to put down some pounds.

The water had been heated by the fire essence system to just the right point

Strange

Generally, that little quantity of crystallized fire essence was very slow in heating the flow of water coming from the aqueduct and often the water came out cold. Perhaps the secret was to replace the essence before it was completely consumed; after all, he had replenished it himself a short time before.

When that brief, pleasant moment was over, Sisap prepared himself to get dressed. When he was finally ready he went downstairs to eat his breakfast.

Arriving downstairs he had noticed, with a note of pleasure, that his wife had prepared him breakfast before leaving. Eating alone was a bit sad, but it was often difficult to combine the schedules of the two jobs. She worked early and finished before the sun went down while he worked intermittently throughout the whole day. Dinner was the only real part of the day where they were able to spend some quality time together. Even if sometimes even there they could not see each other. If the job required it, Sisap was ready to sleep off nights at work.

He bit into the sweet bread that, along with the fruit concentrate harvested from their garden, had been left on the table.

Still warm

As he enjoyed his breakfast he thought how even when absent, his wife was able to make him start the day with a smile.

Having finished his meal he gathered up the remaining pieces of sweet bread to take with him and finally decided to leave the house. Closing the door with the usual three locks, for even in the very advanced city of Nuel one could never be too safe, at last Sisap walked toward the place where he spent most of his time. The Advanced Research Center of Nuel was located exactly in the center of the city.

Fortunately, It was quite a short walk, since Sisap with his salary had afforded himself a house very close to the city center. The reason was twofold. First of all, the center was the most beautiful part of Nuel. Second of all, he did not have to get up early in the morning.

The second point was truthfully the most important as he was no longer young and had no more of the energy he once stored. The more he could save his strength for work, the better.

People had already poured into the city streets, some for work, some for necessity, and some for fun. Now almost every street in Nuel was teeming with life and jovial sounds. Parents with their children squealed as they looked at the shop windows full of toys, men and women of all ages stopped to talk on the street, perhaps because they already knew each other or perhaps because new friendships were born now and then during shopping, and many other people alternated between entering and leaving the various open stores.

As he walked two children ran alongside Sisap, one held some toy in his right hand and shouted to the other something like "catch me" while the child who chased him held another toy and laughing shouted to his runaway friend something like "You have no chance!".

Seeing those two children full of life the man's lips curled into a smile. This was precisely why he had become a scientist. To promote science for the welfare of others, to give as many people as he could an easier life. He wanted to offer a life that was better than the one they already had, and certainly better than Sisap's childhood.

This was what allowed him to put so much effort into the experiments, to pull the hardest all-nighters, and to continue even when the results were poor.

----------------------------------------

Having traveled all the way, Sisap finally found himself in front of the black steel gates of the Advanced Research Center. The latter's long planks towered over any nearby building and were bordered by walls of the same material.

Beyond the gate loomed the immense bulk of the Advanced Research Center, so tall and massive that the walls themselves seemed small. Wide glass windows alternated with thick white marble facades in a structure resembling a huge Amphitheater at the center which towered a cylindrical tower, called precisely the white tower, twice as tall as the elliptical exterior.

Approaching it, he pulled out from his bag the badge, which attested his right to enter, and handed it to the first guardhouse.

Thanks in part to the countless guided tours organized by the state to promote scientific awareness in the large cities of Ksamin, it was of the public domain that the Research Center was divided into multiple high levels, for each of which multiple permissions were required.

Generally, each level required a higher clearance than the previous ones, as the topics covered were more sensitive or important for technology development. This was valid for all floors comprising the amphitheater part but, it did not apply to the tower floors. The white tower was home to Nuel's immense observatory, in which there were all the laboratories involved in analyzing the study of the motions of celestial bodies.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

The observatory was similar to a museum, and each floor of the tower was divided into a central space, open for daily visits, and multiple laboratories and studios, where various workers could carry out their roles undisturbed.

What most people did not know, however, was that there were sublevels within the Research Center in which the most advanced and dangerous experiments took place, a kind of research that brought great news when it succeeded but not without sacrifice and considerable risk.

Better to leave people unaware many times.

Once inside, Sisap was faced with a large crowd of people, probably divided between visitors, scholars attempting through interviews to be hired at the Research Center, and finally newly taken resources who were assigned to a senior figure for the first rounds through the various floors. As delineated as the various groups were the situation was almost chaotic, almost like that of the street, and Sisap had to skirt quite a few people before reaching the end of the hall, where four corridors ran to the left. Taking the outermost one on the right, the only one that led to the offices of "Critical Resource Management," Sisap walked down it entirely, and as he walked he found himself observing to his left and right the various posts devoted to Human Resources that were responsible for keeping the interests of important resources, among them himself, aligned with those of the Advanced Research Center.

Finally arriving in front of a door where the words "CRM Director" hung, he inserted his second badge, different from the first, into the small indentation, present at the bottom right, and waited.

The invention of essence band badges had been an ingenious innovation. Multiple primary essences arranged in a certain order were inserted into the badge. If the order matched completely with that of the door then the lock would be unlocked. The problem was preserving the essence in the various badges, which was why every time he went to work, he had to stop at the second floor for a check and eventual arrangement of the latter.

The door with a single noise, a sign that the bands matched, opened and let him in. In front of SIsap, behind a large desk filled with numerous documents and personal items, appeared the director of the wing devoted to "Critical Resource Management."

Pestal was an aesthetically well-cared woman, each day dressed in a different outfit than the last. Today she had on a sober blue suit and adorned herself with numerous pieces of jewelry, earrings, and bracelets among them. Although she was now past her youthful period, which according to her was after 50 cycles (mah), and although she exaggerated with makeup and jewelry, it was clear that when she was younger she was quite a looker. The fine features and perfectly balanced face were a small indication of this. Looking up with her sky-blue eyes, crowned by her impeccably made-up lashes, the woman sketched a smile.

"Good morning Sisap."

"Good morning Pestal," replied softly, as he handed the third badge of the day, similar to the second, to the woman.

Pestal got up from her desk, took and started to examine the badge in her hands. Although she was operating perfectly well in her role as Chief of Critical Resource Management, Pestal was in reality the guard protecting the entrance to the lower floors.

Everyone who wanted to go there had to go through the woman and her examination for the validity of the badge. If the badge would have been okay she would have inserted it in a small cove, similar to one of her doors, which stood exactly behind her.

As he waited for Pestal to do her job, Sisap lost himself in looking at a small paperweight in the shape of a dog that held fixed some documents on the left side of the desk

A cough, imitated by the woman to get his attention, brought him back down to earth. Behind her a door had appeared, the contours of which had been invisible until before; evidently Sisap had lost the sound while contemplating that funny paperweight.

"May your day be productive," Pestal wished him as she held the door open so that Sisap could enter.

"Likewise."

Closing the door behind him, he began to walk down the stairs leading downward.

The lower floors were composed in the actuality of three sublevels, each much larger than their respective upper levels, and each with a specific type of research.

Sisap worked on the top floor, so he had to go down through all the sublevels. Fortunately for him, a weight elevator system had been built inside to reach all the levels, both for ascending and descending. It was not that there were no stairs, but walking three sub-levels was not his desire, nor it was for so many of his other coworkers.

Arriving in front of the system of ropes and weights that allowed him the easy descent, Sisap greeted the guard before handing him his fourth and final badge of the day. And so the descent began, the system was very convenient but had the downside of taking a long time before reaching the bottom of the third sub-level, but in all honesty, Sisap was in no hurry. The research itself was in no hurry.

The last level, although it had only recently come into being, had now become the most important and sensitive one in the entire structure of the Research Center. It was so important that it had attracted the interest of the political heads of the entire Ksamin, who had poured substantial funds into research and development. Thanks to them the research was going better and better.

The main research in the last level, on which Sisap and his colleagues were concerned at the moment, was the artificial development of essence.

Although the origin of essence was not yet so clear, except for the Medriot religion according to which it was a gift from the spirit world, it was nevertheless common knowledge that it was divided into four types called primary Essences. These were water, fire, air, and earth.

From the primary essences, according to certain natural phenomena that brought them together, more complex essences, called Advanced Essences, originated. In this macro set, there were subgroups characterized by the type of union between the various essences. The more complex the bonding was, the more the resulting Advanced Essence was strong but, above all, rare to find in nature.

Taking a simple example, it was much easier to find the union of two primary earth essences than to find a union of three primary essences.

The task of the third sublevel was to artificially develop increasingly rare advanced essences. At present, after months and months of trials and failures, they had managed to successfully reproduce five of the eight known essences formed by the union of multiple primary essences of the same type. This was certainly a noteworthy achievement, through which Ksamin's army would benefit, succeeding in making mages not only for elite soldiers but also for the higher ranks of the basic army.

In fact, the theoretical initiative on the development of artificial essences had been born long before the creation of the third sublevel in Nuel, but it was only after the famous "war of Tears" that it really took off. After the disaster that took place in Zagliastrua, the Ksamin government realized how little magical power it had at its disposal to counter the most serious dangers of the outer world.

It was then that the government, in a short time, decided that the Center for Advanced Research would have housed an additional sub-level.

The third level became the cradle of countless minds who, supported in their research by large sums of money that allowed for many experiments (and many mistakes), had managed to obtain real results.

That was the reason why Sisap put so much effort into the experiments because his goal was to advance science so as to help the state of Ksamin in forming an army so strong that no longer could have threats from other states and, especially, from the unknown dangers posed by the seven Lords scattered across the continent.