The experiment of Nuel chapter 2-The smart, the ugly, and the trainee
Taking his badge back from the guard and passing through the last door Sisap finally entered the laboratory.
As soon as he was inside he saw that some of his colleagues were already present, some because they lived closer to the Research Center and others because they were simply more early risers than he was. The group present consisted of the three closest collaborators he had.
On the right side of the group was Dans, the oldest, who had joined the project almost at the same time as Sisap; he had been the first with whom he had begun to put down the theoretical foundations of artificial essence development. Dans was a short, pot-bellied man, by comparison, Sisap was an athlete, bald but with thick eyebrows and a long mustache. At the moment he was holding a cup from which steam was coming out, probably some hot drink to help him wake up, and as he argued animatedly with the others he occasionally brought the cup to his mouth, lightly drenching his mustache with its contents.
To the left were the other two colleagues, who listened entertained to Dans's talk.
Giosc was a long thin man, the perfect opposite of Dans, with long sideburns and a short haircut. He was one of the last resources to enter but that had not stopped him from becoming one of the most important; his knowledge was crucial in adjusting the primary essence percentages to be considered in unions. He still had a cookie in his hand, leftover from his breakfast, and was laughing thunderously.
Finally stood Neid, even if he was the same age as Giosc he was one of the older resources like Dans, but unlike him was very taciturn. If Dans and Giosc were the two opposites Neid was the in-between. Neither fat nor thin, neither tall nor short. He was the description of the medium man, and often listened attentively to his colleague's speeches without butting in.
Sisap, too far away to hear, decided to visit his colleagues and once he got close he interrupted them
"What is being discussed so passionately?" flashing his usual half-smile.
Dans instantly recognized his friend and spreading his arms wide in a welcoming gesture, shouted "Sisap! Just the man we've been looking for."
"You flatter me Dans. Giosc, Neid." He said nodding to the other two members before continuing "What was I so eagerly awaited for?"
"Two fresh pieces of good news my friend. First of all, the primary essence supplies, that we had filled the request for in the past few days, have arrived."
That was indeed good news. To artificially create advanced essences required the primary components, but for every failed operation there was a risk that the energy exchange would consume the essences by releasing them into the environment in the form of pure essence, which could not be recovered in any way, unlike all other types. Having a good amount of primary essence allowed for more experiments and greater margins for error. This certainly did not mean that care should not be taken-the efficiency of experiments was always a starting point for them but it was certainly good to know that the repository was full.
Dans, who had a smile so broad that it peeked out of his long mustache, continued, " and as the second piece of good news, two new resources were finally hired today, we will thus be able to speed up the theory behind the processes and proceed with more experiments!" his eyes were two balls lit up with joy. Sisap was well aware that his senior colleague cared little about the improved efficiency of the laboratory of the experiments. He saw no time to take advantage of the two new recruits to do anything he felt was too tiring for himself, such as fetching lunch at the Underground Laboratory's cafeteria, located on the first sub-level.
"You are hopeless Dans" he sighed as he looked at him.
"You can see it in my face huh? Don't worry I chose only one, the other resource is far too peppery to make my poor seniority count."
Uh, that's a new one.
Generally, all the resources, excluding of course the core members of which Sisap was a part, who had arrived during all the research cycles had spent at least a little fire time under Dans, who enjoyed using them as errand boys while he took care of the serious stuff, with the promise of engaging them, which was punctually done by the other colleagues.
The old bastard enjoyed doing the bare minimum with everyone....but as a matter of fact, he was curious to see the recruit himself.
"Oh yes? Why don't you give us a little description of the two new resources that will support us?"
"Medriot forbid! I love it when fresh meat shows up embarrassed in front of everyone. You are curious eh Sisap? Don't worry! They are expected after lunch, you'll understand right away who will be my errand one and who will follow you from the beginning"
He finished his words and drank again from his cup, dipping his long mustache into the foam of the drink for the second time in a row.
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To be honest, there was no need to hear the resources speak to guess who would end up undDans'ns' fist.
The freckle-faced boy had been great at letting everyone know. He had come in with his shoulders a little hunched, had waited to be spoken to, in introducing himself had mispronounced his name by stumbling over a few random words, and finally had closed his mouth. Now he was staring downward with red ears and a sweat-soaked forehead. He looked so tense that he gave the impression that just talking to him would make him rush off.
They were in a laboratory for Medriot's sake not in the ranks of the army.
The girl with glasses and short hair, on the other hand, had been just as good but in the opposite direction. She had arrived, shoulders straight and looking confident, had not waited to be asked but with a step forward had shaken Sisap's hand and immediately given her name, Laria Godetr.
Sisap had been impressed; he had never met such a confident person on the first day of work. The girl either knew her stuff or was incredibly confident, whatever it was, it would have been out in no time.
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The third sublevel was divided into four parts all connected by a huge corridor. The first area, which was the only visible when exiting from the stairs was the Hall dedicated rest, the area was filled with a lot of things to make the stay enjoyable, like snacks, drinks, fruit, and many other types of foods and beverages.
After the hall followed a corridor that divided itself to go into two areas. The first was a large main area where at the center stood the experiment facility, a soundproof, blast-proof white parallelepiped structure divided into other four areas where multiple experiments could be tried at the same time. The second area was dedicated to the theoretical part, with numerous stations, not enclosed, unlike the upper office rooms, with everything needed to make one's wits work. Lastly, a hidden area was dedicated to storage, where primary essences were stored ready experimented.
Today Sisap and Dans were in charge of making the tour of the lab for the two recruits, however his colleague, seeing no time to take the anxious boy and make him do all the most useless things in his routine, had put pressure on him to make the time spent on the tour as short as possible.
So after less than an hour, Sisap was left alone with Laria and decided to take her to the corner of the theoretical Hall where he worked.
When they arrived he sat on the chair and when Laria did the same he started "So, Laria, since from now on you'll be starting to work here, I can't stress enough how important it is, that what is done here, will not be known around. I think they will have already told you, but to hear it from people put in the same situation as you are different. There are serious legal consequences and the government does not like this sort of trouble, i hope you understand it"
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"Yes"
"Good, now, how much do you know about what we do here?" inquired as he brought his head slightly forward
The girl, bringing a hand to adjust her glasses on her nose, had promptly answered the question
"Well, speaking for the Advanced Research Center it's no mystery that its main purpose is the development of an instrument that can channel and use the essence, this is labeled as artificial magic." paused "However, if we speak about the sublevels, what I know is that this is the level assigned for the artificial development of advanced essence. I have not been told anything either about the methods or what stage of the research has been reached, I guess for privacy and security reasons. What I do know is that theory to make such a process happen artificially you have to know the rates of the components that will make the advanced artificial essences, calibrate how they should interact with each other, and finally figure out how to force the beginning of the interaction between the two."
Not bad indeed! This girl knew her stuff, at least as a foundation, Sisap at her age didn't even know half of those basics.
Not wanting to be discovered surprised by Liara, Sisap quickly recovered and followed his speech.
"Almost perfect! Yes, as you say at the base of this plan artificially develop artificial essence. As you have well hypothesized, the development of such essences requires a very strong knowledge of the relationships between the individual components. One must first understand the perfect percentage in which such components must be present with each other. I say perfect because any deviation from it is likely to cause the interaction to fail once the process is started. Obviously, for elements that require only one component, it is used an equal percentage of both is"
He paused for a moment "Anything you are unclear about, or have any doubts about, please feel free to stop me and ask."
"Everything is clear for now Dr. Kol"
"Please no formalities, just call me Sisap" he replied. Too many people already called him in a too formal way and during work that was one of the least things he desired. He wanted a friendly environment and using formalities, to his opinion, was the best way to avoid that.
"Sure, Dr. Sisap."
He smiled "Just Sisap" and resumed "Great, now let's continue. After figuring out the percentages of each element, which are necessary for the reaction, you have to figure out the amount of energy that has to be provided. Firstly, to start the interaction between the primary essences and secondly, after the start of the interaction, to stabilize the union between the components. This is a key step; you have to provide the right amount of energy, as too little would risk starting the interaction but not letting it stabilize, risking an implosion of the components. While too much would risk causing it to mutate into another interaction for which perhaps more energy would be needed, again turning it into a low-energy problem. Therefore, it is critical to know or calculate, the energy ranges to supply the components. All clear?"
She ponderated before answering "I have a question. How do we know how much energy has to be applied for a particular result? I assume it is related to the type of interaction, but taking for example two advanced essences with the same components at the base, such as metal and sand, how do we figure out how much energy to provide?"
Sisap smiled, with interest and insight. Laria was continuing to improve her good impression of Sisap.
"Good question. The answer is much simpler than you could think. Trial and error. Although we are the only place in the world where these kinds of experiments are done, at the end of the day we only know a little more about Essences than others. What we have been able to do over the years is a simple trial and error of the interaction between the various Essences, until we got results. That is the main reason why the first few cycles we did not have real results instead, we categorized the values of the energies provided to the essences to get the interactions between them started or stabilized. We then categorized the basic types of interactions involving the primary essences. To date, we have hypothesized three types of interaction between the primary essences: exaltation, alteration, and pseudo-sharing.
Laria's gaze was fixed on him, the girl looked at him with extreme interest.
"Exaltation is a process that is generally formed between Essences of the same category. The elements are de facto exalted by achieving a greater effect between them. Each element has its energy threshold for transformation into advanced essence. Taking as an example what you did ask, for the primary earth essences. If we provide a low energy threshold for interaction between two earth primary Essences, being careful to stabilize it, you get sand. Instead of exceeding that limit by a lot, for now without a real threshold, we get metal."
A short pause to give Laria a chance to take in all that news package of information.
"Alteration is that process in which essences of different types exchange characteristics by precisely altering thown qualities to achieve an advanced essence with different effects from the base components. While pseudo-sharing is that process where the initial characteristics of the primary Essences remain evident. Of the latter two as you may have noticed I have been very brief, this is because they are not the ones we are pressing on. The goal, for now, is to finish all the advanced Essences with the same primary components. Is everything clear so far? "
" Yes"
"Perfect, finally, the energy extension process. Taking advantage of the principle with which martial artists are able to transmit their own life energy into the air, or into animated or inanimated objects, we have created a ritual that mimics this action. By providing energy as an input, this is emitted into the experimental container, where we keep the two primary Essences when we have to experiment so that the interaction takes place."
"That's a great idea! ....but how is this energy delivered? I don't mean to insult but no one seems like a martial artist capable enough to deliver an amount of life energy needed for such a process"
He laughed, looking at himself and especially at Dans he could not fault the young girl for thinking that!
"ahaahah No offense Laria, I can assure you that the people here are anything but martial artists. No, the ritual is set for any energy that can be provided as input. So it can come from a natural resource, to give an example it can be energy derived from a regular fire, or from the Essences themselves"
Again the young resource paused to think before answering him, good sign.
"Excuse me for asking too many questions, but wouldn't it be better to use the life energy of martial artists to make the process work better? after all, the principle is based on them."
"Another excellent question, I don't think I've ever had such a curious trainee on this part, in the early days. Anyway, never ask sorry for being curious."
Laria blushed at the compliment, hinting at a slight smile
"Personally, I had also thought of such a possibility when we started the practical part of the experiments, but the prevailing problem was the cost. Nuel as you may have noticed is not a city that specializes in martial arts, it is perhaps the least specialized city in these, even counting all the possible villages in Ksamin. First of all, life energies have a much lower efficiency on the essences than the primary essences themselves and so to have a number of containers, filled with enough life energy, that would be useful for our purposes we would need either a dozen or so martial artist masters here in the third sublevel, not very practical and economical, or dozens and dozens of daily containers flown in from afar, a definitely higher cost than requiring containers with primary essences instead."
While Laria was reflecting on his answer Sisap paused briefly to catch his breath, picked up the bottle on his table, and took a few sips to clear his throat, a bit hoarse after all that talking.
"Good! I'd say that as an introduction to the subject we've got it. Now let's talk about what needs to be done, to date we have had successful results with exactly five advanced essences with the same basic components. We got Sand, Metal, Ice, Tornado, and Ash. All that is missing for the ones we know is Sound, Snow, and Plasma. When we will finally finish these we will advance to the next categories. The goal these days is to get Plasma, and to do that, we need to find all the iterations of the fire essences with the various amounts of energy provided to them in the past experiments."
Sisap made a small, and maybe slightly malevolent, smile that did not escape unnoticed by Laria, who was now looking at him somewhat in curiosity or somewhat in apprehension.
"Next to the table you will find a cabinet, open it and you will find it is full of papers. Those are papers in which are described all the various experiments carried out among the fire essences. I expect you to make a concise report with all the results concerning fire essences with other fire essences. Ideally divide the report into columns, in one put what was being attempted, in one the amount of energy delivered, and in one when noteworthy results were obtained such as the initiation of an interaction. You obviously have to pay attention to not include the ones where we already got as result the advanced essence of ash."
Laria was left staring at him, and for a moment Sisap noticed that her confidence was gone.
Sometimes a little humility is good but better not to overdo it
"I'll help you with the first two sheets so you can figure out where to find the data and how to put it, but after that I expect you to continue on your own, okay?"
The girl radiated joy "Sure Dr. Sisap!"
"Just Sisap."
It was going to be a very long day.