(Rose)
As we travelled toward their ho, the four of us learnt a lot about each other.
Being barely able to speak a common language almost made things simpler.
Though we can tell the man would love to converse more complex knowledge a common language would allow.
I understand that much even without a word when he shows us a notebook filled with numbers and equations. Bleue recognised an equation related to the weight of things. I recognized nothing.
Mathematics looked like runes and spells to . Heavy science does that to . I have reasonable education, but I’ve always struggled, and Mushio is clearly a level far beyond .
Nonetheless, as we camped, he eagerly drew graphs onto the dirt with a stick, pointing at so obvious things we still couldn’t quite understand.
He kept talking anyway, even when Bleue couldn’t follow.
The quiet girl played with Ana. We adults communicate clumsily.
The thing that was easier to communicate no matter the tongue spoken was where we all ca from, over a drawn map of the world.
We showed him and confird we were from England. Mushio was surprised by that, oddly.
Ana was from the old empire. He called it Türkiye. I recall seeing that modern na a few tis.
Mushio was from Persia, Iran now. The girl was from another area of Iran. He had adopted her on his way.
Mushio drew what looked like orbiting planets, and other symbols we were clueless about, over and over again.
He showed us coal, boiling water, and step by step, machines more and more complex based on steam technology.
He wanted to discuss about energy. Energy.
I understood he ca to Ukraine looking for sothing related to a specific form of energy.
Drawings of giant boilers for production of steam and electricity. I got what he was looking for before Bleue could translate it.
Nuclear power.
I shivered a little as I understood. I lost my smile even, and he saw it.
I drew and told about a large explosion destroying a mountain in the Alps. I saw that power at work and what it could do even to beings-like-her.
Mushio didn’t seem to understand. Maybe we misunderstood each other. As for computers, I know fairly little of these sciences. Only that it’s a power to reckon with carefully.
Ana learnt their language faster than , as she made an invisible link to their brains, like she has with us.
A - Mushio interested in radioactivity.
R - I don’t even know what that is.
And there Mushio began teaching us about radioactivity, with pictures and the occasional translations from Bleue and Ana. I had only learnt the basic definition of what nuclear power is from Blu. There’s so much more knowledge behind it’s staggering.
~
This man was once a physicist of so sort. A man of sciences, but with centuries of progress beyond our ti.
Bleue and I, and scientists from our older ti, we were lost behind his knowledge, shared language or not.
Through calculations, he was able to predict incredible things, and work even more impressive wonders.
We saw him calculate and predict when a strong flow in a river would drop, to a level where we could cross.
Calculate weights to balance over a frail bridge, when and how much to drink for all of us to maximise our efficiency.
Small insignificant things. But he was able to perfect them.
Working with prodigious equations, everything he encountered found solutions and improvent.
All I could notice as the primitive being I was, was that he wasn’t carrying any weapon.
He didn’t need to. He understood this world. Better than us surely.
Because he had a background knowledge so advanced, everything in nature, even in the modern nature, made logical sense and followed mathematical pathways.
He knew the old ones and quickly understood the patterns behind the new ones.
So he understood the laws of physics from this day as well, to a wider and deeper level we ever could.
Not only the world made sense to him, he had understood it. There was no magic in the world for a skilled scientist like him. While we could be struggling seeing the effects of the new rules and understanding them, he had already won the ga.
And the next steps for our understanding of the world involved learning about radioactivity, vectors in mathematics and complex numbers. I didn’t even know what these could be.
He wanted to teach us what he knew of the world, and happily we were eager to learn. Even if it involved mathematic equations.
We learnt there why the quiet girl tagged along as well. It wasn’t just for survival. It was to learn, everything.
She wasn’t helping him much with anything, but she listened, and asked questions I couldn’t even understand.
She was his pupil and heir, destined to inherit his wisdom and knowledge.
And there was still so much he knew, from the older ti and the current days.
He was one of the last living mbers of the old world with prodigious understanding of technologies and physics.
He may not know much about ancient greek mythology, but he knew about the equally legendary domains of nuclear physics and computer electronics. Fields equally as mystical to us nowadays, if not more.
And oddly enough, despite how primitive we were, we learnt a lot.
Slowly, as we travelled with them, we learnt.
He ca from an age when nuclear technologies were widespread and well understood.
But what he was looking for now was a specific thing that didn’t exist the way he needed in most reactors across the world. Except for a few around this land we walked in.
That difference we would later see for ourselves was simply a window in a thick wall.
A small round window, in a giant wall of steel and sturdy concrete.
And behind it... A domain of science we would need to learn a little more about.
~
We arrived at their ho. An old nuclear reactor by a river. Everything still looked rather well maintained. I almost expected to notice people working around, or other survivors living there at least, but there was no one else.
We entered offices in varying states of decay or furbished. He left what he had carried away all this ti in a workshop filled with electronics.
First he gave us a tour of the property.
Nothing worked, but most things still looked intact. He guided us through this modern monunt of and to technology, and toward that specific window.
A wall with odd machines glued to it. And in a sort of car embedded in it, that window.
Behind it, it was just dark. Even for Bleue’s eyes, there was nothing to see there.
Still, the man seed especially proud of his discovery, and also a little amused by our beguiled reaction.
B - He said he will study... Taeïïn?
R - What’s that?
B - I think he ans... The ichor... What we call magic.
~
Sowhat like another spectrum of light. Pardon , I an electromagnetic force.
Invisible to the human eye usually.
The energy, the eitr, the water, this thing that is blood to beings-like-her.
It had no na for us, until now.
It behaved similarly to radioactivity in so aspects we learn, though it is sothing else entirely.
This man of science was able to understand that. That it was not simply magic, and that it could be studied on a fundantal level.
And using another invisible power the right way, he could test his theories.
Radioactivity would sohow allow him to make that thing react, and make magic beco visible.
This confinent chamber in the very specific architecture of nuclear reactors was the key to his intended experint.
Bleue and I were struck.
By his knowledge, and the depth of our ignorance. Or more exactly, the depth of the gap in knowledge between our ti and his. We were rather well educated ladies in our ti, and yet it doesn’t co to much against what he learnt before the world ended.
The surprises did not stop there.
It was a rush.
He kind of promised us we would see working computers, and he delivered.
In an office, with odd hexagonal solar panels by the windows, we saw computers working.
Screens displaying pictures of living landscapes and not just text.
He made the pictures change. Texts appeared and disappeared at the slightest wave of his hands.
Until he showed us a docunt in text, that looked like the print of a book.
A report of so sort.
I recognised the Ph.D acronym.
Sothing about physics. It was written in French, so I could guess the general aning.
It was a thesis docunt, about sothing called T.I. Written by a doctor Morhens I never heard of.
The acronym of Terra Incognita was T.I. Taeïïn as we heard it...
I was completely dumbstruck but continued reading what I could comprehend.
The docunt described a few experints with schematics. I sort of understood that Mushio wanted to repeat one of them here, after he had found and read this thesis.
He was so happy to be able to share this set of theories, he had tearing eyes.
I couldn’t grasp how important this was.
I was barely able to envision it.
Knowledge is power. And this, this was the gate. A gift of understanding.
What reality is made of.
And how the world has changed.
My mind could barely encompass what I was brushing.
Mushio was sharing the greatest treasure of all known to him, and all the hope it could bring.
The greatest power of all. Real, knowledge about the physics of our days. And then how to use it.
The terrifying strength of humanity is sumd up there.
Despite the end of the world, we were able to write the equations explaining everything.
I can see why so beings-like-her would still be terrified of humans today.
There’s so much about physics to learn it’s stunning .
~
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