361. Visiting friends, 8

(Rose)

As we travelled toward their home, 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 me. Heavy science does that to me. I have reasonable education, but I've always struggled, and Mushio is clearly a level far beyond me.

Nonetheless, as we camped, he eagerly drew graphs onto the dirt with a stick, pointing at some 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 came from, over a drawn map of the world.

We showed him and confirmed 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 name a few times.

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 came to Ukraine looking for something 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 me, 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 Blume. There's so much more knowledge behind it's staggering.

~

This man was once a physicist of some sort. A man of sciences, but with centuries of progress beyond our time.

Bleue and I, and scientists from our older time, 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 improvement.

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 game.

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 time and the current days.

He was one of the last living members 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 came 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 home. 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 time 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 monument 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 seemed 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 means... The ichor... What we call magic.

~

Somewhat like another spectrum of light. Pardon me, I mean 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 name for us, until now.

It behaved similarly to radioactivity in some aspects we learn, though it is something 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 fundamental level.

And using another invisible power the right way, he could test his theories.

Radioactivity would somehow allow him to make that thing react, and make magic become visible.

This confinement chamber in the very specific architecture of nuclear reactors was the key to his intended experiment.

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 time and his. We were rather well educated ladies in our time, and yet it doesn't come 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 document in text, that looked like the print of a book.

A report of some sort.

I recognised the Ph.D acronym.

Something about physics. It was written in French, so I could guess the general meaning.

It was a thesis document, about something 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 document described a few experiments 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 summed up there.

Despite the end of the world, we were able to write the equations explaining everything.

I can see why some beings-like-her would still be terrified of humans today.

There's so much about physics to learn it's stunning me.

~