Chapter 9, Part 3: The Unwritten Curriculum

Elías began to observe the children with an intensity that bordered on the clinical, seeing in their newfound engagement an opportunity, a breach in the mental block between abstract emotions and concrete knowledge. Their capacity to learn, to absorb the previously incomprehensible, registered as an intriguing chemical reaction within his mind. He was, unknowingly, a born teacher, a catalyst for understanding. Yet, his cool detachment meant he possessed no arrogance, nor did he grasp the immense power of the knowledge he wielded. His quantum brain operated on a different plane, its mechanisms as enigmatic and taboo as nature itself. For millennia, humans had learned to navigate their world without delving too deeply into such fundamental, unsettling questions.

Calmly, driven by his unique gift for truth and his singular passion, Elías began to mentally list the names of Ana and several other children who displayed a marked interest in study. Their familiarity with the fields, their practical understanding of rural life, became a new data set. He began to analyze countless thoughts and ideas from every conceivable angle, as if simulating millions of potential scenarios in his mind, only to distill a precious few that could be brought into reality. His peculiar magic was to decompose what was akin to common copper and transmute it into intellectual gold.

For a full week, Elías immersed himself in observing both the challenges of their environment and innovative, often overlooked solutions. He focused on the special bamboo from the farm, noticing its varied ecosystem, how it thrived in certain microclimates. With a methodical precision that mirrored state-funded scientists, he devised a way to biologically and simply reproduce the bamboo. He processed the seeds, letting them ferment with natural elements, recognizing humanity's inherent drive for efficiency in agriculture. He worked with cold precision, yet the slow pace of natural processes grated on his mind. Impatiently, he sought ways to accelerate, to leverage nature itself to reduce the time.

He then took some readily available bamboo, illustrating new books with subjects more attuned to rural life. He envisioned texts on basic agriculture, the local flora and fauna, the practical physics of simple tools. As he worked, he noticed elders and street vendors, ordinary people who occasionally traveled to the capital or distant cities in the US, bringing back worn but functional books. Elías would acquire these, carefully disassembling them. To his surprise, he found errors – factual inaccuracies, flawed logic, concepts poorly explained. He meticulously recorded these mistakes in his mind, not with disdain, but as a crucial demonstration that reality could not be molded like fantasy. What Elías understood, others often could not grasp, and he was keenly aware that he was not yet capable of seeing beyond this world and the stars. He took these valuable errors, logging them in a special folder. With a cold, intellectual discipline, he learned to see error and the incomprehensible as his greatest allies, safeguarding him from arrogance and pride.

He finished his new books on rural life, simple yet profound, and subtly placed them in the village's makeshift library. The most active children, those Elías had silently observed and supported, were the first to find them. They picked up the bamboo-bound volumes, a unique spark igniting in their eyes. These were the very books they had unconsciously wished existed, texts that spoke to their lives, to their dreams. It was a singular moment where nature seamlessly blended with ideas, sparking solutions as if they were an intrinsic part of the world itself.

Just as the sun reached its zenith, a modest rain began to fall, a gentle shower that herded the children into the improvised library. As they huddled inside, a strange sensation of pleasure, of cold comfort, settled over Elías. He observed the wet village through the open doorway, noting the chemical response within the children: the relief, the safety from the elements, the sudden permission to simply be indoors. This feeling, of being secure while rain fell outside, prompted Elías to add meteorology to his mental notes, identifying it as something humans sought to manage, to alleviate a primal form of stress. He analyzed the pattern from close range, his own bamboo umbrella, specially designed, capable of redirecting the rain over a specific side of the library, alleviating the physical weight on the structure.

Driven by a renewed passion for ingenious solutions, Elías began creating different natural polygraphs and inks. He experimented with crushed insects for pigments, and sought various other ways to find solutions to things never before seen. As the rain continued, Elías remained still, a cool, objective spectator, preferring to stay hidden as if by a natural instinct. He was a silent architect of understanding, observing the unfolding patterns of human engagement and the subtle, profound ways in which knowledge, when made accessible, could transform the most ordinary of moments.