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pinkgothic:
They had no particular schedule. Leila came to visit Mateo when she felt like it and had healed up enough from her previous spell-casting to try again and he imposed no particular cadence on her. Sometimes it was Mateo who visited Leila, sharing some papers he thought might help her better understand the craft. She was still a way's away from being able to visualise a rune from the descriptions in the papers, but she could by now work them out piece by piece, cross-referencing her notes on the nomenclature.
Today, Leila was visiting Mateo, ringing his doorbell.
It took half a minute for it to actually open. “Leila,” he greeted.
Past his shoulder, she could see Nyarai Pretorius sitting on the second stool Mateo owned, almost clipped to the computer's table, glancing up as the door opened, locking the screen with what looked like a well-honed reflex. Her eyes opened a little wider and some kind of curious smile tugged at the corner of her lips, but unlike the last time they'd crossed paths, there was no immediate commentary.
Still, it was easy to imagine those eyes held the question 'so it was a date?'.
Nymphetamine:
It had been nearly two months of meetings between them, usually once a week, or whenever she healed up. Leila devoured the materials that he offered her, taking notes in a personal tablet of hers (rather than one supplied by work), locked behind biometrics that she hoped would be enough. Their efforts to keep this between them had seemed to work, and no one commented on the botanist who had begun to refuse to roll up her sleeves too much while she worked. (She had since taken care to carve runs higher up on her arm, just so that her forearms were able to be uncovered.) It was slow progress, but there was noticeable forward momentum. The runes were becoming easier to recognize, and she practiced as much as she could before she actually applied the strange stylus to her arm. Mateo was the one taking all the burden of risk upon himself, what with procurring the nerve-blockers, the other tools and papers that he shared with her.
When she arrived at his door that day, she was dressed in the usual sort of clothing that Martians wore. Something entirely more functional than fashionable. Her hands and arms were freshly washed after the workday, and her hair pulled back in a braid. She was not expecting him to already have company, so the sight of Nyarai Pretorius was a bit of a surprise for her. “Mateo. Hi… Am I… Am I interrupting something?” She gave a little smile to Nyarai before her attention swiveled back to Mateo himself.
pinkgothic:
“Not any more than in the most tautological definition of 'interrupt',” Nyarai said, before Mateo could align enough polite words for an answer. “In that we were doing something. But it's quite interruptable. We can easily shelve it and continue some other day.”
Mateo frowned mildly. “That's not necessary,” he said.
“You want to send your lady friend back home?” Nyarai feigned indignation.
Mateo grimaced. “She's not–”
“Not your girlfriend, yeah, yeah. You're meeting a lot for people who aren't dating,” Nyarai protested in amusement.
“Men and woman can be friends,” Mateo hissed.
“In your wildest dreams,” Nyarai grinned.
“Are you my girlfriend?” Mateo retorted, glowering at Nyarai.
“Oh-ho-ho,” the sorceress lit up like a Christmas tree, as though Mateo had handed her a gift. “Maybe I am,” she joked and smiled light-heartedly at Leila. “Leila, watch out, competition.”
Nymphetamine:
Standing in silence while their exchange played out, she tried her best not to look impatient. Not the sort of young woman to blush at the hint of romantic entanglements, especially when there were none, she let Mateo defend their friendship. Protesting too much on her part might have fed Nyarai more fuel for her insinuations. Her attention turned to the well pleased sorceress, calling herself Mateo's girlfriend. A huff of indignant laughter burbled up to the fore. “No competition here, girl,” she said as she raised her hands in a defensive manner, palms out and fingers pointing towards the ceiling. She managed a thin smile for Nyarai, though it was more perfunctory and polite than friendly.
pinkgothic:
“Don't you 'girl' me,” Nyarai said, but she did it while still grinning, revealing just how seriously she was taking the conversation. “I think I'm older than you,” she finger-gunned. In a sinuous motion, she peeled herself from the seat and into a stand. “I can come back later,” she said, lightly.
“Or you can stay,” Mateo said. “And we finish up the sim.”
Nyarai was strikingly silent for a moment, as though something Mateo had said was deeply puzzling. She slowly tiled her head. “But not while Leila is here?” she suggested.
Mateo closed his eyes and sighed deeply, disliking the choice - especially since it wasn't really necessary. Nyarai didn't know that, though, and maybe it was best not to let her know. So, instead, he said: “Okay, fair, but it's not going to make a lick of sense to a botanist, anyway.”
Nymphetamine:
Not wanting to start trouble, or cause a problem for Mateo, she stood silent for a moment or two longer. Glancing between them, she considered what they might have been talking about prior to her arrival, and now guessing that it was none of her business. “It's alright. I'll just play with Haffy while you guys finish up, if it's all the same to you.” She had taken a little bit of a shine to the feline after having taken care of Mateo. It was a cover, because she was certainly curious about what they were doing that had Nyarai's desire for privacy with this simulation they were apparently running.
pinkgothic:
“Heh,” Nyarai said, the sound dull. “I dunno, should it be all the same to me?” There was an edge to that question - it wasn't quite aggressively intoned, but a wariness was floating to the surface.
Mateo shrugged a shoulder. “We-e-e-e can also do this some other day,” he suggested, his tone one of mediation. “I was just going to prioritise the research, but I can save state and we can continue where we left off next time.”
“Yeah,” Nyarai said, the tension ratcheting down a fraction, still more present than not, but no longer feeling like the brink of detection. “Remember, it's the sorcerer's responsibility to maintain the rules,” she said, looking at Leila with tired apology swirling in her eyes as she spoke to Mateo. “Please try not to trip into trouble.”
Nymphetamine:
She did not respond, as their conversation continued towards a pause until another time. Which was just fine with Leila, though she was infinitely curious about what they had been squirreled away doing that couldn't be in front of 'just a botanist'. But she wasn't going to protest or make anything more difficult for Mateo. Still standing awkwardly in the door way, she side stepped to allow Nyarai to pass, saying nothing as any parting words would've seemed sarcastic after her intrusion.
pinkgothic:
Nyarai eyed Leila in passing - not quite suspiciously as much as with a trace of worry or concern - and slipped out of the room with a deep but soft sigh.
Mateo tugged gently on Leila's sleeve, closing the door behind her. As it clicked shut, Mateo ran his hands through his hair. “That could have gone better,” he muttered, directing it at no one in particular.
Nymphetamine:
Not wanting to stare, she tried not to watch Nyarai go, but failed at that. Managing a thin smile even if it felt sarcastic, she waited for the other woman to go before addressing Mateo himself. “Could've gone worse, I guess, too?” There was a pause as she considered her next words, needing just a moment to collect her thoughts. “Maybe we ought to have more of a schedule… I feel like I've misstepped coming over unannounced.”
pinkgothic:
Mateo shook his head with the energy of residual annoyance. “No, you should come over when you like, I'm not going to pretend we're doing anything nefarious, just because it happens to be illegal on a technicality,” he exhaled. His fingers drew down his face around the outlines of his mouth. “Nyarai means well,” he assured. “She's just a bit protective. If I were less of a coward I would have clued her in already, but here we are.”
Nymphetamine:
She wasn't about to cast aspersions on Nyarai's intentions, so she just managed a warmer smile for him as she watched him visibly try to deal with the situation. “Maybe we.. Well, I say 'we', but it'll probably fall more on you, unfortunately, maybe we tell her? She seems awfully astute, and perceptive…” Leila was trying to ease him into it, but she was as subtle as a freight train. “If you think she can be trusted..” She sighed, though, and shook her head. “Obviously, I will trust your best judgement on the subject…”
pinkgothic:
“To be fair, you don't really get through sorcery education without being astute and perceptive.” Mateo pinched his nose, then let his arms drop, before settling on the anxious middle ground of crossing his arms to keep them still. “If you're cool with it, I'll work myself up to it eventually,” he said, lips askew in a slightly pained expression. Maybe he was vividly imagining her giving him misguided, maternal career advice to drop the apprenticeship. No doubt that's exactly what she would do, if she was really 'protective', as he put it. He took a deep breath in a conscious attempt to dismiss the subject. “How're the studies?” By which he meant her reviews of the carefully encrypted copies of academic sorcery papers he'd shared with her - the dense material that she was still in the process of learning to as much as read fluently, let alone understand downstream ramifications of.
Nymphetamine:
“Yeah, I suppose, if you trust her.” Which, she was sure that the reasonable thing in the world would be for Nyarai to try to talk him out of continuing before too much damage had been done. It wasn't as though Leila had access to the nerve-blocker, or the stylus itself, so he could box her out pretty easily if he wanted to. She managed a smile, which quickly faded into a grimace as he asked about her studies. “Oh, you know, just reading esoteric documents about a niche study, having to master seemingly a whole other language, even if it's not…” A self deprecating laugh followed. “I don't think I'm even a quarter of the way through…”
pinkgothic:
He smiled back, the tension not quite fully gone yet, but the expression sincere nonetheless. “We're not in any rush. But come, sit down, let's talk about how little we know,” he prompted, himself finally untangling his arms from each other and ambling over to one of the seats by the computer. The screen was still locked and he didn't turn to face it - evidently he was just sitting there because the chair happened to be there.
Nymphetamine:
Leila followed him towards the desk, sinking into an available seat nearby. “We really don't know much about sorcery, do we?” she asked with an amused cast to her voice. That fact was both incredible and humbling at the same time, almost awesome in the strictest definition of that word. “Or rather, there just might be so much to learn, or discover, I suppose.”
pinkgothic:
Mateo nodded amicably. “Yeah. Like I said the other day - this is like the early days of chemistry. We know a lot of the reactions and we can guess some others from things that look like rules, but the underlying forces that make it happen are still completely unknown to us.” He paused, then smiled. “You've been reading up on a lot of theory lately. If someone put you on the spot and asked you for a grand unified theory of sorcery, what would you guess is going on in the physical substrate?”
Nymphetamine:
She considered the question for few minutes, chewing on it like a piece of gristle. “Well. As my sister used to say as she pulled my hair as she braided it, 'Beauty is pain'. So I guess I would say that 'Sorcery is pain',” she said cheekily, making a joke-answer to forestall the real answer that she was still considering. “To be honest, not entirely sure. I know I've been reading and studying sorcery for a while now, but a unified theory of sorcery? I think the sorcerers are still working that out themselves…”
pinkgothic:
There was more nodding as was customary in polite conversation. “Well,” Mateo said. “We're fairly sure the glyphs modify the flow of something, which is why their shape and arrangement is important. Like building a very crude laser, or some functioning caricature of a Large Hadron Collider with lego pieces. The trouble is that we don't know what is flowing. We've ruled out neutrinos, for example, and it's obviously nothing in the visible universe.”
Nymphetamine:
Lips pursed together as she listened to him speak. They were toying with forces they didn't understand in the least. “That's quite the example, but it made sense.” Which was the whole point. “No wonder we call it 'sorcery'. Science can't explain it? Have they done like… I don't know… can we perceive the mass of the runes when they've been carved out?” She wondered if scientific instrumentation had been able to pick up on the runes themselves.
pinkgothic:
Mateo gave her one of those looks that suggested she'd just asked a stupid question, but before she could figure it out for herself, he said: “You've handled runes, they have weight. That means they have mass.” …right! That was how mass worked.
“But if you don't mind the presupposition, I think what you're really asking is what substance they're made of. We… unfortunately have data on that, yes.” It made sense that the data on it could only have been gathered from a failed spell, or some other horrid bodily mutilation. “By chemical analysis, it looks like it's some kind of metal alloy, made of soft metals.
“That's not the whole story, of course, just the abridged version - but the point is that there's nothing fundamentally unusual about the rune substance that we know of. We don't understand why we need the runes, why… twisting your fingers into the right shapes, for example, could never have the same effect, or why iron-casting runes in the exact necessary shapes doesn't do anything.”
Nymphetamine:
Nodding along with what he was saying, she suddenly wished she had brought her tablet to make notes. “I know mentioning the soul is not very scientific, but could it be the life essence? Not that I support the animal abuse this suggests, but do carving runes into animals produce the same results? I'm sure someone has had to try, haven't they?” It was barbaric, and she would still use her own arm rather than hurt an animal. But she was curious if living matter was the criterion. “What about plants? Can you carve into plants?”
pinkgothic:
“So,” Mateo sighed. “From what we can tell small chemical changes in the composition of skin, muscle and fat layers change the final shape of the runes drastically enough that the spells we know don't work. The chemical composition of the runes also changes more the more you deviate from the human template.
“We can't tell if something can be done with those runes and we just don't know the spells, but it's research we keep doing on and off. Not high-power, mass-testing, for the same reason we don't move Tincture around in large volumes - bad things seem to happen when we do that.
“In a sense, it's encouraging, because it means the other runes probably also do something, but the heuristics we know about all don't work in that space.” He tapped the tips of some of his fingers together idly. Adhafera appeared in the corner of Leila's gaze and snuggled against Mateo's right leg, purring lightly.
“But there doesn't seem to be any electromagnetism involved, which is pretty much the only way you could talk about a 'life essence' in a metal, I think.” He didn't sound wholly sure about it, so maybe the chemical compound that came out of the combination of Tincture and flesh still had some complex carbon molecules.
Nymphetamine:
Continuing listening to him, she was beginning to grasp the importances of the human-essence in the creation of these runes. However that worked, because it sounded quite like even the sorcerers didn't know how it worked, or what it meant. It felt like being over one's head. Like she had jumped into the deep end of a fathomless pool because she thought she could handle it. Sorcery was something they had only scratched the surface of. No pun intended, of course. “Too bad that experimentation is so risky. We could learn so much more if we weren't having to be so safe about it. I suppose that's just childish desire for easiness. Slow and steady wins the race. And doesn't die.”
pinkgothic:
The comment made Mateo chuckle. “Not dying is a good start,” he confirmed. “But anyway, the force we're manipulating seems very strange, physically speaking. The closest behavioural equivalent would be electromagnetism - on the one hand, if you imagined the runes were ferro-magnetic, which they aren't, then you'd have a fairly interesting electromagnetic field, and the complexities of that could explain some things.
“On the other hand, electromagnetism doesn't…” He gestured a bit helplessly into the air with both hands. Haffy seized the opportunity to leap up into his lap, making the hands settle back down on the cat, rather than on his thighs or the table, kneading at her gently and absent-mindedly. “You don't accidentally make a nuclear bomb by arranging magnets in a certain way, right? So it's weird.”
Nymphetamine:
And Leila chose to learn sorcery. A thing with a mystical force that they could not explain. Rapidly blinking at the 'nuclear bomb' comment, she stared at him. “I hope that's hyperbole,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I mean… do the mistakes really result in the force of something that large?” Wracking her brain for any news she might have read about particularly bad sorcerous fuck-ups, she couldn't recall anything specific. “That sure is.. uh… that sure is quite the comparison, Mateo. I hope you're just exaggerating. Last thing I wanna do is accidentally blow up the dome…”
pinkgothic:
“Oh, you wouldn't do it on accident,” Mateo said. “But there are spells that have about an equivalent effect. They're mercifully expensive to perform, and papers about them only ever talk about component parts, though, so neither you nor I are likely to get access to them. But trust me when I say there's no way you're going to do a spell like that on accident - or, in fact, any other spell, even the simple ones.”
Nymphetamine:
She breathed a sigh of relief. “That's *very* good to know.” Apparently she was worried. Feeling the tension in her shoulders and neck fade away at this reassurance, she managed a soft, grateful smile. “I'll tell you, I had been worried about blowing people up for a while now…” Which may have been an unfounded fear, but there it was, out in the open. “So. We know less about sorcery than I previously thought.” Her rich chuckle was full of mirth at this.
pinkgothic:
“The rule of thumb in sorcery is that we know absolutely nothing,” Mateo nodded in amusement while scritching at Haffy's bald forehead gently. “The things we do know are the rounding errors. What Nyarai and I are trying to crack is the big question of alchemy in particular - we know we can turn some atoms into other atoms, and it turns out it is even fairly arbitrary whether those atoms have the same number of component parts or not, but if we do alter the fundamental amount of… stuff… then the alchemy buck stops there. Why is that? We don't know. We can turn a gold atom into several helium atoms, we can turn those several helium atoms into a gold atom, but if we turn that gold atom into a single helium atom, it's locked in place. It's a helium atom forever, as far as we know.”
Nymphetamine:
“That is so weird. And we've no idea why it stays a single helium atom forever? Is it because it's a noble gas? Or like, if you turn the gold atom into say a calcium atom, does it work the same way?” Fascinated by the prospect and the differences of it all, she shook her head with a wry expression on her face. “Still searching for the grand unified theory of sorcery it is…” Chuckling a little about that, she heaved a sigh and leaned back in her seat, amused, mystified and still curious about the entire thing.
pinkgothic:
“Yep, the substance doesn't matter - well, you might be able to have a situation where you happen to turn some molecules into completely different molecules that still have the same overall mass, in which case maybe you'd be confused that you can continue to transmute the result, but generally speaking, if you transmute something into something with more or less mass, you can do that, but you're stuck with it.
“The reason we know this is true is because we know quite a few alchemy spells, that's why we're up here, after all - and the gold-to-helium and helium-to-gold transmutation's basically verbatim been done. You can exchange them to and fro as long as you like, but the moment you change the mass, the spells stop working. And we can't tell the difference. It looks like normal gold atoms to us. Or normal helium atoms. But suddenly the spells treat it differently. It's very mysterious.”
Nymphetamine:
“That is really strange…” Leila mused on what was said for a few moments longer, and then gave him a massive shrug. She didn't have any more answers for it than he did. “To what end, though? I mean, what is the grand, end game purpose for mastery sorcery? This isn't the Stone Age, we aren't trying to transmute lead into gold, are we?”
pinkgothic:
“I mean, we kind of are,” Mateo shrugged back. “We need to transmute things to make Mars habitable - again, that's why we're here. Turn rock into oxygen, trace metals, water. There's a big plan to increase the gravity of Mars by doing non-mass-preserving alchemy on its sterile core, make it easier for Mars to hold onto an atmosphere. If we can figure out - and maybe circumvent - the restriction of alchemy, we can, basically, create material out of thin air. As in… out of less than thin air, it would literally be an infinite material machine, bounded only by the willingness of the sorcerers to cast spells.”
Nymphetamine:
“Humanity is so ambitious.” There was a not so subtle note of appreciation in that remark, like she was marveling at the amazingness of the human spirit and its determination. “I suppose that's pretty cool, though. All in all… it's important work, that has to get done. It's simply not feasible to ship everything from the earth, or the moon.” A pause, more thinking on that before she smiled and shrugged, resting her hands in her lap. “Well then. Let's go, Team Human.”