The Power of Ten, Book Five: Versatile Wizardry

“Any competition for basic materials?” I had to ask Briggs.

His pale violet eyes glittered. “Basically, no. Everyone wants stuff Energized to the Elements, it’s what magitech runs on. I’m basically getting the junk that’s left, and they are all too eager to sell it to me. Of course, that means that right now those raw materials are cheap, and will be right up until they realize how important they are, at which time they’ll start putting the squeeze on.”

“That profit motive is such a killer at times,” I had to agree.

“Yeah, so with an amazingly coincidental new income source that we stumbled into, I’m stockpiling tons of the stuff, and when it comes time, I’ll bring it up to the Pentagram as a vital national resource, which they won’t deny as they oooohhhh and aaaaahhh over their tech that can finally post videos of magical combat. They’ll institute price controls, the mine-owners will whine and complain and outright lie about the cost of production, lawsuits will fly, and then they’ll lose all their leases on their mines and find out I bought them up from underneath them.”

“Weird how a nigh-unlimited amount of funding makes so much stuff possible,” I mused to the Heavens.

“How bad is the impact going to be when you have to let the spells go for pocket change?” he asked with more than casual interest.

“Negligible on the common Elements. When I start rolling out those one hundred percent Elemental Awakening Tools at the Spellhouses, it’ll be even more money. We’re still talking millions of sales a year worldwide for the unoptimized base version of each of the six spells, by Element.

“Income on the scarcer Elements will be lower because there simply aren’t as many people who have them. BUT... there are a lot of people who WANT them, and once they have them...” I smiled widely.

He smacked the side of his head. “Duh! Wasn’t even thinking. Suddenly Fire and Lightning users are going to be all over the damn place, aren’t they?”

“Damn right. And they’ll all want the best version of the spells, of course!” I beamed, and he could only shake his head at that point. The next generation of mages here in America might have the mix THEY wanted, rather than what ‘just happened’. Woo, wouldn’t that change the balance of power. The Families tended to dominate others via use of Fire, Lightning, and the Advanced Elements, after all...

“I suppose that means I should be buying heavy stakes in Fire and Lightning-using industries that are about to explode, and short-selling those that rely on a scarce supply of their Elements...” he mused to nobody in particular.

“Let Sama handle the numbers stuff. You know how much she enjoys playing with other people’s money, making a fortune, and giving them back a pittance.”

He beamed again. “She IS rather good at that,” Briggs admitted gleefully.

“And now that she’s got a hundred million dollars to play with and parlay into more...”

His eyes turned up towards the ceiling, and the stars beyond. “Magic’s influence peters out significantly as you exit the atmosphere. It doesn’t go away, but you have a rarefied level of it to operate with up there. If you want a next-step goal from me, it’s going to be getting into the satellite business, which means a dominant presence in telecommunications of all types.”

There were no cable lines cutting across the seas here. Such things would promptly be severed and destroyed by the Tribes of the seas who noticed them, and likely the ships laying them would mysteriously vanish, so Humanity had never even tried it. Transoceanic communication had always been by fast courier, usually Archmages or Dragon-riders, until they figured out satellite technology and M-radio bounces.

“I can probably really help with that tech if I get the Levels to Awaken the appropriate skill Ranks,” I confided in him. “Aelryinth went ten Ranks into a lot of fields of endeavor of the old world of science, just to preserve as much as he could in case it might be useful someday, a big project for Terra-Luna’s Artificers and Alchemists. I can’t access all of it without the akashic link of a Class Level, but the whole of Earth’s tech in those areas fits in seven Ranks per branch of science or engineering without much problem. It’s more about being inventive and specific applications and cross-discipline synergy that stuff works.”

“You’ve got loads of Skill Rank sinks right now,” he frowned down at me. “How many Skill Ranks do just your Element Control skills require?”

“I don’t have them all maxed out, but...” I just sighed. “242.”

“And now you’re going to be backing us up in the sciences?” he asked skeptically. “Can you even take enough Classes to do that?”

“I also have been doing Studying since the beginning in said Control Ranks. As of right now, I have eighteen Ranks from Classes floating, waiting to be assigned,” I grinned cheerfully. “And as soon as the boys get back from the Firelands border, I’ll be promoting up to Mage. I already have Math and Chemistry at 13 Ranks, and Engineering and Computer Programming at 10 Ranks.”

Math and Chemistry could advance because they were foundational Lores for both magic and alchemy, and Engineering worked with both of them. Computer Programming basically exceeded the available technology to support it at the moment. I’d gotten it to 10 Ranks because of Polyglot synergizing with it, making the language ever more complex and transcendental, and having people smart enough to actually use it without being machines.

“Huh. Sama and I haven’t been able to break seven Ranks on the true sciences. Can you do that?” he asked pointedly.

“That doesn’t sound right,” I frowned. Both of them were impossibly smart by human standards. “True research limitations?” I had to ask.

“We don’t get the raw lab time, and we don’t have the numbers to really crank the foundational technology,” he admitted, making a looping circle with one hand. “The virtuous cycle of research: build better tools so you can research further, research better tools for further production... you know how it goes.

“As long as it’s combined with magic, we can shoot to the moon, but other stuff...”

I waved him off before he went further. “That would be science vs Spellcraft, Artifice, and Alchemy,” I confirmed. “Which is great, you built the Refractory Towers and its White Mana Zone with them. It won’t get you any higher in the true sciences, however. To progress true sciences, among other things what you’re going to need are the Foundational Numbers.”

-Ohhh, that sounds interesting.- Sama was now obviously /listening in now. He’d probably been feeding her passively.

“Terra-Luna had a couple White Mana Zones, too, and they concentrated a lot of research inside of them. The non-Powered love working on low or non-magic solutions to stuff, and even if it’s impossible for high tech to endure outside the Zones, it’s still possible to learn the stuff is there, just unusable.

“Everyone wants to know if zero-point energy is actually harvestable and all, right?”

“Shades of Stargate!” he clapped his hand to his thick brow. “I cannot imagine why a nigh-unlimited power source would be desirable to anyone!”

“Yeah, it’s unfortunately mostly airy theory stuff, as we can’t apply any of it, so it’s basically a serious hobby among the intellectual set, as opposed to something with a lot of active support.

“But, you know, people take their hobbies seriously, especially with post-human Intellects.”

Briggs’ knuckles cracked as he grinned. “Can confirm!”

-Ditto!- /added Sama.

“One of the things we found is that there are specific Rules of Reality you have to find out on a mathematical level which determine in which direction and how far your manipulation of science can take you.

“The universes with ‘Power of Ten’ dominant magical Rules that we’ve been to tended to have very similar Foundational Numbers, with a lot of Rules that were fairly elastic and easily nudged around by magic. From everything we could determine, the Numbers for Terra’s original home universe were pretty hard, and super-science was incredibly difficult and much harder to attain there.

“Once we have the Numbers, we should be able to ascertain in what direction to pursue research, which will cut down on a LOT of blind alleys.”

“So, we have to build the stuff that can ascertain those Numbers, then start doing the hard research to find the particulars.” Briggs nodded slowly, liking the idea. “I gather you don’t have a lot of worlds for datapoints?”

I held up three fingers. “As you might imagine, everyone was pretty damn busy trying not to see Terra-Luna get overrun, so World-hopping For Great Adventure was a highly desired dream we had to put on the back burner for the most part.”

“Can Divination magic reveal the Foundation Numbers?” he asked, clearly not expecting a positive answer.

“Yesssss...” I drawled out, and he just waited. “But using magic to find them gives you the Numbers that work with active magic, not the no-magic Numbers.”

“Briggs is pretending to be surprised.” He flipped up his huge paws, an amazed expression popping up hilariously on his crude features as he looked to the skies in mock wonder.

“Yeah, it was too damn easy,” I agreed with a sigh.

“So, you can add a point of Study every two weeks, basically auto-passing the checks, which should get you to six or seven Ranks in any Skill, by playing off your non-essential Element Control Skills and then feeding your Class points into the sciences using the akashic links. Sama and I could technically do the same, except we’d need real-time study and research into something to do the same, and you’re basically having one of your personas just testing Mana Control while you do other things.”

“Oddly enough, brute-forcing some of the higher-Tier spells does the job wonderfully,” I agreed. “The influence of each Startrail on the spell, the different configurations of each Startrail, then the standard and the non-standard ways of linking them all up, then altering it all up with a new Mana type, which changes the responsiveness of everything...” I just shook my head. There were a LOT of extremely minor alterations and interactions to catalyze, and every intersection affected every other one.

Spells here were basically happy coincidences of magical reactions coming together!

“That’s a lot of cranking spells,” he agreed, starting to run the numbers, and watching them just grow and grow. “Please tell me you’re building a database so you can crunch this down and start eliminating dead ends ahead of time.”

I let the two of them look at some of the datapoints and math I’d arranged to apply to this.

Both of them /whistled mentally. -Goddamn, I wondered what you were doing with those twenty servers you made for me,- Sama /mused from Boston.

“Servers you made?” Briggs asked aloud in overly-hurt surprise.

“My first nine Study Ranks I bought-off went into Computer Engineering. I only needed the raw materials and I was able to whip up some Tech Level Nine computer servers, better than anything else on the planet. They’re Weird Science, not pure, but I only want them for number crunching, so I didn’t care.”

“TL 9 is still better than anything else on the planet by a fair margin...” Briggs murmured thoughtfully, his pale violet eyes gleaming expectantly.

-Just one could run the whole New York Stock Exchange, or the Pentagram,- Sama /said gleefully.

“How’d you make them?” Briggs frowned dramatically. “We don’t have the tools to make the computer tech at that level, Weird Science or not!”

“Yes, I had to make the tools first. Virtuous Cycle and everything.” I imitated his looping motion from earlier. “And of course, Artifice. You can slowly make all the TL 9 servers you want now, you just need the raw materials.” Making a magical machine to build the mundane machines hadn’t been hard once I had all the tools invented. We could basically Print them on demand now, if slowly.

“Has someone been holding out on me?” he mumbled good-naturedly.