chalk

[alicornucopia]

In Paraasilan, Esmaar, a pair of roommates are about to break a rule that, compared to the one about running in the corridors or even the one about unlicensed teleportation, is there for a good reason.

In unison, they complete their shared spell.

~~~

with Adarin (Aestrix)

with Ekador (kappa)

with Brilliance (kappa)

with the admin (kappa)

with Teah (kappa)

with Katran (lambda)

with Hall (kappa)

with Joy (kappa)

with Kalinda (Christy Hotwater)

Comments

[cardistry]

"Wanna go show me some books?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah, sure." Kaylo swallows the last bite of his sandwich and heads for the lift.

[cardistry]

Brilliance is not quite done his ice cream. Omnomnomnomnomnomnom now he is done his ice cream! He does a quick teleport to catch up to Kaylo.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo snorts slightly, and tells the lift to take them to the library when they're in it.

Here is the library. It has many books in it.

[cardistry]

"Hmm," he says. "Okay, bring me your list of books that mention channeling capacity the right way?"

[alicornucopia]

"...will my bibliography do or do you need the actual books?"

[cardistry]

"If getting the books is easy for you, it'll make things easier," he says. "Just while I'm figuring it out, so I don't have to mess around with an extra layer of search to physically find them and then an extra teleport or flight to bring the targeted ones. Why, is it a big stack?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah, kinda, I've had this project on the back burner for a few years."

[cardistry]

He shrugs. "Will it all physically fit on a table?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yes."

[cardistry]

"Then it'll be easier to work with 'em stacked on a table than scattered around a bunch of shelves. At least until I figure out what the hell I'm doing."

[alicornucopia]

"Okay." Kaylo digs out his bibliography, then casts a spell on it. Books start flying at them and piling themselves on the nearest table.

[cardistry]

"Nice," he says, watching the books assemble.

Then he sits at the table and starts designing a spell.

[alicornucopia]

"Do you need anything else?" Kaylo asks.

[cardistry]

"Mm, don't think so. Just the books..."

He waits for the books to finish coming in. Then: "Read," he says, and his spell diagram unfolds beneath the pile. A thin film of rainbow-coloured mana rises to cover the books, gradually, starting at the bottom layer and working its way up. As each book is completed, it flashes slightly. Brilliance looks lost in thought.

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo decides to stand back and supervise and not ask further questions or touch the books till it looks like Brilliance is done.

[cardistry]

He smiles slightly and murmurs, "Cool," which seems to be commentary rather than another incantation.

The next actual spell he casts doesn't take an incantation at all, and has the effect of lifting all the books into the air and fanning them out vertically so that any two books next to each other in a stack have enough space between them for another book to pass by. "Okay - Category Sort." The books take advantage of their newly roomy configuration to rearrange themselves into three groups - about three-quarters of them on the bottom, about a tenth of them on the top, the remainder in the middle. The vertical gaps between categories are exactly twice the height of the vertical gaps between individual books in one category.

Brilliance contemplates them for a little longer, then says, "Information Summary." All the books in the bottom category and some of the books in the top category flash. "Information Summary." All the books in the middle category and some of the books in the top category flash. "Category Sort." The top category splits and rearranges itself - most of the books that flashed on one or both of the summaries stay where they are; all the books that didn't, and a few that did, rise into a fourth category above them. "And... Information Summary." The new top category flashes.

"Now I just need something to output to..." he murmurs, rubbing his head. "Of all the dumb things, I don't have good enough matter manipulation to just make the spell auto-write it, I'd have to learn how to work with matter well enough to conjure paper with stuff written on it, that's way harder for some reason than getting the information in the first place."

He turns at last to Kaylo. "Any suggestions? I've got three reports here - grouping the research by different things people tried and how it turned out when they did, grouping the theory by what theories they mention in about what level of detail, and grouping the miscellaneous crap like statistics and historical overviews by what kind of thing it is. I just need to get the reports out of my magic and into some kind of a format you can read, and I don't feel like writing them out by hand when there's bound to be a way to do it easier with magic."

[alicornucopia]

"Spells for dictation are mostly kind of terrible. There's good copying spells, but I don't know if that would work for what you want to do - what format is the information in right now?"

[cardistry]

"Uh, magical? It's - I don't know, spells can hold information apparently, I've got the whole text of all those books in here too, that's what Read was doing. Stored separately from the summaries, though. And I'm gonna dump it all as soon as I'm done with it, I don't feel like carrying around a library's worth of information about CC in my systems permanently even if there's room. I think the holding format's mostly supposed to be intermediary between reading or composing something and recording it somewhere, but I can access it directly like that because I'm a Device."

[alicornucopia]

"Could you dump it into a picture crystal, maybe?"

[cardistry]

"Maaaybe, what's a picture crystal?" He tilts his head, then amends, "Never mind, it was in the books. I guess that's kind of handy. Sure, show me a picture crystal and I'll see if I can output to it."

[alicornucopia]

"I can dig one up, just a tick -" Kaylo teleports away, is gone for a bit more than a tick, and then reappears, crystal in hand. "This one's blank."

[cardistry]

"Okay... hmm. I'm juggling a little too much crap here, one sec." He waves a hand at the floating books and they un-float, settling down neatly into contiguous stacks. The spell diagram disappears from beneath them. He blinks a few times. "There, that's better. Now lemme have a look at you..."

He holds the picture crystal in his hands and peers contemplatively at it for a few seconds. It shimmers briefly with rainbow mana, then begins displaying an image of a considerable amount of neat black printed text - in Leraal, this being the language the books were in - on a plain beige background. He hands it to Kaylo. "There's your reports."

[alicornucopia]

"Awesome," says Kaylo. "You could do that with arbitrary sets of books and topics?"

[cardistry]

"Yeah, pretty much. And if I do enough of them I can probably refine the spells so they're not so - hands-on, so I won't have to handle all that information so directly and theoretically somebody who wasn't a Device could use them."