The Good Teacher

After Marie was left to her devices in the vault beneath the mountain, she immediately started to cycle through plates one after the other, gaping in awe at the convenience and ingenuity of the whole infrastructure. In this process, she discovered a few more features that Mage Maddi had left out in her explanation. For instance, it was possible to expand a select region of the three-dimensional projected by a significant factor. Marie decided to dub this behaviour the 'zoom' function since it felt as if she was zooming into the sky while approaching the desired region. She noted that she was able to zoom in by at least a hundred times without losing clarity.

Though she did not have access to the exact method used to develop this magical piece of technology, it didn't stop her from developing theories and hypotheses regarding its internal mechanism and the concepts at play. For one, the mode of capturing the visual of the sky. Through repeated zoom-ins and zoom-outs, some beyond the limits of the system's capacity, she found that the projection was basically a collection of points assigned a colour as well as a relative frame with respect to a reference point (which would be the projection quadropod). The total number of points projected never exceeded a fixed amount of 298598400 give or take a few. As she zoomed in, the existing points moved apart and new ones spawned to take their place so that it didn't look like an empty void was suddenly spawned at the centre of a star. And this continued until the maximum zoom-in limit where Marie theorised that no new point could be spawned to fill in the blanks.

Marie also noted that the regions in the far reaches of outer space, corresponding to the empty regions between celestial bodies, were actually artificially spawned points of true black. She determined their artificial nature by the fact that they never jittered as a result of noise (terrain, sensing, etc.) when she zoomed in.

The physics of how this system worked did baffle her for a while. With her limited understanding of the subject, she figured that maybe some sort of emission, reflection and absorption mechanism was in play here. Where the pylons emitted some kind of wave or particle, allowing it to reflect off of a surface while capturing key features at that point such as its colour and distance from the source, and retrieved this information by absorbing the reflection.

In the Solar System that Gaea was a part of, there were six other planets besides it. Starting from the Sun, it went Duenea, Norvea, Gaea, Thorea, Uthea, Gradinea and Sacagea. She knew for a fact, having read this detail in an old book during her travels, that the distance between Gaea and Sacagea was appreciable - approximately 25 G-Units (which is the average distance from the Sun to Gaea). The fact that she could sometimes see Sacagea in the three-dimensional visuals, which was 25 times as far away from the Sun as Gaea, at around the size of a large ball even at the maximum zoomed-in level, established an upper limit to how far the pylons could see and capture. She could see the other planets as well, and with increasing detail, as she worked her way closer to Gaea. In fact, the representation even captured the surface of Duenea, Norvea and Thorea with a level of detail as if the person was actually there!

After messing around a bit more with the device, the euphoria brought on by exposure to its new and innovative magic and technology started to wear off. And as she sobered up, her expression started to droop more and more until she was forced to sit down on the ground and ponder over her next move.

The data she was working with was raw. Unadulterated, unaltered, raw. She wanted to know the configuration of celestial bodies in space, and she got just that. So... what next? This line of questioning brought forth a few crucial points such as: "How does one define the position of celestial bodies? What is the frame of reference that is most apt?"

The next set of questions tackled higher-level problems, such as: "How much needs to be considered to define the correct model? What line of reasoning must be followed to define the correct model? Should constellations and clusters visible in the night sky be considered as part of the model as well?"

Especially with the last question, Marie found that with each new celestial body taken into consideration for the model, she would be introducing an additional set of parameters and a whole other equation. Planetary dynamics was already highly nonlinear, this would just make it a hundred times worse!

And then there was the matter of tying it all in with The Heavenly Eye... How to go about that?

Marie's eyes drifted upwards, beyond the projection of the sky and into the seemingly endless tunnel, with its walls lined with lustrous black obsidian and aged books leading to the peak of the mountain. Her sight started to grow woozy as the previously vast vault started to shrink around her. It was suffocating! She had to get out!

While she started to spontaneously run out of breath, she staggered her way towards the exit. Her vision was flickering to black, and she was starting to lose strength in her legs.

Just as she passed the membranous force field protecting the entrance and filled her lungs with fresh air enriched with ions expelled from the crashing waves, her body rapidly depressurised and she collapsed onto her back.

"What do we have here?" A familiar voice brought her out of her daze. Marie tilted her head backwards and found her Master's face peaking into her sight. "I'd assumed that you would be knee-deep in research by now."

Krish expected a witty retort of some kind by this point, but then none came. All he saw was his Disciple's face turning dourer by the second. That was never a good sign.

"What's the matter? Actually, what are you doing here, laying outside the entrance?" Krish probed in rapid succession. He kneeled and approached his Disciple.

"I'm scared..." Marie murmured.

"You? Scared?" Krish blurted out instinctively, but he immediately tapped his lips apologetically and gestured for his Disciple to continue.

"It's all just so overwhelming, Master. When I went into it, I falsely assumed that everything would be straightforward. Manageable. Within my realm of expertise. But I couldn't have been more wrong," Marie responded.

"Is there any way I can help?" Krish asked sincerely.

"Unless you can sift through centuries worth of data and can make proper sense out of it..." Marie muttered wryly.

Krish proceeded to lie on the ground and joined his Disciple. "You don't have to carry the burden of our lineage all on your shoulders, you know?"

Marie turned her head and faced her Master.

"In truth, my only expectation from you is to survive as long as I have and hopefully with all your body parts intact. All of this is secondary to me. If you fail in this endeavour, know that there is no shame as people far more knowledgeable than you and more experienced have also tried and failed," Krish continued.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Marie shot back sarcastically.

"People feel scared for many reasons," Krish ignored his Disciple and followed up. "People fear the unknown, people fear uncertainty, and people fear failure."

He turned to meet his Disciple's gaze and asked, "Are you afraid of failing?"

Once he received a light nod as a response, he revealed a warm smile and said, "I believe, that people aren't inherently scared of failure. What they fear is the disappointment that results from it. They fear disappointing those they care about and not being able to meet the expectations set upon them by others, and worse still, they fear disappointing themselves."

Krish rubbed Marie's head assuringly and said, "When you do something for yourself - for the sheer joy and experience of trying and learning something new - you don't fear failure since your mind knows that failure is just another opportunity. Without anyone to disappoint, your mind is unburdened from the need to succeed on the first try."

He then released a light chuckle before pointing out, "You do realise that we have all the time in the world. You are allowed- no- encouraged to fail as many times as you want. Follow what Sect Leader Larks taught you about approaching any problem. Break it down into bite-sized pieces and go about it slowly. If it still feels overwhelming, then ask me for help. I'm practically idle so take advantage of that fact. If need be, we can even pull in a few of the members of this sect. I know that Jace will be least bothered about it."

Marie released a long breath that she was unwittingly holding in.

"Although, it does fill me with immense joy that my dearest Disciple cares so much about my opinions and expectations," Krish joked to take advantage of the brightening atmosphere.

"Yeah, I didn't realise that I cared about your expectations of me either," Marie reiterated with a rise in pitch at the tail end of the conjectural phrase voicing her surprise. Then, without allowing her Master any time to respond with a quip, she kipped up and clapped her hands excitedly. "I will take you up on your offer for support, Master."

"So, what is it that you need me to do?"

"We have a lot of data to cycle through and take note of. It will ease my workload if you could help scribe as I dictate," Marie explained.

"Sounds manageable. Alright! Let's get to it!" Krish encouraged loudly while crossing the threshold into the archives. With each step, his excitement and giddiness started to grow as his dream of working and guiding his Disciple, like Guy did, started to approach reality.