Wiz - 1.06a - magic
I really don't know why I am adding these sections to Huf's manuscript. His explanation of our life is perfectly adequate. I have no expectation that either I, or this manuscript, will ever see the world of my birth. Therefore, why should I take the time to explain what only those of my own world would need to have explained? The people of this world would simply accept that magic exists, and that wizards have magic, and no further questions need be answered.
However, somehow I have this driving need to explain what I have discovered. Possibly it is only to clarify, in my own mind, what I have in fact discovered, and see if, when set down in plain text, the explanations that I have come up with do, indeed, makes sense.
I don't know how I discovered the extra sense of perception. I certainly don't know why I would have discovered it any earlier then any of the other magical skills. If I were to think that any of this magic was, actually, magic, and that some deity, spirit, or personality was at least partly involved in my transfer from my own world to this world, I would have thought that this sense of perception was as partial recompense for the fact that I lost access to pretty much all technology in the bargain. At any rate, while I was still rather unwell, but had regained most of my consciousness, I did become conscious of the fact that I could look into my own body and get a kind of an x-ray view of what was happening inside it. In fact x-ray would be too crude a term. The extra sense of perception seem to combine x-ray, cat scan, MRI, and even possibly something similar to PET scanning. And it operated with an almost electron microscope level of precision. Therefore, I could tell that the injuries to my body were, indeed, while painful, rather unimportant, and were healing properly. I don't know why I started looking at my head and brain: certainly it is not something that would ever have occurred to me on my home world. Perhaps it was simply the fact that I was being plagued by headaches, and, naturally, wanted to understand what I could about the reasoning for this additional pain.
The reason for the additional headaches was that there seemed to have been and addition to my brain. I'm still not absolutely certain about this. The structure that I think has been added to my brain is, as far as I can tell, the one that functions when I am using magical skills. As with pet scanning, I can tell when an area of tissue is more active than normal. The particular structure that I have identified is one that is active when I am using the extra sense of perception, and also when I am attempting to influence the entropy of external objects. It is also, as far as I can recall from my always very limited knowledge of biology, not common to a human brain. At least not a human brain from my world. So, it has been added in my transfer to this world. Once again, if there was ever any indication of a personality involved in the transfer here, it would seem to be that it took the request of the wizards seriously, and, given that my wizardry relied upon the existence of technology, endowed me with some of their capacity for wizardry with this additional structure which they seem to have in their brains. (As well as their language, so that we could communicate.)
Yes, once I identified the structure in my own brain, I started looking for it in the brains of others. The servants and others of low place seem to have what I recall as a normal human brain. The wizards, however, have this additional structure in their brains, similar to the structure that I have found in mine. Most of the structures in their brains are significantly larger than the one in mine. I suppose that, now that I know more about this world, and this extra structure in the brain, that I could try to increase its size in my own brain. I'm not sure that I would like the headaches that might result from that, nor am I sure that I could get away with it without doing myself some kind of injury. At the moment I think I should just leave well enough alone.
So the first thing that I figured out about wizardry was that you needed the extra sense of perception. The second thing that I learned, and this took much, much longer to determine, and to figure out how to do it, was to figure out how to mess with entropy in external objects.
The atoms of matter, unless they are at absolute zero, which tends to be impossible, are in constant motion. Apparently, the wizards can use the abilities that this extra brain structure gives them to move the atoms in matter in a direction, or to a place, of their choosing. This takes some energy, although not as much energy as it should take if the material were acted upon from an external force. It seems to use the atom's own energy. Since the additional structure in my own brain is smaller than the ones that most of the other wizards have, my ability to move a particular mass is less than theirs.
So, I suppose that what I am really saying here is that, while I have been cavalier and careless about using the term magic and wizard, but what's happening here isn't really magic, and the wizards really aren't wizards. The magic is simply a somewhat strange native ability, and the wizards are people who have this ability, possibly because of this additional brain structure that I think that I have found. I still don't know that I should trust the extra sense of perception that seems to result from this, nor the information that it provides to me. However, since an illusion is defined as a real perception that does not correspond with subsequent reality, I like that subsequent reality has seemed to bear out the perceptions that the extra sense of perception gives me.
And, of course, coming from a world of technology, I have been able to turn this extra sense of perception, and the ability to manipulate entropy, to my advantage. I have been able to create a new and additional technology by using the sense of entropy and the manipulation of entropy. Because I studied physics, and some medicine, I am able to use the manipulation of entropy in a much more effective manner than the wizards do.
There is, of course, no way that, with my minimal capabilities in regard to manipulating entropy, I could move something as massive as the table. But knowing what I know about air pressure, I could convince all the atoms in a thin layer of air underneath the table that they all wanted to move in the same direction--up. This suddenly created a force of several tons underneath the table and moving up. More than enough force to create the situation that Huf describes. I figured this out somewhat accidentally, but rather providentially, in the midst of an emergency situation. I have since been experimenting, secretly and rather carefully, and I've realized that it does grant me considerable power.
I should probably note that the spells don't appear to be spells anymore than the magic appears to be magic. The spells seem to be kind of reminders of actions to take in terms of manipulating entropy. They also seem to act as a kind of mantra, allowing the wizards to focus their concentration on a particular task. I have been able to figure out the actions being taken by wizards who are using various kinds of spells. When I try out simpler ones, I tend to get similar results, although, of course, my ability to manipulate entropy is much less than those who have larger additional brain structures. So I need the advantage that using it as a technology gives me.
I should also mention the elementals. I call them elementals because that is a term that is similar to the word the wizards use in their language to describe them, but also because of the similarity to the idea of elementals in my homeworld's myths about magic. The thing is that elementals are not exactly spirits. They seem to be fields related to certain types of materials. The wizards class them by earth, air, water, and fire, just like the mythical classifications of elementals on my homeworld. This gives a good classification of the types of functions that can be performed by the different types of elements, and a reminder of which type of element supports which type of function. When you have the different materials, you get access to the heightened ability to manipulate entropy consistent with the functions that that element strengthens. Once again, I should note that, as far as I can tell, and as far as I have been able to determine an experimentation, there are no spirits or personalities involved in this. It's simply another aspect of the technology that goes by the name of magic on this world.
No comments:
Post a Comment