Chapter 28
Discussing Libraries (Mind 3)
It is with a complete lack of surprise that Mary successfully inserts a second rune into her second mind magic. As it turned out, adding an ambient mana rune to her newest spell was a trivial endeavour, the rune itself slotting in with no real difficulty at all.
‘The integration could be improved with superior spell logic. I’m getting used to the needed symbols for adding an ambient mana rune to my spells.’
Commented Mary, admiring the progress of her magical studies. Before she could continue, however, her second mind chose to interject, noting the peculiarities of her newest magic.
{We’ve exceeded neutral energy draw and gone straight into creating mana-positive magic.}
Mary nods in agreement at her second mind's commentary; her current second mind magic is efficient enough that it currently doubles up as a passive regeneration spell. Mary pauses momentarily and, with some hesitance, realises the opportunity that she now has: with her second mind, she has a genuine chance to have a conversation with someone who has all her cultural expectations and history.
For a short moment she shows some reluctance, but ultimately, Mary chooses to openly engage with a fragment of herself.
‘Between the relatively high level of the ambient mana rune and the extremely high efficiency of the mind rune, that isn’t really a surprise.’
Mary replies blandly, still adjusting to the idea of having a proper conversation partner.
‘It’s a shame though; it seems that we won’t be able to offload the running of the second mind spell. Some of my concentration will always have to be used to keep you active.’
At her non-sequitur, Mary hears what she recognises as a derisive scoff from her second mind.
{That hope, such as it was, was wildly optimistic, less like a genuine possibility and more a forceful hallucination; creating a truly independent mind was never going to happen, especially not this early on in our magical development. And for that we should all be thankful.}
Mary sighs at the rebuke, accepting the truth of her second mind's words; as she had mentioned, it was more like a flash of possibility than a true expectation anyway.
{I will be able to use my capacity for any of our other soon-to-be-created passive magics, though.}
Her second mind continues thoughtfully before, once again, her tone turns into a rebuke.
{But you know very well that if you had gone ahead with making me independent, well, Earth avoids such things for some very good reasons, as I know that you recall.}
The sigh turns into a grimace as one of Alexander's more grim memories flashes across her eyes: the terrible sight of the framework of the old internet shattering apart; a live news channel with a stylised doomsday clock almost striking midnight; and the desperate and legendary actions that stopped it.
'You're right, of course. That is something to be avoided at all costs.’
Mary answers the rebuke with an apologetic acknowledgement.
{So, where are we going now that we have some basic multitasking capability again?}
Asks the second mind, her tone almost rhetorical.
‘Even with your help, we won’t be able to properly remember complex magical logic. We’ve already identified where we’re going next; a replacement for the grimoires that Sylvia mentioned is in order.’
Mary answers, airing her thoughts.
{We need a type of mental library, what Alexander would have called a database. Obviously, we’ll need to initialise another new rune to get the library working without a massive amount of effort. Our restrictions, that we don’t have the memory to create complex spells, are still there.}
That was a fair point, Mary thought. Given the goal that they were currently pursuing, how many possible runes were there that she could create and use?
But which of them would work best?
{Well, let’s think about this logically, shall we?}
Her second mind asks rhetorically.
{What we are aiming for is information storage and control. Off the top of our head that leads us to four keywords; half of them are general keywords, broad in their focus, and the other half are specialist keywords, limited in focus.}
{Of our available options, we have the two general keywords; they are probably similar in reach to the ‘Mind’ rune that we are currently using. They are ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Information’.}
Mary nods in agreement; no doubt she would use both eventually in her more complex mental spells, but they were probably too broad in scope for her first mental library. This was especially true given that she could not apply the necessary logic to use either keyword effectively.
{Then there are the two specialised keywords we could create and use. Like how ‘Telepathy’ could be viewed as a branch of ‘Mind’, we have ‘Library’ and ‘Database’.}
As her second mind had said, this was essentially the same rationale that had seen her use a telepathy rune instead of a mind one for her telepathic spell. Both runes could have achieved her goal of enabling communication with Sylvia, but the mind rune was more general in nature and would have required a level of logic that she was unable to apply.
Of course, if her attempt to create a mental library works out, then that is something that she could revisit, as she would have a means to store all her work without having to worry about memory issues.
‘Especially considering the massive difference in rune level, my latest ambient mana rune should allow a telepathy spell using the mind rune to stay active for as long as I want. It might even warrant looking at increasing the mind runes' power for more distance or other capabilities.’
As her tangent briefly ends, Mary hears an amused voice interject.
{Don’t get distracted now. Let’s work out how we’re doing the library before planning anything further.}
Mary blinks before flushing in embarrassment.
{Apparently, I’m not as easily distracted as you are. Maybe our infantile body is impacting us more than we had suspected?}
Mary feels a chill run through her blood at the thought of this possibility. Of course, she had wondered why she was as cognisant as she was but had not properly considered if her mind was being impacted by her body in other ways.
Why would she? If the most obvious impacts of being a newborn weren’t affecting her mind, why would other, more complex ones do so?
{We can’t be certain if our current cognisance is due to mana or outside interference. But completely dismissing our new biology would be a mistake as well.}
Mary nods in agreement; that was another matter for her to investigate when she had the opportunity.
{But later. Our immediate priority must be the mental library.}
'You're right, of course.’
Mary answers the rebuttal with agreement.
{Let us dismiss the ‘Knowledge’ and 'Information'; while we’re at it and because both of us had forgotten, we can also dismiss a ‘Data’ rune as well.}
Mary blinks in surprise at the last-minute addition. They had forgotten a third obvious general rune, hadn’t they?
{All three of them could be valuable for later attempts at creating genuine mental simulations; even if we only ever apply such simulations to the magic creation process, I don’t doubt that we’ll use all three in time. They also open options for manipulating mana that will be critical for us in the future, I’m sure.}
That was true; the differences between the three keywords were subtle but present. Information and knowledge were both more general in their reach, but the latter, especially, was more connected with the act of knowing something than with the information existing at all or possessing it in general.
The concept of data was more closely linked to organisation and statistics than to information.
‘In reality, those three are going to be the cornerstone of most of my mental and information-based spells going into the future.’
{Which leaves us with the two specialist runes to work with. I said it before, but it’s worth repeating. This is exactly like when we created the telepathy rune, a stopgap measure until we can work towards greater things.}
‘True, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still be used. Just that they will become secondary.’
{Of course.}
{Our choices for a specialised rune are a ‘Library’ rune. In the end I think this might be my preference, as it makes logical sense to utilise a library rune to create a library, in the same way that the ‘Telepathy’ rune was the rational choice when creating telepathy. Our current goal is to create a mental library, a place to mentally store and catalogue our magical knowledge. The imagery that we attach to a magical library, as well as our preconceived notion that mages study books, should work very well with this keyword. In theory at least.’}
That was true; much of her actions thus far had been based on Alexander's notions about a world with magic. From what Sylvia has indicated, this might have been a common strain among otherworlders.
{Our second choice, the more modern one that Alexander would have likely chosen, is the creation of a ‘Database’ rune. And herein lies the problem: we have been forcing ourselves to think of a library as a place where books are kept, but the truth is we have inherited Alexander’s bias.}
Mary grimaced at the reminder.
{To Alexander, a library was a programming term for a collection of prepacked methods. We already know that our thoughts on the purpose of keywords have some degree of impact, so could this notion of ours negatively impact the creation of a ‘Library’ rune, thereby making it less capable?}
‘But the alternative is no better. Does a database rune even exist in this world? We’ve had conversations with Sylvia; we know that computers as we know them don’t exist. Does Terra have the notion of a database? It was a coin termed in the middle of the 20th century.’
{A fair point.}
Mary's second mind concedes.
Seemingly emboldened by her second mind's concession, Mary chooses to play devil's advocate and asks a question.
‘Is there really any need for a discussion at all? Both would achieve what we want to do.’
Immediately, Mary experiences the bizarre feeling of the second mind aiming a disappointed frown at her.
{A library might be much more restricted in content and less organised too, especially if a library rune is impacted by the less sophisticated nature of Terra.}
Mary hums in agreement. Alexander had never actually visited a real physical library, but he had seen them in virtual worlds. If the rune took after what she knew of a physical library, then it might be harder to properly maintain and much more difficult to update the contents; navigation would have to be handled carefully as well, but…
‘We don’t know if such a thing as a database rune exists at all. We still haven’t tried to create any runes that are based wholly on our Earth-based logic, and it’s difficult to know the limits of what Terra knows anyway.’
{With the exception of the very first time we created a rune, it only takes at most a quarter of an hour of effort. Unless there are negative consequences to attempted rune creation that we don’t know about and Sylvia has neglected to mention, then there shouldn’t be much of a problem, should there?}
Mary answered her second mind's uncharacteristic optimism with a derisive scoff.
‘Sylvia has no experience with rune creation. We’ve already run into a few occasions where she couldn’t adequately answer our questions too. Her knowledge is helpful but limited, something that she is aware of.’
She continued firmly.
‘It’s entirely possible that there are consequences that she doesn’t know about. She did mention that mages could spend potentially years of effort creating new runes, didn’t she?’
{According to her example, that was for extremely complex and advanced runes. At no point did she indicate that there was any genuine danger involved, merely time spent.}
Mary chewed at her checks, finally allowing herself to be convinced to do something that she, in truth, wanted to do.
‘Let’s do this then. We create both and see what the differences are.’
{We might end up using both in the end anyway. It depends on what they can do.}