Bloody Mary and the Magical Revolution

Simulator

The princess experienced the passage of time swiftly, as another pair of months came and went while she continued to hone her magical abilities.

During one of her exercise sessions, she focused on preparing her body for physical activity without needing to hold on to anything.

The physical princess stopped as her second mind called her.

{I’ve got something to show you; get over to the simulator.}

At her second mind's prompting, Mary immediately sends her attention fully into their shared mindscape; for reasons of psychological stability, she, as usual, chooses to partially form an avatar so that both the second mind and her physical self could more properly comprehend where their physical self’s focus was.

It goes without saying that Mary had tried to be a literal floating eye in the sky, if only to see what it would be like, and that action had made her physically vomit. This was not an experience she wanted to revisit anytime soon.

Which was why she had manifested a true avatar in her mindscape instead.

Upon arrival at the outside of her destination, the princess pauses to stare at the building before her; in truth, she had intentionally formed it outside the building, if only so she could once again celebrate the achievement it represented.

A proud smirk spreads across her face as she once again reminds herself how this new building came to exist.

It was not the library that she had created; after all, that virtual construct was to the new building's immediate left. Mary allowed herself to briefly glance at the familiar archways of the library whose creation had once been the sole focus of her magical attention but quickly turned her attention again to the building before her that she had intentionally sought to inspect.

This building looked much more modern than the library, with architecture better suited to the 21st or even 22nd century.

To a degree, this modern appearance revealed the building's intent and purpose.

This new building, rather than resembling a classical library suited for ancient Greece, appeared to be a hyper-modern data centre that someone from Earth would recognise.

Which, Mary belatedly reflects to herself, is in many ways precisely what it is.

The story of how such a data centre had come to exist, even if it was rarely present – largely due to energy constraints – and even then, only when Mary required it.

In contrast, the library was permanently active.

The details of how the data centre existed inside the princess’s mindscape were both embarrassing and frustrating, and given how the last months of Mary's life had gone, they likely felt right at home.

Mary remembered it all vividly; shortly after she had successfully created her second mind and the attached virtual library, the pair of them had set about theory crafting; more specifically, they were attempting to figure out what their next step should be.

The princess and her doppelganger were very frustrated because they were stuck, not just because they didn't know much about magic and what it could do, but also because they couldn't predict what would happen from their actions.

As they struggled to figure out what to do next, the pair's frustration had continued to mount. In the short time that they had existed in this new magical world, they had seen outstanding, perhaps even immediate, success in their endeavours.

This was epitomised in what became their successful attempt to first create a second mind, which was immediately followed by the creation of their virtual library.

They had even moved on to triumphantly create their book scanner, which even now was helping to fill the shelves of their library.

All of these successes, great achievements in their own right that they were, had built up the princess's ability to hasten her study of magic.

But as the days wore on, in truth, as they were both forced to handwrite ideas, even if only mentally, as they found themselves having to guesstimate the outcomes of particular rune sequences.

They could only assume the effects of their new formulaic logic on any given spell matrix.

The princess and her virtual mind had quickly become astonishingly frustrated with what had become their new status quo.

For both of them, the reincarnated otherworlder who had inherited Alexander’s memories of Earth could remember the simulated outcomes perfectly, or at least seemingly so, using vast, modern data centres.

They could remember a world that could, using the correct virtual tools, guess with supreme accuracy what the outcomes of a massive number of even novel actions and ideas might be; even better, such actions would be without the expense of time and money that would otherwise have been needed if they had been forced to physically commit to them.

Mary's veritable eruption of frustration over her continued inadequacy compared to Alexander had ultimately led to the creation of the modern-looking building before her.

Objectively, it was an almost ruinously expensive spell to maintain.

That was a reality that Mary was forced to acknowledge. And while she would have loved to have permanent access to its incredibly useful facilities, in the same way she had permanent access to the library and second mind, that was, for the time being, a highly impractical desire.

{Are you going to stand there reminiscing, or are you going to get moving? We’ll need to shut down the simulator in just over an hour.}

Mary blinked as she heard her voice, the voice of her mental doppelgänger, interrupting her musings.

“Sorry, I was just appreciating how useful the simulator is.”

{Very, I know.}

Appropriately chastised by the second mind for her distraction, Mary stepped into the building and immediately was met by her apparent clone standing in a room surrounded by what appeared to be computer interfaces and holographic displays.

Everything that she could see here was all merely a representation, of course, a rationalising caused by what Mary had intended when she had built this place, but it nonetheless soothed her mind to look upon such a familiar virtual scene.

Mary, now present in the simulator, took in the sight before her fully; in part, she saw exactly what she had expected given the second mind's memories and what she knew was being worked on.

Four holograms split the room in two; on one side she could see that there were two runic spell matrices, which she immediately recognised as updated versions of the library and second mind spells.

Clearly, Mary internally remarked that the second mind had been hard at work upgrading the runes as much as possible; although the rune sequences remained the same, the formulaic logic associated with them was highly different.

On the other side of the room were two simulations, showing what in truth were fully virtual worlds, one that contained a simulated second mind and the other a simulated library.

Attached were dozens of graphs demonstrating the observed metrics of the spells functioning.

Mary looked at the holographic graphs with approval, seeing that the energy efficiency of both spells had greatly improved, making it possible for her to finally activate a third permanently active passive spell, so long as that spell costs roughly the same as a second mind.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something strange—an oddity significant enough that she immediately began to ignore the other recorded spell metrics, which all appeared extremely promising, in order to focus on this new anomaly.

In the heart of the room there was a third spell matrix, one that she immediately recognised. How could she not, as she had been one of the two minds who had created it?

At the centre of the spell matrix were a pair of runes that she had created nearly a week after developing the book scanner spell.

It was only natural that she would immediately recognise these runes, as they were the very runes that enabled the existence of the simulator building in which she was currently standing.

The simulation rune of course, was what truly allowed this building to exist at all, although when she had first formed it, the princess had been simultaneously disappointed and yet unsurprised when the depths of Alexander's knowledge had only resulted in the creation of a fifth-level simulation rune. As much as he had used simulations, for all that he knew about their potential uses and overall nature, Earth had only been using them widely for a few decades.

Perhaps even worse, not only had Alexander’s education been primarily aimed at focusing on the biological side of science instead of the electronic, but that education had also never been finished.

Mary had realised, after some thought, that it was sadly unsurprising to find that the simulation rune was one of the lower-level modern runes that she was able to create.

But the second rune that was present in the matrix was a different deal entirely; even just looking at it caused Mary to smirk triumphantly, not merely in the virtual world that she was currently paying attention to, but in the physical world as well.

The princess's already large smirk grew to an almost deranged level as she wondered what her maid’s reaction to this rune’s existence would be.

Certainly, Sylvia likely lacks the context to properly understand how important a data rune could truly be, but she had also already warned Mary about the trouble that a high-level rune could bring to her if it were known to exist.

The potential trouble its existence could bring to her was ultimately why, with tremendous reluctance, Mary had not revealed to the silver-haired maid the level eight rune that her princess had so recently crafted.

Considering the sheer utility that the concept of data could bring to the table, it was a rune that would no doubt get used often by the aspiring mage. She had already planned to include it in the library spell eventually and, in all likelihood, the second mind spell as well.

Both could benefit from having a data rune, let alone one with such a high level attached to it.

With all that said, Mary still frowned, having finally realised what had been missing when she inspected the virtual building from the outside.

“Why are they here? Why is this spell matrix inside the building?”

Mary asked the second mind, baffled at the change in the spell's location.

When they had first created their virtual library, the spell matrix had existed next to the virtual representation of the second mind spell.

At the time, to Mary, that clustering of spells had seemed like it made sense; it was, in the end, logical to concentrate infrastructure in such a way.

So then why was the simulator matrix, which she had last seen next to the spell matrix of her second mind, now within the building?

And now that the princess had her attention directed at the change, she knew what had been missing outside of the simulator, the oddity that had made her inspect the building that she had ultimately taken for granted.

Mary now realised that the library had also changed slightly.

No longer was energy flowing from the second mind spell to the library, nor, as it turned out, to the simulator.

{Finally noticed that, did you?}

The second mind asked rhetorically.

{It’s a matter of energy efficiency.}

She stated firmly.

Mary twitched as she remembered another oddity that she had inadvertently ignored and asked the clone pointedly, her eyes glaring at the doppelganger.

“That’s why the simulator still has an hour left before we need to shut it down! How long have you been running the simulator?”

The virtual clone of Mary smiled smugly.

{Already just over an hour.}

Mary inhaled sharply in surprise. When the second mind had called Mary into the building, she had informed her that they still had an hour left before the simulator needed to be shut down.

It had been strange, but she had ignored it; after all, the simulator was supposed to only be able to run for an hour before it exhausted their reserves!

And the princess was very conscious of the fact that she still had plenty of energy left at this very moment; as a result, she had assumed, without checking the memories of her virtual clone, that the simulator had only just begun running.

Apparently, her assumption had been extremely wrong.

But, Mary thought wonderingly, was moving the spell matrix really that much of a big deal? Everything she saw in this virtual space should have been superfluous, something that her mind had conjured to rationalise what was occurring in her mindscape.

The buildings were supposed to be metaphorical representations, not genuine constructs whose placement genuinely mattered.

The second Mary nodded in agreement.

{Yes, that is what we thought, but as it turned out, we were wrong.}

She shrugged, as if to say, 'What can you do?'.

{The thought had occurred to me while I was looking at the buildings outside.}

The second mind began recounting her experience.

{Both of us could see the energy flowing from the spell that creates me to the buildings, and I had wondered if that was indeed metaphorical or not.}

The second mind went on to explain that, as it had turned out, the energy flowing from the second mind to the buildings had not been as metaphorical as they had first assumed.

This was indeed an oddity when considered in light of their current understanding of both magic and the mental space they had created.

{We already knew that our knowledge of this place was subpar.}

The second mind reminded Mary of something, and she nodded in agreement before continuing the thought.

“After all, if we knew everything there was to know about the mind, then we would have created a level ten [Mind] rune, wouldn’t we?”

{Exactly that. Anyway, considering the simulator was something that I had to activate and deactivate continually, I had decided to experiment with the placement of the runic matrix.}

The result had, the second mind pointed out, been obvious.

After all, having moved the virtual representation of the simulator spell inside the building, the energy drain for the spell had been essentially halved.

An outstanding gain that had doubled the amount of time they could run the spell before exhausting themselves.

“And so, you did the same with the library.”

{So, I did the same with the library while you were asleep. But I will need your help to do the same to me.}

The second mind stated, causing Mary to blink in surprise.