View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Akibel Mowar is on his way home from the blacksmith's when he spots it. People are shrieking and fleeing from it, which seems reasonable, as it's a fuckoff huge snake with a mirror for a face. A big mirror.
Kib can't so much flee. He can shriek - he can lurch in the direction of the nearest house and try the door - it's locked. He can amble briskly...
He can break into a run when the snake gains on him and fall flat on his face.
And he can get eaten up.
And it's too bright too bright too bright and he flings his arm over his eyes.
+ Show First Post
secondchance
It's a short letter:
Think there's a useful avenue for a magical solution to aging. It's going to require a ridiculous amount of data handling and the testing will be convoluted, but I should have it within a Year, certainly within two.
Think there's a useful avenue for a magical solution to aging. It's going to require a ridiculous amount of data handling and the testing will be convoluted, but I should have it within a Year, certainly within two.
secondchance
"Ooh. - I wonder if an eidetic golem would be useful for data handling. Years here are long enough that it might meaningfully speed up the immortality project and certainly the next thing to come along if it did help."
"What would an eidetic golem be able to do?"
secondchance
"Well, I'm not sure what he means by 'data handling', but, potentially, that, golems can remember anything you tell them or they absorb if you make them to do that and people can use them for math problems and searching a library of data they have the golem read or whatever."
"Ooooohhh. I bet there's a way to use that for some of the experimental parts. Though it's hard for me to say, the level of engineering involved in that kind of thing is well beyond me. Want to head over to my family home? I'm visiting to see my sister and you could talk it over with him."
"Her mothername is Ahláriellë. Fathername is given at six weeks."
"I got the impression my mother had several girl names she'd wanted and now had a girl and was damned well going to use them. It's Lári most of the time."
"My brothers mostly called me Nelyo, growing up."
"Should we head over right now, or do you want to come find me when you're at a good point to stop?"
So they make the trip out of the city. Fëanor is not in his workshop for once; he is sitting inside, holding the baby, and there's an exhausted-looking woman with him. "Hello," Maitimo says. "Kib thinks his magic does data handling magically."
"Oh, really," he says. "The whole field of cryptography will be born dead, then - or, depending exactly what you can do - what can you do?"
"Oh, really," he says. "The whole field of cryptography will be born dead, then - or, depending exactly what you can do - what can you do?"
secondchance
"I don't think they do cryptography - or at least they don't yet - but sophisticated libraries sometimes have talking golems who read everything in the library and can tell people what they're looking for, mathematicians occasionally use them if they can get them, that sort of thing. They're not that widely used because they're so time-consuming to make, but that's by human standards."
"There are two approaches to immortality that make sense from where I'm standing," he says. "One is raw power - I can try capturing the light of the Trees in a form amenable to further engineering, and then I can wield it probably very bluntly at first but eventually with some precision to do things like end decay and possibly aging - though ending decay wouldn't strictly end aging and tons of raw magical power around mortals could actually serve them poorly.
The other is to do it very carefully, which makes it a search problem, mostly: trying to identify of the hundreds of billions of overlapping resonances that can be ambient which ones are affecting aging and how we can counter them." And he launches into the search problem and how it could be approached.
The other is to do it very carefully, which makes it a search problem, mostly: trying to identify of the hundreds of billions of overlapping resonances that can be ambient which ones are affecting aging and how we can counter them." And he launches into the search problem and how it could be approached.
secondchance
"Okay," Kib says, "the obvious problem here is that I don't know how to program a golem to perceive resonances."
"Right, you don't innately have osanwë. Does that mean it's probably impossible, or just that it'd require giving them a sense that you don't have - could a deaf person program a hearing golem?"
secondchance
"I don't know about deaf people in particular but it's not strictly required that it be a sense I have - golems that can see in the dark have been made, storks are suspected to have ludicrously good hearing. It might however be easier for an Elf to learn to program golems and for me to only do the waking part than for me to try to wrap my head around the sense well enough to write it in."
"I would love to learn to program golems," he says at once. "I think some of the books in the library cover it, though I haven't had time to read them all yet because I now have a daughter."
secondchance
"You can get most of the way on books alone but I'm happy to help if you think that would be useful to you at any stage of the process."
"I shall write you with questions. Maitimo says that you're trying to reinvent stork golems to solve the baby situation?"
"Good skill. We should also teach the people who work with children in your world the songs for quieting crying children, that sort of thing, see if we can make the job more appealing."