A moment later, she's on a grassy hillside, with no snake in sight.  Some sheep look up and baa questioningly at her.

Between some other hills, she can see an orchard some ways away.

There's a wooden rail fence nearby that looks well-maintained, so... probably there're some people nearby?

"...Well, let's find some people."  Onwards!  To civilization!  ...She hopes!

When she first touches the fence, she feels a very slight - but noticeable - pressure, almost as if the wood's swelling under her hand.

It's a little while before she hears a dog barking from around the corner of a hill.

...That's very strange and she doesn't...know what it is.  Probably magic, but how and why?  Is it her?  Is it the fence?  Either way, it would be rude to break it!

...Oh, joy, a dog.  She's not very fond of dogs.

Well, at least this one probably won't get all up in her personal space...

Still.  Walking, walking, not-touching-the-fence-more-ing...

The dog - a large brown shaggy dog - runs up grinning but stays on the other side of the fence from her, wagging its tail furiously.

A minute later, a heavy-built man comes up with... is that a magic wand?... tucked in his belt.  "Hello, er, miss?  Are you a new visitor here?"

"No, I'm pretty sure I'm rather incredibly lost.  Not-on-the-same-planet lost, if I'm even in the same universe - which I doubt, because there sure isn't anything like the magic in your fence or the wand on your belt in mine - minus whatever got me here in the first place."

He raises his (very bushy) eyebrows.  "Hmm.  No magic at all?  Sounds hard."

"We made do.  Got to some pretty impressive heights once we figured out how to make rocks think the hard way, had machines for doing repetitive work, before that.  Went to - I don't even know if you have a moon.  ...And I'm not going to question how the fuck we're speaking the same language lest whatever benevolent gods there are choose this moment to deprive me of it.  Unless that was questioning enough, but you don't look suddenly more confused."

His eyebrows go up even higher.  "Rocks thinking?  Rather they not think, myself.  Sheep can be hard enough to handle...  Best for you to go into town; folks there would want to know about whatever brought you here.  And get you a place to stay."  He gestures in the direction of where she saw the houses earlier.

He purses his lips, and after a moment adds, "Show you the way?"

"Not literally thinking, but doing complex math to the point that what you could make that math do was getting pretty eerie, before, uh."

She gestures at herself.

"I ended up here.  Honestly, I'm glad to not have to worry about that problem.

"And...yes, I'd appreciate a guide, if you've nothing better to do."

He frowns, and gestures for her to follow him down the fence line.  "Gate this way...  Golems, then?  Never seen one, but Sister wrote some things 'bout them...  Tricky, bad business, sounds like."

After a minute, they're at the gate; he taps it with two fingers before undoing the latch.  "I'm Randall.  You?"

"Not exactly, or at least approaching the concept from vastly different directions than the - well, you wouldn't have the story.

"Anyway, automata yes, but thinking machines no.

"Annnd you can call me Mira, I suppose. 

"...Sister?  As in your sister?  Or a Sister of something-or-other?"

Randall smiles a bit and shakes his head.  "My sister, Tilda.  She's workin' at the palace, helpin' keep things straight with so many things goin' on there.  Wrote me a warning 'bout evil golems; said there was a sad story..."  He frowns.  "Wish she'd said who was doin' it, but she said that part's kept secret."

(They're walking through an apple orchard now, down a dirt path, Randall in the lead with the dog at his heels.)

A moment later, he snaps his fingers.  "Say, now that I mention Tilda, if you want to talk about your no-magic world an' figure out how to get back an' such, she's just the person to know where to go."

"Sounds like the right sort of person, aye.  What's going on at the Palace that needs so much keeping straight?"

"Oh, hearin' all sorts of arguments and disputes between people and cities and businesses and everywhere, keepin' the spellwagons and mail and everything running, appointin' all the recorders and half the teachers an' such an' improvin' all the books they're usin', and of course lookin' into new magic too..."  He shrugs.  "Myself, I like to leave it to the people who're good at it.  What's the Palace do in your world?"

Suddenly he looks surprised.  "Just realized - it'd be really different without magic; you'd just have a human as Queen."

"Yeah, and then we decided we'd rather not.  So everybody votes on - well, representatives, who vote on things - these days.  What's your Queen, then?

"And if the Palace is a center of research...I imagine I have quite a bit to contribute.  I wasn't a scientist, but I'm very well-read."

As they leave the orchard, the town is very close - there's a core of quaint-looking tile-roofed brick buildings in neat rows on one side, and then some more haphazardly-located wood buildings on the other side.  There's some line running away from town between them in the distance, that looks almost like it might be a railway line.

"Huh.  We've got some of those too, but the Queen can always say no to them.  She's an Elf, after all; been ruling us ever since, well, since before there was a Suinel.  Since the Last War, almost.  Immortal, an' fuller of magic than all of us humans put together."

"...Well, if she isn't doing a shit job, I guess there's no reason to give much of a damn, but boy do I Not Like That just on general principle."

"Well."  He looks nonplussed.  "Got any better idea?"  It's clearly a rhetorical question.

"Immortal god-queens are great and all, until someone mind-controls them.  And I'm from the country of my homeworld that cares the most about democracy, to boot.  And then there's my political leanings, which are even further skew in the direction of freedom-from-boots-on-necks.  If all y'all actually like your Queen, want to keep her around?  Honestly, it ain't my place to say nothin'.  But I come from a tradition of, at least, trying to listen to everyone's voice.  ...Even when half of them are bloody stupid bigoted asshats who refuse to even - "

"...ohhh, this is not a good thought I'm having.

"What's the state of medicine?  Because there's concerns I have about whether we have different diseases and I need to know if y'all can handle that.  Fuck, fuck, why did I not think of this," she sing-songs, clearly berating herself, "immune-system vulnerabilities kill a shitton of people and I'm assuming we have the same basic biochemistry, and I'm not vaccinated against your common colds, please tell me you have figured out how disease transmission works,"

The streets aren't crowded, but there're some people there - most of the men and a few of the women in the same worn pants Randall's wearing, or overalls.  More of the women are wearing long skirts, though, smooth enough to not be home-sewn.  They're clearly noticing Mira and Randall, but only giving her some side glances.

(If she's paying attention, they're headed through the brick section of town, towards the might-be-rail-line.)

"Medicine?  Wish it was better.  Had my best ewe die last year; gave her some medicine and it kept her around for another month or so, but she didn't make it in the end.  But yeah, we know how diseases spread... leastwise for us; not sure about wherever you're from."  He gives her an appraising stare.  "When was the last time you washed your hands?"

"Oh thank goodness, you know enough about germ theory to ask that question.  Couple hours ago, maybe?  I'm in the habit of doing it at least every time I, ah.  Excrete.  And if I've been doing anything more strenuous - and consequently dirty - than walking around, I try to do it before eating.  'course, that doesn't really help with the airborne stuff, but unless we're in one of the weird lines of probability where you have something that hits me like it's HIV when it's just what y'all's bodies naturally cultivate for whatever reason...or vice-versa...and I really doubt that.  You look too human for me to really suspect - shenanigans like that from the universe, although I'm going to be very annoyed if I end up catching all the kiddie diseases I dodged on Terra.  ...D'you know that lead's bad for you?"

"Lead, bad?  How?"

He shakes his head.  "Y'know, there's this girl in the Research Mages who talks just like you, just 'bout magic.  Sister was telling me 'bout her, the last letter, an' how she only understands half of what she's saying but she knows it's important.  Maybe you should get together and have fun chasin' down all each other's tangents."

He stops in front of a larger building with a sign saying "POST".

"Want t' send a letter to Sister an' the palace an' hear back maybe tomorrow, maybe next day?  Or just head there yourself with the letter?"

"It accumulates in your body and fucks shit up, especially thinking, and it never goes away.  ...I think I'd like to meet this fellow questioner of things!  ...And hope I can do magic; magic is the one thing I've always hoped to find, you know?"

Randall looks uncomfortable at that description, but then shakes his head.  "Can't do anythin' myself... an' anyway, never heard of any lead out in the fields.  Anyway, 'bout magic, you're definitely at the right place, then.  Ev'ryone says Suinel has the best magic anywhere since the Days of Wonder."

Randall leads them down the street toward another building with a sign saying "STATION."

"As long as it's not in your pipes or your food, you're not at particular risk, anyway.  ...The Days of Wonder?"

"You don't -"

He stops mid-street and turns to look at her more squarely.

"'Course you don't know.  The days back when there were Elves and Fay and sylphs and dragons and Speaking Beasts and all sorts of wild magic everywhere, and they raised the mountains and carved valleys, and you could go out on a quest for adventure and have a story to tell if you got back - but they're not around anymore."  He shakes his head.  "Wish we had half as much magic as them.  But no."

"...What...happened to it?"

"The War."  He shakes his head, frowning.  "Don't know much; sad story.  But they say the Queen's the last Elf alive.  An' I don't know the last time anyone found some wild magic... less'n that's what got you here."

"...but where could it have possibly gone?  Is it holding the Time Lords and Daleks in stasis around fucking Gallifrey?  ...Excuse me, entirely unnecessary literary reference.  I guess the question is, 'if the magic is gone, where did it go?'  ...Which I already said.  Blah.  And I suppose you wouldn't have reason to know, anyway..."

He scratches his beard and frowns again.  "Never looked at it that way."

"Yeah.  It's...what actually changed, in the War, that the base rate of magic - ...upwelling? - did?  ...and how'd the Queen survive, for that matter?"

He shrugs.  "Never thought of magic that way.  An' don't know 'bout the Queen... don't remember, at least.  Sister would know, or that new Research Mage girl she's been talking about."  He shakes his head and starts walking toward the station again.

"Yeah.  Just needed to say that out loud so I'd remember to ask someone later."  And she's walking, and walking...

She's not walking far at all, actually.

The spellwagon station looks rustic, with a big room and open log walls on the inside, sort of like a ski cabin - more rustic than anything else in town.  Through the open windows at back (it looks like real glass, though sort of milky?  But the windowpanes are open) Mira can see a platform that looks a lot like a railroad station, with a few people already waiting there.

Randall nods to the stationagent behind one of the two counters (the other being unoccupied), a man a little older than him with a golden horse coat-of-arms sewn to a weatherbeaten shirt.  "One for Dumrath."

The agent looks surprised.  "What's taking you out of town, Randall?  Hope there's no bad news from Tilda?"

Randall puts down a few coins from his pocket and shakes his head.  "Ticket's for her."

The agent shoots a quizzical look at both of them.

"From another world, maybe."

"Another - what?  How?  Haven't heard about that since the Days of Wonder!"

Randall shrugs.  "No idea.  Thought Tilda should know."

"Yeah, I'm about as surprised as you are.  Especially since there just wasn't magic, back home.  So, yeah, going Tilda-wards, hopefully to find out."

"...Although I should note that I have no idea how I'm going to find her once I'm there?"

The agent looks in surprise.  "No magic at all?"

Randall shrugs.  "Go to the palace; tell them your story; they'll know."  He turns to the agent.  "Got paper?  For a letter for Tilda."

He pushes a pen and paper (looking like it'd be newspaper-quality on Earth?) across the counter, and then stamps a ticket.  "Good luck - the spellwagon's coming in three chirps."

"...I should note that we appear to have vastly different systems of timekeeping; I have no idea how long a chirp is.  Not that I'd necessarily need to, but I'd like to."

She'll hold on to that ticket like her life depends on it, then.

(And, presumably, the letter, too.)

"So, twelve tweets to a chirp, six chirps to a tide... we've been talking for maybe a tweet so far?"  He points up and behind him.  "There's a clock on the school next door; you can hear it chime on the chirp."

After a moment, he adds, "Are you trying to get home?  Or - what do you want to do here?"

"I don't know, yet.  Magic's pretty cool, and I know a lot of stuff that'd probably synergize with it pretty well.  I want to poke it, y'know?  ...I just dunno.  I'll find out, I suppose.  And there's so little I know yet of how things are here that would impact my decisionmaking."

"Stuff that'll work well with magic?  Then you're definitely going to the right place; the Queen will love that!"  He grins.  "And if you've got questions - well, sorry you ended up with a guy of few words like Randall.  Anything I can say before the spellwagon comes?  Or what's your world like?"

"My world...It's honestly a lot like how yours could be, in twenty to fifty years?  If you were going on and researching on your own, I mean.

"Despite the whole no-magic thing.

"And then there's the crazy shit.  I could just call up and talk to someone on the other side of the world from me.  There's a network of billions of devices that can all talk to eachother, manufacturing barely requires human input...we make a basic component of computation that's less than the thickness of a human hair long.

"I have in my pocket more externalized ability-to-compute than the project to launch a manned rocket to the moon - I still don't know if you have one of those, actually - needed to succeed."

His eyes go wide when she mentions talking to people on the other side of the world.  "It takes us a day to get a spellwagon across the country!  And that's if we're hurrying unsustainably, and we can't send news or mail any faster, unless you believe those stories from the Research Mages."

Randall looks up and smiles at this, but doesn't say anything.

The agent snorts at him.  "Hey, if it was real, you'd think they would've told everyone by now and trained us in how to do it!"  He shakes his head.  "Anyway - 'rockets'?  Don't know what those are, but we've got a moon.  They say the Elves used to go there in the Days of Wonder."

"My home country went to the moon by setting things on fire very hard."  She grins, subtly, before delivering her followup: "Fifty years ago."

"Huh!  Can you do that!?"

"Not on my own, not right now.  But I bet I could figure it out, with magic on the table."

He shakes his head and smiles.  "I'd love to see it."

Randall folds over the paper and hands it to Mira.  "Letter for Tilda?  Saying who you are, plus other news.  And good luck."

"Thank you, both of you."

And now's about the time that the spellwagon arrives, right?

Actually, it takes a little longer, but the station agent's willing to tell her a little about the town while she waits.  It's called Appledore; in the last generation or so, it's grown from a farm town to also cater to tourists coming - by spellwagon - for the hills and the nearby lake.

The spellwagon looks a lot like a train.  It's enclosed wagons coupled together, running along a (single) metal rail.  The conductor pokes his head out of a window to wave her (and a few other people) on, and Randall silently raises his hand in farewell.

The seats are draped with cloth, but they're clearly wooden benches with rough backs.

She waves goodbye to Randall, before taking in the train.

There aren't any seatbelts.  Figures.

The direction is a bit backwards, but she's half expecting to meet Arachne Tellwyrn on the other end of this ride, just off the tropespace she's been observing.

...At least she has a coat she can bundle up as a pillow.

No, no such thing as a seatbelt.  Nor arms.  The spellwagon does move smoothly, though... at least most of the time.

The track runs along the river for a while, and it does look pretty.  After a little while, the conductor comes by and takes a look at her ticket, and lets her know they'll be getting to Dumrath tomorrow morning; unfortunately other travelers have already paid for all the beds, but they'll be stopping for a few chirps at Silmvale around suppertime where there's a decent restaurant in the station which can pack something in a hamper.

There aren't that many more people in Mira's car, but for a little while - between two local stations - a family gets on with two young boys arguing about some stories from the Days of Wonder.  They get off at the next station before they've settled whether it was more awesome to plop a mountain on top of your enemies or turn them all into air-spirits (or beetles; the tales vary.)

Around evening - after the stop at Silmvale - the spellwagon switches to another track, leaves the river, and sets off through a well-farmed plain.  There're two more women in the car with her, both with wands in hand, murmuring together something about magic and occasionally practicing spells, occasionally interspersed with grumbling about how it's a shame they'll be getting off in the middle of the night and wouldn't it be nice to go on to the palace someday and see the Queen herself.

Mira sees the full moon rise just after sunset.  It looks about the same size as Earth's moon, but clearly not the same - there're fewer craters, but the Man in the Moon has such an obvious face that no one can miss it here.

There're next to no lights, but the moonlight is enough for her to make out waving fields of grain and the occasional town as they rush past or briefly stop.

She absolutely listens in to the women practicing their spellwork - and, later, drawing upon past experience, somehow manages to sleep pretty decently despite being on a bench that's as hard as a rock.  It's something about being wedged into her seat and possibly engine vibrations that makes it work, apparently, because she can't replicate it in cars, and she's tried.

Regardless...Dumrath awaits her.

Dumrath is a large city, clearly densely packed, running right up against a forest on one side. A turreted palace is at one side of the city, by the forest.  The spellwagon runs across the river on an arch bridge, turns to avoid the palace, and then through an archway into the large stone hall of Dumrath Station.

It's midmorning now; the car's filled up somewhat in the morning, and just about everyone is piling out now in the station.

She, and her various stuff, will join them.

...Is there anyone there who might be willing to help a traveler?

...Anyone wearing the fancy emblem, she means.  She's not that trusting of strangers in the city.

The golden horse that was on the stationagent's shirt (and also the conductor's)?  Oh yes, there're several people with that, a few standing around the platforms and a few at desks near the doors leading out.

...so yeah, she'll just...

"I'm horribly sorry for bothering you, but, well, I've got a letter that's supposed to go to someone in the palace and I'm kind of freaking out about going anywhere near said palace because I have not in fact ever done anything that could possibly bring me to the attention of someone who could crush me with their pinkie finger if they so chose, before?  And I mean, I need to actually do it myself, I have necessary context that also needs delivering, but, uhh...aaah."

The woman looks surprised.

"Don't worry!  They don't crush anyone there.  Is this your first time in the city?"

"Of course they don't, not normally, but they still could.  Which...my nerves really don't like the idea of.  ...It's my first time in this city, at least.  I've been in others before.  Just...not one with the Palace in it, y'know?"

She purses her lips, confused but curious.  "I don't know what to say.  I suppose maybe you could hand the letter to someone at the gate and then come back for the context later?"

"...Thank you so very much; that's enough plausible deniability for my brain to stop screaming."

"You're welcome!"

The cobblestone street outside the station is somewhat wider than they looked from the spellwagon, but still crowded with people on foot and the occasional horse.  (Almost everyone is better-dressed here than in Appledore.)  She can see one of the towers of the palace down at one end of the street, maybe six blocks away. 

...Alright, palace-wards she goes.  Avoiding the horse poop and other such eughbleckglaagh.

The large palace gate is open, showing a courtyard inside with flowerbeds separating several different buildings (some statelier than others).  At the gate, there're three men standing there in what has so many cockades and ruffles that it has to be a dress uniform, armed with swords and wands - but they look somewhat bored, and the hilts of the swords are jeweled enough that they might never have actually been used, and if Mira waits a couple minutes she can see some people going in and out with the guards barely paying attention to them.

...she will nonetheless roll up to one of them!  "Uh, hi, I have a letter to deliver to a Tilda, works...somewhere in here?"

"Tilda?  As in, the Sub-Chamberlain?"

"...Has a brother Randall in Appledore?"

He looks unsure, but one of the other guards smiles.  "Yes, that's her.  Are you from Appledore?"

"I came here from Appledore, at least.  Randall gave me the letter."

The second guard nods.  "Oh, we'll see she gets the letter, if you want to leave it with us."

"Well, part of why I have the letter is that I need to speak with Tilda."

"Oh - well, I'm sure you know she's busy, but you can wait in one of the reception halls if you want?"

"I can do that, yeah."

Thank goodness; she'll have time to calm down.  And also 'eavesdrop'.

"I'll take her," says the second guard.

The first guard nods.

The second guard leads her past several flowerbeds - every color of the rainbow, plus multicolored flowers, with some literally rainbow-striped in ways that would never be seen on Earth - to open a door to a wood-paneled hall.  Inside, it's obviously a waiting and reception room, with three secretaries seated at desks busy writing longhand.  They look up when Mira and the guard walk in, and one of them says "Hello?"

"I have a letter to deliver to Sub-Chamberlain Tilda?"

"She came from Appledore, miss," the guard adds to the secretary.

The secretary nods.  "She's currently with the Research Mages, I think, talking about Aeslin's latest supplies request.  How urgent is this letter?"

"She will quite probably want to see it sooner rather than later.  And definitely see it today, rather than tomorrow."

"I'll see that she gets it when she comes back here, if she has some time before the royal audience at noon...  Family matters?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, you can sit in here" (she points to a couch on the other side of the room) "or wait outside if you want, but no promises on the schedule; as I'm sure you know, she's very busy..."  She shakes her head and glances back down at whatever she was writing before Mira came in.

She'll wait.

She doesn't have long to wait!

It's only a minute before she can hear a woman's raised voice right outside the door:  " - and I'd tell you again just how vital these crystals are, except I can't say it in public, so let's just walk into your office and I'll get out the you-know-what and explain it all!"

The door's wrenched open by a very upset teenaged girl, with a crown-and-starburst badge on her blouse.  She isn't even looking at Mira or anyone else in the room.

On her heels, a young (but not that young, it seems) woman walks in.  She looks a lot like Randall, and she's visibly sighing.

"You've said it all already, Aeslin, and I know it's important, but I don't have the time to hear it again."

"...Oh, this isn't a good sign..."

"...Ah, I'm presuming you're Tilda?  Letter for you, ma'am.  And yet more important stuff thrown on your plate, unfortunately."

"Ah, yes, thank you." Tilda reaches for the letter without really paying attention to Mira.  She seems like she's about to say something else, but then her eyes flicker down to Randall's name on the outside, and she blinks and looks up again at Mira.  "What's your name - and is it best for me to read this right now before I go to the Court?"

"...It depends upon whether you would rather have fundamental assumptions about the universe overturned before or after you might have cause to rely upon them."

Tilda looks confused.  "Randall, writing about fundamental assumptions of - well, all right.  Excuse me, Aeslin."

She opens the letter and glances over it.

Aeslin throws up her hands and sinks down on the couch next to Mira.

Eyes wide, Tilda takes a closer, appraising, look at Mira and then reads the letter again, more carefully.

She certainly doesn't look like she's from Suinel. 

And assuming she doesn't just have delusions, then she's from somewhere that isn't Suinel, which means a lot of historians or Research Mages or both are going to be interested - as well as the Queen herself.  In fact, the Queen is probably exactly the person to ask to figure out whether this Mira is from another universe or the Days of Wonder or where... except Tilda isn't exactly sure even the Queen would be able to answer that...

... but that can be answered later.

"Well," she breathes, not really trying to hide her shock.  "Randall's definitely sent you to the right place.  We're very happy to have you.  We'll have a lot of questions - but to start with, he says you're eager to invent new things?  What do you need to start with that - and also, I'm assuming he didn't think to pay for a real bed on the spellwagon; would you like some rooms and time to rest?"

"I need to know what I have to work with, is mostly the thing?  I'm not a one-woman Industrial Revolution, though y'all seem to have that well in hand actually - but what I do have comparative advantage in, is probably going to be pulling random things out of my - ahem - that help y'all do magic more efficiently, and if we can get my computer running, I have rather a lot of math and simulation capability."

Aeslin looks at Mira for the first time.  "Making magic more efficient?  What's this 'computer'?"

"A computer does a lot of math really fast and uses that to control outputs."

"Oh!  Do you have one of those?"

That'd be really handy in a whole lot of ways, in addition to proving her story right away.

"I sure do."

Look!  A cell phone calculator!

Aeslin and Tilda both stare at it in shock.

Aeslin asks first, "How does this work!?  Do you layer spells on top of each other, or - or -"

"This works by the properties of certain metals and nonmetals enabling you to shuffle around electrical potential in certain predictable ways, plus the way certain crystals can be induced to emit light at specific frequencies, for the display; computers in general are mathematical constructions rather than a specific physical mechanism.  If I were constructing a computer out of magic, I'd certainly look towards metamagic as the field to do it with, though!"

"What is electrical potential and how does it -"

Tilda interrupts.  "That sounds like something too long to talk about right now.  First, Mira, do you have anything else useful on you right now that my brother didn't mention?  Aeslin can show you to lunch - don't let her forget lunch again - but do you want anything else before then?"

"Lightning."

"...What do I even have on me...Uh.  Nothing immediately comes to mind beyond what you've already seen, but if I find something after unpacking, I'll let y'all know.  Speaking of which I will eventually need somewhere to rest my head and-or keep my stuff, I don't actually want to haul this suitcase around forever?"

Tilda nods.  "I'll make sure you get a room.  Aeslin can tell you everything you want to know about magic; I can get you in touch with metal miners..."  She frowns.  "Actually, that'd take a little while; Duncan's gone to visit the mines up north.  But sometime.  Let's get out of these people's way."

"You can leave your suitcase in my workrooms for now."

"That'd be fine.  ...Also I should warn you that I too have what I'd guess is Aeslin's flavor of quirky brain stuff, unless I miss my mark, so...apologies in advance for getting caught up in discussing magic and probably fumbling get-lunch?"

Tilda throws up her hands, laughing.  "Two of you!  Well, all right.  I guess I'll just head on to Court and leave you to talk magic and computers.  Aeslin, I'll tell the Queen that your report's going to be delayed a lot."

"Sure, but I might have to rethink my plans given what else we'll be able to do with metals now!  Come on, Mira!"

And on she goes!  "So tell me about magic!"

"To start on the theoretical level - Magic energy flows out from the Earth itself.  I can diagram the flow for you if you want, but there're still a dozen theories on why that we can't distinguish.  If only we could fly to the Moon, that'd tell apart half of them, which means that the Days of Wonder probably knew...

"But anyway.  Most things can't sense magic.  Or maybe the human body does instinctively and that's why we're living people; I haven't bothered to look into that.  Though I suppose your coming from a non-magical world would pretty much settle that!  Assuming your body does work the same way as ours!  Either way, to actually do anything with magic, you need to catch it and conduct it, and for that you need - well, if you don't have an Elf or a dragon or something like that, in practice you need wood or leaves from one of a few plants."  She taps her wand.  "Even crystals can't catch it, though they can store it.  And you also need your own living mind behind it to direct the wand, of course.  You envision it with your mind and direct it through the wand."

"...Why of all the bloody things would it be sapient thought?  I mean yes of course it would be, given the premises, but there has to be a reason even so - can you do it with live plants?  What happens if you do a graft?  Why can't crystals store magic?  The center of the planet is just a bunch of highly pressurized metal!  Unless magic, but it's not like I exploded because iron stopped existing, or maybe iron started existing and that's why I haven't exploded, or a bunch of variations on the simulation hypothesis that basically mean nothing actionable - why is it thought that you need to shape magic, can you tell if my computer has the magic-shaping quality, do you have an instrument to test whether I can do magic - oh, bloody hell, I need a voice recorder or some other way of taking notes - okay, cuing that up and - " she reiterates most of her questions - "okay, hypothesis, whatever ended the Age of Wonders was or involved a magical ritual to make all the crystals we can't readily find, magic sinks.  How could we disprove that..."

Aeslin stops abruptly by the corner of a flowerbed.  "Magic sinks, as in they naturally take in more and more magic?  That would actually explain some of the weirder stories about the Crystal Mountains... but if so we'd expect to hear a lot more weirder stories, and we could go to the Crystal Mountains to test it out... or more broadly, with other crystals around the world, we could trace the large-scale trends in the magic field, which we somehow haven't been tracking because nobody thinks it's important enough!

"- oh, and I've got a few spare wands in my workroom; you can try one of those, and how can we connect one with your computer?"

"Science is the art of failing to prove yourself wrong, I should probably remind you, but that really does sound like a good idea!"

"We would need to have a wholeass project to engineer 'connecting magic to my computer directly', probably; there's layers upon layers of specifications I don't have handy and we would thus need to rederive from the example.  Unless magic is very do-what-I-mean, which, I don't trust near an irreplaceable item anyway."

"It is on the elementary level, like the simple light and motion spells.  But things more complicated aren't, and even there it's easy to move something too fast and hit your friend.  - Oh, and you were asking 'why sapient thought' - well, I think the best guess was the one about how being a person is itself using magic, but your being here disproves that... assuming you're a person in the same way as the rest of us are, which it'd be some level of evidence for if you can do magic... come on, let's try that!"

She starts off again a little faster than before.

A moment later, she adds more softly, "... and a broader test tonight, though I still can't be sure to distingush..."

"A broader test tonight...?"

Yes she does want to do magic though!

"Oh - my dreamwalking spell.  I've seen some animals' dreams before, and different sorts of people's - humans and Elf and Dragon - and there're clear differences, though I can't say I can be sure to distinguish any differences."

"Oh wow, that sounds interesting!"

"It is!  I wish other people would actually learn it - I figured it out years ago, but I'm still the only human who knows how to do it!  It is really difficult, though, but it can't be much more difficult than some of the ward work I've seen - say, that right there."  She points with her wand at a large stone building with a bas-relief of a dragon carved over the door.

"Bad portrait, by the way.  I can only guess it was trying to be symbolic, but I've no idea what symbolism."

"Hm, sorry, what about the ward-work?"

"The wards on that hall - they protect from decay in a dozen different ways without stopping intentional expansions, let alone the conditional lockdown wards -"

She suddenly blinks and shakes her head.  "Oh, excuse me, I forgot you don't even have a wand yet.  But look how well the wards have worked; you'd never guess it was more than three hundred years old.  Or, well, what does your world do with buildings?"

"I'm pretty sure we've got some thousands-odd years old castles still around somewhere, not to mention the cave paintings, but, eventually, to dust everything returns, y'know?  Still, we can keep stuff in pretty good shape if we try.

"And modern architecture?  Well, they're skyscrapers for a reason, when they're not endless duplicates of the same suburban house churned out almost factory-like.  There's a couple four-digit-height-in-meters buildings, I think, though I don't know that for sure."

"Skyscrapers..."

Aeslin stares into the sky, off toward a few clouds in the distance.

She shakes her head.  "I don't think everything returns to dust here, though I'm not sure if we've rediscovered any really lasting preservation spells... and for that matter, I wouldn't know for sure if the Age of Wonders' spells would've decayed anyway after a few thousand years; we don't have an inventory from back then..."

She shakes her head again and starts walking again.

"I have no idea if magic produces a net increase in entropy over time, yet!"

"And I have no idea what entropy is!  But here's my Workroom."

She taps her wand at a closed metal door in the stone wall ahead of them, about twice as wide as a house door on Earth, and then pushes the door open.

The Workroom is walled with bare stone, with shelves on one wall holding blocks or beams of several different materials, and a wider top of some (closed) cabinets bearing several things that look sort of like gyroscopes.  On one of several tables (their tops marked like graph paper) in the middle of the room, a phosphorescently-glowing piece of what looks maybe like copper, as big as a forearm, is sitting in the middle of four crystals.

Aeslin waves her arm around the room, and then goes to one cabinet.  "There're spare wands in here... let's see, yew or gopher or tayrilee..."

"Entropy is the tendency of a closed system's disorder to increase over time, ultimately trending towards, somewhat ironically, homogeneity in temperature and the sum of motion vectors of particles and...so on and so forth.  The pattern of breakage spontaneously happening, rather than not that spontaneously happening.

"...note to self, see how hard it is to make a Maxwell's daemon."

Aeslin whirls abruptly, a curious look on her face, two wands in her hand.  "A daemon?  Is that some sort of golem?"

"Maxwell's daemon is a thought experiment someone had; the original concept involved a tiny demon watching particles of a gas bounce around between two chambers and opening or shutting a door depending upon how fast they moved.  There was something I heard about information-theoretic entropy still increasing, though, so it might not actually be negentropic even with magic involved, but I still want to see how hard it is to do with magic.  Oh, hm, while I'm on the subject of thought experiments, another potential way a hypothetical someone could've messed with the ambient magic is probably something like a Warlock's Wheel, which is - well, a science fiction author's device that consumed magic to, mostly uselessly, Spin Really Fast and hold itself together under the strain of Spinning Really Fast.  I doubt it's actually the thing that happened, but I did have the idea, so, I figured I'd mention it."

She's still staring at Mira.

"I don't think a golem could do that... I hope... but that might be simple enough for a spell... though why wouldn't we have seen it already... we'd need several counterspells just in case..."

"...hmm?"

Aeslin shakes her head.  "Disquieting idea.  The Maxwellian Demon, I mean."  She brandishes a new wand, somewhat lighter-colored than her own.  "Here's the tayrilee wand; it's supposed to be the best for beginners.  Try it?"

(She'd better not drop more hints about official secrets with this newcomer, Aeslin reminds herself.  Even if she's got new magic ideas that just might be relevant.)

"It doesn't...seem very worry-worthy to me?  The 'demon' is really just a plot device for something my humans have no idea how to make.  And the rest is pure math.  It doesn't bite.  Also, it's Maxwell's demon like some mathematical equations describing physical behavior are Maxwell's equations; not Maxwellian.  It's a possessive."  ...Annnnd she gets ye wand!  "...Alright, so, now that I have the wand...uh, well...what do I do with it, again?"

"Uh - yes, the wand!"

Her smile starts out a touch nervous but quickly brightens.

"Hold it in either hand.  To start with... start with the kids' light spell.  That's one of the ones that really is do-what-I-mean.  You can wave the wand in a small circle if you want, but the important part is to visualize a small light on the end of the wand and envision the magic flowing up through the wand to make the light."

"Heh, if I'm doing visualization trickery I should probably say 'Lumos'.  That woman is a horrible person whose name I refuse to perpetuate, but damn if she didn't have a knack for doggerel Latin spell names.  Anyway."  She points the wand at a convenient wall, and...tries visualizing things, her way.

From environment import magic; let magic equal light(435 THz); magic -> vector-to-wandtip -> conic-projection(15°);

It's not a valid program in any language she knows, but she does know what it means.

Mira feels all up and down her forearm some tingling and rippling, almost as if she'd stuck it in some moving water - except she's not actually feeling it with her senses; it's sort of like she's imagining it but also sort of like a lucid dream in her waking life.

-- She might see a very faint red glow at the tip of the wand.  Or maybe she's just imagining it.

"Did you feel something?  How were you imagining it?"

"...Definitely something happened, let's try that again..."

let light == get-magic-from(self,earth); let flow(light(600THz, 60W), output = new point(wand.tip), perturb(sphere));

It's a lot easier to hold on to the state of feeling mana when she knows what the heck it feels like, even if it doesn't feel like a feeling should.

The tingling is much stronger this time, but there's a feeling of turbulence in the flow - like air bubbles are mixed with the water and stopping the pipe for a few moments.  Or maybe it's not water; it feels somewhat more solid, almost like mud or mush.  It's moving through her arm and her hand to the wand, where it's causing the wand (again, like in imagination or a dream) to ripple in her hand.

And she sees a shining light on the tip of her wand.

It's not a full 60 watts - maybe 45? - but it's a light!

(If she bothers to look away from the light, she might also notice her arm is turning red.)

"You did it!  You can do magic!  How --"

Aeslin's eyes go even wider.

"-- wait, stop!  Er, drop the wand!  Your arm!"

"Blagh.  I'm going to feel whatever that is tomorrow, I'm sure."

Yeah she stopped that the moment she felt blockages, and if it doesn't stop on its own she will indeed yeet the fucking thing.

"Note to self: 'self' is not a good source of magic.  But what I'm wondering is what the hell this backlash is, physiologically, and what the hell causes it."

"No, it's not!  We're not Elves or Dragons; we don't have any usable magic in us - and I guess you just proved you're the same sort of human in that way too.  You were trying to summon magic from somewhere that really doesn't have it... though also from somewhere else that does, given that you got a light?  Just what were you visualizing that second time?"

"...It has something.  Or if it didn't before it might well now.  The feeling was a clog, not - it's the difference between a clot and an embolism and I doubt you actually know what those are on account of medicine being a specialized field - anyway, it might've felt like nothing was there for a second, but then it didn't.  Or maybe that was the - anyway, I think that whatever that psychosomatic whatnot was, it was possibly a consequence of magic getting dragged through the me.  Somehow.  Which is odd, I'm pretty sure the visualization wasn't supposed to...

"Oh, but would it have been a one-way valve in practice?  Hell if I know.  I'm definitely not a magic plumber."

She'll transfer the wand to her other arm, make a frustrated noise because now she can't stop thinking about drawing magic from/through herself so casting's right out unless she's extra careful...

"...so what happens if you try to put magic in a human, anyway?  Because I can't get my brain to stop thinking about this so I'm going to be useless at casting until it up and quits.  Or I suppose I could and not self, but that's...high risk tolerance."

"Yes, you were dragging magic through you... or that's what it looks like; we haven't quite proven you're standard-human so let me check -"

She pulls out her wand, flicks it in the direction of Mira's reddened arm, and then nods.

"Yes, a standard flow burn.  You were feeling the flow of magic in your arm, right?  That's what happens when you're not visualizing it quite the right way - you need to focus the visualization so it's flowing through your wand and maybe your hand around the wand and no other part of you.  Otherwise, if you're drawing the magic through you, you get - well, that.  Or worse if you do it too much.  I may have tried to make myself an Elf when I was young and stupid... and all I got was some hurt and a reference to a monograph on why it wouldn't work that it took me another couple years to really understand.

"Don't worry; it'll heal by itself in a day or so.  And it doesn't stop you from casting as long as you do it focused right."

"Yes, yes, the problem is my hyperactive problem-seeking missile of an imagination.  ...Anyway.  Really want to see that monograph, actually, if you have a copy, but.  Where were we?  You were going to ask something?"

"Yeah, it's in the library."  She gestures off vaguely.  "Anyway, flow burn or not, you're getting it a lot faster than most children!  Before you try it again, let me check - what were you visualizing?"

"I was mostly visualizing it as computer code.  Not in any real programming language, but it was a helpful metaphor.  So something like - oh, hm, I probably ought to be thinking more in terms of HTTP than object-oriented...well, maybe a little of both...and it's not like I'm not throwing pseudocode functions around willy-nilly already...Excuse me.  That was a bunch of jargon.  But yeah, uh, I just...specified what it ought to do.  Hm, I wonder if I can..."

for(int i = 0; i<5; i++) { make-light(msource = Magic.Ambient, lfreq = 435THz, pshape = Sphere.default(r=2in.), pvector = this.wand.tip*1.01, duration = 500ms) this.sleep(500ms);}

If this works, it ought to create a red light that blinks five times, cycling every half-second, drawing from ambient magic for power.  Of course, she doesn't know if magic works like this, but she's going to darn well try.

She feels the slush - or water? - flowing over and through her wand-hand in the same illusionary way, and then rippling up the wand.

A dim two-inch-radius ball of red light blinks on.

Then it blinks off.

The magic flow almost stops then; it's no longer a current but just a tingling at her hand and wand.  The light doesn't come back.

"Did you turn it off on purpose?  And did you mean to make it that dim - if not, you might want to focus on visualizing the magic flow better?"

...She pokes the magic flow (this.wake()) to see if it goes on again.  "Yeah.  Maybe."

It tingles more for a moment, but then nothing.

... maybe she should try the whole visualization again?

...

Fine, universe, she'll try turning it off and on again.

for(i=0; i<5; i++) {this.out(new Light(Frequency f = 435THz, Duration d = 500ms, Shape s = new Shapes.sphere(r=5cm), Position p = position.fromVector(this.wand.toTip()*1.01), maxBrightness=60W)); this.wait(500ms);}

...And if that works, she does it again, except bumping up the tine to 5000ms to see what happens when she moves it.

The light shows up again!  And then it goes off!  And nothing else!

"Are you trying for something more elaborate?  You need to know tricks to do some more elaborate things; there's a reason the light spell's the first thing we teach children."

"Mhm?"

for(i=0; i<5; i++) {this.out(new Light(Frequency f = (435+(75*i))THz, Duration d = 500ms, Shape s = new Shapes.sphere(r=5cm), Position p = position.fromVector(this.wand.toTip()*1.01), maxBrightness=60W));}

(There's a brighter light now, lasting half a second, but no repetition.)

"What're you trying for?  And you mentioned computer code - how're you using that?"

"What kind of do-what-I-mean interpreter is this that can't even handle a for loop, I swear," she grumbles, and tries again with a

int i = 0; while(i<5){this.out(new Light(Frequency f = (435+(75*i))THz, Duration d = 500ms, Shape s = new Shapes.sphere(r=5cm), Position p = position.fromVector(this.wand.toTip()*1.01), maxBrightness=60W));i++;}

(Again, the light goes on once, for half a second, and then off.)

"It isn't totally that...  What's a for loop?"

"How do you make a spell do the same thing multiple times?  ...Bloody hell, this is going to start getting into whatever nonsense reflection is, I can just tell.  That or Lisp."

function Make-A-Damn-Light(int i=0){this.out(new Light(Frequency f = 435+(75*i)THz, Duration d = 500ms, Shape s = const Sphere(radius r = 5cm), Position p = (this.wand.BasetoTip()*1.01).toPosition()));}

Make-A-Damn-Light(); Make-A-Damn-Light(1); Make-A-Damn-Light(3); Make-A-Damn-Light(5); Make-A-Damn-Light(1);

(That doesn't work at all; nothing happens.)

"Oh, you're trying to define and repeat invocations!  You can't do that with freeform wand casting, I'm afraid - magic doesn't recognize that; you need to tell it what to do each time.  For invocations, you need to press it into crystal and invoke it from there.  That's how we run spellwagons and wards and so many other things.  Is that how your computers work too?"

"Something like that.  Not really, but it's close enough for jazz, probably.  Hardware's not anything like my field of expertise, though, so, be warned.

"...let's see if the dread GOTO works, just to make absolutely sure..."

10 LET i = 0;

20 CREATE NEW LIGHT(FREQUENCY 435+(75*i)THz, DURATION 500ms, POSITION this.WAND.TO-TIP() AS POSITION, SHAPE SPHERE(5cm), MAX-BRIGHTNESS 60W);

21 IF i > 5 END; ELSE i++;

30 GOTO 20;

Nope, it doesn't!  Once again, she gets one half-second light.  Then she feels some turbulence in the flow at the GOTO, but nothing else.

"...Well, it got closer."

"What's a 'goto'?  If you're telling the magic to go do the same thing again... that's the simplest sort of invocation, but still not freeform...  Now that I think about it, I wonder if Elves could do that?  I'll ask her sometime."

"Why would Elves have specific abilities to tell magic to do things that humans cannot?"

"Because they've got magic actually in their minds and bodies!  We need to invoke the magic outside ourselves through the interface of a wand; they don't.  They can get much finer control and understand more intuitively things that we need to learn and practice.  That's how there were so many separate schools in the Days of Wonder - or at least I think so, based on the legends we've got.  I haven't seen the Queen do anything totally impossible for us, but then I haven't seen her do much actual wand-work these days, even though she obviously likes it, so maybe...?"

"...so, wait, doesn't the magic still come inside us a little bit, though?"

"And...hmmm...I have a thought...because you can get magic to hold on to things..."

"What if I somehow compile the code into something that'll stick around long enough, and then invoke it by passing parameters via the metaphorical command-line?"

"Didn't really work when I tried just defining a function, buuuut I think it might be worth a shot..."

She refuses to let this crappy interpreter beat her!  She will have freestanding loops!

(Unless she definitively can't, but she hasn't yet run out of ideas!)

luxbuf init -size_of 400 -shape_of square -col_size 40

...no, that's not enough, that would be 400 bits, let's try that again...keep in mind the maximum wattage...

luxbuf init 3600 square red 80

luxc -from_string "method Create_Light(Vector v, Shape s, Color c){this.out(new Light(v, s, c, 500ms, 60W)); this.wait(500ms); return;}" | luxbuf

loop_unroll("for(int i = 0; i<5; i++){luxbuf.Create_Light(this.wand.pos*1.01, new Sphere(5cm), 435THz);}") | luxbuf

luxexec luxbuf

"Yes it does, but it doesn't stay inside us, and we don't make it ourse -- what's that!?"

She's staring at the light in front of Mira's wand, and whips her own wand out to point at it.

A square of glowing red light hangs in the air in front of Mira's wand.  And under it - between it and the wand - another red light blinks once, twice, thrice -

(Mira probably doesn't know to check, but Aeslin, to her shock, can see the magic flowing to the blinking light from the square not from the wand.)

- and then the square collapses and the blinking light vanishes.

"You made a construct to - to take the place of a crystal?  A golem formed just of magic without any material parts at all!?"

"That, dear Aeslin, was a buffer!  And a compiler!  And also a loop unroller, just in case!  So - what I did here is...

"Imagine that you have...instructions, for magic, like beads on a string.  And there's a bead you can hang on the string, that tells magic to make a string composed of these beads.

"And you take that bead, and the bead you hang on the string after it, is a bead that says 'cast this and keep it hanging around!'

"And that was the square.

"So I put the intent I use to create light with into that square.

"And then, because I'm an overachiever, I tried something even more bullshit, and actually managed to get the magic to -

"Alright, it's time to properly explain for loops!

"So for loops are pretty simple, semantically speaking; you have the 'for' token, an initializer section, a continue-until section, and the section where you actually do the loop - there's also usually a section for 'things you execute when the loop ends', but it's not necessary for this explanation even though I used it in my code.  And, here's a key thing, you don't actually need to write code that way.  You could write, say, if you wanted to make five lights, 'make light one, make light two, make light three, make light four, make light five' - but it's easier to think, 'for integer i =' - okay, programmers do a lot of zero-indexed ordered lists, it's just kind of a Thing - 'for integer i = 0, i less than 5, make light i, increment i'.  And that's where a compiler comes in: because it's a pain in the ass for computers to jump back and forth in the code they execute, compilers unroll loops and do a bunch of other stuff, so you can turn it into the 'make light one two three four five' of earlier.

"So, we start from the buffer.  I 'compile' approximately half an intent to make lights into that buffer; I compile, actually, a method to make lights that can vary.

"And then, I unrolled a loop like that example from earlier, except, in the middle, I read the buffer for my make-a-light intent, which I had set up as a part-of-a-spell so I could feed it values - and then I fed that back into the buffer, which I then executed!

"And then, it ran!  Take that, magic!  I have defeated your stupid arbitrary no-looping thing!"

"You hung it in... just the magic in the air, and made it a charged crystal built from pure magic!  And then it evaporated when the magic ran out, of course, but I wonder if I could get it to stick around longer, and maybe even run it off a live oak or gopher tree without any crystal needed - and it could grow with the tree -

"- and if you can do logic like that loop can you do all sorts of other things as well like a golem -

"Oh wow, that'd almost be a fairy well right out of the Age of Wonders!"

Her eyes are gleaming.

She gestures with her own wand, and a red square of her own appears in the air.

... But then nothing else happens.

Aeslin stares at it appraisingly.  "Is it just a mental block?  Or is there some trick to putting that intent into the square?"

"I'm not sure; tell me what you did and how you did it.  What I did was something like..."

"...Actually, let me see if I can get it to show what it's doing."

"Or - if you've gotten the code into the buffer, maybe I can get it to..."

luxexec remote.Aeslin.luxbuf

(She is, however, ready and willing to write down what she did, if that doesn't work.)

(Her remote execution attempt doesn't do anything.)

Once Mira's written down her code, Aeslin looks at it curiously.

"I almost want to say I don't speak this language!  For that matter, how do you speak our language, and how did you come here... but we can study that another time!

"So... think of the act of making the light as an object, and put that into the square and have it do that?  Is this how you normally work with your computers?"

"You have no idea how bemused I am that I do - that I'm here, and y'all speak English, despite the vast divergence between our worlds - honestly.  But as far as the 'is this how programming works' thing...  Pretty much!  And honestly the square's just there to look pretty; the shape doesn't matter, only the data inside."

"We speak what?  But really, I'm surprised you've got nonmagical 'computers' that somehow work in ways magic works even though we didn't know it!"

She holds out her wand again and twirls it in a slow spiral, as if she's filling in a shape on an imaginary piece of paper, trying to think of making a light as an object even while supplying magic to hold up the charged fully-magic crystal that is the light square...

And some magic goes out of the square, but then it collapses as her attention wavers.

"We're speaking the same language.  Mine's English.

"Hhmmm.  Part of the reason I made this a buffer is that - a buffer, intrinsically, has the nature of holding a thing, such that - it looks like what happened just now is, you lost focus on it?

"And part of why I made this the way I did, with a visible thing holding the information, was because that way I could trick my brain into giving it object permanence with less focus on specifically what I was holding up - the magic was already flowing in such-and-such a way.  All it needed was keeping open the spigot.  So when you do the twirling...use that as your memory space.  Your memory palace, even; do you have those around here?  Never really learned it, but I could talk about the theory."

"Yes, I lost focus - I don't have a memory palace, but I could try thinking of it as my dream-house?  That's inside my mind too, even though it doesn't look like it when I'm in the dream."

"A what now?  But - possibly?  I don't know what that is, but if it's some sort of lucid dreaming construct, it should very probably work?"

"'Lucid' dreaming... you mean, magic dreaming?  Yes!  Or not just magic dreaming; it's normal dreaming too but - well, I mentioned my dreamwalking magic?  I've gotten pretty familiar with how my dreams work!"

Aeslin weaves her wand in the air, more intricately this time, casting a variant of the first set-spell that would normally enable her to dreamwalk once she falls asleep.  But instead of that, she ties up in it the simple light spell...  which would probably make her glow while asleep?  Maybe she'll try that sometime... except that she instead triggers it, and casts it on the light-square.

It works!

Magic flows from the light-square and lights a new light!

... and then about ten seconds later, Aeslin gets distracted and the red light-square evaporates, and the new light with it.

"Woo!  We did it!"

A knock sounds on the door

Aeslin, ignoring the knock, exclaims, "Let's see how efficient we can get the power run through it!"

Another knock sounds, and someone slips a note under the door.

Aeslin angrily flicks her wand, and the note flies over to them:

"Miss Mira,

"Her Majesty Queen Elethy Ever-True most urgently invites you to her royal court.  All formalities will be waived; come as you are without delay."

"...aaaaaaaaaah?  Okay then um can you come with me please."

And, erm.  Off she goes!  Kind of terrified about this!

"Oh - sure, I guess I can wait these experiments.  Don't worry; she's just curious about you and how you came here... and probably what you have to say about a world without magic too."

Aeslin glances around the room, shrugs, shoves her wand into her belt, and opens the door outside again.

"Over there in the old palace," she says, pointing at a building taller than the rest, with two towers on it and stones more ornately carved.

"Thank you.  Authority figures I don't know the rules about, they spook me.  And, uh, you've ever interacted with Her Majesty before and I've interacted with you before, so, uh, cultural translation?  I guess?  Is how I'd put it?  I dunno, I'm just...it's scary!  ...and it smells like plot...which is not a rational thing to believe, but my entire worldview is shot, so I don't know how much I should."

Anyway!  Walking now!

And she's keeping that wand in her quick-access pocket, just in case she needs it.

"Authority figures... but she's different; she's the Queen!"

"Yes well I'm not from, a culture that's grown up with her?  And most of my referents for Queens and Kings...could be assholes."

Aeslin stops and stands still for a moment.  "Wow.  That... must feel strange.  Or, I mean, different.  Even if you get a good ruler at some point, if they're humans, they'll die, and then who comes next?  No wonder you don't trust your rulers."

"Even a single immortal ruler can get run over by a stagecoach, and then where are you?  Let alone if there's something they fuck up about consistently.  Uh.  Anyway.  Less morbid, more meeting, probably."

And not-being-late-to-the-meeting, aaaaaaah, off she goes!

Aeslin, visibly deep in thought, leads the way.

The attendants at the door to the Old Palace building (wearing the same dress uniforms as the ones outside, but without swords) nod to Aeslin as they enter.  She leads them through some halls without talking to anyone or pausing anywhere, until a reception room even more ornately carved than the rest, where one man in a differently-ruffled uniform throws open a silver-paneled door with an engraved crown on it, intoning "Mage-Researcher Aeslin and guest." 

(Aeslin walks in without bowing or curtseying.)

There is something of a rictus grin upon her face, plastered there because she can hardly let the internal screaming out.

Queen Elethy looks like she could just maybe be human.  Her eyes look sort of tilted toward a cat's - but it's not clearly inhuman; there could be a human somewhere with those eyes.  Similarly, the proportions of her face are nothing you could put your finger on as not human... but she's clearly several standard deviations away from any human you'd expect to meet.  She's standing in front of her throne, and looks up from talking to a man at their announcement.

She's wearing a glimmering green dress and a silver circlet with her black hair braided around it.  Another silver circlet appears to be floating over her head like a halo.

"May it be well met, Miss Mira.  I hope you have not been disappointed in your time in Suinel?"

Mira strangles a squeak before it passes her lips, and, after a few moments of collecting herself, decides to fix her gaze on The Hat.  It is a very good distraction from speaking to the most important person in the country if not the world.

"I have been positively impressed, to speak the truth of it.  Your people have welcomed a lost stranger with kindness, your science and industry stands within a stone's throw of a thousand years' effort of mine, and also there's magic, which my people don't have."

"Thank you."  She smiles.  "I do not know how far we could have gotten without magic - but then, we do not have a thousand years of effort without it, and five hundred already feel too long to meet my dreaming and visions - are you sure there is no magic in your world?  Or are there merely no beings or plants that let you interact with it?"

"If there was magic beyond that which our authors dreamed of in their stories, I knew of it not, and while I am no polymath, I do consider myself well-read.  If magic existed, I would think there would be some evidence to find, in our delving to the subatomic and piecing together of history til moments after the beginning of it all.  And yet, here I am, so to quote a playwright of some renown - there are more things in heav'n and earth, than are dreamt of by our philosophy."

Queen Elethy steps forward in interest.  "Tell me about how you have done all this without magic?  And what else have you done?"

"Let's see...landed a man on the moon and brought him back, several times, with less weight of computer technology than I have in my pocket right now in terms of space available...a network of geosynchronous communications satellites...the entire Internet for that matter, whereby you could consult a million libraries from the comfort of your home...built mile-high structures...turned flight from a thing man merely dreamed of to a routine business annoyance...delved to the bottom of the deepest sea, where no light shines save what the creatures down there make, and seen the strange creatures of the sulfurous geothermal vents where the continents crash together or break away...sequenced the blueprints of humanity.

"Made one truly terrible weapon, whose production I will not speak of - but it felled cities, even as we later turned the technology to peaceful ends."

"Oh, and, Aeslin, do the thing, please?"

"We've discovered how to hang an invocation in a construct of pure magic!  And put a repeating loop in it to make it do the same thing again!  I've only gotten it once so far, but..."

She focuses her mind again on the act of making the light as a single object, and twirls her wand in a slow spiral again to build up the square buffer...

And again, above it, one light blinks with magic from the buffer.

Queen Elethy doesn't have a wand out, but she stares at the demonstration with growing smile and wider and wider eyes.

"Amazing!  The very idea never came to my mind - even the simplest golems require material components!  The magic looked somewhat strange to me... but you do it freeform, with a standard wand?    Are there limits in principle to how long it could last, or how complicated the instructions?"

"Standard wand - Mira did it with my spare tayrilee, just a couple minutes after she touched it for the first time.  I imagine we'd need to hold the instructions in our heads, unless we can delegate that part to a crystal... Mira?"

"Aside from - being able to hold enough of the relevant instructions in your head to use the intent-capturing trick on them to begin with?  And I mean you can probably get reasonably complex with that, or rather, the thing is that rather a lot of things are surprisingly simple when magic lets you 'do what I mean' at them.  I think the only external limit I can think of is, uh, magic and the availability thereof, but that's Aeslin's field of expertise.  It was - I figured it out mostly because I could tell magic to 'hold this effect for this long', and that's still data - is still memory, when freeform magic is 'supposed' to not have any such thing.  The rest was mostly bashing my head on metaphors until magic gave up on trying to stop me.  ...which reminds me that I probably ought to follow up on why GOTOs felt different from attempting a regular loop, despite the fact that it didn't work as intended.  A lot of science starts with 'huh, that's funny'."

"You would still need the magic itself, yes, to keep the construct alive... but perhaps it could be connected to a live tree, or perhaps even the light of the stars themselves..."  She stares off into the air for a moment before shaking her head, and the coronet hovering over her head twirls with it.  "Ah, I was remembering the Age of Wonders."

"...the sun is a star, too, if your cosmology is anything like mine - which I have very little idea about but do suspect to probably be true enough.  Incidentally.  Not sure if you'd know.

"...and I should probably see if you can make dynamos...really need to learn how magic here upends the physics I know.

"...What other things did the Age of Wonders have, that you miss, if I might ask?"

"The sun itself a star?  Then it would be a very unusual star - either larger or smaller than the others, depending on which theories you follow, and with much less of a magic field.  But ah!  Would that I had time to study physics with you.  Perhaps together we could rebuild the flying carpets and everlasting fountains and wells of transformation and oracle-bones of the Days of Wonder, even if we could not bring back the lost Fay, let alone the lost Elves..."

She stares off into the distance again, a haunted look on her face.

"It's just much closer than any other, actually; astronomy's not my best field, but I know that much.  It's...if this sun is the same sort, if the sun was the size of my fist, the planet we stand upon would be as dust.  There are bigger and smaller types of stars, though, funnily enough; color's a decent guideline.  Blue is a hotter 'flame' - which isn't really what stars do - and reds are usually biggest or second-smallest, depending upon whether they've exploded yet.  Yellow 'main sequence' stars are firmly middle-of-the-pack."

She shakes her head again and frowns.  "The stars are not my focus either, but we can see how big they appear, and thus how big they must be if we knew how far they were.  And if the sun were an average size, then the stars would be close enough that they would seem to move over the year.  Is this another difference between our worlds?"

"Or the sun is regular-size, but the stars are incredibly far away; so far away that their precession takes aeons, and all we observe are the brightest and closest.  I could probably do some trigonometry to check, one way or the other - really, anyone with some straight rods and standardized units of measurement ought to be able to replicate Eratosthenes' experiment, it's just trigonometry plus facts of geography.

"It goes like this: The curvature of the planet is such that there is some point, on some day, where the sun will not cast a visible shadow from an upright pole.

"You find that point, and then take another measurement of the shadow cast by a pole of the same height, a reasonably large distance away to the north or south, and preferably at the same elevation.  You should observe, if my model of the world is at all accurate, that there is a shadow cast.

"This allows you to calculate the circumference of the earth reasonably well, despite the fact that it's not quite right since the planet's spinning squishes it a bit and, uh, elevation is a factor.

"Then, using those numbers, you can construct a triangle with those rods as two points and the sun as another; the rest is just plugging it into a squared plus b squared minus two a b cosine C-the-angle, slash otherwise exploiting the fact that triangles are pretty easy to pin down if you know enough about them - and I'm pretty sure we would, in this case.

"But actually...have you ever tested that 'the sun is less magical than other stars' hypothesis?  It seems eminently measureable."

"Yes, we have tested the sun's magic and the stars', and the stars give us more, for all their small apparent size.  But I do not recall anyone measuring the distance to the sun or the stars... Aeslin?"

"I don't remember anyone doing that either, Your Majesty.  But I might've missed it.  I'm still wondering if we can tell for sure whether her world really doesn't have any magic...  Do you know of any way to measure the influence of ambient magic?  Preferably in a human body... or presumed-human; I still haven't checked."

"...or the sun is already giving us magic, or it's something about the magnetosphere, or there's something else influencing input..."

Elethy stares off again.  "I remember that in the Days of Wonder, there was someone who could detect signs in humans' bodies of their having been near more magic than normal, even after some time had passed, so presumably there is some way to tell that a human body has been near less magic than normal, even though she is now here in normal magic..."

She doesn't shake her head now, but nods.  "Yet I do not know it.  And yes, perhaps the sun is already giving us magic.  If it is a star - and if, somehow, it is really the same size as the other stars - then that would make sense."

"...or you're drawing from a whole crapton of a lot of stars and only one sun!  Because there's stars you can't observe behind the stars you can - how do y'all normally specify, when you're doing that?"

"We normally don't...  Do we know any higher-magic areas where we could test people for figuring out how to tell if her world really has no magic..."

Queen Elethy's face instantly looks grave.  "The Crystal Mountains."

"And that would allow testing the 'whatever the fuck happened, it might have just started pumping the world's magic into crystals' hypothesis while we're there - but.  Uh.  Why do I feel a sense of impending plot?"

"Speaking of which, maybe you should hear about some of the other ideas Mira had...  We haven't tested them; they were just stories in her world; I don't know if they'd work here, but if they do..."

Elethy had been giving Mira an appraising look, but she turns to Aeslin.  "How bad?"

"Er, not as bad as the Last War.  Not urgent, though."

"A lot of them do depend on the idea of magic being finite.  I don't know how Elves work, but I'm told you just produce magic, internally?"

She shakes her head.

"No - as far as we know, magic is produced by the earth and sun and stars - perhaps I should specify, both the fixed and moving stars.  I can manipulate the magic directly, without needing a wand or other intermediary tools."

"...those 'moving stars' are proooobably other planets, actually, like the one we're standing on.  By the way.

"Anyway, I could have sworn...but if you say it's not so, well, you're the primary source on elves.  Do you have any idea what the heck kind of process creates magic?"

Queen Elethy and Aeslin both shake their heads.

Her breath hisses between her teeth.  "Don't like that.  ...Does the moon create magic."

"No."

"Perhaps to a small extent... There was a rumor when I was young.  But if so, not enough to clearly notice."

"...well, if we figure out why that is, that might give us a better idea of what the heck magic even is to begin with."

"Yes, and I am much more curious about that now that you are here from a world that might not have it.  But, how did you come here?"

"I have absolutely no idea.  I was packing for a trip, and then I was out in the middle of nowhere, give or take."

Queen Elethy looks curious.  "In your house?  Was there anything new there?  Did you see anything else unusual before or after?"

"Just outside, hauling stuff out to a vehicle; I might've seen something shiny reflect out of the corner of my glasses, but I wouldn't put money on it."

"That's right; we need to send a team to investigate where she appeared."

The Queen nods and turns to one of the men standing there.  "Flynn, do it, right away."  And then to Mira:  "Could you point it out on a map, do you think?"

"No, but I'm pretty sure I could point you to it - just, oh, bloody hell, what was her name, I'm horrible with names...ask the person who I think is Aeslin's boss slash told you I existed; I'm here because of a fortuitous coincidence in that I was dropped right next to a family member's farm."

"Tilda's not my boss, and..."  Aeslin hesitates.  "We could just search the whole area rather than send Mira off back there...  It might be worthwhile; something might've moved."

"That is why I said I think," she quips, a wry expression on her face.  "Guess I was wrong.  I would certainly think searching the area might be helpful, though.  ...That said, I just got here."

(A woman standing next to the Queen nudges her and holds up a pen.  The Queen glances toward her and nods.)

"Of course," she says to Mira.  "And as Idith has reminded me, I have other business too today.  Do you think your computer would be better used as it is, or investigated as a sample for research or duplication?  And do you have any other proposals for where we can help each other?"

"I'd be a bit tetchy about giving up the accumulated personal history I have on my computer, and really, I think I can probably teach you more of the stuff you'd need to know to replicate it with it intact than I could with it taken apart or anything.  I do think we'll be able to get quite a few things from investigating the peripherals, though, and I care less about them.  Besides, the way crystals work absolutely wants to be all microcontrollers and such.  As for where I can help you...I know a bunch of random stuff about a bunch of random things.  What sort of problems are there?"

"Figuring out how to communicate faster, to teach people better, to fly - even all the way to the moon - and figure out whether people's bodies and minds really are inherently magical, and for that matter of course figure out how to safely make golems -"

Several people look taken aback by this list, especially the last item.

"I would agree with the earlier items, and add..."  She stares off into the distance.  "... Perhaps we shall say, medicine.  And if you do go so far as to study golems, be very careful."  She grins hollowly.  "By which I mean, ask someone else from this world whether you're being careful enough."

"Oh trust me, I've got plenty of speculative artificial intelligence horror stories to add to the pile on top of what you have.  On the other hand, there's a surprising amount of stuff you can do entirely without intelligence, just on the strength of mathematical modeling heuristics - self-driving vehicles, for example, were something that was very much becoming extant, regardless of the fact that computers do only and exactly what you tell them."

"...Medicine...yeah, I know some things about that, though it's a field where there's so much that I know I don't know, and furthermore some I couldn't know - such as magic interactions - that it's going to be a long-term project even if there's a few immediate results.  Speaking of which, handwashing, especially with soap, is good, diseases must be transmitted through some medium and you can avoid transmission by filtering said medium, lead and mercury are bad for your health...not just lead and mercury, there's a laundry list of heavy metals that the body doesn't like, but those are historically common..."

"Oh, what sort of intelligence do they not have, if they have modeling systems?"

"I'll arrange a group of physicians too, Your Majesty."

The Queen is staring off into the distance again, but she nods.  "Thank you.  And thank you, Miss Mira.  I hope we can talk again, soon."

"They don't have...planning, is, I suppose the best way to put it - only the inputs and outputs and rules to convert inputs to outputs."

"Thank you, your highness.  I hope to help your kingdom thrive."

"That has been my struggle too."

Queen Elethy nods to Mira as she and Aeslin leave.

"...I think I like her."

"Of course.  She told me once -"

At that moment, Tilda comes around a corner with a long roll of paper in her hands, sees them, and grins.  "Oh good.  I hope things went well at Court?  Mira, did Aeslin forget to get lunch again?"

" - we both did, but uh, possibly revolutionizing magic covereth a slightly delayed lunch, I hope?"

"Oh well.  I don't suppose you figured out how to duplicate people to get a dozen things done at once?  Aeslin, do show her to the dining hall - I'll be there as soon as I get these things delivered, I hope."

"Oh, all right.  And I do want to hear more about computers!"

The dining hall is several hallways away in the same building, without any obvious method or mention of payment.  The table of food is showing clear signs of having already been picked over, but there's still the tail end of some sauced roast meat, some salad, lots of bread, and a few different sorts of pies with notes saying "Sheep," "Veggie, Spice," "Veggie, Smooth," and "Apple".

(Aeslin takes the salad and smooth veggie pie.)

"Not quite anything that exciting, unfortunately; I'll see what I can do on that front, though!"  She grins, though she's only mostly joking.

Ooh, pie.

She'll try a little bit of the roast meat, a little bit of the smooth veggie pie, definitely grab some bread...And, of course, the apple pie.  She just does not pass up desserts.

"So, what would you like to know about computers, Aeslin?"

"How do they even work?  How can they do math without magic?"

"Hmm, alright.  Let's start with binary.

"So you know how numbers can be written like...

"Expanding 543 to 5 times 100 - ten to the second power -, 4 times 10, 3 times one?

"Every computer these days would represent 543 as...

512 - 2 to the... 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 ninth, plus 16, two to the fourth, plus eight, plus four, plus two, plus one - two to the zeroth.  Or, one zero zero zero zero one one one one one.

"And you can represent those ones and zeroes with a simple on-off switch or similar easily-monitored thing.

"The original computers used punch-cards for data entry, which they inherited from mechanical looms.  Which I'm assuming y'all have, because you have that sort of mass-produced clothing quality going on, but actually, do you?  Anyway.

"You have binary representation of numbers.

"The next part of how a computer does math involves boolean logic.

"Boolean logic is a whole field of math that this one guy named Boole came up with, so I'm guessing that if you have it you have it under another name, but if you can tell me what True XOR parenthese False NAND True close-parenthese would evaluate as, you know it.

"And through hooking together enough NAND gates in particular ways, you can take a binary integer from some register A and a binary integer from register B and add, subtract, multiply, divide...hell, even exponentiate.

"It gets more complex when you start involving negatives and decimals, especially arbitrary decimals, but it's possible."

"So... you'd be representing numbers as something like the dots and dashes of heliograph code?  Except more systematized, so 13 would be... let's see, base 2..." (she counts) "8+4+1 so 1101, which would be" (she taps on the pie with her fork)

**_*

"I haven't worked with this Boolean logic... but it sounds vaguely familiar?  Maybe I heard about it at school once?"

"Heliography is also one of the predecessors of computing!  Or, well, telegraphy; we did ours with wires and magnets instead of sunlight and mirrors.  Heliography is an example of a character encoding - agreeing that a sequence of bits means this specific thing.

"It's also a good example of networking."

"Telegraphs must be a lot more convenient; you wouldn't need manual relay stations everywhere in line-of-sight!  We only have a few lines because of that.

"So... how do computers actually do things?  How do these logic gates work?"

"Well, I don't actually know the specific structure of silicon logic gates.  But it's about how electricity does or does not flow through them.  ...And I could probably figure out how to make y'all telegraphs, but honestly I'm tempted to see how much you can just skip it with magic."

"... Because we can get magic conditional gates, so if I just had enough materials and knew the designs, we could build a magic-run computer right now..."

"Oh!  I can run down the list, then.

"I think silicon computers are built mostly off a foundation of NAND gates - Not X AND Y.

"But see, you shouldn't actually just...slavishly reimplement the computer.

"What sort of ability to store information does magic have?"

"Store information?  Pretty much anything it can sense, it can react to.  We can't read it directly, but it can make some records - I've got a setup for that in my workroom."

"Well of course you don't go trying to read individual bits on the hard drive when what you want is the document you put in there yesterday -"

luxbuf init → red

loop_unroll("for(int i = 0;i%=128;i++, this.wait(100ms)){display_binary<Tuple<Light.ghost_blue_sphere, Light.bright_white_sphere>>(i);}") | luxbuf

luxexec -ambient luxbuf

"- but this is a form of data, isn't it?"

"Especially when I..."

suspend luxexec

from luxbuf display_binary<Tuple<Light.red, Light.green>>(i);

"Can do this, I think."

She feels a weird jerk on her wand, and after a moment the flow of magic stops.

"Oh, for...'Do what I mean' seems to be looking more and more 'do what I say' every time I try to do something the least bit complicated.  What's missing this time..."

"...Think it choked on, of all things, binary.

"And I might have gotten the concepting confused with how I stole a particular sort of notation, but dammit, singletons are valid type-shaped things."

"Hmm...  Maybe binary notation is too complicated a system for you to really be visualizing the whole system?  I haven't gotten magic to display any text except what I specifically tell it to, either... not even a crystal, though I haven't really tried there.  Let's go to my workroom; I've got a power sensor there you can tell it to push a calibrated amount instead?"

"Maybe if I turn it around - but then, ugh, no.  That's even less of a way to co-opt parameters.  Really, it should have just been method arguments, but noo, I wanted my thing to be fancy and distinct to be easy to visualize.

"Feh."

"Alright, let's try this again."

luxbuf init square red

"#define (binary)int i

bool[] brep;

int n=0;

do{n++;}while(pow(2,n)<i);

brep=new bool[n];

do{if(pow(2,n)<=i){i-=pow(2,n); brep[brep.length-n]=1;}}while(--n>-1);

return brep as binary;

#enddef" | luxbuf

cat "#define (int)bool[] b, (int)(binary b as bool[])

int val=0;

for(int i=0;i<b.length;i++){val += b[b.length-i]*pow(2,i);}

return val;

#enddef" luxbuf

"...what was I even doing with this...Oh, right.  Statefulness."

cat "binary c = new binary{0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0};

main(){ while(true){this.display_bool_array( c++, light.cube.white, light.cube.ghost_blue ); this.wait(100ms);} }" | luxbuf

loop_unroll(luxbuf) | luxc | luxbuf

luxexec -a(mbient) luxbuf

"And now we wait a little bit, just to see it roll..."

suspend luxexec

display_bool_array( luxbuf.c, light.sphere.green, light.sphere.red );

"And look at that, there's still the same data.  In an entirely different display format."

Aeslin stares at the lights.

"So you can hold enough of binary notation in your head!  Why?  Is it that you're that familiar with it?  No, in all of Suinel someone should be familiar enough with writing..."

"I think what I have that you might not is probably somewhere in the abstraction.  The process of zooming out from 'make a light', and generalizing how it's handled.  Because every time I do this, I get away with specifying less than I did before.

"But also I am cheating by composing my programs in short blocks that I stick together as I go.  Or, well, I suppose that's also - it's not that someone from Suinel couldn't create, well...this, it's that they wouldn't think to do so.  I think?"

"Anyway.  Let me just...write this one down; I think the concepts it introduces would probably be useful to you..."

Scritchity scritch goes the pencil as she writes the 'program' down.

"Anyway, I really wouldn't say I'm overly familiar with binary in the first place; almost nothing even uses it at the levels of abstraction I work on.  I just know how, approximately, to formalize it out of primitive commands I do know well, in a sort of on-the-fly manner.

"It's..."

"Ooh, let's see if I can do graphics."

"...although, probably a good idea to not test my functional understanding of GPUs and GPU coding around people we don't know aren't possibly prone to seizures when exposed to erratic lighting."

"Shaders are honestly pretty weird, as coding environments go; you have to specify everything almost entirely relative to everything else."

"...but anyway, I got onto that tangent by wondering what the fuck magic will do if I just..."

cat luxbuf