"I know just enough to know it's more complicated than I remember, but I think the sensible solutions tend to involve dividing the list into pieces..."

He nods. "The fastest method we've devised is to pick an element, reorder your list so all elements with a value less than yours are before it and all elements with a value greater than it are after it, and then repeat this procedure on each of the unsorted smaller lists that are created. This problem happens to be analogous in a relevant sense to the engineering problem of distinguishing correspondences between tugs on the threads of creation and effects in a biological organism; you can imagine that the items in your  list are the relational strengths between threads, and the engineering process is mostly disambiguating them. I have to create magical items for each of the steps in the aforementioned process, which is many more items than there are possible avenues of interaction between creation and aging, and then I'll have them sorted."

"Yeah, that sounds familiar. Very tidy. I'll update your readers with my latest notes on railguns." He does that; it takes negligible time. "There. The electrical generators are coming along nicely too, but the railguns are most of what we were working on this morning, that and getting your alphabet onto the readers. You can take notes on those now too if you want; they're unlikely to run out of storage space this century."

He takes it out and spends a few minutes poking around. "The typography isn't quite right, can I improve on it?"

"Any adjustments to the way the text is habitually displayed have to be done from my shuttle, and I imagine your time has better uses than walking there and back to fiddle with it, but you can issue corrections to me and I'll fix them next time I'm on that side of the lake."

He has several for each letter.

Miles gets them all down in a neatly organized fashion. "Thanks, I'll take care of that next chance I get."

"You're quite welcome. You see, then, why my project here is time-intensive and requires a great deal of precision. I might be done in a decade."

"Yeah. And my ability to contribute is limited because as far as I know I have no capacity at all to make magical items. Still, I'll keep it in my thoughts and see if any brilliant insights shake loose. And I hope you'll get plenty of use out of the Handbook's biochemistry section."

"Yes, it gave me around eighty different things to look for in early testing. You could be useful in interpreting results, once I have some, and I'll make you aware of them when that day comes."

"Thanks."

"Heat turned out to be easy. Now I'm trying to discover whether there's a means with our methods to do what your lights do, which is go on and off at will..."

"Well, is there a magical equivalent of opening and closing a gap in an electrical circuit?"

"Not yet, but if there is some way to have one I'll come up with it."

"I have every reason to expect as much. You're a delight to work with."

He starts explaining in a distracted undertone the ways that magics can be established in a way that allows the user later manipulation.

Miles listens and takes notes. It's a fascinating subject.

"..none of which work to allow someone not the creator to turn it on and off at will," he says, "which is why I'm trying to think of something new."

"Yeah, I see that. Mm. Tempting though the analogy is, I don't think magic is actually enough like circuit design for me to import useful insights. It's not as though I even know that much about circuit design. Though I can tell you what I know if you think it might be inspiring."

"I don't mind if you keep talking about it," he says. "I'm just thinking, right now, no work to interrupt."

So Miles shrugs and explains the representation of binary numbers in electronic devices and the principles behind the half adder again. "And that's the foundation at the heart of any device of mine that manipulates information using electricity, although of course they get vastly more complicated than that."

"I could just copy that," Tyelperinquar says, though he doesn't sound happy about it. "Or...hmmm..." and then he's off with another mumbled speculation about Elf engineering.

Miles follows along delightedly. Magical engineering is great.

A minute later he shakes his head. "That's not going to be it. Are there related problems I should think about?

"Depends what you mean... I know there are mechanical rather than electrical systems that can accomplish some of the same behaviours, but I'm not nearly as well-versed in their details."