Laelia entered the large conference room to find it already filled with quiet speculation about why she had summoned everyone. Fifty of Europe's most accomplished scientists sat around the enormous central table, their attention focused on the whiteboard where she would soon present her work. Every person seated at the table had decades of experience in their respective fields, and none of them were younger than fifty. Laelia, by comparison, was only thirty-five, which had caused more than a little resentment when the government appointed her as the chief scientist of the laboratory.
At first, many of the older scientists had privately questioned the decision. They had published papers in the most prestigious journals in their fields and had spent decades establishing their reputations before being invited into this laboratory. Then the government had placed a thirty-five-year-old woman above them, someone whose name had barely existed in the scientific community before mana appeared. They had complained quietly among themselves, but none of them had been foolish enough to challenge the appointment openly.
Their attitude changed after they actually began working with her. Whenever someone brought up a subject in their specialty, Laelia could follow the discussion without getting lost and often asked questions that went directly to the heart of the problem. She was not necessarily the greatest specialist in any single discipline, but she possessed an unusually broad understanding of many different fields. That ability allowed her to connect ideas that specialists working alone might never have considered.
The three hundred scientists standing along the walls received considerably less attention from the senior researchers. Most of them were students, assistants, or accomplished scientists who simply had not reached the level required to occupy one of the fifty seats at the table. None of them seemed particularly bothered by that arrangement, however, because working inside this laboratory gave them access to knowledge that would have been impossible to obtain anywhere else. Even listening to the discussions between the senior scientists was considered an education in itself.
"Right, I know what you are all wondering," Laelia began as she walked toward the whiteboard. "As you all know, one of my bodyguards reached Stage 1 a few days ago, and that gave our laboratory permission to access and purchase resources that were previously unavailable to us." She paused for a moment before continuing, already knowing that everyone was waiting for the important part. "One of the things I purchased was a tome concerning runes."
The room immediately became quieter.
"Do not ask me how much it cost," Laelia continued with a pained expression. "I had to empty almost our entire budget for the year to purchase it." Several scientists exchanged uncomfortable looks because they knew exactly how much money remained in their budget. Their laboratory still had at least ten million silver coins available, but almost all of that money had effectively been secured through government loans and grants that would eventually have to be repaid.
That level of spending was horrifying under normal circumstances. The governments of the world were already borrowing enormous amounts of money to rebuild cities, establish infrastructure, equip their militaries, and prepare for the next Guardian Trial. If the current spending continued at the same rate, the scientists were beginning to wonder whether the next trial would even be profitable. Humanity was investing enormous amounts of resources into surviving the present while simultaneously gambling that the future would provide enough returns to justify the debt.
Yet nobody in the room thought Laelia had made the wrong decision.
They had all heard enough about runes to understand their potential. Runes represented one of the most promising methods humanity had discovered for combining mana with technology, and the possibility of creating devices that could function through magical principles rather than conventional electronics was too important to ignore. If they could understand even a fraction of the knowledge contained within that tome, the entire technological landscape could change.
"So we need a project that can demonstrate the value of this knowledge to the Minister of Technology," Laelia said. "Something impressive enough to justify giving us additional funding." A proud smile appeared on her face as she reached beneath the table and retrieved a small case. "Luckily, I have already thought of one, and I brought a prototype with me."
That announcement immediately captured everyone's attention.
Laelia spent the next hour explaining her theory from beginning to end. She described the runes she had studied, the way she believed they could transmit information, the giant mana-steel slabs that could already communicate across enormous distances, and her idea of turning those stationary devices into nodes in a much larger communication network. She then explained how smaller devices could connect to that network and function as something resembling a modern telephone. By the time she finished, the whiteboard was covered in diagrams, equations, rune patterns, and arrows connecting one concept to another.
The room remained silent for several seconds.
Soppe Yntema was the first to speak. He was an accomplished electrical engineer specializing in telecommunications engineering, and he had spent most of Laelia's explanation leaning forward with increasing interest. He finally looked at the diagrams and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That is an interesting problem you have brought before us, and I can see why you believe this could justify another increase in our funding."
Several people nodded in agreement.
"But I have one question," Soppe continued. "Are there no methods for making multiple rune sentences function simultaneously without using a rune array?" There was a hint of hope in his voice because such a solution would eliminate one of the largest problems in Laelia's design. "If we could make several separate rune lines communicate with each other, we might be able to reproduce some of the functions of a rune array without needing the enormous amount of space."
"It should be possible," Laelia replied.
Her confidence disappeared almost immediately.
"But that could take weeks to figure out, or possibly years," she admitted. "The tome does not explain the underlying principles behind rune arrays in enough detail for us to simply recreate them. It teaches individual runes and explains what those runes do, then provides templates for rune arrays and examples showing how the runes should be positioned within them."
She sighed and looked toward the prototype sitting on the table.
"I have already tried making the runes smaller, but that does not work at our current level of understanding." Laelia tapped the diagram of the proposed phone. "At best, we can fit three to five useful runes onto a device this size before we run out of space."
She pointed toward several lines connecting the runes.
"I understand that the runes need to be connected to one another, but eventually we need to complete the sequence." She drew a small mark at the end of one of the rune lines. "A rune sentence needs something equivalent to a period at the end of a normal sentence, otherwise the sequence cannot properly terminate. So how do we continue the process from there without requiring another enormous piece of mana steel?"
The scientists immediately began discussing the problem among themselves.
"I must admit, your theory is magnificent," said Agnes Dawson after the room had quieted again. She was a world-renowned physicist, and her fascination with the new rune system had become increasingly obvious during the presentation. "More importantly, it is an excellent demonstration of what these new principles might eventually allow us to accomplish."
Agnes leaned closer to the diagrams.
"I also believe we can simplify the receiving and transmitting ends of your design." She pointed toward the massive mana-steel slab represented on the whiteboard. "I agree that the quantum computer should handle as much of the complexity as possible. It is currently the most sophisticated information-processing device humanity possesses, and creating something comparable that can operate independently outside a city is probably beyond our capabilities."
Laelia nodded slowly.
"But the giant slab needs to be redesigned," Agnes continued. "You have currently configured it as though it were another phone, which means you are forcing it to perform far more functions than necessary." She erased part of the diagram and began drawing a new arrangement. "Instead, we should change the runes used by the slab and have it communicate with the quantum computer through light."
Several scientists immediately leaned forward.
"The same principle could work in reverse," Agnes said. "The quantum computer receives the information from the network, processes it, and then sends the appropriate information back to the large mana-steel node. That node then relays the message toward the intended phone."
Laelia stared at the new diagram.
"If we do that, we remove one of the largest bottlenecks in your design," Agnes continued. "The quantum computer becomes the brain of the network rather than forcing every individual node to understand everything being transmitted through it." She tapped the central diagram several times. "It also means the large slabs do not need to function as phones. They only need to act as extremely reliable communication stations."
"And that leaves the phone itself," Laelia said.
Agnes nodded.
"Exactly."
The room fell quiet again.
"The phone is going to be the difficult part," Agnes admitted with a slight grimace. "We can simplify the central network, but the receiving device still needs to be small, durable, efficient, and capable of communicating with the larger nodes. But as soon as we accomplish that, we are golden.