Chapter 257: 257 Outsourcing

Following a temporary waylaying, Marie returned to her quest of enlightenment with renewed resolve, and with her Master in tow this time. Marie appreciated that her Master took the initiative to do so. Even if he had little to no idea of what she was doing, his simple presence and infrequent words uplifted her spirits greatly. And although her Master's expertise may not lay in line with her own, he was a post-post-post-post-human with mental and physical faculties four levels beyond her own mortal limits. In all honestly, 'four-levels' just didn't capture the massive gully separating her from her Master in terms of brain power, raw power, magical power, and soul power.

Case in point. A monumental task that she estimated would take her many years (at least half of her mortal life) was accomplished in a week thanks to her Master's intervention. Ignoring the specifics of the task, her Master leveraged his parallel thinking and wide sensory capacity to run all four quadropods positioned around the central Celestial Recording Platform simultaneously. Obsidian plates rushed in and out of shelves at a feverish pace as her Master finished recording the pertinent information affiliated with the current plate within minutes of it reaching the projection area. All the while, four brushes hovered elegantly over a hefty book, jotting down notes into a table.

So what exactly was the Master doing by juggling all the plates, papers and brushes at once?

Marie's first order of business was to establish a viable line of study. There were a lot of variables and parameters up in the air that could be considered and included in her model of the world. Each new element considered would bring it closer to reality, however, it would also balloon up her calculations substantially. But, as the saying went, to end something one needed to start somewhere first. Rather than preoccupying herself with the factors beyond her control and realm of expertise, she could make do with what was within her capacity.

For that reason, Marie decided to narrow her scope of research - mapping the movement of the bodies of the planets within the Solar System through the years. She kept the Sun as the base reference frame and established a relative axis where an x-y plane is formed on the plane in which Gaea orbits around the sun. The x-axis can be drawn pointing from the Sun to Gaea. The z-axis is perpendicular to the plane and is determined from the fact that Gaea orbits the Sun in a counter-clockwise direction, which in turn provides the relative y-axis. (Open the right hand into a palm and point all fingers in the x-direction, then orient the thumb in the direction of the z-axis. The direction the palm is facing is the y-axis). This essentially keeps the Sun and Gaea along a singular axis.

With a proper frame established, she then had to determine a suitable method of measurement. The three-dimensional projection of outer space was perfectly scaled. So any distance measured would be accurate to its real-life counterpart. This was where Marie was glad that her Master was present and willing to assist.

After spending a decent chunk of time explaining the definition of proper standard units of measurement, her Master learned how to measure distances in metres. Marie opted for the exact definition of the unit, through the use of the speed of light as a reference, since she intended to use light as a basis for the unit of measurement for objects in space that are separated by large distances. She's heard Mister Larks say it once or twice in passing: the word 'light-year'. She thought it was just another one of those quirky phrases that he'd mumble on a regular day. Now though, it all made sense. It defined the distance covered by light in a year. In outer space, where distances are extremely large magnitudes, this was perfect!

Her Master was quick on the uptake. All she had to do was drill in the fact that nothing could go faster than light, which led to a minor verbal debate where her Master was adamant that he knew mages who could go faster. There was a minor segue when Marie threw out a thought experiment with the faster-than-light-man and what he would see if he were to hold a mirror when running that fast. That put her Master out of commission for a few hours as his brain shut down and restarted multiple times. In the end, he gave up arguing and just went with her explanation.

Now, her Master could measure the light-years directly. All he did was zoom the projection at a constant speed while mentally measuring the distance. To measure the distance from the Sun to Gaea took him half a second - all Marie saw was the projection expanding and rebounding with a nearly imperceptible flicker. The sceptic that she was, Marie verified the measurements and was surprised to find that her Master's measurements were far more precise than her own.

Her Master was thus assigned the task to record the coordinates of all the planets and moons in the Solar System for every day recorded starting from the most recent one (a single reading of the position of the celestial bodies for every day). A daily reading was sufficient since going into the hourlies would be equivalent to splitting hairs.

Before they started, Marie pointed out one issue gnawing away at her.

"We don't have enough paper for this..."

Her Master, her hero, reached valiantly into his cloth bag and pulled out a hefty gold-rimmed book with foreign, luminescent glyphs carved all over its cover that reminded her a lot of the grimoire Markus carried around with him (sans the gems, of course). And her guess was proven correct by her Master.

"This book holds an infinite amount of paper sheets. Tearing out any sheets will cause them to disintegrate."

Marie was definitely intrigued to know what other bounties lay within the seemingly endless treasure trove that was her Master's bag. Upon asking him about it all she got was, "You'll know after I'm gone. This bag was passed down to me by my Master, who got it from his Master, who won it in a heated drinking game against a dwarf. And one day, it shall be yours. Till that day comes, I hope to keep the mystery alive!"

"Why would you say that?" Marie shot back in anger. She spun around three times and spat over her shoulder five times.

"What are you doing?"

"You can't speak such foreboding words. You can't put such thoughts out into the world," she scolded.

"Didn't take you for the superstitious type," Krish responded with raised brows.

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"Well, words affect fate's tapestry," Marie muttered. "Nonetheless, I don't want to hear you talking about your death! Got it?!"

Her Master laughed uproariously and ruffled her head. But one deathly serious glare from his Disciple later, he acquiesced, "I understand, my dearest Disciple."

With that aside, within the coming week, the endless book started to fill up with tables upon tables of data collected and collated by her Master. Without the need to eat or sleep, he worked tirelessly like an automaton. Marie would be lying if she didn't feel horrible about putting her Master up for such a tedious and soul-rending task, but he assured her that it was fine.

"And that's the last of them," her Master declared with a loud exhale as the final obsidian plate left the projection platforms and found its place back into the towering shelves.

"So, what now?" He turned and asked Marie. She made it a point to accompany her Master at all times, even if she had nothing to do.

"Now it's time to make sense of things," Marie declared as she rested her hands on her hips.

"How do you intend to do that?"

"We first plot the empirical data that you collected and compare it with the models that we already know that describe these natural behaviours," Marie explained.

"And then?"

"Well, then... I have to find a way to connect it with the Heavenly Eye," she murmured contemplatively.

"It seems that you have your work cut out for you," Krish affirmed.

Right as Marie reached for the book in Krish's hands, he yanked it back and said, "-work that you can get to tomorrow."

"What? Why?" Marie argued.

"There is no benefit to rushing," Krish reprimanded. "What are you losing? Time? From what I recall, we are basically ahead of your estimated schedule thanks to my intervention."

"You're right..."

"Excuse me?" Krish shook his head and cleared his ears exaggeratedly. "Did you just say that I was right? Who are you and what have you done to my Disciple?"

Marie slapped her Master's elbow and walked out in a huff.

'It wouldn't hurt to rest up for a day,' she thought to herself. She could use the time to brush up on what she'd learned with Mister Larks and write down a plan on how to approach the modelling problem.

Along the way, she stumbled upon Mage Maddi and Shay-Hade, the lovebirds, who snatched her along for a sightseeing trip up to the observatory.

At the peak of the central mountain, Marie lay down on her back and gazed out into the horizon as the Sun slowly plunged itself into the clear blue ocean.

The world was silent.

She was at peace.

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