Chapter 24: Past & Present

Chapter 24: Past & Present Artemis Long was ready. He’d been preparing for days, and the fortune teller woman had said that today would be his watershed moment, the day that would change his life. He adjusted his tie and looked at himself in the mirror. He had been a good-looking young man once upon a time, but those days had long past leaving behind only a greedy fool. Greedy fool, that’s what Ling had called him the day she’d left. So many years had passed since then. What would she have called him now? Probably ’greed old fool’. She’d refused to change her surname to match his even when they had moved abroad to the West. He couldn’t remember the number of times people had asked him if she really was his wife not some girlfriend - how much humiliation that had brought him. Their eventual divorce had been inevitable, he just had failed to see it. Artemis chuckled to himself. He rarely smiled, and never laughed these days, not since Ling had left him and not since he’d had to leave Misha in that boarding school and return to this godforsaken place to carve a future out for the both of them. Then he’d convinced Misha to join him. Was that part of carving out a future for them? He shook his head. He deserved to be called a ’greedy old fool’. "Colin," he called out in his usual voice, gone was the self-pitying aging man, replaced by the ruthless visionary. He paused. He heard no feet on the steps coming up to the study room and not a sound from anywhere in the house. "Colin?" Artemis rose and picked up his umbrella from where it leaned against his desk. He knew there was someone on his tail but whether it was an ally from The Unity, here to handle the job and take the crystal, or someone else, he did not know and not knowing was dangerous. There was a slight creak from below and Artemis ducked behind the door to his study. Slowly, he held the body of the umbrella with one hand while pulling up the handle with the other. The sword hidden in the umbrella was thin and flexible but also deadly sharp. Creak. Creak. Artemis knew then that those were not the footsteps of Colin. Colin would never creep about so slowly. His master hated slowness. Artemis flexed his sword hand, readying his blade, and... -- I stared at the librarian’s neat handwriting then at Bran’s new recreation on the next page until the circuit-like strokes started to dance. I rubbed my eyes then put the notebook down. "Bran," I said. "Mm?" you said across from me. We were back home again. We’d had lunch already though the bowls were still on the coffee table. I’d been on my way to wash them when I saw you writing out the name of the book again and decided to sit down again. "Do you have a... spell reference book?" You looked up from the book you were reading. It was the Shan Hai Jing. "What kind of reference do you need?" "Oh, just...." I had a quick think. "I want to see lots of different spells, what their inscriptions look like. Oh, and if there’s an explanation on what they do, or maybe even how they do it, that would be even better." "Ah." You closed your book. "I have that. Come here." You got up and went to your old bedroom/my old bedroom/Amethyst’s current bedroom. There was still no news from her, but you didn’t seem too worried so I thought I probably shouldn’t either. Besides, Amethyst, even if she looked like a young woman, was probably at least a hundred years old, from what you figured based on the little tidbits we’d heard from her. There was a large closet in the bedroom with a lock on it that I didn’t remember. "That always there?" I asked, picking up the lock after you’d taken it off the handles. "No. Just a precaution while Amethyst was here," you said. "Ah." I put it down on the little desk in the corner that you probably used while you were in school, then watched as you pulled box after box from the closet until there were four boxes taking up most of the floor space by the bed. "What are these?" I asked. You crouched and pulled off one of the lids. "My old notebook," you replied. "What you’re asking for exists but only in Chinese, at least for the books you can find in Pearl City. I got some reference books while I was in Pretan, but they’re still being shipped here, so it’ll be a while before you can get your hands on them." I slid my fingers over a few of the spines then randomly picked on up. Inside it was exactly what I wanted: inscription excepts, explanations, even little drawings to describe their effects. "This is amazing!" I said. Then I looked at the rest of the books. "Wait, are all these boxes full of notebooks like this?" "Yeah," you replied. "And there are more in there." You nodded toward the closet. "But they’re from later when I got into more advanced stuff and when I got a better grip of Chinese so you wouldn’t be able to read some of the notes. These though," you pointed at the four boxes on the ground, "are from when I started." Suddenly the book in my hands felt heavier. You know that feeling you get when you go to some historic place you’ve always heard of and then suddenly, bam! you’re actually there? It felt like that, that sort of solemn weightiness. I held the notebook to my chest. "I’ll be careful with them," I said earnestly. You smiled and shook your head dismissively. "No need. They’re old. Don’t worry if they start falling apart." I shook my head. "I’ll be careful." "Do what you like," you said and left the room, but not before I saw the pink on your cheeks. With a smile on my lips, I took a seat on the bed and started flipping through the notebook. You said these were from you first started and I believed it. Your handwriting now is nice, but your handwriting from back then was pretty bad, even worse than mine and it made me laugh seeing your little doodles. An hour later, I ventured back outside and saw that the table was bare. "Bran?" I called out as I went to the kitchen and looked inside. You were just finishing off the washing up. "Bran." "Mm?" "I’ve had an idea," I said. "Actually, I had the idea a while ago but after looking at your notebooks I think I’m right." You finished off the last bowl and set it on the rack. "Shoot." "I think all this magic stuff is actually a lot like programming." You stared at me. "Programming? You know programming?" "I dabbled in high school, but I was going to study it in university." "What did you study in the end?" "Business." You digested this a moment, then: "Alright, go on then." "Yeah, okay, so like, the whole inscription-plus-medium-plus-power thing, and how your notebooks basically talk about different belief systems as code libraries, and-" "Code libraries?" "Yeah, so like..." It was then that I noticed the confusion in your eyes. "Okay, so, in theory, you can program a machine, or something like that, directly using machine code. It’s like the machine’s native language. But that’s a lot of work and is really awkward to do once you start doing anything with just a bit of complexity - it basically looks like gibberish to humans. Anyway, that’s why programming languages were invented, they’re basically a different language that humans have an easier time looking at and writing with since it’s not just ones and zeroes. But how does the machine understand the programming language?" I’d meant to continue on after taking a breath, but you cut in. "That’s what the code libraries are for. It’s like a dictionary or a vault of knowledge that allows translation between the machine and the human." I knew you were smart. "Pretty much!" I opened your notebook and flipped to the page I was interested in. "See here, you did a test using the same spell on different types of paper, some were just random bits of paper, and some were consecrated for religious purposes. You found that if you were doing something based on local folklore religions then the paper used for their rites worked the best and some paper wouldn’t even work at all. I think this is because the paper itself has certain code libraries." "Or it doesn’t." You folded your arms and nodded slowly. "That’s..." Then you smiled and looked at me. "I knew you’d be a genius at this stuff." The sudden praise caught me completely off guard and I fumbled with your notebook, nearly dropping it. "What made you think of all this?" you asked as you ushered me out of the kitchen and away from any sources of water. "The ’white mist’," I replied. "You know those two characters in the book’s name, I feel like..." I’d been hesitant to suggest it earlier, but your praise helped bolster my confidence. "I think they might not actually be characters but actually a spell, or rather, a virus."