(2) Luster, conductance and heat transfer
It is 1925. At the university of Haybenhagen, there is much ado.
A revolution is rushing through the natural philosophies: physics as established by Newte Tonne, is being re-examined: Equinstein's works have disestablished the fourth and fifth laws of mechanics, and Marks Plank is questioning the nature of heath and light.
In mathematics, efforts are being made to formalise what exactly is in a proof. Works are undertaken to attempt to prove everything and rumours are passing about that Carte Cradle is working on something big.
In magery, efforts are being made to understand the very basic nature of magic itself, as proposed on the Spikebay confrence just seven years prior by the arcane master Sunheart.
Steele Glint has recently graduated Cum Laude from the University of Haybenhagen, and has found work as far away as Töltstadt. The efforts of Dr. Jo Ostmane to investigate high energy thaumic systems, is in dire needs of competent analysts and Steele finds the subject interesting and is in need of some money.
"Dr. Ostmane why is it you should have this grant?"
"Because we might reach valuable results. You might have heard of the experiments with cosmic radiation in cloud chambers? It is my professional intuition that investigating high-energy phenomena might be an avenue to radical new knowledge."
"Yes. Why is it that you do not just construct a cloud chamber?"
"Because it is already a phenomenon being investigated in other faculties. My plan is to use magical assistance to construct an experimental setup to accelerate heavier particles."
"That is novel. Why—"
"You have my report and preliminary calculations already, don't play me. Give me the grant."
"Very well. You press a hard case, we shall take it up to consideration."
"Have a good day, gentlemares."
Jo turns away from the grant committee, and strides away. Steele quickly gets moving and follows her out. As they exit the room, Steele breaks the silence.
"Are... Are, are we going to get the grant?"
"No."
"Politics, huh?"
They trot in silence, down the hallway to Jo's office.
It is high noon, in mid winter. Snow lies outside the windows of the small office that houses a research fellow and two junior research assistants.
Steele looks over his latest calculations. His job description is that of a glorified computer. Across from him, Emdash — a young mare with a degree in experimental design — has fallen asleep on her work. How she is able to fall asleep at one in the afternoon is a mystery — well, it isn't really, she was out on the town last night — and it annoys Steele.
One could say she lacks discipline, but in reality Steele is just better at holding his liqueur. And he would be scolded more for sleeping on the job.
The silent moment of annoyance is broken up when the research fellow proper almost kicks in the door. Jo storms up to her desk and throws down a thick binder, before breaking into a little dance.
"Jo, what, what's going on?" Steele asks her; and from the other table a groggy "bwuh?" is all Emdash can muster.
"We got the grant! I don't know how or why but we got it! Five thousand stamps!"
She flicks her horn towards her desk and pulls from the lowest drawer a bottle of fine wine and three glasses, making Emdash groan audibly.
"We, we were out drinking yesternight, Jo," Steele says.
"Oh you spoilsports —" she pours a glass for herself "— a toast! To me, you guys and high energy physics!"
Emdash gets up from her awkward sleeping posture and stretches her wings, then her back, causing Steele to look away.
"Oh, right, you were out 'drinking' yesterday," Jo snarks and elbows Emdash in the ribs.
"That is the official story, and I am sticking with it," Emdash murmurs.
Emdash gives an exasperated sigh, "this doesn't make any sense!"
Steele looks up from his notes and then looks to the third party around their round table. The third pony is a unicorn mage from Prance. Working across a language barrier like that can be annoying at times, but she was the most mathematically apt mage they could find. Her name is Fluxion.
"What do you mean, mon ami?"
"It's like... There isn't a connection! The material the magical circles are drawn in don't matter, for one, and small permutations give large deviations in function, but equivalent circles exist that look nothing like one another!"
"Oui, that is how it is."
"And most of this is older than dirt! Here is an almost unchanged design by Starswirl! That was five hundred years ago!"
Steele looks at her, "It's, it's the, the state of the art, Em."
"I know, it's appalling! I wanna go back to Max Well-ian electro magnetism. This is too much."
Fluxion puts a hoof on the table. "Merde! It is never too much. We are academics, I had to learn all this by heart, mon ami. You have a university degree! You are an academic. We can do this!"
"I, I, would say that, that Experimental Design has at, at least as many things to remember. You are just used to knowing stuff. Remember when you were a first year. That, that is what this is."
"You're right. I guess I am just tired" — Emdash gets up — "I'm going for a cup of tea, anybody want something?"
Jo is looking at the schematics with her face contorted in deep concentration. Steele, Fluxion and Emdash have just finished presenting the designs and computations they and seven students have made.
"What about this valve?" She asks innocently.
"That's not a valve, it's a window," Emdash clarifies, and then turns to Steele, "but what about that valve there?"
Fluxion and Steele both suddenly look horrified. "Oh," murmurs Fluxion.
"Okay, we're gonna have to correct that, give us an hour," Steele says apologetically to Jo, who is smiling deviously.
The cyclotron assembly is coming along nicely. It has taken two more grant applications to get to this point, but now results are showing.
Twenty six sections of very pure copper, each engraved meticulously with magical patterns inside magical patterns, are laid out, embedded in concrete flooring, welded into a circle of several metres. Inside that is a simple cyclotron assembly, and outside it rudimentary cloud chambers, biochemical reactors with big yeast colonies and crystal assemblies are set up.
The floor is overpainted in several colours with magical circles, everything technological is inside-out for easy repair, everything is a hack, and the measuring apparatuses are mostly there to detect whether or not something interesting happens, not how interesting it is.
In the centre of it all, a unicorn horn from a generous soul who donated her dead body to science.
A very important part of this experiment is that no pony mages will actually be participating. Everything magical is in enchantments and stores of magical energy.
"Do you think it will work?" Jo asks.
"I have no idea," Steele replies.
"You ran the numbers."
"I ran the numbers and the numbers says it should, but, but, but if there is anything this project has taught me, it is that everything works in theory."
It did work. The cloud chambers had traces, the yeast colonies had fluctuations in the output, seismographs could detect vibrations in the crystal assemblies, and there was even a visual on a magical aura around the horn.
But there were no drinks and celebration that night.
"Oh, wait, I, I forgot my adding machine back in the chamber, tell the others to postpone activation, it might interfere with the experiment!"
Steele bolts back towards the experiment assembly, while Emdash takes off and flies down the hallway towards the control room.
"Stop the countdown —" with horror she sees the Jo's hoof already having pressed the ignition button "— shit!"
Steele arrives in the chamber and enters precariously. He steps into the assembly, past cloud chamber three and crosses the copper ring. On a section of the cyclotron, he finds his adding machine.
The door slams shut. The cyclotron stars humming.
Steele gallops over to the door and pushes against it, but it doesn't budge. He bucks it and sprains a muscle.
Small actuators rotate the enchanted devices of the assembly, and the humming is deafening. Steele feels it in his teeth and staggers back into the experimental assembly. In that moment his conviction to this project is surpassed by his will to survival.
He doesn't even get as far as the first power plug.
Emdash hammers the emergency shutdown button, and a loud hiss is heard. The hum decreases in frequency as the cyclotron powers down. It takes over a minute before the door opens.
She finds the all the yeast colonies dead, one of the crystal montages cracked and the unicorn horn pulverised. The rest of the assembly is mysteriously untouched, save for a single, burnt, black smudge on the floor.
"Steele!" She calls out, and gallops around the assembly. He is nowhere to be found.
Jo comes in, short of breath. "What happened?"
"Steele forgot his adding machine" — she points to the twisted pile of cogs and springs lying on the floor — "in here, and went to get it, I was supposed to stop you from stating the experiment."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know!"
Fluxion comes in, much less short of breath than Jo. In silence she takes a quick look at the mess. "Merde! Where is monsieur Steele?"
"He's gone!" Emdash almost screams.
"Non, he isn't."
Fluxion summons up a magical impulse and starts sweeping the area with her now glowing horn. "Oui, it is as I suspect. There is a clear téléportation trace here."
"Can you track it?" Jo asks.
"Hmm.... —" Fluxion's brow furrows "— non. I can't."
An hour later, all the other mages has been called in and three dozen analysis spells have been cast. All they can find is that Steele was clearly teleported away.
Two hours later, the local guardsmen have been contacted and a search has been initiated.
Four hours later, Jo has hired five students to make missing pony posters to put up in the nearby city. Emdash is sick with worry, drinking at a local pub. Fluxion is silently speculating. The only ones doing productive work is two of the other mages who are reviewing the data they actually gathered; this would have been Steele's job, were he there.
Seven hours and thirty two minues after Jo pushed the ignition button, something happens in the test chamber.
Suddenly, there is a flash of light. The hum dies instantly and the pain disappears.
Testing, Steele opens one eye and sees an extreme lack of sensory stimulus. He closes his eye again, preferring to look at his own eyelids. It feels like he is in free fall, the surrounding temperature is both freezing and scalding, and every hair on his body is tickling with static electricity. His shoulders and forehead are numb.
It is like this for maybe a minute until the world finally returns.
Steele finds himself in the test chamber, now destroyed. He stands within the cyclotron ring among various instruments and the pedestal with the horn now holds a pile of dust.
That is when he notices something in the top of his field of vision. Same colour as his fur... A horn.
His pulse rises notably, glands in his body release adrenaline and trembling, he touches it with a hoof. He feels the tap of hard against hard in his skull. It is like a tooth, it has a feeling core, but is otherwise quite resilient.
That is when he notices a strange proprioception in his shoulders. Testing the sensation, he hears a woosh, and looks down his flank to see a couple of wings.
Steele starts hyperventilating. At this point a normal pony would need some smell salt to not pass out. Steele is not one for fainting spells, but he has fainted once or twice in panic. This time he doesn't. A few minutes later he has himself under control, enough to attempt to climb out of the cyclotron.
He makes it in one jump and crashes down — almost landing on a sharp crystal — on the other side.
Slowly, cautiously he nears the open door. The room is dark and he can't help but knocking over a galvanometer setup.
He ventures out into the hallway, walking towards the light in the distance.
Jo sits in the control room, idly playing with a glass of strong spirits. She has bags under her eyes from the stress and sleep deprivation.
"What, what time is it?"
She almost falls off her chair.
"Steele!"
She runs over to him and grabs him in a tight embrace.
"That late, huh?" He says.
"Where have you been? What's..."
It just now strikes her that her colleague isn't supposed to be a pegasus. No, strike that, a unicorn. No, strike that, Jo is very confused.
"I, I have no clue and, and, and, and no answers. You have at least some, what time is it?"
"It's almost three o'clock in the night, we were worried sick! I am so glad you are unscathed!"
"Se— Seven hours? It, it felt like minutes."
Jo looks at him in silence for a beat. "As soon as you feel you are able, I want you to write down everything that happened, and then review the experimental data."
"I, I, I think I need a, a drink and some food."
Jo promptly hands him the glass she had been sipping of, and Steele empties it in one swig. His face contorts in disgust.
"We should tell the others you are okay, we called the guardsmen and everything."
"I, I... I don't really know if I am okay yet."
(1) Interview with the Alicorn
"Well..."
"What about we start with the beginning?"
The interviewer is an older unicorn mare, orange fur and curly mane of gold and ginger.
"The beginning of whom, ms. Shimmers?"
"You, of course. Who else?"
"Moonrise, in, ehm, in order to understand my tale, you must know that we are a group, just as much as we are individuals."
"I don't doubt that, but currently you are in the room with me."
The interviewee is an Alicorn with cobalt blue fur with mane and tail of metallic luster.
"I, heh, I am currently in five places at once. I have many chores."
"Currently there are no other individuals of your collective in the room with me," Shimmers says with a wry smile.
"Touché... All right, my birthname is Steele Glint, but please, call me Ockham."
"So, mr. Ockham, why don't we start with the childhood of Steele Glint?"
"You really want everything? I am a deep pony — when, when you get me going I can really talk — do you have enough paper for that?"
"Taking dictation will not be a problem."
"Oh, okay then. Please — if you have questions or if I, if I start to ramble — stop me when you need... I was born in 1892, to a baker and an, an engineer. My childhood was relatively normal, my, my parents were loving and kind, and I was a very smart foal."
"What is your original tribe?"
"I, I was born Equus. Good question," Ockham fans his wings "this, this is exactly what I meant. You, you are a good journalist ms. Shimmers."
"Thank you."
"I, I was a smart foal — growing up in Manemark — I went to, to public school. Public school is not a place for smart foals, and I was bored. Bored out of my skull every day for ten years. My grades were bad and my work ethic worse. Outside of school I played games and read books. It was only after finishing High School that, that I had some kind of personal epiphany.
"I got into university, despite my low grades, and, and, and... Did you go to journalism school?" — Shimmers nods — "It's like coming home, when, when you find your calling. Mine was mathematics with a minor in natural philosophy. It was right about the time that, that physicists were beginning to wonder at the speed of light.
"I, I, I got my degree in, in... Well it's actually not that important what I got my degree in, but, but — suffice it to say — I graduated cum laude.
"The real trouble started when I got involved in some research into magical physics."
