OtH 1.11 - Worldly Problems

Hope you enjoy the chapter. I am actually quite enjoying writing Aarick's perspective.

Aarick’s mind stalled again. If a computer had as many BSOD moments as he had over the last while, it would need some serious work.

Fortunately for him, human minds were usually pretty good at fixing that problem themselves. And, sure enough, his mind started to stutter back into working shape. A few halted thoughts of, how, why, food, space, sputtered out of his mental engine, before something resembling proper rational thoughts began to emerge.

I am missing something…

And it has to be something big.

“How…” He coughed and started over again. “How fast does food grow? Does qi impact the speed?”

Reodan nodded.

“Yes, sir, food grows more quickly in qi rich areas, up to about three times as fast. Past a certain point of concentration, the qi inside the food itself rises, instead of speeding up development.”

Still not even close to fast enough. Unless their metric for growth is skewed from the beginning…

“How long does it take to grow apples here? From blossom to harvest, I mean?”

Reodan raised an eyebrow at him, but still answered.

“Generally, here in the valley it would take about three months, sir.”

Substantially shorter than home, but even if I reduced the harvest time to once a month, it wouldn’t be enough. There shouldn’t be enough resources to support this empire, let alone four more.

“Are there specialists who grow food? People who use qi to speed up the growth?”

“Yes, sir,” Reodan answered slowly. “However, that is a rare profession. Such people usually only grow food for nobles. Usually the focus when they grow food is actually not on the speed, but rather the quantity of qi. A much more common profession is for individuals to focus on growing spiritual herbs, fruits, and so on.”

Seeing Aarick’s mouth opening, he continued.

“Spiritual plants have useful natural qi formations inside them. They create some change, when eaten for example, or can be used in alchemy.

Are you remembering some things about your previous life, sir? Was your family specialized in growing food, for example?”

He startled for a moment.

Best to the tell the truth, just in case.

“Yes, I am remembering some things about by family. You would call my mother’s family nobility. My father was a gifted healer, and he lead the healers in our city. Oversaw some of the neighboring cities too, if I remember it correctly.

And I recall some people nearby who specialized in raising food.

The speed they grew food was different than here, the qi levels were definitely different.”

All true, if horribly misleading. I am going to get a lot of practice at this type of prevarication.

“Excellent, sir,” Reodan said. “Is your memory returning then.”

“No,” he said. “It is not returning, so much as I am accessing what remains after I found myself here. I have not felt any drained memories actually come back.”

Not that my memories have ever been drained… as far as I know. Man, there are so many things about this world that could make me paranoid.

Reodan nodded.

“A shame, but not a surprise, sir. That which is sacrificed can rarely be recovered, even if you were not a willing participant.”

He nodded back at him.

“I have been trying to understand how The Empire, how all the empires, work. I am trying to gain a sense of scale. All I remember is our area had several million people, and the region we were in had about 300 million people living in it. So my sense of scale is off.”

He nodded.

“Sounds like you lived in a small town, though it was probably in a special region if you knew people specialized in raising food. I’ll pass the information on to Lurona. It might help her find out where you came from.

As for gaining some context on The Empire, what would you like to know? It is hard for me to even know where to begin. You obviously know plenty of things, and remember some foods, but the gaps can be surprisingly large and random.”

Aarick replied carefully.

“I am not sure what benefit someone would get from draining memories away. However, I can say that my knowledge of cultivation is almost nonexistent, and obviously I had no cultivation by the time Lenora found me. I have not felt like my skills at basic daily tasks are suffering, though I my knowledge of etiquette for The Empire is lacking. I had no knowledge of the language, and I tried to use a language that I don’t think anyone speaks here.

In fact my knowledge of the Empire was essentially nothing.

When I looked at the weapons I felt no real familiarity with them. Though I know I have used a bow before, but I am not sure what anyone would consider my level of skill.”

Reodan paused for a moment.

“I… don’t actually know what someone can do with a sacrifice of cultivation, memory, and so on, sir. That information is highly regulated. The Empire does not practice sacrificial magic on people, except in a few exceptional circumstances.

Be aware that you are potentially vulnerable to one of them.

If you open a gap to the Eldritch by making a deal with something living there, one of the fastest ways to close the gap is to ritually sacrifice you to close it.”

Aarick shuddered.

“Fortunately, I have no intention of ever making a deal with something from there. I don’t even know how one could, what I saw was so… alien.”

Reodan nodded seriously.

“Good.”

I didn’t like that The Empire would use human sacrifice for anything. However, this sounded like a much more advanced and practical version of the trolley problem. If a city, or part of reality itself, was a risk… then sacrificing one individual who caused the problem in the first place. Well it wasn’t exactly a good action, but it was certainly practical and probably something close to justice.

And while I’m not an actual victim of a sacrificial ritual, I would be more than happy for that knowledge to not be commonly available.

Reodan’s admonition dampened the mood somewhat, but in truth it was a subject that deserved the seriousness with which it was being taken.

“That,” Reodan said, “was not actually what we were discussing, however. Please ask your questions sir.”

It took him a moment to change gears. The magnitude of the potential threat from The Eldritch, plus the threat from The Empire on top of that, had managed momentarily to replace his concerns over understanding how The Empire existed at all. Admittedly, the major potential threats to his existence did have a way of changing the context of his concerns. The Empire obviously was functioning, and had a massive population as proof.

What exactly, did he need to know then?

I keep making assumptions about how The Empire does things. Maybe it has massive artificial vertical farming structures in places with higher qi. To understand the scale of the problem, and how much The Empire needs to have consolidated its farmland, I need to know how big The Empire actually is.

“How large is The Empire, from one end to the other?” He said.

“If we take the longest distance, sir,” Reodan lectured, “from near where we are here in the south, up to the northern regions, it would be about 600,000 miles. The capital is close to equidistant between the two extremes.”

Of course, Reodan didn’t actual say miles. He said another word which was meaningless to anyone from Earth. However, Aarick had had knowledge stuffed into his head with the language he was speaking. And he knew about how long the distance Reodan was using translated to. It was somewhere close to a mile. It might be a little less, it might be a little more, but at this scale it didn’t matter.

His thoughts flashed by, as he quickly made calculations.

I don’t think it is that far off from a mile, but even if I was way off… Even if it was a tenth of a mile, then The Empire would still be about two and a half times as long as the circumference of the Earth. If it is closer to a mile then it is more like twenty-five times the size.

It’s tempting just to brush it off. To say it is a mistake. Except, I am in another world. If it was just another planet in my universe I would still call bullshit, but this universe has already shown it has magic. Magic isn’t a very good explanation, but doubting reality is a good way to lose. Reality, no matter how absurd, always wins.

So… what does that mean?

Well it means the world is ridiculously large. He said this was from north to south, so the world is probably at least double the size in total circumference. At least 1.3 million miles. An insane amount, but it is what it is.

The Empire would live in all the mountain peaks and high alpine valleys. Might need to use teleportation or airships to get around. Cultivators can probably fly in some fashion, and can probably transport others as well.

Divide the world into fifths with a reasonable amount of distance between each empire, and it should be easy to get to about seven trillion people. In fact there would still be far more land to expand into, assuming that mountains and high valleys are still about as common as Earth.

Not all of them would be in great climates, but they probably expanded into the better ones first…

Fuck, I’m doing it again…

I have someone here I can ask.

“Do you know how big the world is?” Aarick asked.

“Scholars have done calculations in various ways, sir” Reodan nodded. “And I think the Emperor has weighed in on the discussion to create an official number. The world is twenty five million miles in circumference.”

Well, I was right to get an answer from Reodan.

For now… I just have to assume that it is accurate.

It does explain something from earlier though. When I was looking out over the valley, the valley seemed too large, the horizon too far away, even with the mountains cutting it off. I am on a much larger sphere, so the horizon is much further.

That part make sense… but the rest?

Sol is only… what a little less than half a million miles in radius? About nine hundred thousand miles in diameter. And this… can I even call this a planet?

Well it still has a sun, though the orbital mechanics of having a planet this large must be strange.

Honestly, the planet ought to be a black hole. I think…

It absolutely has enough mass that is should be a fucking star. The world was something like nine times the diameter of Sol.

Wait, the surface is huge, but The Empire is only six hundred thousand miles across. Ha, only! Funny to think of that perspective shift. Compared to the size of the world though… it is tiny. And each of the empires is supposed to be similar. That could just be propaganda, but if the Emperor actually helped set the year to exactly four hundred days…

I mean, that is something testable though. And The Empire is ancient. So him actually being at least immortal is likely, or just so long lived as to not make a difference. If the Emperor actually has a life span of a star, well a main sequence star like Sol, he could have a life span in the billions of years. If he has only been around for millions of years, he might not even be lying and not know he is aging at all.

I’m doing it again. No way to know if they are immortal, right, but good evidence.

There is even better evidence for the year being exactly 400 days and staying that way. And due to gravity and small losses the day should actually be getting longer over time. A tiny difference, but absolutely noticeable over millions of years. So they are maintaining it, or something else is maintaining that precision.

And, still, the size of the planet. The size is staggering.

I was thinking about The Empire being about 25 times the length of the Earth’s circumference. So, just as an approximation, if I assumed it was just as wide, then that would be an enormous square. 625 squares inside, and each would be larger than the surface area of the earth, so approximate to 1000 times the size of Earth for The Empire’s size. And that is a generous estimate.

This planet though… would have what? This is too much to do in my head…

“Would you fetch me some paper and something to write with?” He asked.

Reodan blurred away for a moment before he returned with what he asked for.

“Here you go, sir.”

Papers were placed on the table as it reappeared, each an almost perfect white. A writing implement was placed on the table next to it. It was a simple cylinder with a single glowing line, and it ended with a fine point.

He couldn’t see any ink on the tip, or anyway that it would come out, but it was literally glowing.

Best to just call it a magic pen until I know better.

He started writing out the calculations. He had new numbers in his head, they had come with the new language, but he fell back to the Arabic numerals he was familiar with. He finished the calculations soon after.

So this world has a surface about a quarter million times of the Earth. And the empires, together, even assuming my generous estimate, are only using about 5,000 Earths. That is only 2% of the planet’s surface. Most of the planet is completely untouched.

Why is so much of it going unused?

His other calculations were ridiculous too. The speed of rotation to make a day was insane, but it was still well below even one percent of the speed of light, so it would do weird things, but was theoretically possible.

Reodan mentioned that the Empire had to invest significant resources into the creche to get them ready. Maybe the population is controlled? Expansion is limited to what can be handled as The Empire expands? That could be. Or perhaps the expansion happens in waves. If the wilderness is as dangerous as has been intimated, then each push could result in massive casualties.

Or maybe I have been underselling the danger of some other things. Maybe the Eldrich breaches cause the death of billions, or maybe the demons do, or weird cultists like the ones that summoned me.

I need more information again.

“Reodan, is there a map of the world? Or a map of the various empires at least?”

“If there is a map of the world, sir. I have never seen one. However, I know that some maps exist in the library. I don’t believe, however, that any show all of the empires. Though…” he paused for a moment. “if you would like I could draw out their relative positions.”

Well it’s better than nothing.

“Yes, please do.” Aarick replied.

Reodan took one of the remaining unused sheets of paper from the pile, and quickly sketched out a map on it. In the end it was substantially more than just relative positions.

In the northwest was The Empire, and it curved. In fact all of the empires, except the one in the middle curved. They formed a loose circle around the middle empire, which spread out in a shape that was somewhere between a star and a more organic meandering.

“Why do all of them look like this,” he muttered.

Aarick wasn’t really expecting an answer, but Reodan answered anyway.

“The four empires on the outside follow the circular mountain range at the edge, sir, while the empire in the center does the same with a series of ranges in the interior.”

He looked at the arrangement more critically.

“How far apart is everything?”

“I am afraid I don’t actually know, sir. Based on what I know, I would guess that the circle is at least a million miles across, but it might well be more.”

Aarick touched his finger to The Empire. Is The Empire 600,000 miles from end to end in a straight line, or does that measure the distance of the curve?

“The curve, sir.”

That made The Empire even smaller than his calculations, and it looked like it was actually substantially narrower that it was long. That meant that the empires were using substantially less than 1% of the entire planet.

A million mile diameter circle would be considered huge back on Earth, but this is actually a very small area compared to the planet as a whole.

Looks like the empires are all living in a giant impact crater. Truly a giant impact. Something larger than the Earth probably hit here, or something going at a ridiculous speed, I suppose.

“Are there other human civilizations anywhere?”

“No, sir, how could there be?”

“What do you mean?” Aarick said, his voice puzzled.

“Ah, sir. Sorry for my assumption. The God-Emperors work together to shield this area from the demonic corruption. This area is the only habitable place on the surface of the world.”