The Rival, part 14.
Added 2020-08-19 19:31:24 +0000 UTCJan has harvested quite a bit of power from reading books, herself. The Happy Jack suit is based upon many a tome of cybernetics, robotics, scanners, computers, & etc.
Comments
"Any Sufficiently Advanced Science is indistinguishable from Magic," so it would not be incorrect to say "Any Sufficiently Advanced Magic is indistinguishable from Science." Astrologers (mostly) became Astronomers, Alchemists became Chemists. We have captured the power of Lightning and use it to not only power our world but grant us the ability to communicate across vast distances. Material Scientists are discovering new "allotropes" of common materials with new, amazing properties (Carbon, not only as coal, diamonds, and graphite, but also graphene (monomolecular graphite), buckyballs and buckytubes), and Quantum Physics seems to be looping us back to Magic, with all it predicts, that can be proven true, but still cannot be explained.
Eric Adler
2020-08-21 01:48:58 +0000 UTC"Knowledge grants it's own power" . . . individual ability, natural talent, and personal development does most of the rest. As she explains to Max, just gaining the knowledge is only part of the journey . . . you also have to have the innate ability to even access the energy that allows one to summon up, draw on, unleash, channel, and/or wield magic. The "Gate" I believe she called it when she looked into Max's mind to see if he had what was needed to begin learning the art/craft. Max was found to not have said "Gate" and so had no way of developing the talents for magic . . . a factor he believes might be found in certain genetic codes, thus Mink's bloodline being magical. Basically, for Mink's world, magic is like tapping into "other worldly forces" through said "gate", and then using the science/art/craft of sorcery/wizardry/witchcraft to give said forces form, substance, and purpose in the physical and spiritual world. But one must first have the ability to "access" and "tap" that energy, and then they can begin putting what they study or self-learn to practice . . . for as she explained to Max, without the former, the latter can't be practiced.
Sonicrailin
2020-08-20 02:50:21 +0000 UTC"You can get super-powers just from reading a book?" Says the guy in the self-made mecha suit with super hacking skills :P
Sleepy Dave
2020-08-19 22:53:59 +0000 UTCI once wrote a webpage in Ruby on Rails and made a spreadsheet of the books I'd read to write it, and they totaled 5,000 pages.
A Patreon of the Ahts
2020-08-19 22:25:04 +0000 UTCCan Mink enchant Jack's lens to show magic energy? That would be very useful in this story.
Paul Lenoue
2020-08-19 19:59:25 +0000 UTC
