This mysterious thing called "Technology" [Thoth]

Of course, in that department at least magic won out. Fire was rarely a real risk and easily extinguished in his world, and there was no direct equivalent of a fire alarm.

Which is why the whole thing was so baffling. What was it? What was a 'fire alarm'? An alarm for fire? It was just... everything. It was a mystery. A giant question mark. He didn't understand a bit of it. It was just a box on the wall, with the words 'fire alarm' and what looked like a strange handle. Should he pull it? It said 'pull down' with a neat little arrow, but he was at least cautious enough to not simply follow instructions on strange boxes.

He jumped, fingers digging hard into the staff he carried with him as he spun, reacting to being touched first. But it was just a boy - another student wearing a whole bunch of things he couldn't begin to guess at.

At least the question was simple, and he clutched at his staff, eyes wide.

"I was looking at the 'fire alarm'. I don't know what it does." Simply enough, and to most people that would be enough to prompt an explanation, which he was clearly hoping for.

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Tag to @"Silver" ​

The boy was obviously doing something, and it was like... there was some sort of bizarre marks on his glasses that seemed to be moving, and... Well, he just really wasn't grasping it at all. He was waving his hand, and Enelen's first thought was that he was from the School of Words, who despite their name often incorporated hand gestures to go with their words.

In fact, when he finally spoke again, he'd come to the conclusion that he'd used magic to investigate him, which was usual enough although a tad invasive. He bristled a bit, straightening up. "You have magic glasses?" That would explain whatever he was seeing. His own world had a similar sort of magic, although it was generally used with books. He supposed it was entirely possible someone could have adjusted an information-gathering spell to display on any surface at all. Books were simply the most commonplace and useful. It would simply have to be high level magic to make it appear properly on the glasses, without warping... unless he didn't actually need glasses, which was also possible.

That was really the nature of the new world he found himself in. Plenty of speculation, but not a lot of solid facts.

"I'd be very interested in knowing how you adapted it to display on glasses - mostly in my world we just use books." Books were used for a whole lot of things, which is why almost everyone had several blank ones handy. Information gathering and display had always been an area of expertise for him, and he'd had a veritable library of books handy at any given time.

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Tag to @"Silver" ​

What the boy had said might as well have been another language entirely. Technically everything was translating over without fail, but no spell could translate a word that had no equivalent. There was no concept for 'wirelessly' in his world, because there had never been any wires. It was like saying that a computer functioned without the need to shake it rhythmically.

There was no internet, either, but he could understand the idea of the world's biggest library. His was certainly large, but not the biggest, and he watched with interest as the boy did something and started to display it, his mouth falling open to form a little 'o'.

He was obviously not faking his interest.

That said, the way he said the world 'technology' sounded funny - in part because there was nothing to translate. He was just having to mimic the english word.

"We don't have this... technology. I don't know the word." The word was completely foreign to him, with no equivalent. "I have access to a massive library through my magic, but I'm only a low level mage, so I'd have to display it on a book." He knew at least some people could display in the air, but that was a more high level magic, and one considered more showy than practical.

There was really almost never an actual need to display things in the air, after all. "Your own world appears to have gone in a much different way than my own." If he already knew he was from another world, there wa really no need to beat around the bush.
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Tag to @"Silver" ​

It was definitely going to be an eye opening conversation. They were both operating on very different perspectives.

"Well, I don't really know what you do with technology, but I imagine whatever you do with technology, we do with magic, and vice versa... for the most part." That made sense to him. Magic was created to address problems, and from the way the boy was talking, that was what technology did to. He considered for a moment that technology might actually be magic, but quickly decided against it. If that was true, his translation spell would simply have given him the word 'magic' instead, so it must have been different.

He considered the question. It was actually a fairly deep one, and the sort of thing he could imagine writing a whole essay on back on his own world. "Well, it's hard to really compare, because I know so little about your world. The best I can give is a sort of brief summary of my own world, and... yeah."

He paused to compose himself, and then launched into a detailed explanation, with a particular focus on magic.

"Humans evolved around two million years ago, but we were primitive and it took us millions of years to really get anywhere. Languages probably evolved properly around ten thousand years ago, although we only have records of about five thousand years ago. As best we can tell, magic has always existed. There is no culture in the world that doesn't have some form of magic, although every culture seemed to utilize their magic differently. Our progression shifted from nomadic hunters to farming around eleven thousand years ago, and our progress as a species started to speed up from that point. We had great cities and cultures for thousand of years, but I would say the majority of our progress has happened in the last thousand. Even the leaps of magic that we've had in the past two hundred years outclass the eight hundred before that. A few hundred years ago everyone was divided up into countries, and separated by physical location. With the advent of crude teleportation magics, the schools began to be formed, which allowed students to receive formal training, as opposed to being trained by a village elder or their parents. This let magic get even better, and..." He paused, forcing himself to take a deep breath. He was clearly excited to get to explain it all to someone, and perhaps he was getting a bit too excited. "Back then there were hundreds of schools, but over time they consolidated into four grand schools led by four grand mages, with a council of the most important mages advising them. There are still sub schools, but really everyone can be divided into staves, words, chants, or ritual. About a hundred and fifty years ago, our mana needs became too much and we started drawing mana from the earth itself - but three years ago we realized we'd drawn too much, and that the earth was dying." He grimaced at the memory, even though he liked to consider himself mostly over it. After all, he'd had three years to come to grips to it. "So we ended up transporting anyone who wanted to try and go to another world at random, so that at least some of our world would survive. And now I'm here." Which was probably unnecessary, because anyone would figure out how they went from 'transporting people to worlds' to... well, where he was then.

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Tag to @"Silver" ​

The nameless boy's explanation was... strange. This missing piece for him was something he'd taken for granted, something he just assumed would be true elsewhere. In his world, it wasn't just that every culture had it's own kind of magic - it was that everyone had magic. The only people who didn't... well, it was a bit like being born with only one arm, or born with no eyes. While he'd met people without magic on this world, it still had not quite dawned on him that magic was a rare trait. It was a bit like meeting someone who was blind - you wouldn't just assume that every other person you meet after would be blind.

And slowly, as he explained, it dawned on him. They were rare. People wanted to study them because they were rare, the way people in his world wanted to study rare diseases. Only rare diseases almost always made you worse, not better, which meant it wasn't fear but curiosity. His mouth opened slightly, hanging in a neat little 'o' as he tried to wrap his head around it.

"Hold on." The thought of lessons was appealing, but he had more important things to think about at that moment. "Do you mean that magic is... well, rare?" Normally he prided himself on his large vocabulary, but the magnitude of the whole thing had fried his brain a bit. "Like... almost no one has it?" Rare. Rare? It was so common in his world. Almost everyone. It was as if he'd just been told that everyone on this world was blind, or that no one on this planet needed to breath. Magic was such a fundamental part of his existence that he was struggling to wrap his head around it.

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Tag to @tag​