Regular Spelling
Thoughts on language and more

Eliza's Notes - 06: Age of Artifice

All our predictions were off. The future looks very different then we imagined it would be long ago.

I was betting on the crystal usage granting everyone access to all of the elements of magic once more. The Evreux was betting on the crystal usage leading to an understanding and control of electricity and the development of an electricity based societal system. What happened instead was people finding new ways to release that charged crystal energy from the mothercrystals, and placing the small powered crystals into mechanisms designed to use their power. Not one, nor the other, but both: the world’s evolved into a fusion of both of our concepts, a fusion of magic and machine.

A typical day for someone with this new technology, staying in a residence in one of the large cities, can be described as follows:

They wake up in the morning before dawn, and press a button built into a device on my nightstand. An array of Shadow magic shards and mirrors begin to glow and light up the room. I go to the kitchen to prepare breakfast, pulling a meal I prepared beforehand from an icebox kept chilled with Ice crystals into another box designed to heat up with Ice crystals, and soon their meal is hot and ready to eat. They leave their residence to head to their work, getting in a vehicle automatically driven by an engine, an engine which operates by a controlled explosion of a combustible medium by power from Fire crystals. Up overhead, small kites fly through the air powered by Wind crystals, carrying along packages to destinations they were set to.

If they happen to get injured, say fall and break a bone, they will go to a medical clinic, where a doctor will cut them open, set the injured bone and fuse it together with a joining device powered by Vitae crystals, then sew them back up and seal it with another machine powered by those same crystals to heal rapidly. If they have problems with their eyes that ordinary corrective lenses can't solve, either lenses or implants with small Shadow element crystals in them can bend the light in ways that allow them to see clearly.

With all of this technology enhancing peoples lives, there has been an amazing shift in the world. Populations have exploded. Supply chains have grown worldwide, and with the ability to preserve food in such more advanced ways it allows food to be grown anywhere in the world and be delivered anywhere else without perishing. People are now living in places they never would have previously due to relatively bad ability to grow food there, and the larger cities are growing into bustling metropolisi, sprawling all across the land, and even larger areas beginning to be defined as megapoli are appearing. The world's population has grown into the billions count, and the rate of growth continues increasing.

The world now resembles stories and legends of the great Aughylian Empire. Although, I imagine, we're probably far from the level of technology they had, to be able to travel the vastness of space, but as I've observed Vaudios over the years, and from both modern Aughylia and what I knew of its history, there seems to be certain peaks of technology levels where the whole of society and its living condition is based on an overall average of technology, rather than any specific thing. Based on this, I would put this as modern society, at the same level of the Aughylian Empire as far as social and lifestyle levels of the general population. We have a long ways to go as far as more technology that could be invented, but there's probably not much going upward that would cause a fundamental shift in  the way people live their lives compared to now. It's mostly down from here, really.

It's the opinion of the Evereux, though, that the technology level has more or less peaked. We're at the limits of what could be done with magic-based energy, they say, and without the advancement of directly electricity based technology we can't do any more. They won't elaborate with me on their secrets, technology which they still retain from the height of their own civilization, but simply tell me that magic energy is too imprecise and unstable for the fine kinds of advanced technology that would require electricity, but because magic energy is far too convenient with all of the crystals for any serious studies of electricity to go on. I suspect at least some of the things they are speaking of are embedded in my staff, as I tried disassembling it once and found a dazzling maze of metal and strange, tiny parts, but could make nothing further of it as I tried disassembling it further, and after it ceased functioning I had to take it back to them to repair and they chided me for messing with things I did not understand.

It's long been a concern of mine that these records, both my primary notes and the supplementary materials I've included, would be destroyed by time before they would ever make it to where they could be possibly found by James or someone who knew him. However, recently an invention of an artificial resin that can be made into a liquid that dries into a hard, clear substance has given me a new option than having to continually transcribe from one aged paper to another, I can seal the pages in this resin to keep them from being exposed to air so they last longer. Additionally, I'll be creating copies of the text engraved directly into this hardened resin, to make them easier to read. I've got permanent ownership of a few different places of land around the world that I can seal these records away in, so there should hopefully be at least one copy that's safe that will make it to the future.


Date posted: 04 June, 2016
Tags: elizas_notes writing
« 2016 Book Blitz - April: Spiral Island 2 | Eliza’s Notes - 07: Age of Enmity »