~What would you need this room for?~

 

 

This is what Ryan was thinking when he stepped inside. It looked like one whole wall was a mirror with a bar along its length, just like one would see in a ballerina class. The floor was hard wood and well polished. One whole corner was full of boxes, and boxes, and boxes, and clothes racks, and an other assorted junk of junk. One got the impression that the room got used to store a few things, that turned into a few more things, that became the place where you just chucked stuff, ~It looks like an abandoned dance studio, of all things.~

 

In the room was the rest of Lilith's followers along with, what Ryan assumed were the ladies' significant others. Ryan slowed down as he thought about this situation, ~So... there seems to be about... seven people who... follow Lilith, but who her most trusted followers are at any given time changes. Is it an inner circle/outer circle sort of  thing, or more like a leaderboard?~

 

There were two guys here who were doing all the major lifting, which isn't to say they were lifting much. The girls were... cleaning? Organizing? Bitching, really. They seemed to be upset they couldn't just order servants to handle this. Another guy who had just taken two boxes across the hall walked back in, making the total three guys, eight girls, including Lucinda and Reed's sister Lily. Apparently Lucinda and Lily were on the low end of the social totem pole, because at the moment, they seemed to be the only girls actually doing any work.

 

Before anyone could comment Ryan just marched over to the boxes while spinning his hand around over his head, "Okay! I need one guy over by the doorway and the other two guys get in the room across the hall so you guys can stack the boxes."

 

Everyone went quiet and looked to Lilith. She smiled to the room, "He's here to help." The room remained quiet as everyone looked at each other, then at Ryan. One of the guys started walking towards Ryan, "Now hold on one-"

 

Ryan interrupted him by grabbing a box and briefly making a magic circle appear on it. A small cushion of water formed under it with a combination of high surface tension and low friction. He casually pushed it with his foot sending it sliding across the floor towards the door. The guy watched it slowly slide past then looked back at Ryan.

 

Ryan pointed at the box, "It only lasts a minute, but it has no friction while it works. I slide the box to the door, the guy at the door slides it into the room across the hall, the two in the room wait for the water to vanish, then pick up the boxes and stack them any way they want. Got it?"

 

The guy who looked like he was about to confront Ryan stopped and thought for a second. Instead he nodded and gestured to the other two guys to do as they had been instructed. Ryan paused to take a swig of a mana potion before getting to work. The four guys got a good rhythm going, while the girls got to sit back and watch as the many, many boxes, slid out of the room and across the hall. It only took another ten minutes before they were finished.

 

The last clothing rack of old costumes from the drama department disappeared out into the hallway. Lilith gave a small clap as Ryan came walking up to her, "Thank you! I knew you'd-" Ryan held up a hand, "Not done yet." and walked past her. She looked a little puzzled as he went walking over to his sister who was sitting in one of the many folding chairs. She started to tense up. Ignoring her, he reached down to grab the mop bucket full of soap next to her and turn away.

 

She frowned at this, but nobody said anything as Ryan tossed the contents into the air, and it stayed floating. He started to gesture, spinning it faster and faster, then scooped it up in a Burnelli Sphere. The soapy water started to froth and boil. Gesturing with one hand he sent out a jet of steamy,soapy water to blast the surfaces of the room, one section at a time. At the same time, he used his other hand to direct a cool blast of freshly conjured water to clean away the residue.

 

Near the end, he looked at one of the other guys and gestured with his chin to one of the windows and asked, "Could you open that?" Everyone had been watching, spellbound at the absolutely cartoonish amount of mana that Ryan was using for something as mundane as cleaning. The question jolted the kid out of his trance and he ran over to unlock and push open the window.

 

Without missing a beat, Ryan made the swirling mass of grimy fluid fly out the window, and inadvertently drowned a bush in the process. When he was finally done, the room was sparking clean. He turned to Lilith, "Now I'm done." She clapped again while smiling. This time everyone else joined in, including his sister, who didn't clap very hard, but applauded none the less.. Lucinda leaned in towards Lily and asked, "Can you do that?" Her blue eyes flashed as she glared at Lucinda. The obvious answer was: No.

 

Ryan slapped his hands together as if dusting them off, "A'rite..." He looked around, "Looks like I got all the hard surfaces... should be good." He looked at Lilith, "Anything else?" Lilith impulsively asked, "How do you use fire and water at the same time?" Ryan blinked, "Uhh... I don't."

 

Lily spoke up, "You're lying." Ryan looked over at his sister, "Excuse me?" She pointed at her eyes, "Water mage as well! You can't heat water, only freeze it! And-and-and even THAT requires an INSANE amount of mana!"

 

Ryan sighed, "Look. the very act of creating water violates the laws of thermodynamics. Neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed, only transformed... UNLESS... you take into consideration the existence of mana." Ryan gestured to the mirror and made a bunch of circles out of mist on it, "Strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, gravity and memetic energy. Reality seems solid but the closer you look at the universe, the smaller you try to go, the more unstable the universe becomes. Perception starts to equal reality... it's just HERE-" He gestured around the room, "This reality is a whole lot easier to... perceive." He scratched his chin, "I don't quite understand it. I'm starting to think it's a resolution issue."

 

Lilith stepped closer to the diagrams on the mirror. She had seen several of them among her gathered notes about Reed, "What do you mean, resolution?"

 

Ryan nodded, "Ah. Xeno's paradox. If you shoot an arrow at a target, at some point it goes half the distance. Then you can half the distance again. And again. And again... on paper, the arrow can NEVER reach the target, because it keeps going only half the distance... onto infinity." He raised a finger, "But it does reach the target. How?" He looked around. Nobody said anything, so he continued, "The planck distance."

 

One of the finances said, "What?"

 

Ryan gestured up to the mirror to create a wavy line, "The plank distance is the minimum distance a single wavelength can be before a single photon of light collapses into matter. The more energy you add to light, the higher the wavelength, the shorter the distance, and then you have your capstone. The point where energy becomes matter because you put too much energy in one spot."

 

Lily looked puzzled, "Wait... energy... can become matter? You mean Mana?"

 

Ryan looked back, "Of course mana, but all forms of energy can turn into matter, at a certain point. It just seems Mana has a much lower threshold than other forms of energy."

 

The wavelength on the mirror changed and it got closer to closer together, "This becomes the absolute minimum distance you can travel. It is IMPOSSIBLE for anything to travel less than this distance." the lines changed, "Now, you can go two plancks and return back one point five plancks, and be half a planck from where you started, but you can't move LESS than a planck in one go."

 

Ryan turned around to face everyone, "This, is the resolution of the universe. The smallest anything can be. And the odd thing is, this all depends on how much energy something has. It is also affected by OBSERVATION."

 

He started to gesture as if having small things in his hands, "You get quantum tunneling, and energy turning into particles and then into waves and then teleportation and information traveling backwards in time, and quantum cloning, and all sorts of strange things." He looked up, "But the very act of observing these things changes their nature. At a certain point, reality stops being objective and it becomes subjective." It was obvious he was losing most of his audience, but Lilith seemed to be following along, having read so much about what he had published so far.

 

Ryan's eyes unfocused as he stared off into the distance, He was silent for several moments before he started talking again, "But that isn't possible..." Lilith looked a little confused as she had the feeling she just missed something important.

 

He raised a finger, "Unless, you consider the interior of your mind to be objective." He grinned, "I think, therefore I am." He then started gesturing about, "Which lead me to the conclusion that perception by intelligent creatures is what creates mana, or... memetic energy. This memetic energy can't do much in a high resolution universe, but in a low resolution universe, then there is much more wiggle room. You can..."

 

He created a ball of water floating in the air over his hand, "I can take that memetic energy and perceive a reality where water exists."

 

He then raised the finger in his other hand, "But... why only water? Why is it limited to only certain elements? Answer, because everyone thinks it does. Humanities' collective beliefs create the limitations. Most of the universe exists objectively, but when it comes to life and intelligence, the laws of reality can be mutated and warped based on the individual and collective beliefs."

 

He started to talk faster and faster as he explained things, "Think about it! We can only subjectively view the universe, but inside our own heads is the only objective truths we know." He held his hands out to the side, "Do we use our internal objective reality to impose over the collective objective reality we call Reality?" He shrugged, "Maybe?"

 

He pointed at Lily, "You see water as water." He pointed at himself, "I see water as two hydrogen atoms combined with one oxygen atom. I know the many properties of water including what happens to water when it is cooled, when it is heated, and when it is applied to massive amounts of PRESSURE."

 

Lily looked thoughtful as Ryan continued, "It appears that the more you change the pressure or temperature of water the more mana it requires to make those changes. This is because it requires more energy to fuel the process." He pointed a finger in the air and let loose a blast of steam that shot up into the air and quickly dissipated, "I can make steam, but I don't know any water mages that can. Sure, you have a few talented souls who can make water AND ice, but steam? That's impossible I'm told. Yet... I can do it."

 

"How?"

 

He looked around at everyone, nobody spoke. He waited a bit before rolling his eyes and smacking his forehead, "Because nobody told me I COULDN'T!"

 

Lily jumped out of her chair, "Hold on... are you telling me the reason you can do impossible magic is because... you don't know any better?"

 

Ryan waggled his head from side to side, "Ehhh... maybe? Just a theory. I know my fundamental beliefs are different then everyone else. I do not perceive the world the way all of you do. However, it isn't absolute." He took his ball of water and flash froze it, "I can freeze this."

 

Ryan reached into his pocket and pulled out his lighter. Flipping it open, he produced a flame that he held under the ice ball. Its surface burst into a small puff of flame as if it was slowly burning like a ball made out of frozen alcohol, "I can force the hydrogen and oxygen to separate. It takes quite a bit of mana to do that. Oxygen and hydrogen burns when exposed to flame. I can't ignite the ice itself, but I can break the ice down into materials that, oddly enough, I can't control, but those byproducts burn easily."

 

He wove his lighter around, "I need an outside fire source to start the reaction, but once started, it's self sustaining... assuming I keep pouring mana into the process of breaking down water into flammable gasses." He looked at Lilith, "And so you know, it's so much more mana intensive than just asking a fire mage to do the same thing." He blew a puff of air at the ice ball and the flame went out, then grinned at Lilith, "Don't expect to be losing your job, anytime soon."

 

Ryan tapped his chest, "I'm breaking water down into a substance I can't really control, but I can control where it breaks down. Once I figured that out, it wasn't that hard to figure out how to just directly heat up the water as I create it." He waved his hand and dismissed the ice ball entirely, "And lo' we have steam." He sighed, "But in spite of all my best attempts, I can't do any of the real fun stuff with heat."

 

Lilith looked quite interested, "Like?" Perhaps being a fire mage herself this was a topic of interest to her.

 

Ryan looked up, "Well, The headmaster can go straight to lightning, which is just electrons. That makes me wonder if someone could go beyond lightning and straight on to full blown PLASMA." His eyes lit up in a fashion that disturbed everyone in the room. They might have no idea what plasma was, but if Ryan liked it so much, it clearly was something to be avoided.

 

A topic avoided by everyone except Lilith, "What is plasma?"

 

Ryan thought for a second, then motioned Lilith to come closer as he walked over to the window. Lilith approached Ryan, more than a bit curious. He pointed up into the sky, "THAT... is Plasma." Lilith stepped closer to the window and looked up at the sun. For a moment, she remembered the first time she ever managed to wield fire with her mana. It has been a clear day like this and the sun shone so very brightly. The heat upon her skin was the catalyst to make the next jump in her evolution. She never saw fire as destruction. She always equated it with the life giving sun. If Ryan knew what the sun was, how it worked, and what it was made of...

 

She glanced at him and noticed that in this moment, as he was teaching and explaining...

 

His usual bitter expression was no where to be seen.