Scientific chronicles 6

This is my most productive month in a while, I might even manage another commission chapter this month... after I do the devil's consusltancy for the end of the month and the monday updates for the 25th and 2nd. I'll have some extra days off during Thanksgiving, should be pretty productive. 

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    Tanya’s schedule was, compared to her old college life, absolutely stuffed with classes. While the sixty hour per week figure included ‘expected time’ for out of class actions, either studying, homework, or projects, this still meant that she was in a classroom or laboratory for six to nine hours a day, except for Sunday, because while Paris didn’t officially acknowledge any of the seven currently active Popes, it still recognized the divine authority of the church. 

    “So how did you like Professor Yungbluth?” Colette asked Tanya as they enjoyed the skilled hands of Mademoiselle Cheveux, a very in-demand hairstylist. She was a giant spider construct that could handle four clients at once, all the while gossiping with them. Her primary attention was absorbed talking with her other two clients, Colette’s friend Xerxsephnia von Bilztengaard and her grandmother, who was addressed by the artiste as ‘Princess Terebithia’. Last night’s party at  the von Blitzengaard estate was apparently quite eventful. Tanya made a mental note to attend the next one, if possible. No one that could afford eight stealth devices for their bodyguards was someone that Tanya would want to disregard. 

    Tanya had many outfits for many occasions, and for this she decided to go for a light outfit. Not in the sense that it had skin exposed, the local sensibilities were a far cry from modern fashion, but just that she wore only two layers, a sundress with a gown and hoisery underneath, and touched it up with her own personal makeup blends, designed to accentuate her features and expressions rather than replace them with a mask that helped one keep a neutral mask, as was the technically-current fashion. It was on its way out, by her judgment. “He seems very knowledgeable about his subject.” Tanya said charitably. “He certainly isn’t boring, either.”

    Colette laughed softly. “Few sparks appreciate teaching the introductory courses, and Yungbluth is no exception.” The professor in question taught Monster-making 101, and he spent the class showing off his menagerie of monsters, bragging about them in between explaining which parts of the textbook he wrote would be covering the techniques he described using to create them. “He lost the Monster Mash, though, so he’s stuck with it for the semester.” Colette was dressed similarly to the day before, a well-made but utilitarian dress along with a matching hat, clearly more of an everyday sort of garment, meant to demonstrate her beauty rather than accentuate it. 

    Tanya thought she looked great in it anyway. “I didn’t expect to be told that we’d be making our own monsters in an introductory course, I’ll admit.” Tanya said, “But I’ve been putting some thought into potential projects.” There was no way she’d get adept enough in the relevant techniques within ten weeks to do some of the things the professor showed off, but the grading rubric in the syllabus did put a premium on novelty and utility, so she should be able to get a good grade if she used basic techniques in an innovative fashion. 

    “Monster 101 is pretty sink or swim, yeah.” Colette agreed, “I take every class that I can, because working with Spark-tech is one of the best ways to try and break through yourself. My project was modifying a cat to give them bioelectric batteries connected to their claws.” Colette mimed a cat’s claw swipe for emphasis. 

    Ah, she sees how that could be useful. “Stunning anything they pounce on, I see.” Tanya said, “How did you alter their instincts so as to let them use this weapon effectively?” If the cat didn’t need to spend all that time playing with their food to exhaust it, it would be a waste to keep the relevant instincts. 

    “Ah, I… overlooked that.” Colette admitted, “My project grade was not the best, but I made up for it on the exam.” As she had previously explained, classes at the Paris Institute for the Extraordinary tended to score your theoretical and practical grades separately, and calculate your final grade for the course as some equation of those two numbers, frequently weighting whichever one was higher to have a greater impact. 

    Tanya hummed. “Well, I’m afraid I didn’t find myself as inspired as some of my Spark-ridden classmates, so I’ll probably end up in a similar boat.” Tanya said ruefully. “I’m much more comfortable with machines, personally.”

    “Oh, me too.” Colette said, “I’ve been training all my life to understand Papa’s systems, and biologicals are all…” She waved her hand vaguely. “Wibbly.”

    “Well, there is more in common between chromosomal programming and system architectures than you might think.” Tanya corrected, “But yes, once you go beyond the simplest of organisms,” That being things that didn’t even count as life, virology and similar were quite advanced, Tanya was looking forward to Professor Fauve’s class. “-the complexity of organic chemistry quickly becomes overwhelming.” Sparks working with organics tended to be a little bit worse at explaining what they’re doing compared to ones working with machines, or at least their scientific journals tended to be more obtuse. The only group that is even less understandable are the physicists. “Even the grandest of computational structures only scratch the surface of the eons of evolutionary algorithms that even the most basic lifeforms result from.” Admittedly, cognitive engines can somehow come close, but she could never wrap her head around them, no one who could create one could adequately describe it without heavily leaning on spark-words, which describe phenomena that you need a spark yourself to even attempt to understand, and even then only a fraction of other sparks had sufficient background to do so. 

    Colette seemed rather surprised at her assertions. “Are you one of those who are trying to copy Papa’s designs?” She asked warningly. 

    “I wouldn’t say no to a look. I’d be a fool to pass that up.” Tanya said offhandedly. “But I suspect that making my own operating system for my hardware will be better in the long run, so I’d be far more interested in the more hardware side of things if I had the option.” The stories of the Master of Paris were far grander than what she’s seen so far, referring to him more as a wizard or god than what he truly is, a systems administrator. “Can he really make the bricks themselves rise up in defense of the city? How does he pull that one off?”

    The dark-skinned beauty took a moment to weigh her answer, and seemed to find it acceptable. “I’ve only seen him do it as a parlor trick.” She admitted, “When I asked to see it. The way my older brothers and sister talk about it, it’s been decades since Papa’s used a lot of the city defenses.”

    “That makes sense.” Tanya replied, “After all, Paris has been peaceful under his reign for a very long time. No need to break out the electrically expensive measures if you have plenty of semi-autonomous defenses that can handle everything that goes on without your input.” It made him something of an ideal ruler, that he didn’t feel the need to show off his military might at every excuse. 

    “Papa does get annoyed when something comes up and takes him from his work, that’s true.” Colette agreed, “He never goes to parties, either.” 

    “One day he will!” Princess Terebithia cut in. “Simon will attend one of my parties someday.”

    “Grandma…” Xerxsephnia grumbled. 

    “That does make me curious as to what kind of work draws the focus of someone as esteemed as Simon Voltaire.” Tanya segued, “Does it have something to do with that lovely connector you’ve got anchored to your collarbone?” While Tanya was a little iffy on some of the more biological modifications that were popular, she had been putting quite a lot of thought into cybernetic interfaces for her to better control her machines. “I’d wager it probably connects to your spine? Maybe some interface with your vocal chords?” Being able to add some kind of aural authenticator code would help her command the city’s systems as a subordinate user, if nothing else. 

    While Tanya couldn’t quite tell if the girl was blushing due to her complexion, Colette did demure a bit, embarrassed. “Ah, I got this years ago.” She admitted, “When I told Papa that I wanted to try learning how to control the city like he did.” 

    Just as she thought. “I’ve been thinking of something similar to control my mecha.” Tanya said conversationally. “I’ve been discussing it with Gil-”

    Xerxsephnia cut in: “Wait, Gil as in Gilgamesh?” She asked, keenly interested. “New Student? Brown hair, tall, handsome?”

    Eh… “Well, I wouldn’t be the best judge of how handsome someone is…” She said, making a show of dipping her eyes towards Xerxsephnia’s dress, which had a tiny cleavage window, just large enough to squeeze one’s hand into. “But he’s muscular and doesn’t have anything particularly ugly about him, so I suppose that’s a fair enough description.” Much like her first body, Gilgamesh didn’t have anything to be ashamed about if he were to go to the beach. Well, except for maybe a few surgical scars, but that was a lot more normalized here. 

    …What did swimwear look like in this world, anyway? It’s obviously going to be something absurdly modest by modern standards, but… hm. 

    “Well, I’ve heard some stories from Tarvek…” Xerxsephnia said, giggling. Well, she already knew that Tarvek was related to the von Blitzengaards, and Xerxsephnia did have the same ‘Storm King Red’ hair color that Tarvek did… “Gil seems like such a fun guy…”

    Hm. “Well, if your family would permit a relationship with a common-born Spark…” Tanya said, glancing at the girl’s royal grandmother. Terebithia’s expression was serene, strictly neutral. “...Then I suppose I could introduce you.” She glanced over to the hidden bodyguard that shifted at those words. “Or, given your family’s reputation for cloak and dagger affairs, I could instead leave coded messages on a windowsill for your spies to pick up and give you a time and place to conveniently run into him.”

    Colette burst into giggles at Tanya’s joke, while Xerxsephnia glared at her friend, annoyed. Even Princess Terebithia seemed amused at the insinuation. 

    Ah, romance. Is there anything else that can make teenagers act like fools? Their hair all looked fabulous afterwards, of course. She’ll be sure to schedule an appointment to come back before any major social gatherings. 

    It was just unfortunate that her hairdo was ruined the very next day by the glue-like slime shot out by the biomechanical crabs of Professor Homard, but Gil took care of most of them, and Tanya was able to vent her frustrations on the now-very-sorry Professor. 

    Sure, she was able to save her hair with the chemicals in the Professor’s lab without needing to cut it, but Colette’s disappointment before Tanya explained was absolutely grounds for every single one of those injuries. 

    Honestly, how is she supposed to enjoy her college years if crazy sparks keep interfering with her seduction of beautiful coeds? 

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    It took Tanya longer than she cared to admit to realize that Paris didn’t have multi-track recording. It wasn’t a particularly difficult innovation, in her opinion, but if any other spark had thought to do it, it hadn’t caught on with the broader music scene. The vast majority of music was still recorded on, well, records. Gramophones. 

    This wasn’t exactly a large problem, but it was kind of a requirement to make karaoke conversion simple and easy. So for at least the first week, she still had to personally perform in order to keep her stage rented. The staff member in charge of managing the public performance spaces was sufficiently sympathetic to her plight that he agreed to be lenient with the regulations until she could get her promised ‘party singing machine’ finished, but ‘lenient’ was not ‘carte blanche’. 

    So she used a few… anachronistic songs that would fit, some of the jazz that she favored during her short stint of lounge singing. “Just keep that coffee hot,” She sang, with her pre-recorded backup singers, which was her, Neena, and Miss Poppins, adding “A-keep it hot”

    In front of her mecha, which had moved its hands to create a stage and used one of tool-hands to hold a microphone for her, with the other handling the spotlight. The bulkier speakers she had added at Gil’s suggestion were deployed, set to a relatively low volume. “Be sure you make a lot (A-make a lot)” Tanya and her backup singers continued. 

    She had dressed appropriately, of course. The slinky silver dress she wore when originally singing this would be too much for the Parisian crowd, but she played to type: She was wearing a pilot’s cap and an officer’s coat with a skirt that had slits up to her mid-thigh, something that wasn’t too far off from what Colette wore as everyday wear, just… a little thinner, with some glitter so the spotlight made the outfit really pop. “Your coffee hits the spot (it hits the spot), so keep that coffee hot (I love your pot)”

    Remembering the music score well enough to get one of the student orchestras to be able to record it for her was a bit of a challenge, but enough students were sufficiently brain-addled by a beautiful face that the small band she needed were able to do the seven songs she had “written” (with a lot of help from Gil) that only needed a trumpet, a saxophone, some drums, a violin, and a piano (which she played), and while finding an actual saxophone was quite difficult, Gil was able to create a reasonable facsimile that fit to her ear and figured out how to play it quickly. The spark was so useful at times. “So keep that coffee hot (So keep it hot)”

    This was her fourth night singing, and the crowd had grown a lot since her first performance, as rumors of a new musical style had spread throughout the school. “Just got my pay today (A-just today), But I don’t plan to stay (Ain’t gonna stay)...”

    Lounge singing was a bit more complicated than just singing, of course. You had to move to the beat, not quite a full dance, but enough to draw the eye and punctuate the most bawdy of the lyrics. “I’m leaving right away, (Yeah, right away), Tonight’s my night to play (My night to play)...” Like that line. 

    “I love your coffee pot (I love your pot), so keep that coffee hot.” She continued, winking at Colette in the audience. There were some tables set up by Neena, and a few enterprising students had started selling pastries from the kitchens in the nearby Mawu hall. Tanya was surprised that the place didn’t have its own coffee maker, so she had taken the coffee maker out of her mecha and placed it inside the kitchen with a detailed instruction manual. She had already made an improved model to replace the one in her mecha. 

    “Got me some troubles to lose, gonna live down those blues, so goodbye (Bye, bye, bye).” Was this song originally sung by men? Absolutely. All of her lounge singing experience was in gay bars, though, so that was never a problem. “Gonna have me some fun until I see the sun in the sky! (Bye, bye, bye)” Sure, she modified some of the lyrics of the songs she was blatantly plagiarizing, but that was to change cultural references to fit, and this song didn’t really need anything beyond the presence of coffee, so it fit. “But whatever I do, I will come back to you by and by (Bye, bye, bye).”

    After repeating the first verse, which was technically the chorus, the song was over and Tanya bowed to the audience’s polite applause. Ah, she loved this song. It was the first one she sang to Visha, before she started volunteering Tanya’s services at the bar, and despite the original context being about a military man and a prostitute, it did go along with their little joke that Tanya only stayed with Visha after the war for her coffee. 

    With that being the last of her set, she took the remote out of her coat and sent the appropriate commands to rewind the magnetic tape cassette she had created and eject it. “That’s the set, I love you all, and goodnight!” She flipped the switch on the admittedly overengineered cassette from ‘karaoke’ to ‘full track’ and put it back in. “I’ll put the machine to play the recording of the set, for a little background music, but I have other matters to attend to.” The whole seven-song set only lasted a half-hour, but doing it twice, once with her own singing and a second time recorded, did constitute enough of a performance that she could keep her spot. 

    Tanya went to the bar, and the barista (who was, amusingly, named Victoria) served her her usual order, free of charge as it was her coffee machine. Was it wise to drink coffee so late at night? No. That was why she invented the caffeine-neutralizing medicine she kept in her room. “Well, Gil? How does the atmosphere here compare to the Island of the Monkey Girls?” Which was a nightclub in Paris, not too far from the university. Gil had found it earlier in the week, and had apparently charmed one of the dancers by rescuing her from a mad spark. She thought it was a bit too blatant in its sexuality, not enough mystery for her tastes. Flashing skin and strip-tease shows were nice, but it lacked the je ne se quois of a thick coat with clear lines and buttons, practically an instruction manual on how it was to be removed. 

    “It’s different.” Gil said easily, “But not in a bad way, I think.” He wasn’t drinking coffee, instead drinking some of the beer on tap. “The… cassettes, as you call them, are quite interesting pieces.” Of course Gil was more interested in the media technology than the stage area’s redesign. 

    A small explosion indicated that yet another piece of shrapnel was headed straight for Tanya’s head, but she ducked. “They’re more complicated than would be convenient for mass manufacture.” Tanya groused, “But as long as the only one who can play the things is me or whoever I give my machines to, the in-built multitrack functionality is worth the additional work to make them.” She was not completely immune to the allure of adding additional features when given the resources to do so, sadly. It was the engineer’s curse. “Also, only having up to five tracks per cassette does limit our options somewhat.” Not by a lot, but it just irritated her that she had to use only three or four on most of her songs because she couldn’t decide how to split things up further from the many options. 

    “You’re already making quite the name for yourself.” Colette complimented, sipping at her own coffee. “Both of you, really. I suppose it’s only natural.”

    Tanya blinked, confused. “Not to downplay my title, but neither of us are particularly notable in status, is being educated at Castle Wulfenbach that big of a deal?” She never really asked, but she knew that most students went to some kind of university, with Transylvania Polygnostic being the most popular. She had heard many good things about Dr. Beetle. 

    “Not really.” Colette said, waving her off. “But the Baron doesn’t sponsor just anyone to Paris’ premier university. It’s only natural for you two to stand out.”

    Gil murmured something along the lines of ‘nice save’, but then raised his glass. “They don’t proclaim this the rightful place of the extraordinary for nothing!”

    Neena, giggling and waving the latest boy to catch her interest away, sat on the other side of Gil. “Hey Tanya! Can I sing?” She asked. 

    “I don’t have the lyric display ready yet.” Tanya warned. Sometimes, getting the parts for a good monitor just seemed impossible to get, and she had been very busy lately. Eventually, she’s going to need to make a trip out to Mechanicsburg to get custom glassware made up. Not that the Parisian glass blowers were unskilled, but the ones able to handle her needs were booked solid for at least a year. “But I do have the sheet music with the lyrics in it, just give me a moment.” She walked back on stage, opened up the cockpit with her remote, and fetched the sheets in question as Neena scrambled onto the stage. “Which song did you want to sing?” She asked. 

    “Uh…” Neena looked through the papers. “What a Wonderful World, I think.” Ah, that one she modified heavily in order to pander to the spark-chic of the Paris music scene rather than the original naturalist vibe. “And Don’t Mean a Thing.” 

    Tanya quickly rewound the tape, flipped the karaoke switch of the appropriate cassette, and set it to play. While Neena sang, Tanya set up the next song to play. 

    Of course, this led to her having to manage the machine for several other people to follow the Princess’ lead, and spend an inordinate amount of time in her mecha (which was no ordeal) working on fabricating more cassette frames (she needed more chemicals for the magnetic tape) in her mecha’s workshop during the next set of songs while she kept an eye on the machinery, for new songs that were actually in French. She had demanded that the one requesting the songs arrange for the recording studio and the band for this, but it was one step closer to her short-term goal of creating a karaoke craze, so needs must. 

    The whole thing was really quite fun, anyway. 

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    One of Tanya’s favorite things about Paris was not actually part of Paris. Underground, there was an autonomous polity known The Incorruptible Republic of the Immortal Library of the Grand Architect, or just the Immortal Library, if you wanted to refer to it unambiguously. It was founded by the famous mentor of Simon Voltaire, a spark known as Van Rijn. Yes, the very same Van Rijn that created the Storm King’s Muses, and was repeatedly honored by the names of locations within the University and Paris as a whole. 

    Keep your nose clean (by their standards and no one else’s) and provide some knowledge of your own, and you can borrow any book they have, no questions asked. They save those for when you return the book, because every single one of them were shameless bookworms who either have read the book and wanted to know what you thought of it, or haven’t read it yet and wanted to know what was in it that led you to borrow it. 

    What’s more, they took a very strong stance on freedom of both people and information, with a terrible hatred for mind control. Her people! If she didn’t have that whole ‘county’ thing providing her economic opportunities and industrial capacity to direct at her will, she’d probably ask to immigrate. Instead, she will file that under ‘backup plan’. 

    She handed over a copy of some of her academic papers on oil refining, which they already had, but the donation was symbolic, as being the author of a book they had was just as good as donating a new book or money to keep them running, earning her a proper library card. You could still borrow books with a free probationary one, it just limited you to common books that they were willing to trust random strangers with or ones you were willing to pay to get copied, and after a year you could get upgraded if you had a proven track record of respecting the books. 

    Normally, you couldn’t actually enter beyond the heavily fortified reception, only able to check out books or read them there. But the reception reading areas were always so crowded, so it didn’t take long for someone to tell her about the “secret” entrances that the Library allowed for students who passed whatever arcane criteria they used to accept outsiders as guests. 

    Whatever the criteria were, Tanya evidently passed them. “Hello, Countess!” Greeted one of the librarians, passing by with a cart full of books. “Another book about aetheric fields?”

    “Not today, Monsieur Verlivre!” Tanya said happily, sipping at her coffee from the cushioned chair. She liked this one, it had an overhang that was sturdy enough to hold falling books. At least, for long enough that she could roll out of the chair. “I’m studying for a test in my anatomy class.” Specifically, one on bones. This would not normally require that she study, except it was substantially more complicated than just naming human bones. No, she had to be able to identify bones from monsters, bones from animals, even hypothetical bones. On top of that, the test also covered the makeup of bones, not just their shapes. 

    She was still confident in her ability… but it was worth deviating from her research on why her recreation of the type 97 wasn’t working, even when she did everything right. Just for a night. “Ah, Professor Calcius’ infamous ‘What’s in a Bone?’.” Monsieur Verlivre said, quite complimentary of her choice. “It’s a good primer, but you really should read ‘Spitting in the Face of God, volume V’. It has an excellent section on skeletal systems that’s much more detailed than Calcius, with greater brevity to boot. It’s not very accessible to laymen, is all.”

    “I have never heard of that book series before and now I must read all of it.” Tanya immediately replied, before returning to her book. “Right after I finish this.” She was already three-fourths of the way through the book, it would drive her nuts if she left it unfinished. 

    Monsieur Verlivre laughed at her diligence. “I’ll send a runner for them, Countess.” He looked at Tanya’s reading partner. “What are you studying today, Princess?”

    Neena looked up from her book on the Red Pyramid of Bishara. “Archeology!” She said, blushing. She had already shown Tanya the scandalously detailed drawings of the Red Pyramid’s army of soldiers, garbed only in an incredibly suggestively designed loincloth and a weird pyramid helmet. “You know, lost civilizations, legends, things like that.”

    “Ah, the Journal of the Societe Archeologique de L'etrange! That’s the new issue, isn’t it?” Monsieur Verlivre asked, “I was going to read it in bed tonight, it sounds like an exciting one!”

    “I actually knew the Keeper of that key they mention.” Tanya volunteered, “Ludmilla was on Castle Wulfenbach for a while, left last year with her boyfriend from the wrestling team.” 

    “...Castle Wulfenbach has a wrestling team?” Neena asked. 

    “It has a wrestling league, actually.” Tanya corrected, “The students had a team, but so did several of the military units. The jagermonsters usually won the tournaments, but then they came up with a rule that they could only compete at the highest weight class, even if they didn’t break two hundred kilos.” As you would expect, mad science meant that the heavyweight class had to be redefined a bit. 

    “So they stopped winning?” Neena asked. 

    “No, but it made all the other classes competitive again.” Tanya said, chuckling at the memory. “Sometimes you got a monster that had enough weight to actually be able to outmuscle one of the jagers, but they usually still lost to the jager’s extensive combat experience.”

    “Wow.”

    “Yes, a jagermonster generally has the strength of ten men and the toughness of twenty, but the thing most people don’t really recognize is that each and every one of them has decades of battles under the old Heterodynes.” Tanya said, slipping into a lecturing tone. “Even if you did luck out and find the youngest jagermonsters available, you’re still looking at over thirty years where they spent more time fighting each other than they did anything else, back when Bill and Barry Heterodyne preferred to fight without them.”

    “You sure know a lot about them.” Neena commented, impressed. 

    “I could write a book on jagermonster history at this point. I used their bar brawls to optimize my power armor.” She tapped her sleeve, highlighting the plating underneath it as she was wearing one of her more robust dresses. “They told me stories before the fights.” It wouldn’t be a particularly thorough book, but just writing down the words told by a primary source was enough to be worth binding. “Sometimes afterwards, if I was still mobile.” The jagermonsters knew not to injure her, but sometimes her armor was intact enough that she didn’t need to get delivered to von Pinn and was able to return to the dorm under her own power. 

    “Did I hear word of a new book?” Asked another librarian, who had suddenly entered the small reading space between shelves along with ten others. 

    Ah, crap. She shouldn’t have said that. Not here. “I’ll dictate it this weekend…” There goes her Sunday morning. “But I really need to study for my test. And compile my notes.” The Spark meant she could remember the stories clearly enough, but she needed to organize those thoughts, make sure she told the stories in a coherent order. 

    “Your requested book, Countess.” Monsieur Verlivre said, proffering the tome. “The skeletal system section is detailed on page one hundred and twenty six. We look forward to your historical account.”

    “A sizable chunk of it’s going to be about my great-aunt Titania Heterodyne who married in.” Tanya warned them. “Naturally, they were keen to talk up the woman who I apparently resemble so much.”

    “Even better!” Monsieur Verlivre said happily. “That just means a greater chance of one of those stories being ones we don’t already have written down somewhere!”

    Well, fair enough.