Lies & Labyrinths

Lilith raced through the first floor of the library towards the back of the building, finding Professor Inam awake and working diligently at her podium desk. Inam perked up at the sight of Lilith, putting on her hesitant smile to the student.

“Oh, Miss Lavoi, so good to see you. What can I do for you this evening?”

“Punch cards.”

“What?”

“The punch cards. I heard that the machine that the model is based on had them.”

“Oh! Why, yes. My father and mother were in the textile industry, their parents invented such things back in my home in Anaestra.”

“You used them to make the model?”

“Yes, would you like to see up close?”

Lilith pretended to not have gone snooping, giving a silent nod. This seemed to please Inam, who took out her key from her necklace and motioned for Lilith to follow, heading into the space where the model stood.

Professor Inam activated the lever, lifting the machine up and revealing the steps to the room below once more. Lilith did her best to act mystified (though truth be told, that wasn’t hard to do; it was quite an impressive machine even on the second viewing). Inam pointed to the rows of punch cards ready to be looped through the machine to guide the sewing needles.

“These right here are how the mundane magic happens. Two options: Sew, or don’t sew. My family profited off of making elaborate textiles using such things.”

“What about letters?”

“Oh, like words on pattern? Very doable.”

“And what about spell scrolls?”

“What?”

Lilith extended the card to Inam. She picked it up, looking at it, and then to the machine.

And then that same seed of an idea that had been watered began to sprout between the pair of them.

Inam seemed transfixed in place, and not entirely from sleep deprivation.

“Yes…” she said at last, barely a murmur, before repeating louder. “Yes. This is doable. I mean, you’d have to adjust the thread to have enough aetherical charge. Enchanted string…”

Inam walked up to the machine, holding up the tracing card up near one of the punch cards. They were a near match.

“This could revolutionize spell-making. It could make the class obsolete.”

Lilith momentarily daydreamed of Arleigh on the side of the road holding a sign reading Wizard in need of a job

“What do we need to do to make it happen, and how can I help?”

“We? No, no, this machine is far too dangerous. I’ll begin work on the prototype.”

“Well, can I at least stay and watch?”

“I suppose, yes. It beats talking to myself while I figure this out. But first, we’ll need to get some papers. Want to come along?”

“I’d much like that, yes.” Lilith smiled, then put on the most convincing saddened look she could. “I mean, I would, but I have detention with Monsieur Arleigh.”

“Oh, not a problem. I can surely convince Octie to have you be my assistant. Besides, the world’s ending in two weeks. Better to put our time to good use.” Professor Inam glanced up to make sure no one else was around before adding “But, maybe we keep the details of what we’re working on a secret, hmm?”

The pair had gone to collect the necessary items, Inam even showing Lilith to the Components Room located not too far from the Arcane Sciences building. There were bottles and beakers, boxes and burners. There were jars with eyes of newt (mustard seed as it turned out), and then there were jars of actual newt eyes. There was an entire section on rocks, parts for magical clocks, even what appeared to be piles of missing matched socks. Not far from the socks came the other fabrics, denim and cotton and wool and so forth, and beyond that came the most impressive array of spindled thread. Inam seemed to know precisely what she was looking for, seeking a particular case of aquamarine string and grabbing two rolls, handing one to Lilith.

“Why this thread?” Lilith asked. “What about the others?”

“We need something that can hold the charge. Enchanted ink and parchment must be used to make scrolls normally. The same could be said about sewn scrolls. Then there’s actually threading it through, and making sure that the material will carry the charge of magic properly, and that it is cost effective. That is the point of spell scrolls after all. But this? This will do just fine. This spindle here is from my hometown. Legends say that a tailor made a dress for the Wind of Winter herself some hundred years ago with it.” [38]

Lilith had no idea what that meant, but gave a pensive nod all the same.

The work had been steady upon their return, first with Inam waving her wand, murmuring a spell that effectively copied the exact position of the work until that point. The thread that fed up into the dais unhooked itself and tied up quite neatly, leaving Inam room to begin pulling the punch cards out of the air with a levitation spell. They stacked up rather neatly as they fluttered through the air much like a magician performing a trick with a deck of playing cards, the ftlftlfltltlft sound of the stack of paper shuffling and sorting mid air before they landed in a box that Inam conjured with the other hand.

“We must make sure to keep them in order. There are lots of dimensions to that model of the veil, afterall.”

Inam looked Arleigh’s trace card over, chewing on her bottom lip while she thought what to do. Drawing her wand out in the air, she began to write, and continued doing so for quite some time. Lilith watched as she first wrote out the letters to the spell mid-air, sparkling pink lights floating in the air like a sparkler frozen mid-combustion. After that she began to divide it up into smaller sections, working it backwards until everything was nothing more than translucent intangible cards.

The process took much time, as the woman broke the components down to nothing more than 1s and 0s, with 0 telling the machine to not punch the needle, and the 1 telling to go ahead. [39] When all was said and done, all that was left was to compile it all. With a tap of her wand, the new punch cards sprang into tangibility, floating into a neat stack ready to be hung up.

Lilith watched it all with an utter look of aw upon her face, mesmerized by the process. Inam seemed to do it all so easily, filtering the cards into the racks nice and neat, closing the latch to secure their role, and then manually adding in the enchanted thread. All that was left was to turn the weaver on. With a flip of a switch and the hum of energy, the textile machine began to operate. It was enchanting to watch the machine flit through the cards, weaving as it went. Inam was smiling, actually smiling, her mind no longer preoccupied with the impending doom she so inherently expected.

“What now?” Lilith asked.

“Now, we wait. And after it’s done sewing, we try it out. If it’s a success we leave it running overnight. We can set it to produce a certain amount. Really, this machine could be changed though to do more than just spell scrolls.”

“Maybe something with the catalogue? All those numbers on the cards above. If it could somehow sort or select maybe?”

“That’s quite the jump in logic for such a machine. But given enough time…” Inam watched, nearly hypnotized, as the spell scroll was sewn. “I’ll speak to my colleagues after the next Weaving.”

“Colleagues? I thought you ran this department alone?”

“I do, dear. But I have two other associates, professor Berkowitz and Professor Meltzer. They’re at the actual Sable Loom as we speak.”

Lilith waited, rather impatiently, starting to regret the decision as it stood. If she had just stuck to using the tracer, maybe she could have done half the assignment.

The machine eventually stopped. Lilith glanced to the produced sheet, gawping at the sight. There wasn’t just one printed, but a large rug sized repeating pattern. The machine had produced a whole roll of spell scrolls ready to be sheared and separated, and had done so with almost no work.

Inam seemed pleased; she seemed more than pleased actually, tracing her wand against the sheet and splitting it apart into perfect symmetrical stacks of rectangular cloth with a large smile on her face. She held one up to the light, checking for any errors, before tearing one corner of the cloth and muttering an activation phrase. The letters on the sheet began to glow, first blue and then green until a bright orange red enveloped the clothpaper, dissolving it.

“Lilith, what is your favorite color?” Inam asked.

The familiar magic that had been used on her that very day filtered out. It was just as strong, if not a stronger sensation than before.

“Red and blue, equally.” Her tongue tingled that familiar tingle.

“And what day were you born?”

“April First.”

“And who is your favorite teacher?”

“You.” Lilith grinned.

Inam smiled back. “Had to put that spell to good use. Now, let’s not go telling anyone about this just yet. I’ll inform Arleigh that you’ve been turning the scrolls into me. Our little secret, hm?” Inam tapped her nose in the universal phrase of keeping something secret.

Lilith tapped hers in return, beaming. She felt accomplished as she left up the stairs and headed back towards the Delta dorms. And she had every right to do so; Lilith had led the way on a path to doing a whole lot of work without having to move too much. [40]

Lilith’s dinner was waiting in her dorm when she made it back that evening, a bowl of pasta and a chunk of a roll along with a glass of some juice that she had never encountered before. It was tart and sweet and yellow, with freckles of some blended berry floating in it. The rest of the meal was nice enough, but the drink was exquisite. She sat at the study/eating table and savored the meal. It was one of the last chances she would get to enjoy such a time before everything began to unravel and her world became far, far more chaotic than she could have ever anticipated.

Footnotes:

[38] The Fey Court was divided into 4 winds, ruled by three and overseen by the last. It is said that when The Wind of Winter appeared at the last Jubilee ball, it signified the end of the Time of Elves and the beginning of the Time of Mortals.

[39] We know this now as Binary code

[40] In our world, we call them Programmers.