❧ i n b o x

[abheirrant]

—pposed to know when to start speaking? That wasn't a very thorough explanation on what I'm to do this, now was it? Hello? Hello? Are you listening to me? Are you even still ther— [beep]

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[abheirrant]

You accidentally went to a beer festival.

[He sounds doubtful, albeit playful about it. His enchanted drink must be working, the sides of his mask lifting in what is clearly a smile behind it.]

[superposition]

No, really! So -

[ He shifts on his stool, gearing up to talk with his hands, because it's storytime. ]

This needs some context. Last world I was stranded on, just before Anchor - I call it Earth-beta, distinct from the Earth I call home - there were a few hundred other people in the same boat, forcibly taken from their home dimensions. Not unlike what happens here. Only there, the machine that was used to abduct us - the Porter - also interfered with our powers, or bestowed new powers on people who didn't have them prior. With me so far?

[abheirrant]

I believe so, yes.

[He's just going to put a pin in the part where Qubit was from another place where people were taken from their homes before this one, don't mind him and that somewhat surprised look.]

[superposition]

[ If Qubit notices his reaction, he doesn't slow down to mention it. He's already brightened considerably just remembering this. ]

All right. Now, there were two fellows who arrived the same day I did. Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler. They're both scientists - Hermann's an astrophysicist, Newt's a xenobiologist - from another alternate Earth, where they were instrumental in putting a stop to a decades-long extradimensional siege. That's not relevant to this, of course, just - interesting fact. Anyway.

[ Look, he's got to brag about them, even if they drive him crazy sometimes. They're good dudes, and he's missed having them around. ]

One of the powers Hermann ended up with was - I don't think we ever came up with a good short name for it, actually. But it was essentially a form of reality warping. Anything he could express mathematically, he could do.

[abheirrant]

That... sounds utterly terrifying, admittedly.

[Says the undead guy animated by magic.]

Though I suppose it does sound a bit like what is done with glyphcrafting, albeit with numbers instead of language. How does one express what they want to do through mathematics?

[superposition]

[ Qubit lets out a short, amused huff. Carlisle, you think a lot of things are utterly terrifying. But in fairness, that's a pretty normal reaction when it comes to superpowers. Hermann's power is extremely versatile - in theory, the only limitations on it are the limits of mathematics itself. Or more precisely, Hermann's understanding of math, but that's still nothing to sneeze at. ]

Oh, he'd do most of the calculations in his head. Or for longer equations, in chalk. You should see their flat - Newt turned a whole wall into a floor-to-ceiling chalkboard for him.

[ He remembers his tea with a little more enthusiasm. The goop may already be starting to kick in. ]

- Or did you want an example? Hold on.

[ He pokes a few buttons on his watch, and out of it springs a translucent blue globe - a holographic projection of Earth, rotating lazily in the air above his wrist. ]

[abheirrant]

[Ah yes, the good old chalkboard. Now that's the kind of technology Carlisle can understand. The holographic projection of planet Earth that Qubit produces for him, on the other hand... not so much.

Despite knowing good and well that Qubit wouldn't deliberately harm him, Carlisle nearly falls out of his chair as the projection springs up before him, managing to duck the entirety of his body beneath the table in a matter of seconds. He peers back over the edge, his glowing eyes still unfocused, but locked onto the hologram.]

What is that? What is that? It's- it's fine, obviously, as you made it, but what is it?

[superposition]

[ Qubit barely manages to keep from laughing at the way Carlisle immediately books it under the table, only to emerge peering over the edge like a smaller-nosed Kilroy. He does not manage to keep from grinning, however. ]

Sorry, sorry...! It's called a hologram. A three-dimensional soft-light projection. Totally harmless.

[ To demonstrate, he runs his hand through it, with no effect other than disrupting the beams such that chunks of the planet briefly disappear. ]

You all right down there?

[abheirrant]

[Oh, so it is harmless, as promised. Carlisle stares at it, wide-eyed, for another moment, his gaze flicking to Qubit and back again.]

O- oh. It's— it's not magic, I know, and you're going to tell me it's not magic, but- but it looks like it. Some- some sort of an apparition or illusion.

[superposition]

[ He glances up at it and shrugs. ] I suppose. Are you that surprised, after the teakettle? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke, I think.

[ Similar effects, produced by different mechanisms. And Carlisle's not at all unusual for drawing parallels to things he does understand - Qubit was doing the same thing when he tried to explain magic. BUT ANYWAY back to the story. ]

Where was I? Right - so here's the Earth. [ He gives it a spin with a gesture. Damn, that is a sweet Earth, you might say. ROUND,, ]

Let's say you want to mathematically represent a point on its surface. Say, this one. [ He pokes a spot on the east coast of North America, and it lights up orange. ] How do you think you'd go about doing that?

[abheirrant]

[Sliding out from behind the table as though the hologram might bite him were he to move too quickly, Carlisle studies the glowing, translucent orb.]

You... would have to divide the world into specific segments, like squares on a map. And where they intersect would be the point's designation?

[superposition]

Close! Very close. [ So he's familiar with something like Cartesian coordinates, that's a good start. ] Of course they won't be squares, since the surface is curved, but -

[ Qubit taps a couple of keys on his watch, and the globe redraws itself more abstractly, a plain blue sphere with the continents outlined in green, and a few more elements that get drawn in as he mentions them, sometimes poking the globe and sometimes his watch. ]

Rotational axis, north pole to south. Equator - an orthogonal plane bisecting the axis. They intersect at the center of the planet, we'll make that the origin. [ Represented by another orange dot. ] Lines of latitude - indicating the angle of deflection north or south of the equator. So here's thirty degrees, sixty, and the poles at ninety. Lines of longitude - the angle east or west of an arbitrary Prime Meridian, here. Thirty, sixty, ninety, and they meet at one-eighty. And I should clarify, these are just the conventions in use on my world, yours may be different.

[ Which is a long and excessively pedantic way of saying "yeah, you divide it into segments." They've got a very nice wire-frame Earth now. Good job. ]

However - [ he holds up two fingers. ] - that still only gives us two-dimensional coordinates. What about elevation?

[abheirrant]

[Though he flinches as the globe redraws itself, Carlisle doesn't nearly jump out of his skin this time. Small steps. He squints as he examines it, tentatively giving the image a prod with his finger.]

Yes, ours are quite different, I believe. I am no cartographer, unfortunately, nor do I know a proper way to measure elevation. For the mountains near my home, we kept such measurements to how long it would take to traverse them on foot, were one foolhardy enough to attempt it.

[superposition]

[ Baby steps! The image, of course, does not bite. Or respond in any way. See, not all technology is out to get you! ]

Hm. "Dead reckoning" in more ways than one. [ Cause... cause if you get it wrong, you're dead. It's mildly amusing, okay. ]

Not quite the level of precision I'm looking for, though. You'd need a proper survey - manual, or via satellite, or a barometric altimeter, properly calibrated, of course. But let's say that's been done, you have that data. Now you can express any position on the planet as a vector in a spherical coordinate system.

[ With his finger, he draws a line connecting the center with the dot on the surface. The surface end has an arrow. ]

The components being, of course, latitude, longitude, and magnitude - your absolute distance from the center of the Earth. Which is preferable to mean sea level, since technically the planet is an oblate spheroid, not a perfect sphere.

[ Still following? Good, cause he's moving right along. ]

So now, let's say you want to be somewhere else. [ He looks up the target coordinates on his watch, and does the math in his head while he's talking. ] All you need to solve for is the transform between this vector and the new one, and that's basic linear algebra.

[ Plugs in his answer, and voila - the vector swings over to a point in central Europe. Qubit smiles, self-satisifed. ]

Child's play.

[abheirrant]

[Annnnnnd Qubit lost him somewhere, probably right around the time he started talking about barometric altimeters and something about vectors.]

And... what did this Hermann fellow do with such equations, again?

[superposition]

[ ... Okay, yeah, maybe he did get bogged down in the details a bit there. Whatever, it's fine, we'll fix it in post. He was making his way toward the point, though: ]

Oh, he teleported himself to Germany.

[abheirrant]

To the Oktoberfest?

[He's lucky he can recall that word with how fuzzy the lights in his eyes are. That is some good tea.]

[superposition]

[ A short laugh. ] Not quite. He actually ended up further south, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. His hometown.

[ Or Earth-β's version, anyway. But homesickness does not make such distinctions. ]

He was still figuring out his power at the time. I believe at this point he'd only worked out teleportation in theory - it was the first time he'd actually done it, and he hadn't meant to. And then he didn't have enough energy to make the return trip, so he asked me to come pick him up.

[abheirrant]

How utterly terrifying that must be, to accidentally discover the reach of your abilities.

[HE WOULD KNOW.]

The ability to simply go home at will would be quite a boon in this place, though if one wanted to return, it wouldn't be as easy as asking a friend.