011

Lunacy

Vaughan loved where he lived, but he had to admit, the overabundance of evergreen trees made the traditionally colorful season of fall nothing more than a chilly time that signaled the coming of winter. Winter was never overly difficult for Vaughan, as he was a Red wizard and knew the necessity of stockpiling before snowfall. These two facts together gave him a significant edge over the average mountain hermit.

Vaughan actually quite liked winter; it made the world beautiful in a whole new way. No, it was the tail-end of fall that he disliked. Not for any reason of weather, but for the sharp uptick in calls for him to do his job. Arcane heaters were one of the simplest devices and he always got called out to perform maintenance at this time of year.

To be sure, it was a necessary service, but it was keeping him from his work. They hadn’t even discussed the steps required to get to the moon yet! Already, Vaughan was considering a few difficulties in the mission and potential solutions, but to get anywhere he’d need to talk with Blue and that just hadn’t happened yet.

Not to mention the fact that the Skyseed wasn’t repaired yet because everyone else was preparing for winter as well. Did they have a few weeks before snowfall? Probably. However, the town of Willow Hollow wasn’t stupid, it wouldn’t be caught unawares by an early freeze.

With luck, preparations would be done long before they needed to be used and work could resume.

Vaughan didn’t feel very lucky right now.

“Why isn’t it working?”

Vaughan had heard that question five times in the last ten minutes, each time from a different one of Suro’s kids. The first time he’d bothered to explain the intricacies of spell storage and why the Red core had become misshapen due to underuse, while also being much smaller than when he last adjusted it last year.

Heaters needed new Red every year. His job was to make sure every heater got it, and would last the whole season.

Which meant getting large Red crystals from Big G and lugging them all around town for installation. He was usually paid. Usually. Since this was Suro’s house he was doing this one as a favor. After all, Suro was more than capable of installing it himself, as a jeweler; he just had his own responsibilities in this season. Namely, that of making new heaters.

“You don’t know, do you?”

Vaughan popped the used Red chunk out of its wiry frame with ease. Under it were a few simple Magenta crystals. Naturally, they had drifted in shape over time, and since the heater was such a simple device they hadn’t been cut with precision. Vaughan had to probe each of them individually to figure out how the current crystals behaved. This process was inherently destructive to the spells contained in the Magenta loops, but after the tests Vaughan put his own spells back into it. He rotated the various Magenta pieces until they lined up again and allowed for basic heat control.

“Hello? Old beard guy?”

“Vaughan,” Vaughan said, picking up the replacement Red off the ground and setting it on the heater, widening the frame to accommodate the crate-sized crystal. “And it’s working now.” He grabbed the Magenta handle near the bottom and pushed his will into it, prompting the Red to glow and the ambient heat to increase. “Tah-dah.”

The kitten sitting nearby wasn’t impressed. “So why wasn’t it working?”

“Ask your siblings.”

“They told me to ask you.”

Vaughan put a hand to the bridge of his nose. “After nine months, crystals decay unless you put a lot of extra effort into the design, okay? It’s just not worth it to design a fancy and precise heater.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Vaughan stopped himself, turning to stare at the kitten. “Because a lot of complicated reasons I’ll tell you about when you’re older.”

“Why older?”

“Intelligence increases with age as well as the things you can understand.”

“Why?”

Vaughan smirked. “Don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know.”

“Wh…” the kitten’s face contorted into confusion. “Wh…”

“Riddle me this,” Vaughan said, finishing up his work on the heater and standing up. “Why do you ask so many questions?”

“Uh… because I like to ask questions?”

“I was honest with you, it’s only fair you do so in return.”

The kitten looked visibly nervous now. The next thing Vaughan knew, the young cat was running away from him at top speed.

“Allow me to answer my own question,” Vaughan said to nobody. “You’ve discovered that endless questions annoy the grown-ups, but they don’t want to squelch a curious mind so they let themselves get annoyed, to your delight.” Vaughan tilted his hat back and left Suro’s shop.

There was another kitten waiting outside.

“Why wasn’t it working?”

Bunch of good for nothing tag-teaming conspirators…

~~~

It was dark when Vaughan got home. He lazily pushed the front door open. He took one look at the stairs and decided he wasn’t going to bother and just flopped onto one of the couches in the entry hall.

“You look terrible,” Jeh said from her perch on top of an end table. “Why?”

Vaughan held up a hand. “Please… please… no more questions today.”

“Oh, oka—“

“Hey Vaughan!” Blue shouted, trotting into the room. “When are we going to plan the next phase of the mission?”

Vaughan pulled his hat over his head and let out a pathetic whimper.

Blue blinked a few times before looking to Jeh. “What’s with him?”

“Deathly afraid of more questions today.”

“Ah. Why?”

Jeh shrugged. “I dunno, but you’re sure asking a lot of questions around him.”

“Ah. Right.” Blue shuffled her hooves anxiously. “Communicate without questions… Uh… Yeah, that’s going to be difficult.”

Jeh glanced at Vaughan, frowning. “I say we just let him sleep and come back to this tomorrow. It is a weekend, after all.”

“That won’t stop me from working.”

“Obviously.” Jeh frowned. “You spend so much time in your experiments and calculations…”

Blue tossed her mane back. “It is my gift to the world.”

Jeh raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say this whole thing was stupid when we started?”

“That’s a question.”

Jeh put her hand over her mouth. “Ackpth! Sorry, sorry!”

A loud snore came from Vaughan’s position on the couch.

“He must have worked a lot today,” Jeh said, shaking her head. “You have too. It’s night.”

Blue waved a dismissive hoof. “I slept until noon two days ago, I’m fine.”

“Suuuuure.” Jeh jumped from her perch and entered a roll. “You know, even I need sleep.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “I’ll sleep when I’m tired.” She levitated a notebook out of her lab and started flipping through it. “Right now I’ve got so many things to investigate I’m not sure what to do! Vaughan’s declared ‘to the moon’ and I’ve got a list of items so large—“

Jeh put a hand on the top of the notebook and pulled it down. “Do you, like, play? Ever?”

“Uh… no?”

“You could come with me into the forest, you know.”

Blue’s expression softened. “I’d love a tour of the forest one of these days, Jeh, but right now my mind is fixated. The fixation must be resolved! A plan needs to be made!” She tapped her hooves excitedly. “When we get into a lull, you can show me everything in the forest you want.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Jeh threw herself around Blue’s legs and giggled. “Thanks!” She jumped up and made her way to the front door.

“Wait, where are—“

“My tree. Where I sleep.” Jeh rolled her eyes.

“Soon it’ll be too cold even for you out there.”

“So I do the not-dying thing while I freeze every night, big deal.”

Blue raised an eyebrow. “You never know when it might be important to be around during the night. And even then, in the midst of winter it’ll never get warm enough. Why don’t you sleep inside for once?”

“But… no tree.”

“The great Jeh can’t sleep in a comfy, fluffy bed?”

Jeh blinked a few times. “Never tried.”

“Why not start now? We do have an extra bed.” Blue gestured up the stairs toward a guest room.

Jeh nodded a few times before ascending the stairs. “I’ll give it a shot.”

“Good night!” Blue waved as Jeh vanished from sight. A few moments later she heard the unmistakable sound of someone jumping onto a bed from a significant height.

Vaughan let out another snore.

“I’m just leaving you here,” Blue said, chuckling to herself. “Wizard of Couches, Magician of Pillows, Vaughan. That’s you.” Without any further fanfare, she returned to her lab, where she stared at her notebook for another couple of hours before passing out.

~~~

That weekend, Suro knocked on the door to Vaughan’s cabin.

For a split second after he did this, he was absolutely certain he was being watched. He flicked his eyes out over the forest, examining it for any motion. All he found were a few tasty-looking birds flying out of a tree.

A loud crash from inside the cabin tore Suro’s attention away from the forest. “You okay in there?”

“Just fine!” Jeh called, throwing the front doors open a moment later. “Glad you could make it, Suro! Today’s a special day!”

“It… is?”

“I made it so! Come on in, it’ll be great!”

Suro followed Jeh into the dining room, which was absolutely filled. Fresh fruits and vegetables lined the plates and bowls, an impressive find this close to winter, Jeh must have spent a ton of time foraging. Or she just knew where to find it all. There was no meat—Jeh was terrible at cooking, so this was understandable. Still, it was a bit of a disappointment for Suro. Fruits and vegetables were good and all, but he was a cat, and cats wanted meat.

Not that he said anything on the subject; that would have been rude.

Next to the table the blackboard was stood up. It had a nice drawing of the moon on it, with the words Wizard Space Program Meeting scrawled above it. Several items were cluttered on a small end table next to the blackboard: Vaughan’s star chart, a model of Ikyu and the moon, a few crystal tops, some plants in jars, and a few drawings of the Skyseed.

“Wizard Space Program?” Suro asked.

Jeh shrugged. “Seems like a good name. We’re all kinda wizards, after all.”

“….Not strictly true, but I like it.” Suro took a seat at the table, taking a moment to check that his tool ring was ready to hold silverware. “Where are the others?”

“Asleep,” Jeh said. “Vaughan came back yesterday exhausted.”

“My kids didn’t exactly go easy on him, from what I hear.”

“Is that what it was about? He came home terrified of questions.”

“Yeah, that would be them.”

It was at this point Vaughan himself walked into the room, rubbing his eyes. He took much longer to absorb the state of the dining room than Suro had.

“Huh.” He turned to Suro. “Wh—“

“Not me.” Suro shook his head and gestured at Jeh. “This is all her.”

Vaughan whistled. “You keep surprising me with your skills, Jeh.”

Jeh winked at him. “Please, have a seat.”

Vaughan chuckled, doing as asked. “So, can we eat, or do we wait for Blue, or…?”

“Let’s give her a few minutes,” Suro suggested.

“In that case…” Vaughan gestured at the blackboard. “Wizard Space Program?”

“It works, right?” Jeh asked.

“It’s perfect, I’m just curious what made you think of it.”

“Don’t remember where I got it.” Jeh shrugged. “I just like it.”

A few minutes were not necessary. Blue marched into the dining room talking a mile a minute. “Okay everyone I’ve got a long list of things and I know you don’t want to talk about them over breakfast but I want to get these things out in the open before snowfall and everything becomes a million times harder so please hold your complaints until I fi—“

Vaughan used some Orange to hold Blue’s mouth shut. He gestured at the blackboard before releasing her.

“Oh,” Blue said, lowering her notebook. “Oh…”

“I got this all set up!” Jeh said, grinning. “Now we can… I dunno, eat and talk, figure things out?”

Blue blinked a few times. “Wow… Jeh, this is great… than—wait, Wizard Space Program?”

“Yep!” Jeh grinned. “Great, ain’t it?”

Blue frowned. “It’s not strictly correct, we aren’t all wizards…”

“Oh, give it a rest,” Vaughan said with a dismissive hand. “Suro’s the least wizard-like one here, and he still knows a ton about magic. We, Blue, are the Wizard Space Program.”

“Are we?” Blue put on a playful smirk. “Well, if we are the Wizard Space Program, then we need to name our mission to the moon.”

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“Yes, actually.” She trotted up to the blackboard, picking up both a piece of chalk and a yellow berry in her telekinesis. She ate the berry while she wrote on the blackboard. Standing back, she grinned. “Operation Lunacy.”

“Embrace the stupid!” Jeh declared.

“That’s the idea, basically,” Blue said. “We really should take several years of work testing space before trying to go to the moon, but we have a very optimistic and idealistic Red wizard who thinks it’s the next thing to do. Sooo… Operation Lunacy it is.”

Vaughan bit into some kind of green fruit Suro didn’t recognize. “Well, Jeh went through all this trouble, it would be a shame not to go through with it. Blue, I know you’ve been working on the mission—“

“Operation Lunacy,” Jeh corrected.

“—Operation Lunacy’s parameters,” Vaughan corrected. “So, I take it you’re more than ready?”

Blue nodded vigorously. “Please, in Dia’s name, just let me talk already!”

“I dunno, maybe we should debate it a bit more…”

Blue shut his jaw with her telekinesis and launched into her explanation. “So! You all thought getting to space was hard and dangerous! Hah! That was nothing, the moon is a much harder goal for many reasons, and it’s not just distance.” She levitated the Ikyu-moon model onto an empty spot on the table and started spinning the moon around. “The mission goal is simple: go to the moon, retrieve a sample, return to Ikyu. Each part of this brings its own issues.

“First, going to the moon.” She gestured at the spinning model. “This isn’t exactly accurate to the distance between Ikyu and the moon, it only shows the relative motion of the moon. The accurate distance would be more like this…” She drew a circle on the left side of the blackboard for Ikyu, and a smaller circle on the right side of the blackboard for the moon. “Unlike the planets, we have a fairly good idea how far away the moon is and how big it actually is. This distance is about 400,000 kilometers. For comparison, the diameter of Ikyu is somewhere around 12,000 kilometers, and the moon about 3,000.”

“How far did I go?” Jeh asked.

“Your original mission was to go until you could see the curvature, which Vaughan assures me is only about ten kilometers above the surface. Since you went… much higher…” Blue furrowed her brow and placed a tiny dot right next to Ikyu, so close it was almost touching. “I’d say you got about here.”

Jeh blinked. “Wow, that looks like nothing.”

“Yeah. Distance really is a big problem here. It took you somewhere around three hours to get there while pushing the engines far beyond what we expected. If we extrapolate to the full distance and assume we understand everything—which we do not—the journey would take well over a hundred days. Which is a bit much.”

Vaughan nodded to Jeh. “She does not require food, and the air can be restored.”

“We don’t know if there’s a long-term limit to that,” Blue pointed out, absent-mindedly biting down on some blue fruit. “Maybe the black stuff the restorer leaves behind will eventually overrun the supply, we’d have to test. And testing things like that long term is difficult because of the other problem: Jeh needs to sleep.”

“Unfortunately true,” Jeh admitted. “I tried to stay up as long as I could one time in the forest. You eventually start seeing things. Weird things.”

“And nobody casts magic when they’re asleep,” Blue said. “Even if she could sleep on the journey, the moment she does, she starts falling back to Ikyu. You have to fight to go up, and sleeping isn’t fighting.”

Jeh raised a hand. “Maybe we could use Blue magic to make me go slow so I can stay awake for longer or something?”

Blue blinked. “That’s a good idea, actually, if we can control the Blue magic. That’s a big if, though, as the rate of motion will be different for everything. The more reasonable suggestion is to send someone else up there who can run the drive while Jeh sleeps.”

“But there’s no one else who can do what Jeh does,” Suro said.

“Exactly!” Blue declared. “Once someone else goes up there, we need to keep them alive. And that becomes a problem. With Jeh, we don’t have to worry about temperature regulation, sunburns, meteors, and whatever else might slowly kill us that she doesn’t even notice. There are a lot of things that could be deadly up there we don’t even know about. Keeping everyone alive is perhaps the most important part.

“Then there’s the problem: with more people and longer voyage times, you need more supplies. Jeh can survive without eating, we cannot. Hover clover tubers can provide most of the nutrients we need, but it still takes up space, making everything heavier. Then there’s whatever armor we’ll need to keep tiny meteors from destroying us, which makes it even heavier. And as we all know, heavier things are a lot harder to move.” She slapped the chalk into the blackboard for effect. “To go to the moon you’ll need a big ship. I’m not sure our drive could lift a ship of the size we need.”

“Make more drives,” Vaughan said. “Distribute them evenly around the center of the ship, tie them all to the same will.”

Suro coughed. “There is a limit to how much will we can put out. You and Jeh have a lot, I have a moderate amount—“

“—and I have as close to zero as you can get,” Blue added.

“I had been trying to avoid bringing that up, but yes, you would have trouble continually working the air restorer.”

Vaughan frowned. “What we need is an Orange wizard who can tease out large amounts of force with minimal will, where she can then store the spells for our use. I am not an Orange wizard, and it’s pretty clear Orange is what you need to go up.”

“Ashen launched herself off the mountain with an explosion,” Jeh commented.

“Then the ship would have to store a ton of Red for my use,” Vaughan said.

“There’s another problem with using Red,” Blue said. “It has to ‘go fast.’ The reason we went slow was to avoid uncontrollable tumbling while we moved through the atmosphere.”

Suro let out a soft meow. “The problems keep adding up, don’t they?”

“We’re not even done yet,” Blue said. “See, we’re not just trying to get to ‘anywhere in space,’ we’re trying to get to ‘the moon.’ The moon moves.”

“Slowly, though,” Suro said. “…Right?”

Blue put on a coy smirk. “Well, it takes the moon about a month to go all the way around.” She gestured at the spinning model. “Keep in mind that it’s 400,000 kilometers to the moon. In order for it to cover that much distance it has to be moving a kilometer every second.”

There was silence at the table.

“I didn’t think anything could go that fast…” Suro said.

“Blue has been used to accelerate to that speed,” Vaughan said. “In controlled environments, of course. Anything going that fast lights on fire.”

“Not in space, though, where there’s basically no air,” Blue said. “…Which is why the moon can go that fast, huh, didn’t even think about that one. Maybe there’s a relation there…” Blue shook her head. “But that’s a distraction. The problem is, the moon is going absurdly fast and if we just try to fly to it we’ll end up little more than a pancake.”

“At least we know the moon can go that fast,” Jeh said. “It means we can too!”

Blue nodded. “That’s right. It’s physically possible to go that fast. We just have to find some way to do it so we can actually approach the moon safely. Which leads us to…”

“The sample, right?” Vaughan asked. “I’ve been thinking about that one myself.”

“Yes, how are we going to grab something?” Blue tapped her hoof on the ground. “We can’t leave the ship. Even Jeh needs air. We can’t just send her out to grab a rock, and even if we did, opening up the ship will vent all the air we have. We need a workaround.”

“Perhaps a big claw attached to the ship?” Suro said, lifting up the ring he was using to hold a fork. “It’ll grab a rock and keep it safe until we get back.”

“That’s one idea,” Blue said, scribbling it down into her notebook. “Naturally, once we have the rock we need to go back. The return journey has much of the same issues as the original one. We basically have to undo everything we did to get to the moon, and worry about finding the correct landing spot on Ikyu while also not burning up in the atmosphere. There will be no way to predict cloud cover if the mission lasts more than a few days, either.”

Vaughan scratched his chin. “These are a lot of issues. But none of them seem insurmountable. The moon itself demonstrates the possibility, as Jeh pointed out. It’s up there, we can get up there. With no air in space, we no longer have to go slow.” Vaughan snapped his fingers. “Perhaps a hybrid? Lift out of the atmosphere slowly, then transition to Red for speed.”

“We need to test more propulsion methods in space,” Blue said. “Which is why we need to repair the Skyseed, so we can run those tests.”

Jeh raised her hand. “I’m all geared up and ready to go when you need it! Red, Blue, whatever—it’ll be my pleasure to experiment!”

Blue grinned. “That’s great! Now, for those experiments, we should probably go to a near-airless elevation, which would mean closer to where Jeh reached. However, each time we go up, the chances of those tiny meteors… if one hits the drive…”

“I’ll fall back to Ikyu,” Jeh said. “It might take a while, but I’ll get back to you. I’ve been working on memorizing the maps so I know where I’m crashing!”

“Let’s try to avoid that,” Blue said. “You’ll worry us sick.”

Jeh shrugged. “I’m invincible, you don’t need to worry at all. Seriously.”

“But if we design for your safety,” Suro said, “then the ship will be able to hold any of us as well.”

“Oh. Right.”

“In conclusion!” Blue called, grabbing everyone’s attention. “We have a large number of problems to solve. If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears.”

“Most of you isn’t ears,” Vaughan pointed out.

“Har-har.” Blue rolled her eyes. “Seriously, though, I’m not going to be able to solve these on my own. I need help, we need to run more experiments, and there are probably problems I haven’t even thought of.” She took in a deep breath. “We might need to bring in more people than just the four of us, there’s so much going on.”

Suro chuckled. “Blue, I’m sure you’ll find that Willow Hollow will be eager to help you with your project. Everyone’s already a little curious, and I’ve noticed Krays in particular has taken an interest.”

“I suppose we are the Wizard Space Program, now…” Vaughan said, scratching his beard. “Perhaps we should get some more members in an official capacity.”

“We could take it to the Mayor, now,” Suro added. “With a successful mission, a goal, and the air restorer… he might be convinced to make it official. I’ll get Lila to talk to him.”

Blue grinned, slamming a hoof on the table. “That’s the spirit! We can turn this into a proper production! Just make sure we don’t turn it into a reflection of the morons at the Academy—we do things our way.”

“Absolutely!” Vaughan declared, standing to his full height. “We’re going to the moon! A bunch of nobodies in a frontier town! We… will go where no one has gone before!”

Blue raised an eyebrow. “I mean, didn’t we already do that?”

“Then we will keep doing it! Until there is nowhere else to go! To the moon, to Hexi, to the stars themselves!”

“ ‘Lunacy,’ “ Suro said, chuckling. “Oh, what a fitting name…”

~~~

Lila took in a sharp breath before she knocked on the Mayor’s door.

The Mayor’s house was nowhere near the town square, which was where the town hall was. He lived near the edge of Willow Hollow, and one could be forgiven for thinking his house was a simple farmhouse. It was even a little run down.

She knew full well this was done intentionally. The Mayor didn’t like visitors, though Lila wasn’t sure why. The man was very mysterious and, given his mask, Lila wasn’t even sure what race he was.

When she heard rummaging inside the house, she whispered a quick prayer to Dia and adjusted her Keeper robes to collect herself.

The Mayor opened the door, turning his mask to her. “You want something.”

“Yes,” Lila said. “Though the request comes from others through my husband.”

“This is about Vaughan’s little project, isn’t it?”

Lila nodded. “In an official capacity, it is the Wizard Space Program, and it seeks to explore above us to further our understanding of the universe and develop innovations that will benefit Willow Hollow, Kroan, and the world at large.”

“That’s not the official tagline, you made that up just now.”

Lila folded her ears back. “Yes.”

“Good. You make a perfect spokesperson. You are a good face for the operation.”

“I’m not part of the Wizard Space Program, Mayor.”

“You should be. They need someone like you to navigate the inevitable consequences of innovation.” He tilted his head back.

“I am a Keeper, Mayor. You know that.”

“Much like the mayorship, you likely won’t have much choice.” The Mayor tapped his cane on the ground. “If they get into trouble, you’ll help them with your voice, and you know it. Why not make it official?”

Lila frowned. “I do not want to overextend myself, or take away from my meditations. I serve Dia, not innovation.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive.”

“Of course not, that’s why I’m he—“

The Mayor held up a hand. “You are to be the Mayor soon, Lila. Very soon. In deference to that, I will approve whatever you do. You can declare the Wizard Space Program a community project, you have my blessing.”

“Thank you, Mayor.”

“But you know I’m right. It will be best to officially attach yourself to them.”

Lila nodded. “Yes… yes, you are right.”

“I will not live to see you succeed,” the Mayor continued.

“Are you sure you don’t want any special rites?”

“My body is up to you, once I’m gone why would I care what you do with it?” He let out a scratchy chuckle that turned into a cough. “But… I do have a direct request.”

“Anything.”

The Mayor sighed. “I wish you didn’t mean that…” He shook his head, focusing. “There is a crate in my basement marked with black paint. I want you to try to destroy the object within. I hope that, eventually, your innovations will be able to.”

Lila frowned. “If… you don’t mind me asking, what is it?”

“I do mind you asking. It’s best if nobody knows what it does. Do not touch it. It will ruin your life.”

Lila forced herself to rein in her curiosity. The Mayor rarely asked for anything directly; he must have thought this was beyond important. She would do her best to follow his wishes in regards to the thing in his basement.

A thought occurred to her.

“It’s… it’s not alive, is it?” Lila asked.

“I am almost certain it is not,” the Mayor said. “However, I know of nothing else even remotely like it. So be wary.”

~~~

Krays couldn’t believe it, but she was actually nervous. She caught herself wringing her wrists—she hadn’t done that since she was a kid!

She knew there was nothing to be afraid of. She knew these people. Great insult partners, most of them. Some even fought back! Foolish, but fun. It wasn’t the people she was nervous about.

No… it was the nature of what she was about to pledge herself to. The very stars themselves. That which flew in the heavens far above her head. She might even get to use Vaughan’s telescope whenever she wanted! To see that which she had spent her entire life looking at…

Not that she would admit most of this to anyone. Darmosil was the only one aside from her family who knew, and her family was far from here. Very far.

But she could still remember standing on top of a mountain in deep snow, staring at the brilliant stars that streaked across the sky. How old had she even been? It was young. Very young.

The stars looked down on everyone. They were above her. She could rise to see them as more than just sparks—she could see them for what they were. That was the beauty of it, she supposed. She didn’t know what they really were, now. But by pooling together, they could come together and find them. To find the stars.

To find the truth.

She took in a deep breath and knocked on the door to Vaughan’s cabin.

Mary opened the door. “Oh, you’re here! We were starting to wonder if you wouldn’t come!”

Krays grinned. “You think I’d give up an opportunity to insult the stars to their face? Hah! You wish!”

“Darmosil?”

Krays shook her head. “He’s the blacksmith, he has a lot more work to do than the glassblower. Naturally, this means all his work is shoddy and rushed. But it’s his loss. Plus, he has this bizarre fundamental lack of imagination, kind of like Big G.” She looked over Mary’s shoulder. “Yes, Big G, I’m talking about you.”

Big G folded his arms. “You must desire enemies.”

“Actually I’m surprisingly cordial and polite to my enemies. You’re welcome.” She winked at him. “So, who else is coming?”

Seskii jumped out from behind a couch. “Well, since Darmosil’s not here, I think there’s everyone.”

“There is no way Blue invited you,” Krays said, breaking out into a grin. “Good.”

“Yep!” Seskii winked. “Gari for life!”

“So, you gonna offer me a drink or what?”

Seskii put her hands on her hips. “Krays, now is not the time for intoxication.”

“It’s always time for intoxication.”

“You haven’t touched an alcoholic beverage for three months.”

Oooh, she’s good. Nice. “You could remedy that—bring the succulent juice. You do sell juice, right?”

Seskii smirked mischievously. She pulled one of her standard bottles out of her pack and handed it to Krays. “Wine. Excellent quality too, I might add.”

Krays let out a laugh, taking a quick swig of the drink. “You need to get better suppliers, this stuff is barely palatable.”

“Your face says otherwise.”

“Your face says a million things I wouldn’t repeat in polite company.”

“That doesn’t include you, right?”

“Naturally! Polite company is trying to rip you off. And usually in broad daylight.”

“And that’s why she’s polite to her enemies,” Mary said.

“Is she though?” Seskii asked, her playful smile unwavering. “Or was that part of this game of hers?”

Big G put a hand to the bridge of his nose. “Please. Have some decorum. This is an official Program now. We need to look the part.”

Jeh ran into the room. “Oh my gosh, new people! Hi! I’m Jeh, your immortal pilot!” She demonstrated by snapping one of her fingers on the wall. “See? Good stuff!”

Krays glanced to Big G. “You were saying, prophet buddy?”

Big G folded his arms, remaining silent.

Seskii produced a bottle of light-green juice and gave it to Jeh, who drank it without even asking what it was. “That was delicious. Now! Uh… yeah I don’t know what’s going on now, I’m not the one who organized this one.”

“That would be me,” Suro said, walking into the room with Lila and Vaughan behind him. “I am the ‘man with connections’ after all.”

Lila nodded at her husband’s words, but her face was one of a woman unsure of what to make of the situation.

“…Where’s Blue?” Jeh asked.

“I knocked on the lab door,” Vaughan explained. “She yelled ‘give me three minutes!’ and refused to come out.”

Krays winked at Big G. “How professional.” His lack of response did not deter her. The strongest walls were the most fun to break.

“Anyway,” Vaughan dusted his hands off on his robes. “Tradition from the Academy tells me I need to make an inspiring speech and get you all on board. But one of the things we set out to do here was not to do it the way of the Academy. No noxious paperwork, no endless reports, no bureaucracy, no chains of command, and whatever else we can think of. So… we all know why we’re here. This everyone?”

Seskii nodded.

“Wait…” Lila tilted her head. “I don’t think we gave you an invitation?”

“You didn’t.”

“Ah. Don’t know what I was expecting.”

Krays shrugged. “Hey, if you didn’t invite me, I probably would have forced myself anyway.”

“And Seskii is cool!” Jeh called. “She has juice!”

“What does she offer, exactly?” Big G asked. “The rest of us have technical knowledge, skills, and connections. She sells juice.”

“Emotional support,” Mary suggested.

“Can’t you do that?”

“Nope.”

Big G raised an incredulous eyebrow.

“I’m also good at economics!” Seskii said. “And extremely obscure trivia!”

“Truly, skills the Great Crystalline Ones would envy,” Krays deadpanned.

“You’d be surprised.”

“Anyway…” Vaughan said, cutting them off there. “I suppose, welcome to the program. Uh… since we’re a democracy I suppose we get to take a vote on Seskii’s inclusion?”

Mary, Jeh, Krays, Lila, and Vaughan all raised their hands or paws.

Suro turned to Lila. “Really?”

Lila nodded. “She’s got something I see in so few people. A heart to know others for their sake.”

“Awwww, thanks!” Seskii said, waving a hand at Lila. “You do that too, though.”

Lila smirked. “I didn’t say you weren’t redundant.”

“Ooooh, burn!” Krays laughed. “From the Keeper!”

“She wasn’t always a Keeper,” Seskii pointed out.

Lila rolled her eyes. “Have my children been spreading rumors again?”

“Nah, people just open up to me.”

“A—“

Blue charged into the room with wild eyes and a ton of papers in her telekinesis. “I have it! I have it! I’ve figured out the speed problem!”

Everyone stared at her blankly.

“Oh, just listen.” She ran to another room, grabbing the blackboard and a piece of chalk. She drew the to-scale image of Ikyu and the moon. “Just in case you don’t know, the distance to the moon is really stupid large. So large we expect to take over a hundred days to reach it. This is very ineffective, so we needed to figure out how to go faster. But the Skyseed was going at maximum speed to just barely get into space, right? Right?”

“Um…” Mary tilted her head. “Yes?”

“Hah!” Krays chuckled. “It’s obviously no.”

Jeh widened her eyes. “I could have gone faster!?”

“You were always going faster!” Blue declared, pointing at Jeh. “Well, at least, once you were high enough.”

“Uh…?”

Blue wiped the blackboard clean, drawing a dot on it. “This is the Skyseed.” She drew an arrow pointing downward. “This represents the fact that the Skyseed wants to fall to Ikyu.” She drew an arrow pointing upward that was equal in size to the other arrow. “When the drive is calibrated to make the Skyseed hover, this is what it looks like. The ship wants to go up and down equally so it goes nowhere. At this point, we increase the power of the drive…” She increased the size of the arrow. “So up wins out and the Skyseed drifts upward. This is how we fly.”

Mary blinked. “I’m assuming you’ll explain to me how that works later.”

“Yes, yes, sure,” Blue said, more than a little dismissively. “The important thing to realize is that the force produced by Orange does not directly correlate with speed. It correlates with acceleration. Right, Vaughan?”

Vaughan scratched his beard. “That’s not strictly true… but yes, applying a constant force does keep making things go faster, to a point. Eventually the speed stops increasing.”

“And I’ve just realized why that is!” Blue said, flicking her chalk at Vaughan. “When we go faster and faster we hit more air. The air stops us from going faster—or it lights on fire. It’s the same concept that we used in the fins to right the Skyseed! The air pushes back, keeping the speed from increasing.” She drew a small arrow pointing down next to the dot. “This is the… air resistance.”

“And if there is no air…” Big G said, realizing it first.

“Bingo!” Blue called. “There’s so little air in space the air resistance might as well be zero! Which means… when we are using the drive in space, it could accelerate… well, I want to say forever, but the trace amounts of air will probably stop us eventually. And by eventually I mean at a speed much greater than the moon itself.” She grinned. “Once the Skyseed is in space, it could make it to the moon in record time! With a low acceleration estimate of 0.01 meters per second per second, we get… three days for the journey. Granted, you smash into the moon at an absurd speed at the end of it, but that’s progress! Once you’re in space there’s nothing limiting your speed, so far as I can tell!”

Seskii started clapping, which shocked Blue considerably. “That’s great! One question… do you really expect everyone to just understand that without context?”

Blue blinked a few times. “Who let you in?”

“This is why you should show up to meetings,” Suro said.

“I was busy having a mathematical breakthrough!”

“And now you’ve confused everyone.”

“But it’s amazing!” Jeh said. “The Skyseed really can get to the moon, can’t it?”

Blue shook her head. “Too much danger. Also, these are very rough numbers calculated for constant acceleration without any adjustments or anything. I actually have no idea how fast you’re accelerating; it’s notoriously hard to measure and it’s rarely consistent. But…” She folded her ears back. “I… am getting ahead of myself. We should probably explain some things first.” She took a deep breath. “So… we’re the Wizard Space Program. Our mission statement is to ‘go up.’ To further that goal, we are currently engaged in Operation Lunacy. We’re going to the moon. One way or another.”

Seskii nodded. “Nice speech.”

“Thank yo—hey!”

~~~

“Well… I was kind of expecting it to look more… impressive, when done,” Blue said, gesturing at the Skyseed.

It sat in Vaughan’s backyard with a brand new set of fins cut by Tracy and a new metal ring along the outside. However, the parts were functionally identical, and the only way to tell that it was repaired was to examine the variation in the wooden grains.

But it was ready to fly.

Blue turned to the others—Vaughan, Jeh, Suro, Lila, Krays, Big G, Mary, and Seskii. “Well… I would say it’s time to fly, but…” She gestured at the completely overcast sky. “We’re not flying in that.”

Vaughan placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of time.”

The moment he said these words, a single snowflake fell on his nose.

Krays let out a tremendous laugh. “Nature thinks otherwise, Gideon!”

Vaughan visibly twitched, flicking the drop of water off his nose. “This is just the first snow, we have a bit more time.”

Seskii took in a sharp breath. “Aaaand you’ve doomed yourself.”

“Tempting fate is a myth,” Blue retorted.

Seskii chucked. “You keep telling yourself that...”

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Acceleration is fun.

Acceleration is also somewhat hard to notice existing. Aristotle related force to motion through the velocity of the object, not the acceleration. These days, we all know the equation F=ma (force equals mass times acceleration) but in the days of old (and on Ikyu currently) the nature of kinematics was a new science. They know enough to identify acceleration and that greater forces produce greater accelerations. They can even run calculations with constant acceleration, as Blue has been doing a lot in her lab.

The equation she used specifically is x=vt+½at2. The “x” is the distance traveled, “v” is initial velocity (zero in Blue’s calculations since the ship starts at rest), “t” is the time, and “a” is the acceleration. Blue knew the desired distance “x” and had an estimated acceleration “a,” and from these she could calculate how much time it would take to go “x” distance. Using algebra, she arrived at t=√(2x/a).

We do these calculations in high school, but they used to be knowledge only the academics could use. Both Blue and Vaughan have mathematical training, though in Blue’s case she also has a knack for it. Most people on Ikyu wouldn’t be able to even think in terms of acceleration, much less make sense of the math. (For the record, Blue knows how to do significantly more complex calculations, and she did several before realizing how simple this particular answer was.)

One thing that you need to be careful of in calculating kinematics are the units. “x”, “v”, “a”, and “t” all have units: meters, meters per second, meters per second per second, and seconds. The distance Blue had to the moon was 400,000 km, which is not meters. Furthermore, the time she wanted to solve for was in days, and would have to be converted from seconds in order for the equation to work.

Curiously, I ran the calculations with an acceleration of 0.01 m/s2

Now, there are two of you in the audience now. There’s the “augh no not math!” people and the “this is very simple math why are you explaining it?” people. For the former, I usually try to avoid math, but today’s science discussion kind of couldn’t avoid it. For the latter, don’t worry; we’ll eventually get into orbital mechanics and other actually complicated nonsense that will drive Blue up a wall.

After all, they’re trying to get to the moon. Magic may give them a lot of shortcuts, but space is space. They’re going to have to realize certain things or perish in the attempt. Still, I will endeavor to explain it in an understandable way.

Keep in mind that the kinematic equations only work when acceleration is constant. Even in a world of magic where you can precisely tune the force an Orange crystal produces, acceleration will rarely be constant. Forces batter the ship from every angle. Even though space is largely empty, light from the sun will provide a non-negligible change over immense scales!

When acceleration is changing, the equation F=ma becomes F=m(dv/dt). “dv/dt” means “change in velocity over time” (the definition of acceleration). However, “dv/dt” can be a function, rather than a simple number. Calculus is required to solve these types of problems exactly.

Calculus has not been invented on Ikyu. Blue will be forced to resort to numerical methods—that is, creating an estimate formula that can be performed several times in succession to get closer to the real value. It is a slow and time consuming process, but it can get an answer to any desired precision.

The problem is the steps have to be done all over again for each individual problem. Blue has a long road ahead of her in raw calculation. Luckily, we won’t see much of her direct numbers. The story is a story, after all.

Still, appreciate the existence of Calculus. It allows us to figure out how things move.