Jonathan

Jonathan ate and, after another maid took his eating utensils away, began to read the book. Sometimes he checked a few things with the help of the books on his E-Reader, but generally, this was not needed.

Later this evening, he got more food, ate it and began to make himself ready for bed. Then he went to sleep.

He awoke due to somebody hitting his door hard. After a short while, he was still groggy from sleeping, he realized that somebody knocked against his door.

He stood up and went to the door, opening it.

Tablos greeted him and seemed to be in a bit of a haste. The Archmage was out of breath and practically yelled at Jonathan.

After a while, Jonathan raised his hand and asked Tablos to tell him slowly what was going on.

Tablos began to breathe slowly and gathered himself. Then he began talking: “The king has found out about you, and he wants to meet you today. I had hoped to let some more time pass before this happens, but we do not have another choice. I have sent a tailor to you, he will come soon, who will give you a mage robe, simply because as a familiar you technically have the right to wear one and also they are easy to adjust. Elise will also be forced to come, but I already send Mage Fizzlewood to her, and she will use her Mage Apprentice robes as formal wear. Now, I will tell you what you must do and how to act in the presence of his majesty, King Eduard the third of Theron. The first thing you will do is to bow before the king, let me show you.”

And Tablos showed Jonathan exactly how to bow as well as which other rituals were needed to greet the king. They trained this step for a while until someone knocked at the door.

Tablos opened the door and greeted the tailor, who seemed to be named Janus Searwind. The Tailor had a robe on his arm and let Jonathan put it on. He took some measurements, while the Archmage told Jonathan what would be expected of him as well as where the discussion might go.

After this, and after the tailor had left, they both went and ate, all while they continued their discussion.

Then they met Elise with Lukas Fizzlewood and got each other on the same page.

After waiting a few hours, they began moving out of the school. This was the first time that Jonathan had left the building or had even seen the outside world. It seemed similar enough, some kinds of trees were identifiable by him such as oaks or birches.

They went to a carriage and then it began moving over a cobblestone road. Jonathan then realized that the carriage had no suspension and began thinking the entirety of the trip about how to build one because this was not comfortable.

Then, finally, they were there. He had already seen it from afar, a stone castle which seemed to be fairly large. They went inside the courtyard and left the carriage.

Then they went into the keep. After moving for a while, the group reached the throne room, where they were announced.

Jonathan followed the steps that he was told by Tablos and then the king began to talk. After a short period of greeting and setting some facts straight, the king asked how the world was, from which Jonathan came.

And Jonathan answered: “It is much different from what I have seen from this world. First of all, to my knowledge, there is no magic in my world. Also, while there are still nobles and even kings or queens as head of state, they generally only have representative power and no real power. At least in the most powerful nations of my world, this is the case. Even though we have no magic or technological advancements allow us to do incredible things. We can travel vast distances fast and we can trade perishable foodstuffs all over the entire world. Some of the militaries of my world have weapons so horrifying as well as or so powerful that war between these powers must be avoided at all cost. A direct war that is. The main reason used for war is not the chance at a territorial gain or a perceived slight against the nation or its head of state, but for spreading an ideology. Of course, this is seldom the only or even the most important reason, but it is the one told to the public. The populations of the nations of my world are counted in millions, and nations with under a hundred thousand inhabitants are remnants of a past that is over for about a century, an era that itself is a remnant of a past from even farther back in time. But let’s not talk about war, but about the normal life. People are regularly flying to other nations, which may lie on another continent, flights that can take anything between 30 minutes or a day. We communicate with each other in my world without delay, even if we live apart, and we do this in our daily life, without really thinking about that. I know that books are expensive in this world, but in my world, they are plenty and inexpensive. We play games I cannot describe here, and for these games, which generally have a big playing field, you must not leave the room. We have materials I think your people will find incredible and many of those are inexpensive parts of our daily lives. I have seen only a few panels of glass in my journey to this place. In my world, you will see buildings, that seem to be built entirely out of glass, which of course is not true, fairly regularly, if you go to one of the big cities, generally with over 500,000 inhabitants. But I know of cities with populations of over twenty million people. But back to glass. Most buildings in my world, especially in the so-called developed world, which is a group of countries that are generally relatively rich and have huge manufacturing capabilities as well as a well-developed infrastructure, are made out of glass. I ask you, your majesty, and all who are here, do you have any specific questions about my world? But please remember, we generally do not know how our technology works. We know how to use it, but not how to build it. Many of us are specialists, which can build part of it, but they normally need a tool from another specialist to do it.”

After Jonathan’s speech, it was quit in the room. After a short period of time, most of the persons in the room made known that they did not believe him, which the king stopped.

He wanted that the summon would meet him for a private lunch in an adjourning room, a high honour for the guest.

After they went into the room, and the maids brought the food, the king asked him one thing right away, not even touching his food, which meant that Jonathan also was not allowed to dig in: “Do you know why books are so inexpensive in your world?”

Jonathan answered immediately: “It comes down to two factors. The first is a tool, developed around five hundred years ago and refined over the ages, the printing press. The second is mass production. The printing press makes, in its original form the cost of one written page more expensive than writing it per hand. But much of the cost is an initial investment. If you produce enough books, you can recoup these investments. Let’s say, a scribe needs six months to produce one book. But for some reason, you want five hundred copies of the same book. If you let this scribe work on this project, it would be extremely expensive and he would need around 250 years. Not exactly ideal. But let’s use the printing press. Because of the steps included, the printing press needs around a year to create a copy. But, while this sound worse, the printing press has one special ability. It can create a high amount of copies of one page in not much more time than it takes to make it ready. So you create five hundred copies of every page, after that, you must bind the books, and you have finished 500 copies of the same book in under two years. The operation of a printing press is scalable and can be made even more efficient because two printing presses can work on the same book, while this is difficult for two scribes to do.”

The king seemed to be in deep thought. And then he asked if Jonathan would be able to build a printing press.

Jonathan's answer was no, but he knew how to create one if he would get a smith, who should be able to work with relatively thin objects as well as a wine press and a woodworker. The king seemed to be intrigued and began to eat.