Machinist of Mana Chapter 136 Sayings of the Ancestor

I attended to my task, aiming for one of the closer places on the list Kitia had given me. This was a college of sorts, a technical one that focused on machines. I had some letters introducing me, and managed to arrange a tour of the public facilities without too much trouble. Elves loved to show off their stuff, but honestly, I wasn't terribly impressed.

“This is one of our newest pieces, a bit coming out of one of the labs,” the guide explained to me.

What he was showing me was mirrored several times through this hall, some of them labeled as hundreds of years old. It was an elevator, weird to me that they seemed to put so much effort into these, but it didn't matter. The design principles were there, with small incremental increases in efficiency, or sometimes materials switched out, but it was the same thing. The overall item, and underlying mechanics were basically the same, for centuries.

“I see, here are some extra pieces here. What do they change?” I inquired politely.

“Oh yes, those. See with this arrangement and a small change to the underlying enchantments we can increase mana efficiency by four percent. Maybe that seems small, but bits like that add up! See, we put these all over, a lot of machines go all over, so every bit matters and this is a significant improvement.”

“That makes sense. How does it compare to the original model you have back there?” I asked, pointing to the first one as we chatted.

“A forty percent increase efficiency increase overall from the oldest ones we know of. Though most of the modern results are coming from materials change. Some of the older steels and irons were fairly poor at the job, better than anything else of course, but not as good as we have now.”

This seemed obsessive, almost mad to me. How long had they been working on these for almost halving the efficiency. Why? I couldn't imagine men spending generations trying to work out small kink after small kink on a design like this, it would be insane. They didn't as much though did they? Elves lived much longer than men did, so perhaps that was some of it.

“I think humans would just add combustion engines to it before spending so much time on the effort,” I admitted with a frown.

“Bah! You know his Majesty told us about burning things for power, and do you know what he told us?” There it was, a fallback on a figure that had been gone for literally thousands of years.

“I do not,” I admitted.

“That we should be careful of it. That too much would cause destruction and disruption of the world around us. I've been told that human cities have an almost ever present layer of pollution, smog and filth everywhere, is that true?”

I crinkled my nose, remembering the first time I'd gotten near Exion, and the horror of the nasal assault.

“Sadly yes, the city I was living in before coming here was... fragrant.”

“Yet have you seen such in one of our cities?” he asked like a teacher explaining something basic to a slow child.

“No, I suppose I haven't.”

“That is because here in Elazia we use magic wherever we can not engines, as much as we can get away with. All of us, well all real elves, have at least a little, and that little bit adds up. Of course with that we don't want to waste it, so everything needs to run as smoothly as possible.”

“I see, that's quite informative. Not sure it is helpful for any humans as so few have magic, but it is enlightening.” I thought for a few moments, considering. “Are these mandates his Majesty put down somewhere? I'm not sure I've ever seen such sayings written down anywhere.”

“Oh yes, has nobody ever gotten you a copy of 'Sayings of the Ancestor'? It's a must read for our educational system.”

“I've never even heard of it, probably one of those things that slipped through the cracks between us.”

“That is a travesty, and one I'll be happy to help remedy. Everyone should read it, know it, it's helped bring our society so far.” I really was curious what was in that book, as he seemed to have almost a religious fervor to it.

“I'm sure it will be very revealing. Though back to the question at hand, magic is used for all of these?” I asked.

“Hmm? Oh yes, because we all have some. You have magic do you not?” his question was clearly one of interest, and his eyes narrowed as he asked it.

“Indeed, there is much elven blood in my family,” I replied.

“Then you understand don't you? Why we hate to waste our power?”

“I think so yes.”

The tour continued, and I continued to be a bit putt off by his fervor, by the obsession, but it changed little. I even got a copy of the book, much as he'd promised. It was a fairly large thing, and was available at the institution's book store. I was happy to note that here at least the pattern with my previous world didn't hold sway, with most volumes being reasonably priced, or even inexpensive. Coming from the world I had where it was a running joke how much textbooks cost that was something new.

I gave one of the volumes they had on mechanics a quick look, but it became quickly clear that it was written in very formal, technical language. Trying to struggle through it would take me ages, and probably end with a lot of misunderstandings that I was uninterested in, so I put it back. My sigh as I gave up on that one got a smile from one of the workers, but they were nice enough to help me with what I was here for so I had no complaints.

The whole institution was almost jarring to see, but did bear fruit. While I was there I got another invitation to some mechanical demonstrations they were putting on, an altogether more important thing than my own questions and personal interests.

So I returned to my hotel, book in hand, wondering why nobody had bothered to give me what seemed to be a foundational work for this society before getting here. The scared maid was there, and I nodded to her kindly as I passed, hoping to brighten her day a bit.

As I sat down to begin looking into the book though I found that it was... well, wild was one way of putting it. Whoever had written this, it was certainly not the man whom they idolized so much, and I doubted whoever had done it had even met him. Each saying, and there were many, was referenced to a certain individual or a place he'd written something down, and almost all of them were lacking context. Instead there were pages trying to explain what would have almost certainly been offhand remarks, or notes scribbled in the margins of books.

There were so many examples, but the one I liked most was “Ignorance is not knowing, stupid is not wanting to know, stupid should hurt.” This was seemingly uttered as a response to a question about why he allowed people who didn't try to get answers to suffer inconveniences and was used to justify so much. While it seemed to innocuous in context it was put into motion for harsh punishments in schools should someone actively resist learning. Corporal punishment was even used if it was to be believed, but the way out was clear to, effort. The book made clear distinctions between those putting forth effort and failing and those not putting forth effort, one was unfortunate, the other viewed as an insult.

As I read it I realized that the implications and explanations given for that sentence were three pages long, the detail exhaustive and exhausting to read. It was actually quite illuminating on their society. There were of course many others.

“I don't know; it's important to admit when you don't know something, no shame in it.”

“Pride in yourself is for fools.”

“Tools are for making people's lives better.”

“Of course he did that, he's an asshole.”

“Farmers are good folk.”

“Huh, I was wrong, I've been wrong before, and I'm sure I'll be wrong again.” This was the most contentious one, and had almost a whole chapter devoted to it.