Shoutout to Bruh_Vista for beta-reading and providing extensive feedback for this chapter!
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Shuri gulped audibly as she stared at the plain metal gates that separated the general and the restricted section. The keys to the ignoble lock hanging under the door handle felt like they were made of lead. This was what she wanted all along, which was to have access to everything the Sect had to offer, take advantage of it and then leave. But the circumstances were wildly against her favour. She was bound to this Sect now and was beholden to it. She could no longer leave.
"What is he thinking?" Shuri murmured out loud. The parchment filled with names of literature for her to read was in her left hand. According to the Sect Leader, it was supposed to contain information that would help her in fleshing out her knowledge of Automagy and assist her cultivation. But she highly doubted that to be true. She doubted that there would ever be another source of information about the subject that would be more detailed and practical than the notes passed on by the Yoruz Clan. But an order was an order, and if this order would let her dally around a little bit and help avert some of the heat she had brought upon herself, she was all for it. If she could prove that there was no progress to be made with this line of study, she would be eventually forgotten... right?
"Oh, who am I kidding?!" She exclaimed. Ultimately, Shuri decided to bury that hope six feet underground. She unfurled the parchment and read through its contents thoroughly.
"Advanced Linear Algebra."
"Control Systems and Automation."
"Electronic and Mechanical Microsystems."
"Probabilistic Robotics."
"Artificial Neural Networks."
"Machine Learning."
...
"What is all this?!" Shuri blurted out. Of all the books on the list, she only knew of the first one, which happened to be a rather heavy read on the advanced applications of linear algebra. She could recite the text by heart, straight from memory, but she could only attest to knowing the first 20% of it. As for the rest of the books, the titles themselves spoke of arcane topics she had never even heard of.
This revelation gave Shuri some pause. She was now reconsidering the option of entering the restricted section. The implied knowledge carried with it the same stench that hung in the air within the Inner Palace. These were things that one shouldn't know - in other words, forbidden knowledge. This was exacerbated by the fact that Marie was probably involved in this in some way, and anything that girl dipped her hand in had always resulted in Shuri taking a loss.
Yet, all of this considered, the allure of knowledge isn't so easy to scrub away. After a momentary bout of hesitance, Shuri plunged the key into its hole and twisted. With a gentle push, the metal gates swung open. There was no noise, no ominous grind as metal rubbed against metal, no pomp and ceremony - it was gloomily anticlimactic.
Shuri passed through the gates and glanced over the books closest to her. As predicted, none of them made any sense.
"Biomechanical Marvels."
"Demystifying Nuclear Physics."
"Synthetics and Polymers."
"Gray's Anatomy."
For the first time, Shuri fathomed just how little she actually knew about the world. It also gave new meaning to the old adage, "If I could fill up a library with all the things I didn't know, then there would be no end to it."
The metaphorical library of unknowns was real, and she happened to be standing inside it. Once again, Shuri was tempted by the sweet nectars of knowledge all around her. Her palms itched as her fingers slid past the pristine spines of the books on their shelves. But she held herself in control. After all, this could all be just an elaborate test to gauge her character - who knows what ran inside the mind of those eccentric mages in higher realms.
Her eyes halted as they passed over one of the books from the list.
"Control Systems and Automation," Shuri muttered. It was a plain book with just those words on it. Opening it, she was greeted by an elaborate three-dimensional diagram of a winged contraption carrying a myriad of cargo. Turning another page, she read the Foreword.
"Humans as a species desire control, although they live in a world that is increasingly tumultuous and unpredictable. Then how do you control what is inherently out of control? To address this question, consider two examples. The first example calls for the reader to imagine that they are responsible for giving a lecture to an audience about a topic they are an expert in. The efficacy of the lecture cannot be known from the beginning, especially if it is the reader's first time. However, at the end of the first lecture, the feedback collated from all present individuals can be used to gauge this metric and improve the lecture for the next time. This is an iterative process until a stable point is achieved that satisfies the reader's criterion for what is considered a 'good lecture'.
As seen in this example, control is achieved through a constructive feedback loop. It is given that the lecture's content cannot be subtracted, but the model can determine the flow of the lecture and the way the content is delivered. This feedback can be used to tune the lecture flow. However, does this mean that this lecturing model (which we shall refer to as the controller from now on) is applicable for another group of students of different backgrounds, gender and age distributions, class strengths, and so on? Changing the lecture group means that there is a change in the system. Therefore, a new controller needs to be designed for this new system. We can start with the previously tuned controller and work forward until the required stability point is achieved.
The example above is crude and highly speculative and deals with human beings. Human beings by nature are hard to control. The same cannot be said for a machine or mechanism. Consider the second example, a stick being balanced on an open palm. The stick 'wants' to topple over and fall as it is an unstable system. However, with the help of various sensors, namely the tactile sensors in the palm and our ocular sensors, we can achieve stability. Changing the stick in the middle of the operation will disorient the balancer as their mental controller is tuned for a specific mass, length, and shape. But ultimately stability can once again be achieved.
This book will explore the concept of controlling mechanical and electrical systems. The kind of systems explored here are rudimentary at best and do not perform actions with a high degree of variability. It will hopefully help the reader gain a better understanding of automation as a principle and even design control schemes to work towards automating things around them."
Shuri gulped audibly as she finished reading the first page. Although it did not touch upon technical information, the essence of what the book would explore sent a small shiver down her spine.
"Maybe this is what they intend for me to learn with all of these books," Shuri mumbled as she looked over the parchment once again. Sometimes, a single piece of information can dissipate the fog of war hanging over an expansive battlefield. If the first new book on the list explored the topic of automation and control of rudimentary systems, then each successive book should offer solutions for control at a much higher level with systems that can perform a variety of tasks.
Without waiting for another second, Shuri flipped the page and started to devour words, numbers, images, and equations as they flashed past her gaze. With each page turned, her mind grew clearer, and with each chapter finished, something esoteric started to bubble from inside her. Her mana grew active and started to circulate through her channels with increasing speed, widening them in the process. For an outside observer well-versed in magic, they would immediately know that she was cultivating.
Shuri had entered a fugue state, though she maintained a minimal level of consciousness. With that minimal amount, she was surprised that she could understand almost everything written in this book. She was also surprised at how as she read more of this book, concepts from the Yoruz Clan's text that didn't make sense would somehow become comprehensible as something else clicked into place inside her and filled in the blanks. Compared to the clan's books, the one she was reading now was far more descriptive and specific in its explanation. There was little room for making speculations or screwing up the interpretation.
But then, as she reached three-quarters of the way through the book, a faint pang of pain started to echo from her core. She had now reached the topic of hybrid systems and cyber-physical systems. Shuri felt it and was immediately drawn out of her fugue state. As soon as she stopped reading, the pang dissipated. The moment she continued reading, the pang returned.
"What is happening?" Was her body telling her not to continue indulging in this knowledge? She immediately scoffed at that thought, "It's probably psychological. How does reading a book and learning new things have any effect on the body?"
What she didn't know was that inside her nascent core, a subtle shift was starting to occur that would set her down a completely different path. Her initial trajectory would have taken her down a destructive path that her mother's clan followed. A path filled with bloodshed and ruin. However, the shift, although subtle, had far-reaching consequences. Where there was destruction, there would be growth, and where there was ruin, there would be prosperity. Shuri's cultivation had changed, her concept and understanding of Automagy were changing, and as a result, her understanding of the open-to-interpretation texts of the Yoruz Clan had changed as well. And if the understanding is different, then the application cases also become different.
"The purpose of automation is to make life easier for human beings," Shuri summarized as she closed the book. She didn't notice the faint smile on her face as she moved down the list to the next book.
Nonetheless, Shuri wouldn't know the ramifications of her decision to adhere to the reading list until much, much later.
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