Shoutout to Bruh_Vista for beta-reading and providing extensive feedback for this chapter!
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A famous man once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results."
Interestingly, if you replace the word 'expecting' with 'hoping for', you'd actually be defining patience. However, an insane person will keep repeating the task with the same level of enthusiasm as the very first time. A patient person will eventually lose the 'hope' driving them onward.
Two whole months had passed since Jean arrived at this place. Two whole months of repeating the same thing over and over (and over ad infinitum simile), and expecting different results. Every day, Jean would repopulate microbes, pit her microbes against the Plague, evaluate the performance of the population, crossover to create a new population, mutate a portion of the population, rinse and repeat until she'd exhaust her mana core for the day. During the first month, the changes were more visible. She could see that her process was directing her microbes to the solution she wanted (something that could fight against the Plague).
But then, midway through the second month, she stumbled upon one problem - convergence. She found that her solution had reached a convergent point and each consecutive generation was only incrementing performance by a negligible percentage at best. This is usually an indication that a solution has been reached, and it is time for the genetic algorithm to terminate. However, the problem was that the generation of microbes didn't really match Jean's expectations. Although they could now hold out against the Plague, they could not destroy it. Essentially, it would be like a vaccination, not a total immunisation, which Jean later tested by finding a test rodent and loading it with the microbes from the convergence generation and sending it into the infected territory. Of course, this was after running sufficient due diligence, since Jean's restrictions could let her hurt anything (knowingly). And wouldn't you know it, the rodent survived!
Yet this wasn't enough! Now, if any mage were to hear Jean's thoughts, they would unquestionably throttle Jean and then kill themselves in a place of murder-suicide wrought with anger and disgrace, over the fact that a girl a fraction of their age had accomplished something they couldn't with all their infinite wisdom that too in an even smaller fraction of the time. One should know that the Plague had been on the Empire's, Sect Alliance's and the Teacher's Co-operative's docket for years, and none of the groups had made any headway.
Jean, though, was feeling annoyed over the fact that her progress had hit a plateau. She couldn't settle for just a partial solution, knowing that there was potential for more. But the problem was that she didn't know just what was missing. She first thought that this was a local maximum. To test if this was the case, she decided to follow through with some of the solutions written in the "Evolutionary Algorithms" text. The first was to increase the diversity of the population, by adding more variations and increasing the mutation rate. This did destabilise the solution for a few generations. Yet after a few more days, the solution converged to the earlier one. She even implemented a few variations in the crossover and propagation criteria, but none of them worked. At this point, Jean didn't have the motivation to restart the process. First off, she didn't have the heart to scrap over a month of progress. Secondly, she was certain that even restarting wouldn't make a difference.
The limitation, in fact, is with the microbes at her disposal. There was only so much an upstart brute force method could solve - it wasn't enough to bridge the gap between a Foundation Establishment realm fledgling mage with a veteran Core Formation realm one. This was when Jean truly realised her limitation and the fact that she was truly in over her head.
Of course, something did come out of the exercise in tedium. After internalising the makeup of her most recent generation of microbes, Jean was able to condense a massive portion of her knowledge about diseases within her cultivation. The insight gained from breaking down the mechanism of her optimised microbes was staggering, and it pushed her close to breaking through by a minor realm. In fact, the microbes at her disposal had the potential to be a universal vaccine.
Nonetheless, this victory felt consolatory in Jean's eyes. She hadn't achieved what she set out to do initially, and that bugged her to no end. This also brought on the second problem - the temptation. Having reached so close to the end, yet being separated by a seemingly vast canyon, Jean was suddenly egged by the temptation to take the "easy path".
Mister Larks once said, "There is no shame in asking for help, especially when you are stuck! Pride and ego get you nothing but disappointment and dissatisfaction. Put those two aside, and you have a more welcoming world at your disposal."
Jean, of course, wasn't dragged down by arrogance, pride or ego. It was the fact that the help wouldn't actually be for a contribution of expertise or wisdom, but a sacrifice. That too, was a sacrifice from a minor who trusted her - believed in her. Kili's blood was the remaining piece of the puzzle - more specifically the antibodies coursing through them.
Speaking of the girl, Jean was anything but thankful that she had been equally patient while Jean embarked on this mission. Jean had packed enough food to last them many months inside her storage disk, but the location was a little isolating. She recognised that the scant few hours of socialising they did every night wasn't really enough to keep the little girl engaged and free of boredom. Besides, Jean had promised her a more exciting adventure but delivered a drab camping trip with nothing fun to do and no one to interact with.
Instead of returning to her work tent, this time, Jean decided to cut her day short and return to the temporary domicile outside the quarantined region. After realising that their stay here would take much longer, Jean retrieved the larger more homely tent from storage, which was somewhat similar to the one Teacher Jeeves had initially set up near the orphanage. There was a proper mattress, so the duo didn't have to sleep in discomfort on the ground. The tent was a spatial anomaly, in the sense that its internal volume was larger than what was shown on the outside. It was properly temperature controlled and had lighting inside, so the sprawling camp Jean had initially set up was disassembled and moved inside.
Upon entering, Jean noticed that Kili was lying on her belly, doodling something.
"What're you drawing?" Jean asked as she approached the little girl from behind.
"Ah!" Kili yelped in shock. "Big Sis! You're early!"
"Yeah, well," Jean shrugged. "I kind of didn't feel like working today."
Kili laughed as Jean rubbed the girl's head.
"It's boring here, isn't it?" Jean asked as she lay down beside Kili.
"Not really! I have books to read, toys to play with, pictures to draw," Kili listed. "Of course, I miss Dora and the others, but we'll be going back soon. Besides, I have you!"
"Hmm, sorry about keeping you holed up here," Jean said with an apologetic frown. "I know you wanted to see a lot more places like Dora."
"That's okay," Kili answered. "I'm still young. I can go anywhere I want when I grow up, right?"
"Isn't that mighty mature of you?" Jean commended while tapping Kili on her nose.
At that moment, Kili's eyes widened and she snapped her little fingers together (though the action didn't produce a sound).
"I almost forgot!" Kili leapt out of her mattress and rushed toward a pile of papers nearby. After sorting through them haphazardly, she retrieved a long parchment and started to count slowly while extending her little fingers.
"What are you doing?" Jean inquired as she turned over. She smiled as she saw the little girl's brows furrowing as the counts exceeded the number of digits on her hands.
"Ah! I lost count!" Kili exclaimed. "Okay, I'm going to count out loud as Mister Larks said."
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven," Kili finished and tilted her head sideways. "Eleven times five is..."
Jean waited patiently as Kili's mind ran the numbers, though a distressed look from the little girl immediately indicated that Kili didn't know the answer.
"Fifty-five?" Jean offered. "What are you counting?"
"Days," Kili answered. "I think this is correct. I tallied every day right..."
"Why?" Jean probed.
"Sister Marie said that I should remind you something on the fifty-sixth day after you set up a longer-stay campsite," Kili muttered. "But I think I missed a day... or was it two? I think it's close..."
"What did she say?" Jean asked with a concerned frown as she approached Kili.
"What was it?" Kili knocked her head with her knuckles lightly while scrunching her eyes in confusion. "It was something about a vaxeen?"
"A what?"
"A vaxeen? Vacseen? No wait! Vaccine!" Kili exclaimed. "She said that fifty-six days after setting up a longer-stay campsite, I was supposed to volunteer for a vaccine. Or something like that."
"No, that can't be true! I don't accept it!" Jean denied it immediately. She knew exactly what those words meant.
At Jean's hasty retorts, Kili covered her mouth with her palms and chuckled, "Sister Marie told me that you would say something like that. She also told me to tell you that 'There is no other way. You might as well pack your bags and return home'."
"When did she tell you all this?" Jean blurted out. "I only saw her whispering something into your ears while you were half asleep! How did you remember?"
"Sister Marie gave me this letter," Kili said as she searched through her stack of papers, before retrieving a folded sheet that had Marie's distinguishable handwriting on it. "She hid it in one of the books you gave me to work on."
"But I packed those books days in advance!" Jean exclaimed. "How did she-"
The question remained unsaid because the answer was already known. Jean wanted to curse out Marie for the game she'd played, but the words escaped a defeated sigh from her lips.
At the end of the day, what mattered right now was Jean's choice, of which she was faced with two. Either she goes down the current path with an unknown ending, or she recruits Kili's help which has a known one.
"Am I really left with a choice?" Jean said with a wry laugh. The letter in her hand right now had sort of already made the decision for her.
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