Chapter 340 When Your Fingers Just Aren't Enough
Shoutout to Bruh_Vista for beta-reading and providing extensive feedback for this chapter!
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"You were supposed to be here an hour ago," Sect Leader Larks said with a stern tone. "I hate to be THAT guy," a snort escaped from Sect Leader Larks as he looked at Shuri with an expectant smile.
"*cough* As I was saying, what took you so long?" The Sect Leader reiterated.
"I went to meet Senior Sister Marie," Shuri admitted. There was no point in being disingenuous or obfuscating information here. Per Mage Larks' admission, most if not all of what occurred within the Sect was known or common knowledge.
The Sect Leader furrowed his brows and asked, "Did she ask you to do some more work for her?"
Shuri quickly waved her hand and explained, "Nothing like that. I just felt that it wasn't right to leave her employ without a proper goodbye."
"That's... admirable," the man mumbled while bobbing his head appreciatively. Then, he narrowed his gaze and probed, "Did she say anything? Did she give you anything?"
Shuri nodded and produced the cube from her jacket pocket.
"Wow! Okay! This one belonged to me before. Marie snatched it from me a few days back, saying that she knew someone who would appreciate it more than I did. What you have there is a Rubik's Cube. A rather interesting toy, this one. A bit on the difficult side to make out of wood, especially if you're trying to keep it purely wooden. Took me quite a while to get it just right, though as it stands it isn't viable to mass produce this profitably," the Sect Leader narrated as he picked up the Rubik's Cube and started to spin its sides.
"She gave me this and said that it might inspire me to do something," Shuri added.
"Can't believe she's still doing this nonsense. Even after I warned her," the Sect Leader growled while continuing the task of shuffling the cube.
Then, he turned silent as he started to spin the cube in a similar pattern multiple times until eventually, the jumbled cube resolved itself with uniform colors on all sides.
"There!" He celebrated while returning the cube to Shuri.
"She did say this would be the last interference," Shuri mumbled while spinning the cube around in her grasp. "How did you solve it?"
"There's a book about it in the Library if you're interested," Mage Larks offered. "It's not that hard, especially for you. You just have to memorize a few combinations according to how the colours are arranged. That is the most basic method. There are quicker and more complicated strategies as well."
He then raised his index finger and added, "Did you know? There are approximately 43 quintillion unique possible arrangements of this cube?"
Shuri tilted her head and said, "Shouldn't there be more? Let me see... eight corner pieces... 12 edge pieces... No, definitely larger than 43 quintillion."
"Mathematically, sure. But the cube can only turn in certain ways. This limits some permutations," Mage Larks corrected. "Try again, but implement the limitations into your calculations."
As he said this, he pushed forward a blank parchment and a writing utensil. Shuri picked it up and started to jot down the numbers. She performed the mathematics for five whole minutes before she dropped the pencil in frustration. "This is impossible! I can't keep track of the numbers."
"Makes you wish you had a calculator, huh?" The Sect Leader commented.
"A calculator?" Shuri asked.
"Think of it like a device that can perform basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, maybe more," the man expounded.
"How does it do that?" Shuri followed up, voicing her doubt and interest.
The Sect Leader scratched his head in thought. "Give me a second," he then said before sitting down in a meditative pose.
After a few minutes, his eyes opened and his expression regained confidence. "There are many kinds of calculators. The most basic one I can describe for you is a mechanical calculator that uses gears. Any number, if written in digital form, holds a value from zero to nine, which translates to ten possible values. If we assign this to a gear, that means ten rotations. Ten rotations of the unit's place correspond to one rotation in the tens place. Ten of tens is a hundred, and so on. So you can imagine how additional operations could be designed with this system?"
Shuri hummed along before raising a point, "But I can see a few problems here. It would be difficult to support large numbers with a greater number of digits, as well as multiplication and division operations."
"Exactly, so let me try and describe another mechanical calculator which has this functionality," Sect Leader Larks highlighted before delving into an explanation of a magnificent machine that he called the arithmometre.
The explanation continued for hours, with the man using all the blackboards in his office to draw an elaborate picture of the device, answering Shuri's questions, and even showing examples. Sometimes, there were questions Sect Leader Larks couldn't answer immediately - he would often enter into meditation before returning with a suitable answer. Shuri theorized that he too probably had some sort of memorizing power like she did, but one that was much slower or was maybe bogged down with so much information that retrieval took a lot of time.
"Well, that was definitely a heavy topic," the Sect Leader declared before leaning against his table and taking a sip of water from a cup. "I didn't plan to cover this today, not at all. But it wasn't an unproductive trip, was it?"
Seeing as Shuri agreed with his words, he continued, "If you are interested, we can pick up from here tomorrow and cover a few more mechanical solutions before shifting to the automatic "Let's leave that for the next class, shall we?" Sect Leader Larks halted Shuri while dabbing his forehead off invisible sweat.
solutions."
"What are automatic versions of the calculator?" Shuri interjected.
"Hmm, it's about the nature by which the calculator is powered. The mechanical solutions, as you saw earlier, rely on the movement of a crank. It takes mechanical input to run its operations. An automatic version uses another form of energy," the Sect Leader explained.
"What alternate form?" Shuri probed further.
"Let's leave that for the next class, shall we?" Sect Leader Larks halted Shuri while dabbing his forehead off invisible sweat.
"Oh, and please," Sect Leader Larks stated just as Shuri was leaving the room. "Don't go and binge the books on this topic today. You only just recovered, so take it slow."
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It was hard holding herself back from visiting the Library. But Shuri held herself back. Her new haven of safety was hard-won, and she wasn't planning to lose it over something so trivial as succumbing to her base instincts.
Back again at Sect Leader's office, Shuri raised a point, "Can we skip the mechanical calculators?"
Before the man could inquire why, Shuri quickly explained, "By my understanding, their principles seem to stem from the same concept of gears and rotational mechanisms. I am interested in seeing alternative solutions - the automatic ones as you pointed out last time."
The Sect Leader evaluated Shuri with his gaze, who froze in fear, 'Did I say something wrong?'
But a warm smile cracked the man's stoic expression. "Good initiative. I was also getting bored of drawing these diagrams. In fact, I wanted to show you some interesting magic today that might help your understanding of the automatic calculator."
Shuri revealed an interested smile.
"Although, to do that I require your permission and your acquiescence," the Sect Leader emphasized.
"Umm... Permission to do what?" Shuri probed. Was she about to be exploited?!
"You will know when you know. If you allow me, we will continue; if not, then we will have to go down a longer path. When you feel it and choose to accept, then meditate and follow the feeling," the Sect Leader hinted before entering meditation once again.
Shuri waited on pins and needles for whatever was about to come. Within seconds, she started to feel a tug in her abdomen - her core. Shuri figured this was the "feeling" the Sect Leader was talking about. After a minute of hesitation, Shuri decided to go for it and entered meditation. As her mind calmed, she started to feel herself getting pulled down a dark tunnel - a chute.
The transit was short-lived and mildly harrowing for Shuri, who suddenly lost all sense of her body. But she was deposited into a bright room, with shelves of books around her, and seats arranged concentrically around a central stage with a massive globe levitating up above.
"Welcome to the Church of the True World," a grandiose voice echoed within the room. Shuri followed the sound and noticed the Sect Leader ascending the stage up front. The man's face started to blur and quiver, and the haughty expression mellowed out.
"Are you ready for your lesson?" The Sect Leader asked rhetorically. Without waiting for Shuri's response, the globe above started to descend and turned completely void-black. Then, Shuri felt herself getting pulled out from her seat and thrust directly into the dark globe.
For the second time, she felt herself getting shoved down a chute of some sort. And once again, she was deposited in a room. This, though, appeared endless in all directions. It was bright, though not as much to hurt her vision, and beside her stood the Sect Leader.
"To begin, we will need to cover some theory," the Sect Leader started. "What is your understanding of binary numerals?"
"Umm... the name suggests one or the other?" Shuri hypothesized.
"Good!" The Sect Leader encouraged. "If you remember from the previous lesson, one of the limitations of the mechanical calculator system is the fact that it isn't scalable to work with larger numbers. The automatic calculator circumvents this problem by implementing a new system of numerals called binary numerals. Basically, unlike the standard decimal system where you have numbers 0 through 9, the binary numeral system only has two digits that are 0 or 1."
"How can you use just two numbers to represent other numbers?" Shuri interjected.
"The binary numeral system is complemented with the base-2 numeral system. The easiest way to explain this is by drawing an example."
Suddenly, a hologram started to form in front of Shuri.
| 2^ | ... | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| __ | ... | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
"Let us take a random number... 44. If I want to write it in the decimal system, it is as is - 44. Where it is the sum of 4x10 + 4x1. Here, as you can see, each digital place is a multiplier by a power of 10. In the base-2 binary notation, the number 44 is described as follows:"
| 2^ | ... | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| __ | ... | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
"44 in binary is 101100. This is basically 1x2^5 + 1x2^3 + 1x2^2."
"I can see that, but how does this make it any easier?" Shuri said doubtfully.
"Ah!" The Sect Leader exclaimed with a playful jump. "It becomes evident once you learn the concept of logic gates!"
Shuri started to bubble with excitement, but it halted when the Sect Leader raised a finger and said, "But first, let us understand how the basic mathematical operations are applied with this new digital system."
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