Markovian perceptions---- A short Miu Iruma fanfiction
Markovian perceptions---- A short Miu Iruma fanfiction
Sorry about the pretentious prose, I know it's bad. I'm just working on the vibe... please don't downvote me!
Miu leaned onto the walls of the institute, staring at the glowglobes drifting across the ceiling, reminiscent of glowing jellyfish in the deep ocean. It was the middle of the night and so they were rightfully dim, fostering a peaceful and quiet atmosphere. During the day, the halls of the no-physics OKB would be bustling with human activity, with researchers and students scuttling throughout the halls to the many classrooms and labs throughout the building, but for now there was only her alone with her thoughts.
From a floor-to-ceiling window the muted outline of the cityscape was visible. The spinshards in the windows arranged themselves to absorb the light, until an entire city's worth of illumination was reduced to a dim gray glow. With the darkness came an acute awareness, to the point where she could here the white noise from electrical machinery in the walls.
"I want to see the city."
"I said, I want to see the city! Damn you, that's a command, Systems!"
Quiet compliance and the faint humming of rotating spinshards, until finally the scene outside the window resolved itself into blurs of color.
"There you are, Miu. What are you doing up so late?"
She lifted her head. "Professor Alexandrov?"
"That's not an answer."
"I can't sleep."
"And why would that be?"
As far as she knew, there was scarcely anyone else in the building, aside from maybe a few researchers. Even scientists were human; rest was a universal need. It just came difficultly sometimes, like now.
"I don't think I'm cut out to be a no-physicist, Professor. I-- can I leave the institute? I'm just a student. I can still transfer fields, right?"
The Professor frowned. "Come with me."
She hurried to match his stride down the winding halls as glowglobes whooshed gently to illuminate their path.
At last they came to a stop in front of a room Miu recognized as the classroom where they studied during the day. As with everything else, it was quiet and dark. The glowglobes inside the room gradually brightened until she was able to see clearly.
"You have already made a dedication to no-physics, one that is not easily broken."
"But... I'm not that good of a student. I'm far from your best. And Kokichi Oma quit already! He said he's gonna be a space marine, or something."
"I don't care what Kokichi Oma did. I'd like you to reconsider. Do you really think you'd find success in any other field of expertise? Do you think that you could still start from scratch, now? By the time you have achieved what you want in your new desired field, you'll be years behind!"
"Of course," the Professor continued, "that is not necessarily a bad thing. But I think you will agree with me, when I say that I hate to see years wasted."
"I---"
"Solve the problem."
"What?"
"The problem on the board. Solve it."
"You can't be serious! I---"
"Solve it, Miu."
".... Alright."
The problem read, "A no-ship is traveling with a steady reactor output of 3.6e39 Joules. Assuming a Markov efficiency value of 79% and a no-field mass of 9.97e8 kilograms, find the distance traveled in realspace corresponding to 4.54 kilometers in foldspace."
Nothing made her loathe the field, and even more so herself than this problem. It represented all her failings, the long hours of working again and again over a paper scribbled and erased over a hundred times.
Miu rubbed her forehead and placed the formula onto the chalkboard: Dr = Df(((EEe-Mnc)^1/4)Ma)
Ma, the Markov constant. She scribbled over the two damned letters and wrote "42.017" above them. At least she had the consolation of knowing. She recalled Kokichi believing the constant was 69.
Now the Energy efficiency. She repeated the process of crossing out and rewriting with 0.79 over the Ee...
She continued across the formula, feeling the cold sweat across her brow. The Professor was there, watching. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, more and more time passed as her frustration grew with each new error that needed her resolving. Aware of the Professor's prescence, though, she carried on through the tedious calculations.
"Dr is 1.393e12, Professor."
"Eh? Where'd he go?"
A brief pause. It was just her alone in the room now, with a single glowglobe hovering near the blackboard.
"Maybe it's not that bad..."