This adds up to brain pain

[Dimnersti]

Early Cryxatum, Summer Era II of the Celestine Mandate, Era XIV Post Fractum.

A single buisness had been relativly simple to manage, review the numbers his captain sent him every once in a while and collect the profits. Starting several though, that wasn't likely to be quite as simple. Sure he could leave it to the local managers and just collect profits with only a minimal review of the numbers every now and then, but that left far to much room for graft and theft. Lightborns may be naive enough to beleive that their underlings would work honestly and for the betterment of the buisness, but Dim was a vysstichi, any such nonsesical beleifs had long ago been torn away by reality. Let them and people will steal all that you have, it was just the way of things.

To that purpose he'd begun to listen to the gossip among the refugee's. There were bound to be men of education among them, Academics were generaly easy to find, particularly in a situation such as paxia's, they either took roles of leadership, or quickly fell, unable to translate their knowledge into practical survival, they did not have the hardy toughness of the average peasent and found themselves nearly unable to rise back up from the blow they'd taken.

After a half a cycle or subtle inquiries and gossiping he'd managed to find a potential individual living in the outskirts of the refugee camp, Hopefully they were in decent enough shape they would be of use to dim.

[Tiyribi Andares]

Mutter.

Where did that blasted thing go? It had to be around here somewhere. Telath was large, yes, but not large enough to hold a brand new pen and its paired stack of stationary. The Human’s rather bulbous muddy eyes darted quickly around his little shanty, as if the speed of his gaze would chase the shadows away from the poorly lit room.

Mutter mutter.

He grabbed the single candle from its holder on the wall and, cupping the rough, hardened skin of his hand around the flame of the candle in an attempt to shelter it against the wind. Turning fast from side to side, Egbert’s attempts were in vain, and the candle quickly went out in a puff of smoke.

Mutter mutter mutter.

Now it was matches. Where had he put his matches? Maybe they were with his quill. Yes, that’s it. With his quill. And his paper. And that dratted version of a devil gnome from Aeternia itself that stole all of his new toys. Where did that thing go? Next thing he knew, Egbert would awake some brightening to the intense blue sky, the three suns, and nothing in between his face and it.

Oh wait. There were not three suns anymore; there were only two. Well, drat the third sun too, wherever it went off to. Egbert didn’t care. He just wanted his matches back. And his papers. Oh, and his quill too. His new one. That’s what he wanted. If only he could throttle that mousai that kept stealing his things. One simply couldn’t trust these refugees. If only he hadn’t lost his position teaching in the city. But that was due to that little demon child too!

Mutter.

Visitor! Oh yes. Egbert forgot about that. He was having a visitor today! That’s why he bought two extra stacks of parchment. Now he remembered. But he didn’t remember where they were. Oh, no. That was the fault of that dratted Faerie. Yes, indeed.

At the sound at his doorway, the rather rotund Human turned his gaze toward the square of light and, in the process, blinding himself momentarily as his pupils fought to adjust. His hand went up to shield his face, but instead a stream of still-warm wax melted down his forehead. “Blast!” he yelped, both out of pain and surprise. “Now I’m a candlehead. Like a unicorn, but made of wax!” His other hand kept waving toward the door, beckoning whoever it was there inside his humble abode. His body, on the other hand, was jumping up and down quite erratically as he couldn’t quite decide whether the best course of action would be to welcome his guest properly or to wipe the wax off his forehead.

[Dimnersti]

The man obviously had taken the trauma of the tragedy of paxia for worse than than many others, his mind fracturing under the meriad of pressures, instability or insanity however didn't necisarly negate wisdom, made it far more troublesome for another to aquire from them, but it also created a certain clarity not often seen in those whos minds still struggled to balance practicalities and reality with the wisdom and knowledge they'v acheived. Dimnersti had met many in his youth among the vysstichi, men fractured by the cruel pleasures of their house matron, or women so driven to raise their rank their minds had long lost ability to see beyond those selfish desires, both often seemed to survive longer than those around them.

Stepping into the mans small home, more a pile of scavenged materials and filth leaning against the half remaining wall of a building lost in the seige, he snigged lightly trying to aclimate himself to the scent of unwashed human flesh, distastfull at the best of times, and rampant decay caused by the mixture of scavenged lumber and the moist air of a coastal city. "So.. I heard you had a knowledge of the way of numbers.." he said slowly as he instinctivly pulled his cloak around him and furtivly glanced around the shanty seeking an space relativly clear of clutter to position himself. The urge to brush the was from the mans forhead was strong, but his revulsion at the thought of touching the man kept it firmly in check.

[Tiyribi Andares]

Grr. Egbert ruefully rubbed the wax off his forehead as he continued to beckon the visitor to enter, not even giving Dimnersti a curious glance. The wax was still warm, but the Human didn’t care. He had to get it off. He just did.

“Serale, serale,” the middle-aged Human continued to mutter, still rubbing what was left of the cream softness from his skin. “Yes, yes, numbers, that’s what I do. Or, what I used to do. Blasted thing, reality. Don’t like it one bit. Tends to bite you in the rump when you least expect it, do you know what I mean? And then you end up falling down on said rump and wonder how in Aeternia you ended up here with mud in your shoe. Speaking of which…” His eyes rolled down to stare at the leather loosely shaped into a covering for his feet. They were indeed splattered with mud. Drat it all.

“But please, come in,” he continued, though his attention still wandered about the room and quite unfocused from the Vysstichi. “You wanted to know more about the,” his voice fell to a hush, “…maths?” Barely above a whisper, Egbert released a guttural chuckle from deep in his throat. “Ha ha! So as long as the Church doesn’t know, it’s all right, is it? Oh, indeed. Far away here in forsaken Paxia anything is all right.”

The Human shuffled around the perimeter of the room, feet kicking up a bit of the dust from the dirt floor. His hand pointed at one of the chairs next to a very rickety table sitting in the center of the shanty. “Sit, sit, and we shall start as soon as I find our materials. But while I look, tell me, what is your name? And what do the numbers tell you? Or…well…what do you know of them?” Egbert grinned a big, wide, toothy smile and, for the first time, looked at his prospective pupil directly. He laughed once more. “Elfs, Elfs, crazy beings…” he muttered, then turned back to his search.

[Dimnersti]

The church, to be honest dim tended to forget about it entirely, its interaction within the empire seemed to be so random, a child meakly grabbing at the toy that catches its eye but quickly losing intrest as their attention wavers. Though this was to be expected of an organization that based its self around the will of such fickle creatures as the gods.

"Dimnersti, and the numbers, well I fear I only understand some of what they tell me. like trying to speak with an arkmatian nomad while only understanding bits and peices of the language. You could say that sort of knowledge wasn't a.. priority, in my youth, and its only in the last decade or two that I'v managed to garner an understanding to the level of your average schola student.." he said slowly a light smile on his face. To have somone who's mind had firmly slipped into the hands of the planatar of dreams, a human no less, refer to a vystichi, as a common 'elf' and as 'crazy beings' was quite amusing in a way. Though if you were used to the inept flopping of the lightborn and the introverted jealousy of the esh, it wasn't all that suprising one would consider them crazy.

"And if you wouldn't mind, I can happily place my notes in my journal, though I'v a decent memory I'd prefer to have things close at hand for review." He said breifly as he pulled the journal from the small satchel at his side.

[Tiyribi Andares]

“Dimnersti, eh? Well, welcome to you, Mister Dimnersti the Elf,” Egbert offered, still chuckling to himself. “Please, please, sit down. Take a seat. Be comfortable. Comfort is important if you want to expand the brain, oh yes. That way the discomfort of the body won’t affect your capacity to grasp and understand what the mind seeks to know.” The Human tapped his rough brown hair with a grungy finger and grinned widely, then pointed at the chair sitting in front of the table in the center of the room.

“So you wish to know numbers? That I can teach you. I can teach you to speak numbers and understand them and use them. These people, let me tell you, do not respect the numbers enough. They don’t understand how much of their lives are defined by the numbers, and that’s a pity.” Egbert sighed. His eyes turned to a darker corner of the room and the stodgy Human jumped a bit, clapping his hands in excitement. “Oh there they are!” he exclaimed as he rushed over to the corner and returned with a stack of parchments and a neat brown quill sitting on top.

The Human put his light burdens down on the opposite edge of the table and pulled out a chair that had been hiding over toward the wall. “Well, I think I have my parchments now, so we can begin.” He pulled out a single sheet of the tan paper and spread it carefully over the center of the table. His fingers grasped around the edge of the quill and, pushing a full ink bottle over toward the paper, he dipped the tip of the writing utensil inside and began scratching.

His attention had completely slipped from the Vysstichi onto his paper. He continued to write four words in clear capitals centered at the top of the parchment. “There are four main operations one must understand in mathematics – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Addition is putting numbers together. Subtraction is taking them away. Multiplication is blending numbers together, and division is separating them apart. Addition and subtraction are opposites, as are multiplication and division.” He pointed to the words on the top of his paper.

“Those are the sort of things you learn in Schola – using basic numbers to record things. But if one wants to look deeper in the numbers, you can begin to understand how to use them to speak.” The dark, beady eyes glittered with excitement at the prospect. He was obviously quite enjoying himself.

[Dimnersti]

Dimnersti quirked his lips a lil as the man spoke, he understood the content well enough, but digging it out of his rather.. unusual speaking patterns was a tad chalenging. he was also mildly afraid to interact at any great level with the man as it risked sending his thoughts down some wild tangent. Sure he had spent many era's honing the ability to gleam what usefull information he could out of bits and peices, but he wasn't sitting in a bar gathering local gossip, he was trying to learn some basic math to help his buisness's, he couldn't afford to spend all this extra time picking things apart and putting them back togethor in the proper order.

He hadn't covered much content yet, just a breif review of the most basic knowledge, but again, given the rather unstable nature he didn't want to apear unatentive, though he couldn't tell how he'd react so he lightly scratched small notes in his journal, he didn't like to waste space, but it was good to review the basics and a lil wasted space was far better than a lot of wasted time.

and how to use numbers, it was less his using them and more his inability to notice others 'using' them that he was concerned with. A misplaced decimal, a number placed in the wrong colum, any number of things and suddenly money that should be flowing into his pockets is shifted over to that of some employee with the initiative to take the risk. Then again it did mean there was teh chance should he ever try for public office, as he had in riparia, again, he could use it himself to pad his coffers at the cities expense.

[Tiyribi Andares]

To be quite honest, it mattered little to Egbert where exactly his Vysstichi student’s attention was. His life revolved around numbers and as he spoke more about the wonders of mathematics, his very spirit seemed to lift and spin and swirl in clouds of happiness. Nothing else mattered to him, not the destruction of Paxia, not the worries of the Empire, not even his basic physical needs. He was living out his love, and that was enough.

His eyes turned back to his paper and his finger followed. “Now,” he began, “you have the names of the four basic operations. Now you have to learn how to use them.” His quill scratched frantically across the paper before pausing to refill on ink, then beginning again. A few careless splotches bled through the veins, but Egbert didn’t notice.

Underneath the word “ADDITION” written clearly in all capital letters, Egbert wrote two columns of numbers. The first he underlined. “Here are two examples of addition: 6 + 2 and 915 + 723.” His hand slid sideways along the table to the next word, this one stating “SUBTRACTION”. Under this, he wrote 5 – 3 and 739 – 84. Moving even further to the right, the Human scribbled underneath “MULTIPLICATION” two clear columns as well: 9 x 3 and 82 x 64. And then “DIVISION” had written 8/4 and 108/9.

Turning the paper and pushing it closer to face Dimnersti, Egbert grinned and folded his hands neatly underneath his chin. He gestured toward the paper and said, “Go ahead. Do the problems, if you can. Understand that you can manipulate numbers just as we manipulate words when we speak our thoughts. They’re the same thing as Common Tongue, really – simply a language we use to speak our thoughts.”

[Dimnersti]

Carefully noting the numbers and equations offered on the slip of parchment. They were fairly basic, and thanks to a fair time doing basic numbers in his head for simple monetary managment, didn't require much in actual process. Though just offering up answers without explanation wouldn't be all that helpfull in further education.

The first math question didn't require anything beyond the simple eight written beneath the equation. The next was slightly more dificult, though not greatly so. An eight beneath the five and the three, a three beneath the two and the one, and sixteen beneath the nine and the seven giveing a total of one thousand six hundred and thirty eight.

Moving to the subtraction collumn, wich he curiously found writing out the work a tad more dificult, couldn't really cary a negative one after all. The first was simple again, just slap a four under the first, The second, took a moment of thought, a slight tick of his fingers on the table as he visualized the subtraction shortly scratching six hundred and fifty five under the second. The work was left off, but mostly cause he simply couldn't remember how he was suposed to write it out.

Moving to the multiplication collumn he first carefully wrote down three nines then added them togethor, nine and nine to eighteen, then eighteen and nine to twenty seven. The second, well that took a lil longer, it had been era's since dim had done anything complex like this, a few scribld bits of abortive math later he finaly managed to work out what he beleived to be the correct answer. First he multiplied eighty two by four noting three hundred and twenty eight, then adding a zero to the end he scribled the answer to eighty two times six, four hundred and ninety two. Adding these togethor gave him a total of five thousand two hundred and fourty eight.

Division was even tougher to remember the proper formula for, the first was easy, four went into eight twice, even the tiniest child could work that out without much thought. The last was somewhat simple as well, nine times ten was nintey plus two nines to jump it to one hundred eight, or just two nines to equal eighteen and ten before it to add the zero in the middle giving you twelve. But he'd have to write it down properly. Placing one hundred eight in a small box he scritched a one above the ten indicating nine went into it once, he then caried down the one left over and placed it before the nine leaving eighteen, placing a two on top to show that nine went into eighteen twice, offering an answer of twelve.

It was odd realy, dim would have imagined division to be the one he struggled with remembering, but it was simple subtraction and multiplication that had seemed to dance at the edges of his memory taunting him with bits and peices while not quite sharing the whole. On a whole he was a lil disapointed, that it had taken him so much thaught to begin with, he certainly had become soft in more way than one in the last few era's.

[Tiyribi Andares]

A stubby finger turned the parchment right-side up toward Egbert as his bulging eyes eagerly glanced over it, as if he could eat every scratch and scribble. He completely ignored his student in his chorus of mumbles and mutters. Idly, his fingers scratched at the thin stubble along his chin as he studied the answers Dimnersti had offered, carefully following every column, every row, and every line. He even traced out a few of the numbers with his finger on the paper, as if just to check they were indeed the correct symbol.

Finally, he nodded. “Yes, yes, very good!” the Human teacher exclaimed, clapping his hands in front of him as congratulations. Bright with excitement, his dirty eyes fell upon the Vysstichi fully and heavily, one of the few times his complete attention was entirely targeted at the other mortal occupant of the room. “The numbers talk to you! Or at least, you understand how to manipulate them, which is a step in the right direction.”

His finger dropped onto the light “SUBTRACTION” written on the paper and pointed at the “five” that Dimnersti had written. “Just a minor mistake; nothing to worry about, but five minus three is two, not four.” Quickly picking up his quill, Egbert scratched out the symbol carefully and wrote a very curly two in its place.

“But now,” he exclaimed, “time to move on!” His quill remained in his hand as he began to draw underneath every column in much the same way as he had before. Underneath the “ADDITION” section, Egbert wrote X + 2 = 8 and 915 + X = 1638. For “SUBTRACTION”, the new column stated 5 – X = 2 and X – 84 = 655. “MULTIPLICATION” had written 9 x 3 = X and 82 x X = 5,248 and for “DIVISION”, X/4 = 2 and 108/9 = X.

The quill was quickly dropped and fluttered down onto the table, rolling idly back and forth. “Now,” the Human grinned, his hands folding expectantly in front of him on the table, “do the problems again, but this time, find the number that the X represents in each one, rather than the actual sum or product or et cetera.” His eyes nearly danced as he watched Dimnersti carefully, as if to study his student’s very thought process.

[Dimnersti]

Such a small mistake, the result of his hurrying past the 'simpler' questions to get to those he assumed to be more dificult. A fine lesson to remember as something like that was what was most likely to show up as any mistakes in his financial records.

The questions added now, providing he remembered those few things he'd managed to learn in between the constant torrents of pleasure and pain endured in his youth was simply a matter of reversing the equation if x plus two equaled eight, then eight minus two equaled x, six. If nine hundred and fifteen plus x equaled one thousand six hundred and thirty eight, then one thousand six hundred and thirty eight minus nine hundred and fifteen equaled x, seven hundred twenty three.

Subtraction was the same, though a lil more dificult, as the equation changed depending on where the x was placed. For the first, x being the number being subtracted, you simply subtracted again, five minus two equaling three. With x being the intial number though you reverse the math, adding the two numbers instead, Six hundred fifty five plus eighty four equals seven hundred and thirty nine.

Multiplication was simple again, simply dvide the sum by the given multiplier and you'v x, unless of course as in the first example, x was the sum. though this was the case in all of them, if x was the sum, you simply did the math as usual. This gave twenty three as the value of x in the first. With the second it was five thousand two hundred and fourty eight divided by eighty two offering a result of sixty four.

And finaly there was divisiion, or in the instance of the first question, multiplication, four times two equaling eight. the second, with the sum being x again, was straight division a repeat of the last actualy, the answer being twelve as it had the first time.

All of the equations had their work written out neetly, save the last wich simply had the solution printed out.

Rubbing his temple lightly, just because the equations were relativly simple, it didn't mean it left him with any less of a mild throbbing in his temple, he pushed the paper towards the ecentric old man. he'd take a lil more time to review his math this time, not wanting to make another mistake as he had last time.

[Tiyribi Andares]

Rubbing his hands together eagerly, Egbert took the proffered paper back and quickly scanned over the numbers, the edge of his quill trailing against the parchment and leaving behind a light line of black ink. The Human mathematician didn’t notice, however, as his attention was fully taken by the scribbles on the paper. He hummed a few times, hawed a couple more, and even made a bit of a grunt until he reached the end of the paper.

Then he smiled. His brown eyes glittered as he folded his hands in front of him, leaving his white feather quill to take up a very odd angle as it was pinched between his fingers. “Good!” He smiled even wider, baring a mouth full of yellowed, crooked teeth. “You didn’t let the insertion of a symbol that was not a number bother you at all. That’s a very good sign. In Schola they teach you what to do with numbers, but to truly learn the art of math, one must understand that numbers are a way to express the language of mathematics, like letters in writing.”

He grabbed the paper once more and pulled it in front of him. Releasing the quill from its grip, he pushed it between thumb and forefinger and began to write. “It’s important to understand mathematics as a language, not merely as a set of the four operations. That way it will become applicable to your normal life, rather than just an idle scholarly pursuit.” His pen continued to scratch along the bottom of the paper as Egbert added a few more lines.

After a few more minutes of work, the Human finished his task and pushed the parchment back toward Dimnersti, circling the bottom with his finger. Three more lines had been written:

80/X = 40
Y x 8 = 16
16 = 2 + Z

“Just for more practice,” the teacher explained, “solve each of these for X, Y, and Z. And then we can move on to more practical applications of what you’ve learned.”

[Dimnersti]

One of the many reasons Dimnersti had so often avoided furthering his education since coming to the surface was because all those born on it seemed to need to review everything. For the vystichi, you either learned it, or you didn't, and the punishments for not were enough that you rarely forgot once told.

But, you adjusted to fit, and if that meant minor anoyance due to repitition, you bare with it. eighty divided by fourty equaled two, sixteen divided by eight once again equals two. and sixteen minus two equals fourteen.

He felt he should probly respond to the comments about numbers being a language, but to be honest he had little to say, at least little that would productivly move the training forward. Mention the simple purity of numbers, how their untainted with things like morals or inuendo, or the inumerable things that affect real language and you'd likely set the man off on a tangent about the inherant superiority of numbers as a language, or how the church uses the lack of ethics implied in the language as an excuse to prosecute it. While an educated man, he was vastly lacking in stability.

[Tiyribi Andares]

His student wasn’t much of a talker, Egbert noted to himself. Not that it mattered, really, when one considered the subject. Mathematicians, as a class, were much more concerned with their own scribbles and calculations than social interaction. Still, the Human prided himself in understanding that numbers, much like letters, were merely a form of communication. It was this way of seeing calculations that set Egbert far apart from his contemporaries at the universitas level, even in the greatest schools in the Empire. He was simply better because he understood better.

Turning the paper back toward himself, the Human glanced over Dimnersti’s answers quickly to ensure that they were correct. Satisfied, the Mathematician quickly pushed himself up from the table and scampered over toward the corner of the room, beckoning with his hand for the Vysstichi to follow him. “Come!” he said audibly as he grasped for the candle flickering on the table and plopped it quite heavily onto the ground next to the northeastern corner of the shack.

The wooden planks of the cottage went vertically from the floor to the ceiling while the dirt floor below had been carefully scrapped even and flat. In the intersection between the two walls, small, thick black notches had been evenly drawn up from the floor. Egbert pointed eagerly at the corner and, sitting his bulk down onto the packed dirt floor, grabbed up the parchment and spread it out in front of him before letting it rest over his crossed legs. He patted the floor next to him as an indication that he wanted his student to follow suit.

“Here you found X as 2, Y as 2, and Z as 14.” He then outstretched his finger toward the corner and traced all three intersections between the walls and the floor. “Imagine that each of these notches are equal to one.” His finger followed to the indentation of the wooden planks, showing how they evenly crossed the bottom intersection. “And also imagine that each place the walls meet with each other and the floor is a line. Let us say that this is X,” his hand flowed up between the walls, “this is Y,” now it fell toward the right and traced the intersection of the wall with the floor, “and this is Z.” He merely pointed at the last intersection leading off to the left.

“If each notch is equal to one, and X is equal to 2, where would that be on the wall?” Egbert grinned, evidently quite proud of himself for his little demonstration. Oh, he was a creative teacher – he liked to think outside of the box and make his students, as well, think of the subject as so much more than writing on a piece of parchment. That sort of attitude was exactly what made him so brilliant, but also so reviled by his peers. They simply lacked imagination to understand his way of thinking about Telath.


“And where would Y be, if it is equal to 2? Or Z, if it is equal to 14?” He grabbed the parchment again and began to draw, carefully sketching a large, even cross. He labeled the vertical line as X and the horizontal as Y. “To simplify, we can only look at the X and the Y. Here, if X is equal to 2 and Y is equal to 2, where would that be on this cross, if each notch is equal to 2?” The quill scratched as he added small half-lines to each of the larger. “And where would it be if we consider both X and Y? Since X is 2 and Y is 2, you cannot put the dot on the lines; it must exist off them, at the intersection of both X and Y of 2 out here.” He gestured toward the upper right corner of the cross, leaving a small dot from the ink left on the end of the pen.

“Is this clear?”

[Dimnersti]

Dimnersti carefully tried to follow the somewhat unhinged mathmetician as he sketched out the question using the corner of the wall, it was admitedly somewhat confusing. "If x were two, it would be the second notch over from the corner I beleive" he stated while bending slightly to indicate the notch he was refering to. "if y were two it would be two notches up. Their intersection being here" First indicating the second notch up from the floor then tracing over to the spot on the wall where the two notches would intersect if you were to draw a line out from each. "Now if z were fourteen, it would be fourteen notches over, here. Its intersection with y being here" First indicating the fourteenth notch over then two boards up "And the intersection of the three would be here." He continued pulling his hand outward from the last intersection carefully trying to line it up with the second notch out along the other wall.

That done he turned his attention to the small chart on the paper. First he marked the first notch to the right on the x axis, then he marked the first notch upward on the y axis. he then carefuly extended both notches out marking the spot where they intersected.

the vizualization of the planes was fairly reminescent of the manner he had to visualize and focus on things when he was in clara and manipulation the ara and his viz, a curious conection and one he would have to ponder on at a later time.