Academy City's Weather Report! (Toaru)

Chapter 470: Academy City Weather Report! - 470

If fate is a predetermined path dictating everything each person must experience, then when someone strays from its designated route, an unstoppable, monumental force inevitably emerges to correct the course.

And the only thing capable of breaking these binds of fate, aside from the grand miracles forged by this world itself, seems to be nothing else.

Natsume-san didn't know if she had a predetermined destiny, but the push of reality kept her constantly seeking greater power, forcing her to adapt to increasingly harsh environments and intense battles.

Even if she personally had no urgent desire or thought to obtain greater strength, sometimes it had little to do with her own attitude; in the end, she found herself helplessly undergoing more and more frequent ability development.

It was as if, the moment she stopped developing her abilities, she would face situations where she was utterly powerless, and even breathing seemed like it would become difficult.

'Maybe I can add a light intensity parameter to the Thermostat Layer. If a situation similar to today's occurs again, it could automatically activate light refraction.'

'Light intensity could be determined by the temperature changes it induces on the body's surface. Light is just a type of electromagnetic wave, but when it hits the air, it transforms into heat—probably the photothermal effect or something. But how to distinguish that from normal temperature fluctuations?'

Sitting at her small desk, the world outside her window held little light, only the dormitory's street lamps steadily outputting their glow.

Clearly, night had fallen.

Her notebook, filled with that cipher-like script, had gained a few new entries.

Natsume-san always liked to jot down her inspirations; whether she actually developed them depended entirely on necessity.

The cipher script Natsume-san used was becoming increasingly bizarre, almost to the point where even she would struggle to read it. This was quite necessary for her, as she absolutely didn't want any risk of her information being leaked.

As for why she still bothered to write them down in a notebook, it was probably because if she didn't, she'd completely forget about them within a few days.

But it seemed our Natsume-san was currently facing some difficulties.

For instance, she didn't want her body to become all blurry from light refraction every time the trigger temperature for intense light she set was met, after developing this calculation.

That would cause major problems, could easily happen accidentally, and was just begging for social suicide and chaos.

Furthermore, it was pointless to only activate refraction after strong light already reached her eyes.

So, she needed to develop a formula that would trigger preemptively and run in real-time, similar to Accelerator's surface reflection but fundamentally different.

Therefore, Natsume-san needed to add some other distinguishing factor besides the set refraction trigger temperature. But she hadn't figured it out yet; perhaps she still needed to rely on her microscopic perspective.

Although the Lightless Phase she used to observe the microscopic world didn't have light per se, light was a type of electromagnetic wave, which still fell within the scope of what she could observe through that phase.

Simultaneously, another problem Natsume-san identified was that light traveled far too fast.

Even though Natsume-san was an esper with a highly developed brain, allowing her to perceive the temperature of light with considerable immediacy...

Once a passive trigger condition for the formula was set, the speed of activating the refraction formula would need to be even faster than her conscious thought. Yet, undeniably, there would still be an incredibly minuscule time gap.

And that tiny gap was enough to determine the success or failure of developing this formula.

This very problem also made Natsume-san rather curious about that white-haired guy's neural pathways. His head of white hair and overly pale skin were clearly results of constantly reflecting light.

Though he probably only reflected the specific components of light he didn't need, unlike Natsume-san's plan to refract everything indiscriminately.

In Natsume-san's thinking, unless Accelerator turned his skin into an actual, physical mirror, he couldn't achieve complete reflection of all unwanted light.

Of course, mirrors can't reflect some invisible light, so it's just an analogy.

She wondered how that white-haired guy handled this problem, achieving such an exaggerated level—it was practically a miracle.

Or perhaps his reflection wasn't that thorough. Maybe he only reflected what his ability could keep up with and process in time, having an actual upper limit.

It's just that, due to past events, Natsume-san had perhaps mythologized him a bit too much.

'So, for this formula to work properly, I need to increase the Thermostat Layer's coverage area, or set up additional fixed temperature monitoring points outside the layer.'

'But even then, I'm still not confident about its feasibility. I need more processing power to continue simulating and testing this formula. And I must develop a more efficient formula to shorten the brain's reaction gap even further.'

A look of resignation crossed her face. Of course, Natsume-san couldn't use her own brain for formula development—that would be too inefficient and severely disrupt her daily life. She had no intention of becoming a formula development tool.

All she could rely on now was the processing power from Reiko's end. Reiko was an incredibly capable girl, after all.

But she'd already piled a mountain of calculation tasks onto Reiko, enough to keep her busy for a good half month. There was simply no spare capacity for this right now.

'Sigh, I really want a supercomputer.'

'I hope Mom can come sooner.'

Natsume-san couldn't help but mutter with a sigh.

For espers, processing power was something you could never have enough of.

'But speaking of computers, most still use the von Neumann architecture. Binary forms the computational foundation, using the on/off state of circuits within integrated circuits to distinguish between 0 and 1.'

'If I could find a method similar to circuit states to represent 0 or 1, and then use that method to perform logical operations like AND gates, OR gates, etc....'

She paused, slightly startled. Natsume-san suddenly realized her train of thought had veered off again, and this time it had gone completely off the rails.

Rubbing her eyes, still tightly bandaged, Natsume-san gently set down her notebook. This sudden idea was unusually not immediately tossed into the recesses of her mind.

It seemed her desperate need for processing power was leading her down some strange mental paths.

Natsume-san keenly noticed something: she might actually be able to implement that circuit-like on/off method. The simplest way would be temperature increase or no increase.

Deeper still, it could be the two orthogonal polarization directions of photons, or the spin direction of electrons in a magnetic field... With her microscopic perspective, she seemed capable of attempting to interfere with them.

So, could she use these 0s and 1s, utilizing surrounding matter or even various particles, to construct an auxiliary tool operating under her ability's influence that could function like a computer?

The idea was good, but how to implement the basic logical operations found in computers, what material to use as the carrier—the fundamental unit akin to the silicon chip performing the logic—these were major issues she needed to face.

Natsume-san, who lacked sufficient understanding of computers and mostly just used them to read manga online, obviously had limited knowledge in this area. [A/N: She doesn't understand computers at all, just read past this casually.]

Another point was also easy to imagine.

Even if this ability-assisted tool could be formed, regardless of whether Natsume-san used temperature changes or something else for operation and calculation, it would still require various formulas in her brain to control it—like using heating formulas en masse, for example.

Setting aside whether Natsume-san could achieve such precise and high-frequency control, she would essentially be fulfilling the role of electricity in a computer.

Unless the computational power provided by this 'computer' exceeded the computational cost required to generate the 'electricity' she supplied, it would be a complete net loss.

However, looking at the history of computer development, from vacuum tube computers the size of a room, to transistors, then to semiconductors and very-large-scale integration, it showed the potential was considerable—if she just found the right direction.

--+--

T/N: If you want advance chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL