Throne of Magical Arcana

Sitting in the study, Dieppe was overwhelmed by his own endless thoughts from his own deduction, as if he was in a nightmare.

He kept going through the entire process over and over again, trying to find the problem. He could not stop murmuring,

“How is it possible that electrons take the form of wave?”

A while later, he started asking himself,

“How can it be?”

Then his confusion beat all the other thoughts, and Dieppe started studying the implications of his findings,

“Why wave…?”

The heavy snow was silently falling outside of the window. The dim light coming out from Dieppe’s place, however, looked enthusiastic in such bad weather. The frustrated look slowly disappeared from Dieppe’s face and was replaced with the look of contemplating.

“…If that’s the case, it seems that all microscopic particles in motion have their corresponding frequencies and wavelengths. Why is that…” Dieppe’s brows frowned tight. Suddenly, he recalled Mr. Evans’s words from the two separate papers.

“…Perhaps we should be more open-minded facing the argument.”

“…Since it is for certain that light has both a wave nature and particle nature as it is supported by solid experiment results, why don’t we combine the findings together? Perhaps it can be explained by Wave–particle duality.”

The latter showed up in a simple paper, and Lucien Evans was saying this in an uncertain tone. Therefore, the words rarely left a deep impression on the readers. But the word concept of dualism had deeply stuck in Dieppe’s brain, and now everything made sense if the duality theory was applied.

He took a long, deep breath, as if he was going to release a world-shattering monster. He finally put it this way in his script, “So here is the conclusion we can draw: Wave–particle duality does not only exist in quantum photons, but also all the microscopic particles in motion, including protons, neutrons, electrons, etc. They all have their corresponding wavelengths based on the energy they carry. In other words, they all share the duality.”

Finishing the sentence, Dieppe had been deprived of all his strength. Even that, he could not help thinking, “If those microscopic particles all share duality, what about those macroscopic objects in motion?”

That was a ridiculous deduction. Dieppe looked at himself and was amused by his own crazy thought.

Then he turned to think about something else: Special relativity could be applied to New Alchemy as well. The two systems were not completely separate from each other. Instead, somehow they could come together. Maybe they would promote each other, like… New Alchemy based on theory of relativity?

Dieppe slowly calmed down, and the strange thoughts began to disappear. But the paper in front of him was still like a huge heavy stone suffocating him.

Standing up behind the desk, Dieppe walked to the window and pushed it open. Coming to him was the freezing cold wind.

Dieppe shivered in the cold wind, but his brain was refreshed. The skyline had lit up. The world was covered in a layer of snow, as if it was a brand new one.

“It’s dawn now…”

Dieppe sighed to himself.

…

During breakfast time, Dieppe did not see Raventi, his teacher. After some hesitation, he went directly to Raventi’s study.

Dieppe knocked on the door.

“Come in.” Raventi knew that it was Dieppe outside from the magic circle.

Pushing open the door, Dieppe walked in quietly. He saw that Raventi was walking out of his magic lab. It seemed like he had been verifying Brook’s paper all night.

“What is it?” Raventi asked directly.

Dieppe hesitated. He felt nervous, worried, afraid, and very self-conscious. He did not think that his teacher would accept his findings.

“Speak it out!” Raventi was also used to roaring.

Dieppe gritted his teeth and took out his paper, “Sir, this’s my latest paper. Please… have a look.”

Without any firm support from a solid experiment, the paper was very unlikely to shake Raventi’s cognitive world.

“I don’t see where the hesitation comes from.” said Raventi in a loud voice, as he took over the paper.

Raventi did not have much experience in this. If it had been Fernando who was going to read the paper, he would have definitely asked whether the paper had anything to do with being subversive, and how subversive it would be.

Dieppe opened his mouth silently but could not say a word, as he had no idea how to respond. He could not simply confess his concerns and worries in front of his teacher.

Raventi started reading this short paper, as he walked back to his desk. Suddenly, he stopped, and the look on his face quickly changed. There was shock, confusion, and even anger.

Dieppe silently took a step back. He could feel the horrible pressure coming out from his teacher, a top sorcerer whose cognitive world could affect the material world.

After a long time, Raventi pulled himself out of the paper and turned to stare at Dieppe,

“You’re telling me electrons are waves?!” roared Raventi.

Raventi’s voice was deep and low, as if there was a horrible storm hiding inside.

“Yes… in fact all microscopic particles…” Dieppe stammered.

“You’re telling me electrons are waves?!” roared Raventi.

“After weighing the mass, catching the track, and making sure that electrons do have momentum and comply with conservation law, you’re telling me this?”

“Then why don’t you tell me those married noble ladies who are also mothers are in fact males?!”

…

Raventi’s roaring made Dieppe keep stepping backward until his back hit against the door. Although Raventi’s analogy sounded correct, it did not seem right to apply the duality to the macro world.

“Some special magic creatures are hermaphrodite. Once gaining the blood power, human beings can also…” murmured Dieppe.

As Raventi’s dark grey eyes stared at Dieppe, the elements in the space rippled chaotically like water.

“Follow me to the lab,” said Raventi.

Dieppe wiped his face and followed his teacher silently. Raventi stopped in front of the cloud chamber invented by Lucien Evans, and he turned on the cyclotron.

“Now you tell me: What are those beautiful tracks left by electrons? You still want to tell me that electrons are waves?!” Raventi shouted at Dieppe again.

Dieppe did not have to take a look at the cloud chamber. He knew how the tracks looked very clearly.

Dieppe took a deep breath. He did not answer his teacher’s question, but instead, he repeated, as if he was assuring himself, “Electrons also show the features of particle. They are both waves and particles.”

In Raventi’s ears, Dieppe’s words were totally ridiculous. Basically, his student was saying that a man could be both male and female, tall and short, live and dead.

The war between particle and wave theory had been going on for ages. How was it possible that both of the viewpoints were in fact correct?

Raventi was about to lash out a few more questions at his student, but when he saw his student’s red, tired, but still determined eyes, Raventi calmed down a little bit. When it came to arcana, he only followed logical reasoning and experiment support.

Raventi recalled the entire deductive reasoning in Dieppe’s paper, and found that there was no problem in it.

“Maybe you mixed a couple of formula. I need some time.” Raventi’s tone softened slightly.

Knowing that the finding was hard to accept to his teacher, Dieppe nodded in frustration, “Take your time, sir.”

As the one who did the deductive reasoning, even Dieppe himself was having a difficult time believing it.

Seeing the run-down look on his student’s face, Raventi took the paper with him and walked out, “This paper isn’t long. I’ll send it to Morris and Gaston to have a look to see what they think. I’m not always correct.”

This was always Raventi’s belief. A student should never follow his teacher blindly.

Dieppe had hope in his chest again.

So the entire morning Dieppe was waiting rather nervously for the letters to come back. When the letters were back at noon, he hurriedly rushed to Raventi’s study,

“Sir, what did they say?”

Raventi answered expressionlessly, “According to Morris, your deduction is bold and reasonable but it strays away from reality. No experiments or models can support it. There’s no way that waves and particles can exist together.”

Dieppe’s hope collapsed again.

“According to Gaston, your hypothesis is based on imagination, as there’s no evidence support from any experiments.”

Because it was Raventi who sent the paper, both Morris and Gaston chose to use softer comments.

Dieppe fell back to a chair. And he started doubting himself again.

“Your paper is hardly persuasive, even for those who insist wave theory, as their main argument always focuses on electromagnetic waves and photons, not electrons. They will be happy to see your hypothesis, but they neither could offer you solid support.”

“If the gap is narrow enough, we should be able to see electron diffraction, just like waves.”

Dieppe was still insisting.

Raventi nodded in his mind, approving the spirit Dieppe showed. However, Raventi also believed that he should not let his student’s mind wondering like this. So he said,

“I will send your paper to Lucien, the authority in this field. If even he says no…”

“Then perhaps it is wrong.” Dieppe’s eyes lit up with the flame of hope and expectation.

He added in his mind, “…but I will still wait for the solid experiment result showing disapproval.”

The pet messenger sent away the paper, and Dieppe started waiting restlessly again. The last time he was this nervous was when he was still an apprentice waiting for his spiritual power talent to be checked.

“I don’t need the support from those wave theory believers…” murmured Dieppe.

“If there’s going to be some people agreeing with me, Mr. Evans will definitely be one of them. But what if the paper even seems to be ridiculous to him…?”

“What will he say?” Dieppe kept asking himself.