In response to his prodding, Gracie Fitzwilliams raised her hand. She was exactly the sort of student the graduate program attracted: ambitious and competitive and eager to prove herself. Perfectly suited to a life in academia.
Rawlins nodded and invited Gracie to step up onto the platform with him, entering the ritual circle. “Time dilation is the localized acceleration or deceleration of the passage of time,” he said. “We will narrowly define the casting radius so that the effects remain limited to the object we target.” At the center of the platform, Rawlins placed a Newton’s cradle. “What are our other variables?”
“Degree of dilation,” Gracie answered. “How fast or slow we want time to go.” Rawlins nodded and looked to the rest of the class.
“Duration, obviously,” said Victor Hamada. “I think that’s it.”
“One more,” Rawlins prompted, raising an eyebrow and drawing blank stares; when it was clear no one had the answer, he gave it: “Direction.It’s often ignored, and it usuallycanbe ignored, because we default to using positive values. But it’s important to ensure that time is movingforwardat the speed in question.”
“So it’s possible to reverse it?” Gracie asked, clearly skeptical.
“In theory,” Rawlins answered. “But if the anecdotal reports are to be believed, it’s a disaster. So—let’s get started. The floor is yours.”
Gracie presided over the preparation for the ritual, taking charge of the class. She consulted the textbook and told her fellow students which elementals to fetch, in what quantities, and calculated their placement on the ritual circle. A rope protractor was used to draw concentric circles, then Gracie calculated the divisions she would need—eventually subdividing the circle into sixty-four sections. Rawlins didn’t correct her, though it was possible to achieve the ritual with only sixteen, if you knew what you were doing. A whiteboard was used for the trigonometric calculations, which Rawlins noted she handled easily.
After ninety minutes, Gracie was ready to initiate. Rawlins pulled back one ball of the Newton’s cradle and started itclack-clack-clacking.He dimmed the lights. Even if near-darkness was not technically necessary for the reactions to unfold, Rawlins enjoyed the theatricality ofit.
Gracie chanted the incantation, her voice rising and falling in perfect time—like a computer-generated approximation of music. Perfect pitch, no melody. Then she lit the fuse, touching a match to the catalyst. The sulfur sizzled, and in a chain reaction, other elementals throughout the ritual circle started to react. Eight vials of lamp oil, evenly spaced, began to bubble; rolls of vellum paper burst into flame and the smoke wafted upward, quickly pulled away by the ventilation ducts overhead; geometrically cut pieces of jade and amethyst glowed. A low, vibrating humming expanded through the hall, a sign that the ritual was working. The sound, barely audible but still perceptible, wasn’t the direct result of any part of the ritual itself. So much of the arcane could be explained, but the humming simply existed.
The students all scribbled notes furiously; Rawlins, irritated, wondered if any of them were watching.
As the ritual took effect, the air at the center of the ritual circle subtly distorted, like a mirage appearing midair, and theclack-clack-clackdiminished to aclack…clack…clackas the Newton’s cradle slowed. It was beautiful to watch the way the silvery orbs arced through the air like they were swimming through amber, seemingly in defiance of gravity, though in fact defying only time. Twenty-four years since he had first seen this demonstration and Rawlins was still enchanted byit.
Gracie had calculated for a sixty-second duration, and Rawlins intended the class to watch the full minute in silent appreciation. But the reverie was broken thirty seconds in by a question from Curt Ladove, a handsome Connecticut prep-schooler who had gone straight from Newlyn undergrad into the graduate program and was now wearing a polo shirt that tightly hugged his biceps: “Professor, what are the practical applications of dilation?”
Rawlins sighed. “Contraction is often used in conjunction with the sciences. We can help study chemical reactions by slowing them down to a fraction of their speed. Acceleration has applications in botany and farming in particular—we can speed up a growth cycle for a givenplant. Of course, it’s a lot of effort and energy, certainly not going to happen on any industrial scale, but for small quantities. You know, if you just planted your crop and found yourself very, very hungry.” He looked to his students, none of whom found his comment funny.
As the sixty-second duration ended, they measured the change in speed and calculated that it had gone from one collision per second to one every eight, exactly to specification.
After that, Rawlins had each of the students lead a variation on the experiment, speeding or slowing the cradle by different degrees, trying out various durations, occasionally altering the radius. Each fresh instance required a recalculation of quantities and distances, but the procedure was essentially the same. Their errors were minor and easily corrected, and they finished all the rituals he had planned with fifteen minutes to spare. The students shifted, clearly waiting to see if they would be dismissed early.
But Rawlins, perhaps due to his sleeplessness, was feeling ornery. The Practicum had gone well.Toowell. His students were going to leave the hall thoroughly untransformed, unchallenged, unawed.
On another day, he might not have been bothered by that; he would’ve been satisfied with their competence. But eventhatbothered him today—his own complacency, and theirs.
In that moment, his thoughts leapt to Maxwell Keene—to the young man’s excitement, hisrapture,at the wonders of arcane mechanicals. Rawlins wondered if a single one of these graduate students was evencapableof such passion. He could teach them everything he knew and they could memorize it easily, but how could he ever awaken a sense of boundless curiosity?
Well, at least he could try. Rawlins cleared his throat. “Seems we have time for one more ritual,” he said, his voice unnaturally loud in his ears. “Would anyone like to try being theobjectof the time dilation?”
The cohort froze, stupefied by the proposition. Rawlins went on, noticing the sweat prickling unpleasantly in his underarms: “I’ll lead it myself. All you have to do is stand at the center. We’ve seen it work numerous times on the cradle, without a major error.”
Rawlins’s gaze scanned the cohort, seeking to lock eyes with one who would accept his challenge. “Come on. Aren’t you curious what it would feel like? For time to crawl, or race by?”
The students all exchanged looks—simultaneously eager to answer correctly and not entirely certain what was happening. Gracie was the one who broke the silence. “It’s illegal,” she said. “Time-dilation spells have been limited to non-human objects since the Hagia Sophia Accords were ratified.”
All eyes went to Rawlins, anxious for his reaction. A line had been drawn in the sand. For Rawlins to continue insisting on a volunteer, he would now have to do so with acknowledgment that it was forbidden. Part of him, the prickly part, wanted to do just that—to defy Lennox and an entire generation of overcautious orthodoxy, and enlist these students in his quiet rebellion. To make themfeelthe power of arcane mechanicals.
But then, again, he thought of Maxwell. And this time, the images were much darker. Blue flame consuming a tower.
Three charred bodies, draped in sheets, wheeled into ambulances.
And Maxwell’s face, eyes wide in shock and terror as he was taken away by the police, leaving Rawlins alone with the guilt and shame of what he had wrought.
“Professor?” Gracie chirped, breaking Rawlins’s reverie, and he snapped to attention, forcing his mouth into what he hoped was a pleasant smile.
“Very good, Ms. Fitzwilliams. The final test of the day, and you have admirably demonstrated yourself to be a conscientious practitioner of arcane mechanicals.”
The students exhaled, and a few laughed nervously; all were relieved not to have volunteered, and a few seemed irritated thattheyhad not been the first to offer the correct response to the professor’s eccentric test.
