The ghost girl, Alice, floated a few inches above the floor. She watched Arthur trace the copper lines on the ancient tablet.
"You call it 'Code'," Alice said, her voice sounding like wind chimes. " The High Priests called it the Word of Creation."
"The High Priests were bad at documentation," Arthur muttered. He pulled out his notebook and started transcribing the binary sequence. "Look at this line here. It's an infinite loop. While (Mana > 0) { Cast Fireball }. No exit condition. No wonder the ancients blew themselves up."
Alice drifted closer. "That specific tablet caused the Great Fire of Sector 7. How did you know?"
"Basic logic," Arthur tapped the metal. "This isn't a spell for a fireball. It's a script for a flamethrower that never turns off."
Arthur looked at the ghost. "So, you are the Operating System?"
"I am the Librarian," Alice corrected, though she looked confused. "I was bound here to protect the knowledge until someone with the 'True Sight' arrived."
"True Sight," Arthur scoffed. "You mean literacy in C++. Listen, Alice, I need to extract this data. But the hardware is fried. The copper traces are corroded."
He looked around the gloomy basement.
"I need to build a compiler," Arthur mused. "A device that translates my commands into mana pulses these artifacts can understand. But I can't do it alone. I need a processor. And I need a power source."
He looked at the ghost. "Can you leave this basement?"
"I am bound to the Archives," Alice said sadly.
"We'll fix that later. Wi-Fi range extender should work," Arthur noted. "For now, I need living staff. I need a mathematician."
He thought of Zack.
"And," Arthur grimaced, "I need a Mana Generator. Someone with more mana than brains."
He thought of Julian.
End of Chapter 26