Archive of Our Own ^beta

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She arises with the dawn, as always. Proper mental balance relies on many hormonal cues, and those are influenced by sunlight.

The bland meal would be nearly tasteless to one not trained to detect subtleties. She can tell how fresh the roots were, how long it likely sat after preparation, if there were traces of soil left upon the skin. Where the soil came from, within a certain range of possibilities.

Meditation comes next. An hour upon the balcony, with the wind about her and the sands shifting out and beyond. One of her emotional cousins might call the vista beautiful. She is trained to ignore aesthetics. The wind is predictable if you can map every surface that steers it, and contrariwise, you can extrapolate the influences from how it impacts the skin, or how it stirs the sands.

Beauty is just another influence on others' minds. She would meditate within a bombed out city, if her guards allowed it, and possibly glean more information from the experience.

But that's the point. To be given the least until the least is an open book, albeit spare and simple most times. Then, one is presented with complexities, at a studied rate, until the mind-maps can encompass... worlds. Empires, ideally, at the peak.

Going past worlds is difficult. Worlds are difficult. Cities are (currently) unimaginably complex. Each stage builds upon others. She will, within the year, be given more than the neighborhood-worth of data to extrapolate from. A small town, perhaps, if she is skilled enough. Another neighborhood if not. An entirely different area of education if she cannot handle the logic of all those relationships.

After meditation is study: the information about her inference-domain first, and she makes predictions where she can, or requests further details where she cannot. Next, biology and medicine; if she fails in the predictive logics, the vastly different complexities of biological sciences will become her primary focus.

She is not allowed to do computer programming or electronics. She was too skilled at those, and too young for her guards to be sure logic will keep her loyal.

She had been taken from rogue Surakians, after all. Her mother had tired of the secretive life in the wilds, more than once. When she'd dallied with some unknown male... Children were welcomed enough among the rogues, especially those without the inbreeding that gave Surakians a more visible ridging above the eyes.

But parenthood had held sufficient difficulties that her mother had sought to turn herself and her young child in, to be trained as Logicians. Trained. Kept. Fed. Introduced to appropriate breeding candidates from time to time.

More often, the companionship of other Logicians was only when they came together to combine their knowledges of their areas and make predictions for the wholes.

That was the usual way the predictions were made for the Star Empire: the training groups advised the city groups, who advised the continent groups, who advised the world groups. And those funneled data to chosen representatives who analyzed it and conferred, and finally, it went to the Emperor.

Each level, from city up, advised the hot-hearted rulers of their areas, of course. The emotional ones would not trust orders to trickle down, and even the Emperor didn't want Logicians clustered together under his or her thumb.

They were far more biddable in manageable groups.

After study, she goes to her door and awaits its opening. The guards beyond were for many purposes: primarily to keep her from going places unseen or unauthorized (or both), but also to protect her from enemies of the city's master, who might want to deny him (or her; no one had said) the use of Logicians.

Even though she is young, some might wish to sabotage the smooth progress of the young to the mature, and force an overworked gap while new Logicians were bred and trained.

Her fellows number twenty-nine, mostly her approximate age (very recent twenties), though with a few precocious children and some adults whose talents have stagnated at this level. (Her mother had no talents whatsoever for understanding or influencing people; she triages engineering schematics, perfecting stardrives for ships they would never be allowed to fly upon. Sometimes she even meets and exchanges information with her child – and does not comment that a childish name, "Pi'mor," little blade, had been altered to T'mor. Parenthood truly had not suited her mother.)

Today, the meeting is overseen by the world-Logician, a tall, bald man with broad shoulders — even beneath the sand-white robes they all wear. The colors of his belt (more for the guards' benefit than Logician ones) are green and a powdery blue: green for blood (the hot, passionate blood that drives the emotional ones in their ambitions and conquests), and blue for the sky and esoteric sciences.

Her belt is sand-white, wound with two shades of green: one matches his, and the other is darker, for the biological sciences of her secondary specialty. Around her, the others' belts are blood-green twisted with different colors: powdery blue, the darker green, dusty rock-pink, sandy amber, and here and there the purple of a functioning empath.

There are more functioning empaths than those who wear the purple, but no Logician — not even the daughter of a rogue Surakian — will mention this to their so-very-emotional keepers. Without Logicians, the Star Empire would fall, squabbling within itself more than it already does, devoured by the slave-species it conquers — and likewise, so would the Logicians be destroyed.

The hot-hearted ones think they control Logicians. Rogue Surakians think they are enslaved for their embrace of logic above emotion.

It's symbiosis.

She is the tenth to rise and make her report, then returns to jotting notes about the other reports on her datapad. They will analyze how their own domains are influencing others', and turn their findings and suggestions into a cohesive whole: yet another report, for those of a higher level. (And the world-advisor makes suggestions and corrections; they all know he is identifying those whose studies should be intensified.)

Afterward is physical exercise in small groups, and the disciplines that — despite hot-hearted efforts to keep Logicians defenseless — clearly have origins in combat exercises. Some of them seek to re-engineer the actual combat moves, though carefully, in ways their keepers will not object to. Others simply interact with balls or ropes to pull against.

She had some training with a knife, when she was a little Surakian child, to defend herself. (A Logician will always be attended by guards.) Her exercises keep her limber, dexterous, and alert — and are probably unnoticed as much different by the guards. Logicians are, after all, always trying to improve their lives in inexplicable ways.

The world-advisor comes with them, no doubt to observe and manipulate their training based on his observations. At one point, when she is in a stillness pose (its goal is balance, able to dodge in any direction), he places a hand on her shoulder. His words are a question of the point of her stance; her reply is one of dancing and the logic of balance and movement and patterns.

His touch imparts carefully-framed approval and expectations of success, entirely absent from his words.

He has no strands of purple in his belt, and she is entirely unsurprised. Her face is properly expressionless as he leaves to converse with another of her cohort. Her anticipation and interest will not show; if she can keep up and improve in predicting the patterns of society, she will learn more directly from him.

His emotions suggest his belief in her ability. She looks forward to it.