The Bigger Picture 2

"Just think about it Don. Think about what I said." Diana was really trying to raise his ability to think critically outside of military matters.

"The Scholar is one of only a few people that know how to read and write some Sanctum-Script shit. What about it?"

"Maybe that was misleading." Diana had added some distracting information. "If I rephrase it you might understand. The Scholar is one of only a few people that know how to read and write aboard this ship."

"Really?"

"Really. The only people on this ship who can read are the Scholar, Captain, Cartographer, and some of the cadets. For the most part, these people are illiterate. What do you think a low literacy rate among the higher echelons means for the peasantry?"

Don didn't really understand the full benefits that the ability to read gave. "Is it harder for them to communicate? Hard to organize around a cause and fight back?"

"That would certainly be an issue, but its probably more an issue of knowledge. They probably don't know that there are different ways to do things, feudalism is all they know."

"They haven't figured out elective representation?"

"If I had to guess, they probably haven't even figured out constitutional monarchism given the fact that they can't read."

"They can't even draft laws can they."

"It's unlikely. That makes it all the more important to pay attention so that you don't break any rules or get on someone's bad side. We won't be able to do much from a prison cell."

"Noted." Donovan never finished eating his meal.

- - - - - - - - - -

The vast majority of the remaining time would be spent on a consistent schedule. Training and learning were the biggest time sinks, but they were introduced to an array of hobbies and activities that high-born aristocrats would consider appropriate.

Unsurprisingly, Don found them all to be some of the most tedious shit he had ever done in his life.

A variety of board games that were interesting for the first few rounds, but eventually revealed themselves to be less complex than checkers.

Dancing was something he would probably need in some official capacity, a gala or some other event, but there was little chance of him doing it because he wanted to.

Actually learning to play music? He would rather die.

The only real hobby of any degree of acceptability was swordplay, but even that had its limits.

He would stick to reading and theory-crafting with ARC.

In contrast, Diana was engrossed with some of the activities at her disposal. The ladies not only had more options, but far more variations in them.

She had always tried to stay fashionable, if a little more reserved in her choices, so learning about 'high fashion' intrigued her greatly. Unfortunately for her, the materials these clothes were made of disagreed with her skin.

Maybe once ARC got a facility online she could design and manufacture her own dresses, that would be something interesting. Hell, it could give her an edge amongst the ladies.

Flower arrangement she found surprisingly entertaining, more like a puzzle than anything else. Sometimes a single flower could make or break a display.

She thought that dancing might be neat to try, but ultimately agreed with Don's desire to only have to do it when politically expedient. Hobbies were nice, but if they took up too much time they were detrimental to their goals.

In the end, they found that the life of a noble could be described by the term 'empty schedule'. The Scholar made it very clear that most nobles were proficient in at least one craft, and dabbled to a degree in many others.

Most nobles also seemed to know how to ride a mount. They didn't know what these mounts were, nor if they were even the same species, but the consistent translation to 'mount' meant they were probably something similar to a horse.

Apparently if you couldn't command one of them, you were viewed as unfit to lead. This was a comment that Donovan impulsively labeled stupid out loud. This drew Diana's scorn and a sigh from the Scholar (who apparently seemed to agree) before being forgotten the next day.

Nearing the end of their journey, they started being taught more about split.

"Split is basically everywhere, and forms a core function in our view of nature." The Scholar started drawing symbols on a board. "To our knowledge, split is a necessary component to the formation of life."

Diana's hand shot up, a practice they had developed in their lectures. "If it is so important, then why do we exist. You keep saying that our world didn't have any or something like that."

"If that was your takeaway, then I am sorry for misleading you. The reality of the situation isn't that your reality had NO split, it just had an abysmally small amount of it. The Great Csillacra likely implemented some way for you to survive in such a deficit, but there was definitely some there."

"Now that you mention it, the sun gave off a reading on the split scanners." Donovan remembered his time isolated in the Kuiper Belt.

"I take it that is some method of sensing split, which actually leads us quite nicely into the second part, which is its generation." He finished a few of the symbols on the chalkboard, each labelled in some sloppy English.

He wasn't the best at writing while seated, so doing it while standing was a chore. They were still good enough to make out though.

From left to right, they were a bug, fish (scaly and swimmy were universal constants for fish apparently), small animal, tree, human, greater beast, planet, and star.

"The amount of split something generates increases the farther right they are. To give a sense of scale though, it should be noted that while there are some humans that generate more split than some weaker greater beasts, there is not a single greater beast than produces more than a planet. Stars, following that logic, completely dwarf planets in a side by side comparison."