In a garden villa belonging to a teacher at the
Rourke, who had come to visit a friend during the New Year holiday and ended up crashing there after a night of heavy drinking, was waving around a copy of Arcane and shouting himself hoarse—equal parts astonished and exhilarated, letting out exclamations like "I can't believe that's even possible!" and "Brilliant!"
"Oh no, I'm going to be late!" Rourke had been gesticulating wildly in his excitement when he suddenly caught sight of the clock hanging in his friend's living room. He sprang to his feet in alarm, realizing he'd made a serious mistake. He snatched up his soft cap, jammed it on his head, called out a hasty goodbye to his friend, and rushed out the door.
The school's main avenue was lined with trees shedding their withered yellow leaves, creating a peculiar sort of romantic atmosphere, but Rourke had no mind for scenery. He was striding at top speed toward the carriage stand.
"Well, if it isn't Rourke? When did such a distinguished figure from the Atomic Research Institute find his way back to the academy?" A deliberately surprised, acrid voice drifted over from the side.
At the sound of that slightly low, hoarse voice, Rourke skidded to a halt and turned his head toward the other side of the avenue. Under a tree stood Beate and several others, their expressions plain and honest-looking as ever.
"Beate?" Rourke's face lit up with excitement right away. He paid no attention whatsoever to Beate's hostile demeanor and said with a broad grin, "Have you read today's Arcane?"
Beate was dumbfounded. Since when did Rourke—who normally exchanged barbs and insults with him—ever act so amiable?
"Haven't read it? What happened?" a teacher from the Electromagnetics department beside him answered with puzzlement.
Rourke suppressed the urge to blurt it out and said with a malicious grin: "That brilliant, dazzling star from half a month ago—you remember it, don't you? His Excellency the Chairman created and launched it! The very first paper in the issue is a detailed account of the experiment!"
"What? That's—that's impossible!" Beate wasn't connecting it to any broader implications; his face was simply blank with shock. Was this really an experiment that human beings could carry out?
The other teachers beside him wore identical expressions.
Rourke patiently prodded them along: "This fully proves the correctness of His Excellency the Chairman's theory and deals a powerful blow to the questioning that's been lurking beneath the surface for centuries."
"True." Beate found this quite agreeable.
Rourke suddenly broke into a laugh: "Then what about last time, when we were discussing His Excellency the Chairman's speed-of-light experiment? Didn't you dismiss it by claiming there were fundamental problems with His Excellency the Chairman's theoretical framework? What about now? Have you changed your mind? Or have you come up with some other excuse?"
Beate raised his right hand and pointed a trembling finger at Rourke: "You!"
He was only a Second-rank Archanist, and in that moment he truly couldn't come up with any alternative theoretical explanation.
"Oh, I almost forgot to tell you—the two theories proposed in the last issues of Arcane and Arcane Magic have already been refuted by the Storm Lord. One was torn apart on the basis of its own internal flaws, and the other demands experimental proof. But I believe that if there really were experimental results, the proposer would have included them immediately. The fact that he couldn't produce any proves his own experiments yielded unfavorable results." Rourke shut down every avenue of reasoning Beate might have pursued.
Beate, burning with humiliation and unable to accept it, retorted: "Then you use particle theory to explain the double-slit diffraction pattern! Explain the Brookes bright spot!"
"That's not the point of what we're discussing right now. Come on—I'm asking you to provide an alternative explanation for His Excellency the Chairman's speed-of-light experiment! Prove that aether exists! Hmph, if aether doesn't even exist, then what value does wave theory have? Oh, and by the way—in the pages of Arcane, Mr. Altier has posted a bounty of fifty thousand Arcane Points for a similar theory. So go ahead, you wave-theory Archanists, put your imaginations to good use!" Rourke deftly sidestepped the real issue, deliberately stressing the last two words to make it clear this was all just imagination.
Beate felt that if not for the classical optical images bolstering his resolve, he might have already wavered. Holding fast to his bottom line, he said: "Just because we can't produce one right now doesn't mean one doesn't exist! You're the one who should use particle theory to explain experiments like double-slit diffraction! It's been nearly a hundred years!"
"Stubborn! Refusing to face reality!" Rourke shot back with a loud, cutting remark.
Beate roared in fury: "And you're the same—refusing to face those classical experiments!"
And so Rourke, one against many, launched into a protracted debate. But both sides merely talked past each other, with no intention of actually engaging the other's arguments. It seemed they could argue until the end of the world without ever reaching a resolution.
"Damn it—I'm already late!" It wasn't until Rourke noticed the winter sun had been warming him for some time that he belatedly panicked. The thought of the Arcane Points that would be deducted from his account made his heart ache.
With a look of contempt, Rourke addressed Beate and his companions: "Stop going in circles! If you have the ability to refute His Excellency the Chairman's speed-of-light experiment, then go claim the bounty! I'll be waiting for the day you take those fifty thousand Arcane Points and convert them into Copper Fel to shower all over me!"
"If you don't have the ability, then stop going around touting wave theory!"
With that, he turned on his heel and walked away without giving Beate the slightest chance to respond—perfectly embodying the essence of the hit-and-run debating strategy.
Beate was just about to deploy the classical experiments against Rourke once more when he realized the man had already vanished from sight. The pent-up frustration and rage, with nowhere to go, burned through his mind like fire: "Damn you! Idiot! Fool!"
Similar scenes were playing out all across Aren, though for the most part it was particle-theory Archanists facing wave-theory supporters at a severe numerical disadvantage. Yet thanks to the powerful evidence of the speed-of-light experiment, they had finally gained the upper hand, venting all the frustration they had bottled up and leaving the wave-theory camp fuming with helpless rage.
The only silver lining was that, because the classical optical experiments still existed, the worldview that the wave-theory Archanists had constructed hadn't been dealt a devastating blow. They believed there had to be some other theory—one that incorporated aether as a medium—capable of explaining
…………
Inside the "Electromagnetic Dominion," Brookes saw the new issue of Arcane.