The square near Lenta's Rose Avenue, lights just coming on, crowds bustling.
This was a habit of many Lenta citizens — after dinner, they would stroll to the nearest square to wait for the start of "Voice of Arcana." But with the newspaper-subscription-and-free-magic-radio promotion growing ever more popular, the crowds here were no longer packed as densely as in the old days. Of course, in absolute numbers, there were still quite a few.
"Hello everyone, tuning to 592.6 megahertz — this is 'Voice of Arcana,' and I'm your old friend, Nightingale. Thank you all for tuning in at this hour..." As the sweet voice, familiar as a family member's, came through the loudspeaker, every listener focused their attention, no longer chatting and laughing with those around them. And after the last live broadcast, they could already reconstruct Miss Nightingale's appearance from her voice alone.
Program after program went by, and then it seemed to be time for the segment that everyone didn't quite understand but found utterly fascinating — "Magic Classroom."
"Ladies and gentlemen, next I will explain to you how to defend against basic hypnotic spells... zzzz..." That magnetic male voice hadn't finished a single sentence before a slightly grating, sharp sound burst from the loudspeaker. Then the sharpness vanished, replaced by the zzzz of static — but everything quickly returned to normal. Only now the deep, magnetic male voice had been replaced by Nightingale's sweet, beautiful, yet tremulously excited voice:
"Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen — this is 'Voice of Arcana.' We are now interrupting regular programming with a breaking news report..."
"What's going on?" The listeners looked at each other in bewilderment. They had experienced temporary signal interruptions before, but never had one recovered so quickly. And it changed the program!
Breaking news?
This was something they had never experienced, so they couldn't process it for a moment.
In the noble mansions, in the commoners' apartments, in the various schools — every listener tuned into "Voice of Arcana" wore a similar expression, unable to understand what could possibly have happened to warrant this strange form of breaking-news interruption.
……
Inside the "Atomic Research Institute," because Leiliya — who had teleported the students up — had told Heidi and Annick about the anomaly of "two suns appearing in the sky," they decided to pay the teleportation fees themselves and return to the surface early, wanting to know what had happened as soon as possible.
This was partly out of curiosity and partly because they wanted to prepare for various worst-case scenarios as quickly as possible. After all, if they stayed in space and something went wrong on the ground, they might never be able to return. Once their energy reserves ran out, the result would be "space corpses drifting." For similar reasons, the unmarried members among them hadn't left the Allenthe Magic Tower, instead applying for nighttime laboratory access.
"Heidi, you've discovered a new particle?" The anomaly of the two suns had been discussed for an entire afternoon plus the dinner hour, so Leiliya couldn't help but change the subject and ask about Heidi's discovery.
Seeing Leiliya, Ophelia, and their other friends' sparkling, curious eyes, Heidi smiled with satisfaction: "After repeated confirmation, it is a new particle different from any previously discovered ones. Its mass is approximately two hundred times that of an electron, and it travels at extremely high speed."
"A new particle? Could it be that the number of fundamental particles doesn't fit the principle of 'simplicity'?" The idea that the more fundamental something is, the simpler it should be was a philosophical view held by many Archanists — much like the seemingly universal and wondrous "symmetry." So Roc, while removing his black top hat and flicking at the almost nonexistent dust on it, remarked with puzzlement:
"For now, we can only respect the experimental results. Maybe fundamental particles aren't so fundamental?" Heidi echoed Lucian's famous dictum "the vacuum is not empty," then glanced at the wall clock in the lab and cheered, "'Voice of Arcana' has started!"
Compared to the "True World Channel," she seemed to prefer "Voice of Arcana."
Roc sighed with mild emotion: "That's possible. By the way, has discovering the new particle given you any 'Real World' feedback?"
"Heaps," Heidi replied with a brilliant smile, never one to be coy.
"Hehe, Heidi, weren't you always complaining about never having won the Holm Crown Award or similar honors? This discovery of a new particle should finally make your wish come true," said Katrina, happy for her friend.
Heidi shook her head, not very optimistic: "Discovering a new particle probably won't be enough, unless it's a very important new particle — like the kind Her Highness Hathaway predicted — or if I discovered it using a 'new method.' I'd better just patiently wait for a breakthrough in artificial intelligence."
"It isn't the kind Her Highness Hathaway predicted?" Annick, Katrina, and the others were quite surprised. From the properties measured so far, the new particle bore a strong resemblance to the "meson" that Her Highness Hathaway had predicted.
Heidi pouted: "We'd have to test whether it participates in the strong interaction to know. For now, we can only assume it doesn't."
Watching her companions one after another take home the highest awards in their respective fields — how could she not have some thoughts and longings? But for now, this wouldn't stop her from making rational judgments, because she was growing ever more confident in the prospects of artificial intelligence, believing that sooner or later she would win some top prize for it — perhaps even the Evans Arcane Award.
During their discussion, they suddenly heard the zzzz from the magic radio, which drew their attention.
"Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen — this is 'Voice of Arcana.' We are now interrupting regular programming with a breaking news report..."
After Nightingale's voice sounded, Heidi and the others immediately adopted solemn expressions. If there was anything worth interrupting programming for, it was obviously the strange appearance of two suns during the day!