The Way Ahead

Chapter 89a: Closed-Dish Cultivation

How did you prove germ theory to someone who didn’t believe it? It was actually a surprisingly difficult question, given that technically speaking, even back on Earth it was, still just a theory. A germ- ahem.

Granted, it was a highly tested and unanimously accepted theory, but because it was a matter of biology, it couldn’t be a proper law. It just couldn’t have the sorts of rigorous mathematical backing required.

All that was to say Edwin couldn’t prove that germs caused disease directly. He could prove the existence of bacteria, yes, but without access to massive amounts of people who were sick with the same thing, he couldn’t even show that the presence of a given bacterium was strongly associated with being sick

Edwin’s solution? Ignore the outright proof of germ theory for disease, just go to try and show that bacteria were real. There were two routes to get there. The first was to build a microscope and outright show Galen that bacteria were real- tricky, but doable, potentially even with apparatite lenses instead of glass. The second was to grow a culture of bacteria in a petri dish.

Fortunately, he didn’t need to choose one route or the other. Both would work just fine for his purposes, and mean there was less chance of being messed up in some way.

“Well?” Alchemist Galen prodded. Fair enough, Edwin had been silent for a minute while planning out his avenues of attack, “What shall I see?”

“I don’t suppose you have any microscopes?” he checked. No point in reinventing the wheel if he didn’t need to, after all.

“A… small-glass? What’s that?”

“That’s a no, then. It’s a contraption that lets you see really small stuff. I didn’t think you’d have it, but I wanted to check. I’ll… make one, I guess. Just give me a few days and I’ll have proof for bacteria’s existence.” Edwin nodded to himself. He’d head back to his carriage and try to get some kind of bacteria culture going, then build his microscope while it was developing.

“Hm. Well, when you’re willing to admit defeat, find me. Now run along. You’ve wasted enough of my morning already.”

Edwin glared at the alchemist, but held his biting comments back. What he made would be far more convincing than anything he could say…

“I agree. Quite the wasted morning.”

Dang it.

Petri dishes were actually quite easy to make. Well, it was that easy when you had an instant ‘summon object’ power, and could simply create a glass dish by imagining the tool exactly as he wanted it to appear. It would have been way harder if he had to try and use actual glass in his experiments. Regardless, that was unfortunately where the easy part ended.

Awkwardly, this was the first time Edwin had actually tried cultivating bacteria. He’d been a physicist, not a biologist, and the closest he’d gotten to the squishy sciences since before college was when he took organic chemistry, which… well, it didn’t cover bacteria cultures. Even back in high school, he didn’t think he’d actually done anything like this. So, he had to figure it out from scratch

Memory told him that the substance used in a petri dish was called agar, but that came with precisely zero accompanying knowledge for what that was, why it was used, or even how to use it. Making an educated guess, he presumed it was food for the bacteria, which he hoped he could substitute with more readily available magical ingredients.

Talsanenris was the obvious option for magical food, given its utterly absurd caloric equivalent, though it might have been short in nutrients. He did have a fair amount of talsanenris leaf, though, which he’d seen had tremendous nutrient density, so that should compensate well enough. All he’d need to do would be to crush some talsanenris leaves and berries together, then add water until it was a nutrient slurry, and he could use that as his base for his colonies.

…Probably, anyway. If this worked properly on his first try, it would be amazing. He’d had better luck with all of his trials on Joriah than back in a lab for whatever reason (he suspected his Alchemy skill helped), but he wasn’t sure if that luck would hold over to biology. Well, fingers crossed.

He used a stagnant puddle near the stream for his bacteria source, scooping up a tiny measure of water and pouring it into his experimental dishes. Once they were prepped, Edwin found a warm, but not hot, corner of his lab and let them sit.

While waiting for his cultures to grow, Edwin started tracking down the materials he would need for his microscope. While he could make most of it out of pure apparatite, it wouldn’t be suitable for the tube. The whole point, after all, was that only light from the sample could make it inside, and his transparent crystal wouldn’t do a very good job at blocking out extra light.

He played with using paper and bark for his purposes, but paper was too translucent and bark was too inflexible. Ultimately, Edwin did go with a cylinder of beaten iron, purchased from the blacksmith for some twenty ager. Honestly, he should have checked there from the very beginning, but he was too accustomed to making everything himself. Magic could compensate for a lot of the supply chain, it turned out. At least it wasn’t too expensive, though the speed at which he’d gotten his part made was bound to have upped the price some.

The rest of the build was… well, not exactly easy, but not too challenging either. Other than actually getting his lenses in focus, it was just a matter of playing around with methods of holding the iron tube up and at some kind of adjustable height.

It took time, sure, but it was just tinkering, and it was kind of fun. It still took Edwin the better part of a day to get the housing up, but he accomplished it nonetheless.

The next day was where things got tricky, and he ultimately decided he didn’t want to have to deal with the math, and instead resorted to trial and error. Granted, it was educated trial and error, but it still just amounted to trying different lenses until he found one with the focal length he wanted, namely a bit shorter than the length of his microscope tube.

Once he started getting close, the rest of the work was straightforward, and within two days, he had a fully functional microscope. It still took a bit more tweaking to get it powerful enough to actually see bacteria and the like, along with more silver spent at the blacksmith’s to get better caps on both ends of the tube, but he did manage it in the end.

While not all of his petri dishes had grown any appreciable amount of bacteria culture, two had enough spots growing in the talsanenris slurry that he felt confident in showing them to Galen.

And so, dishes in one hand and microscope in the other, he found himself knocking on the Alchemist’s door just three days after he’d last stormed out.

“Come in! Ah. Maxlin. Come to admit your failings, then?”

“Not at all, Alchemist Galen. I think I have some things you’ll find particularly interesting, as it were.”

He pulled out the dishes and set the microscope down, “So the first thing I want to show you are these bacteria cultures I grew over the past few days,” he set the dish down and slid it over, “This is just from a sample of pond water, and fed with some talsanenris. Each of these spots you see here? That’s a colony of bacteria, grown from a single cell in the original sample. I started off with just a bit of water from the stream and food to grow, and here you are.”

“Hm, yes. Mold. I’m very familiar with this concept. You can create it from almost anything edible, with just a bit of water. So trivial the System doesn’t even acknowledge it as creation. Is that truly the best you have to offer?”

“What? Create… oh, you did mention that, didn’t you,” Edwin sighed. “You know, Alchemist Galen, other than magical shenanigans, life doesn’t arise from nothing.”

“Nonsense! We can see this happen all over the place! Just as rotting meat makes flies, mice from tall grass, spoiled potion waste water makes slimes… need I go on?”

“That’s not… Okay, I don’t know about that last one, but the former are definitely false. Hm. Okay. So… I’ll get back to that one, actually. For now, this is the microscope I was talking about.”

Edwin fiddled around with his stuff for a minute, getting a slide ready. He made sure to show his process to the alchemist, taking a bit of seemingly clear water and dabbing it onto the slide. Once it was in place, he adjusted the microscope until the slide was in focus and he could… not exactly clearly, but still see some larger bacteria.

“Right here. Just look down this and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

“Bah. Kids these days, no respect for… Oh now that’s clever.”

Edwin perked up, “You see it?” he looked over to see… Galen fiddling with the adjustment knob. Great

“Quite the clever little setup you have here. So you turn this little knob-thingy and that raises or lowers the platform? Don’t suppose you’d be able to share how it works?”

“Uh, I mean, I wasn’t really planning to but I can think about it?” he replied, caught off-guard.

“I don’t see any of these invisible slimes!” Galen snapped, finally peering into the lens.

“What? Oh, you took the focus off.”

“The what now?”

“I had it set up properly, but then you fiddled with the knob and… could I adjust it back, please? I’m going to need you to move.”

“What? You’re blaming me for it? You impertinent boy! I’ve been an alchemist since before your parents were eating dirt!”

“I mean,” Edwin found himself taken aback, “You also haven’t used a microscope before today, so you wouldn’t really be able to know how it works? Though just adjust that knob until the picture comes into focus.”

He took that as an invitation to really start spinning the knob, far too fast to properly focus on any sample, “Um, that’s not how you adjust it. You need to-”

“Shaddup, boy! I know what I’m doing!”

“Your… your, ah, actions speak otherwise, Alchemist Galen. Look, if you’d just let me, I can focus it and then we’ll be on our way.”

“No! I won’t have you deluding me with whatever tricks of the light you’re aiming to try and fool me, but I’m onto your tricks, you adventurer,” the man waved a warning finger at Edwin. “You need to have quite the updraft if you want to get one over on me.”

“Okay, then just… go a bit slower, I guess? You’ll never be able to find the right focus when you’re twisting on it so much, and I’m kind of worried you’ll…” Edwin found his warning cut off by a crack and glittering blue lights, “…break it.” He lamely finished.

“Your damned doohickey broke,” the man accused.

“Yeah. I see that,” Edwin replied, unamused. “Can I see it now, Alchemist Galen? I think I can fix it.”

“Bah. Fine, if you must.”

He gingerly accepted his creation and looked over, trying to figure out what had broken. There was no obvious external damage, but the adjusting knob spun freely and allowed the viewing apparatus to sink to the lowest point it could reach- almost touching the slide.

It didn’t take too long for Edwin to figure out the problem. One of the internal gears had shattered, disconnecting the knob from the slider in charge of actually moving the contraption up and down. He could even see exactly where it should have gone, the transparent nature of apparatite a double-edged sword in this situation. After all, he could see through the outside just fine… but he could also see through the inside as well, and so had to try and figure out what tiny piece was missing by seeing which section of the interior was slightly less distorted.

Not fun and not easy to find, but certainly easy to fix. All it took was Apparatusing in a replacement part in the same position it should have been in, and he was good to go.

“Okay, there you go. Please try to not break it this time? Or, better yet, let me adjust it?” he tried.

“Bah. Fine. I shall allow you to present your best case, that your failings cannot be blamed on me,” the alchemist reluctantly conceded. “Just make it quick.”josei

Edwin successfully held back his grumblings as he set up the slide. Other than a brief hitch where he needed to replace his replacement part from the microscope- his initial fix hadn’t interlocked with the further gears properly- it was accomplished without incident and he stepped back, motioning for the medic to take a look.

“So what am I supposed to be seeing? I don’t see any of those tiny slimes you’re talking about.”

“What? There’s lots of stuff. The cells, the green algae, the longer tubes…”

“Dirt? That’s what you’re going on about? Ha!” he barked, “No wonder you sounded so sure about yourself. Of course we well know that getting dirt in you’s bad. You’re not supposed to have earth in the body, just wind, water, and fire. That’s basic!

“I will say though, the idea that you could make more dirt in your body is a new one! Ha! Can’t wait to tell the others about this.”

“What?” Edwin finally composed himself, “How do you look at that and see dirt?”

He breathed in deeply, “Okay. You know what? I can prove that there’s something alive that’s that small, and that you can’t just ‘create’ life by mixing sugars and water together. Though I have to ask, do you have any Skills that just encourage life to grow in any form? It’ll speed things up.”

Galen looked at him skeptically, “When this fails, you’re going to leave me alone and quit wasting my time. But I do have Encourage Life, yes. What would you have me use it upon?”

Edwin clasped his hands together, “Okay, great. I’ll be back in five minutes, I just need to grab a couple of things.”