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Library - Sunday

After yesterday's detention, all Lee really wants to do today sit, read and avoid any needles or robot guts or running. So, he's got a stack of books (randomly selected from the shelves), a bottle of water and a banana.

He hasn't started reading anything yet. Instead, he's scribbling some notes about something he had been reading before starting on anything new.

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It probably was. But it helped smudge the fact he was getting nowhere fast.

He shrugged. "I'm hoping that if I can prove all the alchemy books here are full of crap, we can get new ones that aren't?"

"Alchemy?" Lee asked, shutting his book. "That a science?"

Edward grinned. "Yeah. Science of turning one thing into something else. But most people around here seem to think it's either magic or some other sort of hocus pocus."

"Turning something into something else?" Lee asked. "Like turning a rock into...a shoe or something?"

"Sure, if you had a reason to," Ed said. "You have to understand the substance that you want to change then you can break it down and rebuild it as something else."

"How do you do that scientifically?" Lee asked, book nearly forgotten now. "Break it down and then use the broken down parts to build something completely new."

"You have to hold both structures in your mind," Edward explained. "It's not a physical breaking down with your hands. It's an equation. The output has to be the same mass as what you start with. It's called the law of equivalent exchange."

"Huh." He'd never heard of anything like this before and the concept intrigued him. "All you need is an equation to do alchemy?"

He grinned. "That and an array to channel the energy needed for the transmutation."

"An array?" He almost wanted to take notes. "What's that?"

He pulled his black notebook out of his pocket and quickly drew a perfect circle with another just inside it then two intersecting triangles. "That's one of the basic arrays (http://www.animeindepth.com/images/1/circle/EdCircle.jpg). They vary depending on the type of transmutation."

With a silent request, Lee turned the notebook towards himself so he could study the illustration closer.

"You have to draw something like this each time you perform alchemy?"

"Yeah, most people do," Ed said.

"But, that means anyone could do it," Lee responded, almost questioning. "Doesn't that make that it hard to use it effectively when anyone can use it?"

"Not everyone wants to spend their time studying alchemy," Ed said. "There's a lot of studying of chemistry and physics and maths even before you get to transmute even something as simple as a bunch of dirt into a flower pot."

That made more sense. "Ah. The equations are complex then?"

"It's a matter of holding it all in your head," Edward explained. "You have a piece of scrap paper or something? I could show you."

"Sure," Lee said, tearing a piece of paper out of his notebook and sliding it across the desk.

Edward folded the paper up so that it would fit inside his tiny array and pressed the fingers of both hands to the edge of the circle. There was a flash of blue light then the paper was gone, turned into a tiny wooden horse. "See? Because I know the chemical make up of the paper - and of the wood - the transmutation is easy." He paused. "Also useless, but it works as a demonstration."

"Wow." Lee blinked and touched the horse with the tip of his finger. It was, indeed, a wooden horse. "Wow. That's...amazing."

He grinned cockily. "It's not so much. Our science just developed differently than this world's."

"If you did this on my world, he'd be famous," Lee told him.

"Maybe if alchemy would work there," Ed said with a shrug. He'd been famous. Just tended to get a person in trouble. "The energy isn't right everywhere."

"The energies have to be right?" Lee asked. "How's that?"

Edward pulled his hand through his ponytail, trying to think how to explain without getting overly technical. "You need energy for the reaction, right? Just like any other physical reaction. The energy is channeled through the array and changed into the form needed for the particular reaction - which is why the shape of the arrays change. And also why if you can't draw a perfect circle, you can't be an alchemist. In some worlds, there isn't energy available for the array to channel."

He paused, trying to see if he was making sense to Lee. "In this world, I can't do alchemy at all. Just here on the island is it possible."

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