Chapter 1153 — Another Shift in the Wind

At dawn, the tower keeper Glyn awoke to the low droning hum of machinery. Sunlight was pouring through the crystal-glass window on one side of the tower's rest chamber, and the ornamental iron filigree on the window frame cast alternating bands of light and shadow across the floor. Far off, the sky was vast and cloudless, and the mechanical antenna dish atop the Luan Hub was swinging through another angle—its jagged, soaring alloy skeleton drifting slowly past the window, slicing the sky into a few cunning geometric patterns.

"Not bad. Fine weather... The mages' forecasts get more accurate every year."

The tower keeper squinted at the sky outside, muttered softly to himself, then let out a deep sigh. He pulled on a loose, cool thin shirt, tidied his appearance a little, and turned to leave the room—the mechanical turntables and interlocking mechanisms of the upper level humming their reassuring low note. Accompanied by that familiar sound, he passed through a short corridor and a brief flight of steps to the nearby equipment room, where a fair-haired young man in a brown shirt sat before the arcane-net terminal, wholly absorbed in the flickering figures on the holographic display, while beside the printing apparatus lay a neat stack of freshly trimmed newspapers and periodicals.

The young man's name was Ron, Glyn's colleague and the tower's other keeper. He had only been transferred here recently, but his steady, diligent, and likable nature had already left a deep and favorable impression on the tower's "old hands."

"Ah, Mr. Glyn," the blond young man at the arcane-net terminal heard the movement at the door and, recognizing the newcomer, broke into a smile. "It's not time for the shift change yet—you're up this early?"

"A regular routine is good for the body—especially for a middle-aged man like me who's no longer young," Glyn said, greeting the young man with a smile. "Vixen isn't back yet?"

"He came back a little while ago, but he headed out again soon after with two technicians—the readings at the secondary hub over in Kosen Township are off. A factory nearby reported they've been unable to receive any signal from Luan since yesterday, and Vixen thinks that thunderstorm yesterday may have damaged the secondary hub, so he wanted to see the situation himself. Oh, and he took the gray arcane-drive cart."

"Sounds like that thunderstorm was stronger than we thought," Glyn said offhandedly, stepping over to the arcane-net terminal, where he immediately noticed that the neatly trimmed papers fresh from the networked printer had already been leafed through, and that someone had marked up one of the pages in red ink. "Anything interesting in the papers, Ron?"

"Ah, I was just about to mention it," the young man named Ron said, his face lighting up with a smile that mixed delight and mystery. "You remember that 'listening project' Vixen's always been so keen on? The one with a listening station at every regional hub? Well, it seems they've suddenly made some tremendous progress—they say they've picked up a mysterious signal, and the scholars have been devoting whole columns to discussing it! And that's not even the only paper—"

Glyn hadn't really been following that listening project, but Ron's excited tone had roused more than enough interest in him. Before the young man could finish, he had already picked up the stack of printed sheets, which still carried a faint whiff of ink.

The first thing to meet his eye was a strikingly bold headline: *Among the Vast Multitude of Stars, Could There Exist Beings Capable of Rational Thought Like Ours?*

What sort of... question was that?

The tower keeper's gaze was instantly caught by this curious headline. From his youth as a nobleman's scribe to his middle age as keeper of an arcane-net hub, he had seen and lived through no small number of things over half a lifetime—but he had never heard of anything like this, never heard anyone pose such a question... Among the stars... Why would anyone look at what happened among the stars in such a way? And then go so far as to discuss the matter in all seriousness?

If one went by what the priests said... among the stars—shouldn't the stars be where the Kingdom of Heaven lay?

Glyn frowned instinctively and read on in confusion, only to find that nearly the whole page was devoted to this subject, and on the following pages there was an even more eye-catching and bewildering headline: *From Caves to Plains, from Beneath Our Feet to the Farther Shores—Royal Astrologer Morgan Hugo Illuminates the "Breadth" of the World.*

Ron's voice came from beside him: "These are fascinating—they look like dry academic treatises, but they're surprisingly easy to follow. I've never seen anything like it in any paper or magazine, theories about the starry sky overhead. Though I did hear from my teacher that the land beneath our feet is actually a planet, that we revolve around the sun, that the sun revolves around 'Ao,' and that every twinkling point of light in the cosmos might be a similar celestial system..."

Glyn listened to Ron's animated account and could only offer a few perfunctory responses—what the young man paid attention to and absorbed did seem rather different from what a middle-aged man like himself did. He had, it was true, received the full course of general education and literacy classes, but for knowledge that sounded so "remote from daily life," his interest was plainly no match for that of Ron, barely past twenty, and keeping up with the conversation was naturally proving terribly difficult.

Meanwhile, his eyes were rapidly skimming the rest of the paper—the unrelated reports, advertisements, and miscellany—when a *Cecil Weekly* buried underneath caught his attention. As expected, he found headlines similar to the first two: *The Celestial Scale Through Master Kaimar's Eyes—Knowledge and Wisdom from the Gondo Era.* And further on in that article, he came across an announcement: to further raise the general level of public knowledge and enrich citizens' reading pleasure, the Empire's Supreme Council of State had authorized the publication of a new journal, devoted chiefly to popularizing knowledge in the field of astrography...

Looking at those crisp, sharp letters, Glyn felt a sudden stir within him. He spread several papers out on the table and rapidly flipped through their main pages and bolded headlines, and a great mass of articles—academic, popular, or argumentative, each seemingly different yet in substance highly consistent—came into his view.

The tower keeper looked at the papers and smiled. Experience had already rendered its verdict—it seemed the Supreme Council of State had some "grand plan" in the works again. These papers were likely only the first step in laying the groundwork; before long, there would probably be related new programs rolled out on the arcane-net broadcast as well.

An ordinary person would find it hard to sense the emergence of this "shift in the wind" from the limited media they encountered day to day, but a tower keeper seated at a regional information hub could keenly feel certain signals being released well in advance. Of course, the prerequisite was sufficient working experience—Glyn himself was a very experienced tower keeper, while young Ron... plainly had not given it that much thought.

"Mr. Glyn," Ron had noticed his senior's sudden movements too, and, a little startled, he could not help asking, "Has something happened?"

"Nothing—nothing bad, anyway. Work here a couple more years and you'll understand," Glyn said with a laugh. As he spoke, his gaze returned to the page that had been marked up, and only then did he notice that its contents were not academic or popular-science articles, but a peculiar piece of news, along with an announcement of a "public recruitment" nature.