Breakfast

The next morning I woke up and Siri told me “breakfast is happening in the mess hall in ten minutes”

I said to her “but neither of us have showered yet can you delay it”

She said “no time, I’ll give you two showers”

And a cloud of mist flew around me and I felt completely clean, I noticed my uniform was put on too.

Abdullah offered to wheel me to the mess hall, I accepted.

As Abdullah wheeled me down the hall to the elevator.

When we were in the elevator he hummed happily, and then he wheeled me to the mess hall.

At the mess hall I met the rest of the my classmates and Emrah.

Emrah said to the group “Until further notice we will not discuss the events of the 21st century. You will learn eventually, but for now it can cause too much division and sorrow to discuss them. Only pop culture is allowed”

And so promptly the girl who was crying yesterday said “Did any of you see the finale of One Piece? I’m Hope.”

The older girl who argued before said “I did and it was great! I’m Fatima and I watched it from episode 1”

Charlie said “Never got into One Piece, but who knows what my brain will like now. My kids sure liked it”

Emrah made food appear: it was a grand range of french toast and waffles and cereals and everything else. She said “Is this food good for you? I can pop anything into existence that you please”

Abdullah said “make a bunch of bacon” and Emrah smiled and a bunch of bacon appeared.

Abdullah immediately began shoving bacon into his mouth. So much bacon and he looked so happy. He said “there were only two things I was afraid of when I was about to die: never eating bacon again and never seeing you again Alex”

That startled me and I said “but you never even met me until yesterday”.

He replied “Yes, that was in person but I dreamed of you my entire life” while looking at me with the most lovestruck glance I ever saw.

Amafati asked Emrah “How do I make food myself?”
Emrah explained “It’s rather simple, you must learn the myths of the food, Learn the myths of anythiing and you gain the power fo create it”

I interjected “That’s quite vague, What do you mean? If I know the myths of a person can I create them too?”

She said “Yes you can, I made 20,000 clones of myself this way, it’s actually pretty simple”.

Amafati asked “So where do we learn the myths of things?”

“In school silly, do you think we’d let you out into the world without the ability to make food for yourselves?” she said while giggling

“You can manipulate the world however you please as long as you understand it. Want to make a new star? All you need to do is learn the myths of the star and it’s easy peasy”

I said “sweet I was looking forward to learning the magic system”

Emrah smiled and said “Use whatever tools you want to understand the world”

We all ate and then Emrah said “time for the first lecture?”

We all nodded our heads and she began speaking

“Food originated 4 billion years ago on planet Earth. It took the form of nucleic acids created by lightning strikes and cosmic rays. Manna from the heavens our ancestors ate it and turned it into their children.”

Amafati said “What? How is this supposed to help us magically make food?”

Emrah said “calm down for a bit, why would you even want to make food if you didn’t know what it was?”

“Food has been a prominent part of our culture ever since we first started eating it 4 billion years ago, pretty soon we started making it ourselves with photosynthesis, and you know Vitamin D? It’s food and we still make it with photosynthesis.”

I tried to get a word in but she kept going

“However light was not enough back when photosynthesis was primitive. We needed more energy so we switched to nuclear power. We used boiling steam and sulfur shooting out of natural nuclear reactors. And then we made sugar from the energy”

Emrah was so excited snowflakes of sugar started to fall from the sky.

“Nitrogen was the hardest part of food to make, but we invented nitrogenase and it was okay, But inventing fertilizer in the 20th century really brought food to another level”

Emrah was clearly in a completely diffrent world of food and chemisty and ancient history.

“So how does any of this relate to making food appear magically” said Amafati

“If you don’t know the why then the how will be incomplete” Emrah responded

“The hardest component of food: Nitrogen, is present in the very air we breathe, we need to take it out of the air like Franz Haber before us. Where do we get the energy we need? From the two maidens: fusion and fission. What else do we need? There’s a story for everything.”

Amafati said “why can’t we just run in and do whatever practical thing you’re doing immediately”

“2000 years ago there were people on islands isolated from the rest of the world. A great technologically advanced nation came to them and gave them many gifts during a war, but soon the war ended and the gifts stopped. But the people wanted the gifts to come back so they displayed the nation’s flag, yet the gifts never returned. I could tell you exactly what to do but if you know only the how and not the why you’ll soon be those people.”

Lets start with making sugar from a sulfur vent

And she snapped her fingers and suddenly we were underwater. There were rocky outcrops with smoke coming out of them.

I gasped for air and felt like I was drowning. Amafati collapsed, and Hope desperately tried to swim up.

Then Emrah said to all of us "This is the fifth millennium, everyone can breathe underwater".

Then I tried to inhale. It felt as though I was just inhaling normal air.

I looked around and saw everyone else catching their breaths.

Amafati did some kind of gesture on a vent. I didn't know what it was and I don't think she knew what it was either

A cloud of yellow emerged around the vent, and I tasted a slightly sweet taste in the water.

Emrah's eyes widened and a massive smile formed across her face.

"You did it Amafati" she exclaimed "It's amazing you did this without any instruction".

The rest of us weren't so lucky. We spent the next hour working on it without success