milliways_bar | (no subject)

A monk, with a microscope.

Interesting.

"Good evening," Father Harman says, stopping by Athelstan's table to look at the things he's spread on it.

"Good evening", he says, looking up with a bright smile.

"What are you researching?" Father Harman asks.

The monk looks slightly scruffy to him, and his habit looks homespun. A medieval monk with a microscope, though?

"...mostly, the workings of this device", he admits.

Ahh.

"I suppose somebody gave it to you?" Father Harman says.

"Miss Sonya Blade", he confirms.

"Why did she?" Father Harman asks.

It's an odd thing to try and confuse a medieval monk with.

'Confuse' implies a meanness that wasn't intended.

"To introduce me to a new thing she thought I would like."

"What did she tell you that this does?" Father Harman asks.

"It allows you to look at things that are very small, such that we can't see them without help."

"Do you know what you are looking at?" Father Harman asks.

"She showed me a drop of her blood on one of these pieces of glass. And these are... many different things."

"Do you know what that means?" Father Harman says.

"What... what means?"

"What you see," Father Harman says. "The details under the microscope."

"Of course I know what it is. The true nature of the things I'm looking at."

"Perhaps not the true nature," Father Harman says. "Simply the very fine details that you can't see with the naked eye and that can show you how things work, and how God organised his creation."

"The closest any man can see, then."

"Yes," Father Harman says. "Did she explain to you about cells?"

"A little", he says with a nod. "That they are the smallest pieces of our bodies."

"They are little blobs of life that stick together," Father Harman says, "they can copy themselves, and in the middle, they have a little core that contains all the information of how the creature they are part of should be put together."

"So much you've learned, in the future."

"Yes, we can understand many parts of how God made his creation work," Father Harman says. "But the more we know, the more we realise we don't know. The nature of that spark of life, the force that makes being real and creatures alive, totally eludes us."

"And that is as it should be", he says with a quiet smile, "for that is beyond our understanding."

"It is still amazing to be able to see God at work like this," Father Harman says. "I don't think faith contradicts science, and it never did."