Reckoning Currents

With Applied Energistics 2 distillate is kept as a count, not in glass: hundreds of thousands of parts of any currents in one rack of drives, runes in the terminal beside items, a vial that fills at the terminal, buses of its own between vessels, the Crucible and the Brewing Tower, a Confluence on order from the terminal and a Heart that draws any current from the network.

It does not replace the craft: currents are born in the Crucible and in distilling, the Wheel and the clash work as ever. The network only keeps and carries. Its power comes from a Flux Mill beside an AE2 Energy Acceptor — the flux of the land, which dries up as with any work; distillate is never burned for power.

The Reckoners wanted to "solve the world" — to reckon every current. Their cords and tablets held the measure of a current, but not the current: a written count does not flow. The masters of quartz can do what the Reckoners only wrote of — turn a thing into a number and the number back into a thing.

A reckoned current does not flow: it does not clash, boil away or turn to murk until it is let out as distillate. That is how the Order of the Still Hour began — with a count, with a stop. What is reckoned must be let out, or it is dead.