41 Transistor (1/2)
Joshua wasn't sure what was going on. Logically, the water particle had to turn into lightning. But instead, he ended with a particle that possessed characteristics of both states. This was without precedent, he had never heard of energy particles containing both energy types at once.
…
Wait, actually he might have. He had developed a combination attack with Catherine to combine her water with his lightning. He ran over to the devices he had installed for that and grabbed a sample of electrified water. However, the result was different. The water he was currently holding quickly lost its electric component. The lightning & water particle were mashed together but couldn't remain this state very long. On the other hand, in his latest experiment, the two states were present at once in a single particle.
Had he made a mistake somewhere in his rune? He was fairly sure he had followed the same pattern as for when he turned a particle into the neutral state. Still, he opened his rune designer and checked every part. Everything was normal… Therefore, his initial hypothesis must have been wrong. This part didn't turn the water into the lightning state, instead, it added it to the existing state. But then, why didn't that happen with his previous tests using the neutral state?
He had to perform more tests, however, as he was about to dive fully into the issue; Luna gave him a small shock, indicating he was acting irrationally again.
'Oh right, I gotta fix my world first!'
Joshua cursed inward, he was getting too excited again. He rushed over to the next ice block and quickly turned it into lightning to fix the crack. A while later, ever fissure had been repaired. Now that this cumbersome matter was out of the way, he could go back and play a bit.
Unfortunately, neither he nor Luna had any idea of where to start. Oh well, he would figure it out eventually. Finding out how energy particles worked was useful, but even more important was using that his newly founded knowledge to his advantage.
The result of his experiment stormed through his mind as different possibilities took form in his brain. Suddenly, his head began to shine like a lightbulb as he had an idea. Then, his head exploded. A loud bang resonated in his world and black smoke was coming out of his neck. The smoke slowly reformed Joshua's head and he began to laugh like the madman that he was. He knew exactly what he had to do.
He had to create a new type of transistor.
Transistors are the key component in nearly all modern electronic devices. Its invention was one of the key factors that allowed the computer revolution to start in the 20th century. They were used to make the most basic unit of data in computer storage: a bit. A bit consists of two states: off and on, usually represented by a zero and a one. Usually, bits are represented in groups of 8 to form a byte. A byte is what's mostly used to encode a single character of text. Take 1024 bytes and you get a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes form a megabyte and so on… In other words, computer systems consisted of billions of transistors.