Adele looked through the records and it didn't take long to understand why there was a fountain pen. It was not because the artifact changed based on where it landed, but because it was a universal law in the spiritual world.
The spiritual world has connected to many worlds ranging from low technology to extremely high technology, but the extraordinary people that harness magic are beyond the means of technology. Even those that specify in the usage of it usually are craftsman that have extended knowledge, those that went the extreme path… have long died in the many wars of the spirit world.
There is one reason for this: the destructibility of high technology is too strong. It is also extremely inefficient when fighting against higher enemies, so it basically only targets the masses of the different worlds. Not only are they the foundation of many organisations, they are also the foundation of the spiritual world.
So whenever there was a war against those technological advanced organisations, the spiritual world would always subtly help. After all, although technology managed to find a way to give birth consciousness, they aren't the only ones that achieved it. The biggest issue is that their way is not usable on a large scale.
It can be said that the spiritual world and the many organisations gave them enough time to grow, and after seeing that they didn't succeed, there was no need for them to exist. From then on, high technology was banned with the help of the spiritual world itself.
The organisations went a step further and based on many experiments, they found that a timespan similar to the Victorian age is the best for the three requirements of growth, power and ease.
Technology makes the growth of the common people easier, although it isn't on an extremely high-tech level, as long as some extraordinary people are put in place to ensure that they don't die on a large scale because of natural disasters, diseases or even because of themselves.
Power in this case means the authority of the extraordinary people. No one would be able to fight them anyways, but it was seen that the authority of the standing powers would be more often challenged when society was on a higher level. This point is mainly important for churches and other such organisations that depend on a large number of faithful people, advanced societies tend to be less faithful in this regard.
Finally, ease is the ease of reigning the lower people as well as the ease of using technology. Naturally higher extraordinary people can use their powers to move around the world, middle ones can do the same on a short distance, but lower ones are many times slower than a locomotive. Because of this, and other features of technology that are helpful to the different stages of extraordinary people, it was finally decided that the Victorian age would work best.
Adele wasn't so sure – after all, in her understanding, there would surely be ways to improve the reproduction of common people in different ways for different ages, but she didn't know the depth of everything, and maybe it wasn't that such things weren't possible, but they might have different disadvantages, or they were simply inefficient.
She only knew that because this age was decided to be the age in which the whole spiritual world would act, every organisation worked together to make it a true law in the spiritual world, and as long as a new world conducts a ritual to accept this law, they will change too. Based on this, she didn't think the outside world would be any different.
She only had a question of what would happen with the common people that would attempt to advance the technology – those geniuses. But apparently, this was no issue. Rather than advancing, they would continuously make their current age more efficient, find solutions to issues such as pollution, and more.
No single mortal would live long enough to change everything, and every few centuries, the spiritual world would regulate the advancements made and reverse them, creating new issues or reviving old issues for the common people to have their fun with.
As for the extraordinary people that walked this path, although high technology wasn't possible, they were still allowed to go from the common steam engines to using electricity. Basically, they were allowed to be more advanced than others and still have their uniqueness, but the high technology that once existed was banned altogether by the spiritual world and major organisations.
"I wasn't particularly looking forward to sci fi, but I can imagine why it was rejected. And in the end, it is mainly the common people that benefit from a highly advanced society, while the extraordinary wouldn't benefit as much. Those in power only care for their own benefit, that is for sure."
Afterwards, Adele continued to read the book while taking notes on the side. She was happy doing this, at least she'd be able to practice writing with a fountain pen again. The last time she did this was when she was only in elementary school, so it was a long time and her writing was a bit ugly.
…
Time passed once more as Adele went from book to book, reading the whole 'basic knowledge' shelf. Once she finished, she re-read her notes and appreciated the progress of her writing. It was only after editing them again and again that she threw them away.
The information was always available and having written everything, she also memorised the core points. Keeping these notes wouldn't be necessary, in the end, she'd just overview them for a second before re-reading the book about what she looks for anyways.
Unlike her previous state, her memory was stronger and she had more time, so there was no need to rush anything. She could take all the time in the world to relaxedly read the content and make judgements based on her situation. This was much better than improvising every time she came upon a situation.