CHAPTER 12: FINALE
AN ECHO IN TIME
Korah put her axe down, watching Combat Spider curiously.
“And these… Your friends? They will fight with us?”
“That's right, and there is more where they came from.” He replied
“A hoard of Arachs then?. Caleb definitely won't see that coming. They are very formidable beasts.”
Lucas looked at Combat Spider, then noticed the way it was using one of its Scythes for balance.
“Can you use that Healing Nexus on an Arach? My friend here lost a leg on the front lines.”
“Yes, but I do not think it will work. This Nexus can only accelerate healing that the body would do naturally. I am not sure about Arachs, but on a human it can not regrow limbs.”
Korah retrieved the Nexus from her bags, took another look at Combat Spider, then said; “Maybe you should do it, do you know how to use a Healing Nexus?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Korah tossed the Nexus over the firepit and Lucas caught it out of the air easily.
Having 4 Agility gave him the enhanced reflexes to make something like that effortless. Korah seemed to have noticed, though she didn't say anything, simply smiling to herself.
Lucas tried extending his consciousness, along with his Mana, into the Nexus. The structure inside was fairly simple. It had two inputs and one output. The inputs were; one for Lucas’s Mana, and another for some kind of information that Lucas didn't understand. The output would release Lucas’s Mana, having been imprinted with information from the Nexus. Lucas approached the Combat Spider’s side, where the missing limb had left an empty socket that was leaking some kind of slime.
The spider was calm and trusting, though Lucas could tell it was a little nervous that something might hurt the sensitive holes in its armour. When he laid a hand on the spider and began moving his Mana into the Healing Nexus again, he realised how it worked. The Nexus needed data of a specific kind, the Mana pattern describing the body structure of the creature being healed. It could heal anything that was still there, but the limb was missing altogether so there was no data. The best he could do was heal over the hole from where the limb had been torn.
Lucas didn't like the idea of leaving his poor Combat Spider without a leg, so he paused to consider the problem. He knew the pattern for their legs, he had seen it many times in his Brood Nexus. In fact the Brood Nexus had all kinds of Mana patterns describing body parts, he could even make them up himself. If he could get that data into the Healing Nexus it should be able to ‘heal’ an entirely new leg into existence.
There were two problems that Lucas could see; Firstly, the Nexus trance made it impossible to use two Nexus’ at once. His consciousness was completely enveloped by using only one. Secondly, where was the raw matter to create the leg going to come from?. That prompted another branch of thought. When he hatched an egg, especially of a large Arach, where did that matter come from? The only answer that made sense was from his Mana. Larger Arach, more Mana.
‘Well, i'm not exactly sure about how the physics of that works, but i’ll roll with it. Mana and matter are interchangeable. At least biological matter.’
As for the first problem, he thought he might have another solution.
‘One Nexus for one person, but what if I’m not one person…’
Lucas had gained another Ability in the cave that he had not experimented with yet. He willed the popup back to re-read its description.
[https://i.imgur.com/CrA11R3.jpg]
A duplicated ‘Lucas’ should be able to use a Nexus, he supposed. He did, however, feel nervous about the idea of messing around with duplicates of his own mind. Nervous or not, he couldn't afford to shy from any potential advantages. Lucas activated the Ability. Immediately he felt energy being dragged out of his Aura.
One of his Mana bands vanished and a moment later a strange, but familiar, echoing sensation surrounded him. He began to feel a separate sense of self that was experiencing the exact same thoughts and feelings. At first the difference was only perceptible as a sort of ‘depth’, as if he simply experienced more. Over the course of a few seconds the depth became a close echo as they began to deviate, like mirror images that lagged while copying each other. Over the course of the next few seconds, the deviation process hit exponential growth until it vanished over the horizon of being capable of sharing each other's experiences. At that point the ‘new mind’ had become separate, self aware, and capable of independent thought.
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‘So, I'm the real one right?’ Lucas ‘thought’ at it.
The mind seemed amused, it did not reply with words but did the psychic equivalent of a ‘nod’. Lucas felt relieved that there wasn't going to be any ‘Who is the real Lucas?’ problems. The mind knew why it had been created. They had not been separated up until a moment ago, so it knew as much as he did. Lucas felt its intentions, which it projected to indicate that it wanted to try to use a Nexus. It was just as curious as he was to see if it would work.
Lucas held up both the Brood Nexus and the Healing Nexus. He had recovered 4 of his 6 Mana by this point, but summoning the Fractal Mind brought him down to three. Just as he had done with the Nexus of Anger when he first got to this world, Lucas held the Healing Nexus to one of the Mana bands in his Aura. It latched into the band, suspending in mid air within his Aura, and Mana began to flow through its patterns. The ‘new mind’ confirmed that it had full access to the Healing Nexus, so Lucas held his Brood Nexus in one hand and placed the other on the injured Combat Spider.
Lucas opened up his Brood Design Interface. Instead of the inside of an egg, which he would usually get, he got a model of the fully grown spider. Most of his usual ‘customisation tools’ were greyed out on his interface, which was designed to work on pliable embryos at extremely small scale. Lucas used the spider’s template, that of the Cave Arach, to get access to the spider’s body plan. These were essentially the instructions in its DNA which describe how the spider ‘should be’. This of course included the missing leg. Lucas attempted to bring the spider’s form into line with the body plan described by the spider’s DNA, but met resistance at that point. The Brood Nexus’s tools were too fine to morph a fully formed spider. It was then that Lucas felt a new element being introduced in the Mana link between himself and the Spider. It was the ‘Fractal Mind’ using the Healing Nexus.
The chain of Mana was now linked; Mana flowed from Lucas into the Brood Nexus, picking up the data of the spiders missing leg, from there the Fractal Mind fed it into the Healing Nexus, which accepted the biological data from the Brood Nexus, then into Combat Spider to begin ‘Healing’ the new leg. Lucas fed Mana through this sequence into the spider.
With his consciousness enveloped in the Nexus trance, Lucas could not watch the healing directly, but he could see the Spider’s body slowly morphing in his Design Interface to match the template. When the spider matched its body plan completely and Lucas could see the new leg moving, he withdrew himself from the Nexus. Sure enough, his Combat Spider had all eight legs.
It was ecstatic, its Aura glowing with pulses of gratitude and surprise. Seeing how happy his spider-friend was made Lucas feel happy too. While he was busy enjoying his warm and fuzzy feelings Lucas’s Fractal Mind started buzzing, obviously excited about something else it was thinking about. He wasn't sure what, but when his attention turned to it the Fractal Mind projected a psychic ‘smile’ and started fading away. As it faded, Lucas felt an influx of memories that were not his. It was the experience of the Fractal being left behind as it departed. Most of them were quite useless as they were only a slightly different perspective of what he had just experienced, but he also realised what the Fractal had been getting excited about. It had been considering what could be accomplished by using multiple Nexus’ simultaneously.
Was it possible to create a healer by trying to impart the healing ability from the Healing Nexus into a new spider design? Or using the other Nexus’, hate and anger for some kind of psychological warfare agent?
Lucas was letting his mind drift over the possibilities when he noticed an alarmed energy emanating from Korah on the other side of the firepit.
“What was that?” She said, “Did you just use two Nexus’ at once? And heal that Arach’s missing leg? Your Aura went blurry. And then… ”
“Yeah I did,” Lucas said, getting up and brushing down his pants.
“I did not know that was possible, is that normal in your world?” Korah Asked.
“I didn't know it was possible either, until just now. In my world there is no such thing as a Nexus, Mana, Magic, or Auras. Auras are probably the biggest difference. How do you go through life with everybody able to see what you are thinking all the time? Caleb could control what his Aura showed, that seems like something pretty important to learn.”
“Caleb hides his intentions and emotions, yes. The only thing he can not hide is his intention to hide. It has strengths and weaknesses, the strengths are obvious but consider this; If you had come to me and I was hiding my Aura would you ever have stepped out of the darkness? My nature is clear and my intentions are open for everyone to see. You do not need to worry about what I am hiding. You do not need to wonder if you can trust me or if I might betray you. If you want the truth, you need only to ask. Not only will you hear the truth from my lips but you will see it for yourself in my Aura. Learning how to hide your Aura takes a lot of work. I think that effort is better spent making yourself into something that can be worn proudly, with nothing that needs to be hidden. Caleb would not be welcome in any honest home, nobody could love him. If someone must hide their intentions you must assume that they intend some kind of harm. Why else would they need to hide?”
Lucas went quiet, considering Korah’s words, and just how different this world was from his. It wasn't long, however, before a few slices of garlic roasted boar appeared and he lost his train of thought to greasy bliss.