I fly through the astral at extreme speeds, not paying attention to the beauty around me, thoroughly tired of the shenanigans from my time in the cloud of language.

But as I do so, I notice something strange; when I pass by a cloud, I know what it is without unpeeling it. As if the cloud was radiating out its emotion and purpose on a wavelength that I couldn’t detect before.

I frown; is this because I devoured the cloud of language?

But why?

Is my brain so altered that I can intuitively understand clouds now?

“Huh, I’m not dealing with this bullshit,” I sigh while rubbing my eyes.

I blast past wonders that would make any scientist explode into excited confetti, sprawling ecosystems of ideas that merge, fall apart, scatter, and slowly change into each other.

I ignore it all in pursuit of home, but as I reach it, I realize that it’s covered in some strange whitish film. My base and the massive ball of iron are the size of a hill that floats beneath them. All behind this barrier, despite being so strange, just feels right.

I know I should be afraid of the random, unexplained bubble around my home, but it radiates the warmth of a well-worn home. I understand intellectually that this could be some weird psychic trap, but I don’t care; I’m coming back home.

I recklessly touch the bubble, and it pulls me into its embrace. Reassuring me that it would make anyone who tried to invade pay a price.

And as I pull in, I see the result of my hard work: the place where I have made the Astral my own. I feel comfortable here, like this place was made just for me.

But why? I certainly didn’t use any technique to make this.

Or did I learn from my travels that the fuel for magic is emotions? Certainly, before this time, I knew this place was my home, even if I never specifically put a doormat here. And so I infused my surroundings with that feeling of home, influencing the Astral to make it mine.

Plus, this would also explain one knot in my expectations theory: the meditation room.

It exudes calmness and peace while making any objects that come inside slowly drift to a stop. And using the emotions fuel hypothesis, an explanation is that due to my exuding calm in the meditation corner, I made the meditation corner more peaceful and slowed down movement in order to aid my meditation.

If that's true, then in the astral, your environment slowly changes to be more useful to you. Like a chef who eventually learns to cook your food just the way you like it.

I wonder if any other sections of my base have these alterations. Nah, I would have noticed by now; I certainly knew about the meditation room's quirks soon after it came into existence.

Although this does make me realize something,

When did I stop getting motes bombarding me with random emotions?

I don’t think I noticed it before the invading motes of color stopped invading me. But since the bubble seems to tell me that it would destroy trespassers, those damn motes harassing me certainly count. It might have been to protect me. But if so, how long has the barrier been in place?

I open my notebook to check which page number it was that I last noted down the motes coming towards me, only to realize they are staring at me with foreign words that I don’t understand.

"Like, come on, I devoured a cloud of languages and I didn’t learn any. Come on, no dead languages like French or Egyptian hieroglyphics poured into my brain. Just the underpinnings of language itself. Which would be really useful, if I knew any?” frustration and anger boiling in my voice.

I turn my head away. Either way, I know that it stopped around the same time that I discovered my infinite notebook, and I just wanted to check for posterity. I slammed the book shut, the strange infinity of the book's pages folding into the ordinary 80 pages.

But this whole situation brings up something interesting: can I just vibe my way into magical effects? I instinctively laugh but stop because, frankly, I did do magic by just vibrating. I didn't do any incantations, and no technique was used. I just felt things, and the astral bent to my will.

And in the end, is there anything embarrassing or ridiculous, considering I'm in a strange magical dimension researching magical theory in order to teleport back home? But as these thoughts spin in my mind,

I yawn; it's been a tiring whatever the hell amount of time it’s been. I shake my head, place my bookbag down, propel myself to my suitcase bed, and immediately fall asleep.

—-----

I rise to the low blackened metal walls, push off the suitcase that forms my bed, and whoops, I float way too high. With an embarrassed smile on my face, I paw my way down. I then grab a metal bar so as not to float away as I pick an outfit.

I sigh as I look at my sadly emptier closet than before; some of my more needy clothes had to be scrapped for parts. It’s not exactly like I have an iron here. Although I do my best with what I’ve got.

“But you know what I should make,” I say while tapping my chin.

“Some goddamn needles so that I can sew sh*t up!” with eureka in my eyes.

I might not have a replicator here to print whichever clothes I want based on my designs, but I could go old school and just use needle and thread. And if I can’t make that due to it being too delicate, I could probably make knitting needles; hell, they’re just long, pointy sticks!

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

As I think about the possibilities of knitting, I shake my head and get back on topic. I grab a poofy shirt with lace collar and sleeves, a deep V held together by tight red laces, off the rack. Then, reaching up, take the clingy dark pink satin pants that go along with them. The white goes really well with my dark skin, and with enough guts, dark reds and pinks always end up looking good.

I pull my hair out of its sleepy time cap, and it suddenly poofs out like a dormant spring.

I sigh while patting my beautiful locks. My hair might be troublesome, but I love it. Today I braided it into a thick singular braid flowing behind me, almost looking like a tail. My hair braces are occupied as a laser welder, so sadly, I can’t snap my fingers and change my style.

Although, frankly, it is soothing to go through these morning rituals, on the other side you snapped your fingers, ate your breakfast, stepped through a portal, and boom, you’re at work. Or, well, that’s the situation for the employed, I think as I massage the back of my neck.

Well, my employment doesn’t exactly matter now; my job is to get out of here.

Speaking of which, I should head to the workstation. I get out of my closet, grab my backpack, climb the bars along the tops of all the low walls, and pull myself to my workstation. From the outside, the room would look crazy, filled with notes and drawings tied together with iron nails, wires drifting about, and a hatch below to constantly eject nails into the growing ball of iron nails.

And it’s also conveniently located right next to the array of hand motors attached to the base. Additionally adding to the craziness is my prototype zero-gravity chair.

It’s a mess of fabric loops attached to the floor, made so I can ponder in peace without floating away from my notes. But as I float above my work, holding down my chair, I take out my backpack and oversee my loot.

But before that, I start chucking nails through the hatch onto the iron ball; later, I'll need to pat it smooth, but right now I'm going over the results of my exploration.

I dump out my backpack, and it spews out two robes, one magical, the other not, a ton of golden jewelry adorned with runes, a now magically empty bangle, some wooden charms, a clean skeleton, and another, newer, still-rotting skeleton.

I stare at the bones for a while before sighing. I don’t really have any use for bones that doesn’t involve either turning them into powder or smashing them to bits. Frankly, I have no idea why I even took them.

I'll toss them into the corner, and I’ll probably encase them in an iron case to give them the closest thing to a grave I can while still leaving me with intact bones. Because, well, practicality always trumps morality.

For all the magical items, like the robe, jewelry, and bangle, I’ll put them in the backpack and attach them to my base with a braided cloth rope.

I’m definitely not touching random magical artifacts, but they could be useful in my attempts to decode the book. So I’ll keep the items around, just as far away from me as possible. I shudder at the thought of getting melted just because I put on an earring wrong or didn't have the right blood.

But the regular stuff that won’t send me quite as far down to hell is the real stuff.

The robe, although beautiful, is going to be turned into just one big pocket. Due to the fact that the IPA only works with that singular pants pocket, I need more; it's just too tiny! I can’t fit shit in there, so if I make a new one, I can duplicate items way better.

And that fits perfectly well with my next goody, all these wooden charms; with wood, I can create fire in this godforsaken place. Fire was one of the most important things to ever happen to humanity, but I’m going to be using it in a slightly different way.

I pull out the water from my backpack, grab the ordinary robe, and tie the part with the sleeve off with a bolt of fabric.

I then go through with the procedures, which end in failure as usual without the special juju of the original pocket.

But this time I am armed with new knowledge, and I do something incredibly stupid. I yell at the magic pocket.

“HEY, YOU STUPID IDIOT, START DUPLICATING ITEMS RIGHT NOW!” I scream at the inanimate cloth at the top of my lungs, while envisioning those who’ve wronged me, the annoyances I just have to let go of, and the injustice done to me when I was thrown into the Astral.

I let this boiling pot of anger erupt, and the strange fluid I float in gets strangely hot as I stare at the failure.

No results.

I then pull my anger in, as I must always do. And I drift over to Steven’s corpse, the room feeling strangely quiet after such loud screaming piercing through the calm of the Astral.

I look over at the wires floating in the astral, the gutted remnant of my gift to Grandmama, attached to broken leftovers of my personal A. I am Stevens' assistant. I remember that there was a voice recording app on him that still worked. His auditory sensors are quite advanced given that, as an A.S.S.A.I., he mostly interfaces with your other A. Is at your vocal command.

With a smile on my face from my clever idea, I scroll through Stevens’ applications, most of them unusable without the A.I.

And I find the app because I might not be able to remember any words, but I do still remember what the app looked like. So I press the red button on the bottom and say to the speaker for posterity.

“Start Log. Invoking emotions seems to work, but anger did nothing other than make me toasty for a second. Most likely, I used the wrong emotion. Experiment failure: on the next attempt, use an emotion more relevant to duplicating items. End Log,” I stiffly say into Stevens’ speaker.

I drift back over to the robe and try again. This time I'm trying to invoke the feeling of perfection, the glory of a finished dress that’s just right. But it doesn’t work, so I try again, this time with a new emotion, and fail, so I start over.

Over.

And Over.

Again.

…

..

.

I sigh, my eyes drooping and my voice hoarse from the unexpected workout of constant voice logs. I drag my hand across my face before I admit it; I can’t brute force it, as I say, and any problem that can be solved by doing it hard enough should be solved like that.

But let’s go about this a bit more intellectually. I grab my hair and pull it back. Because what emotions go with the idea of magic in creation? But as I try to go down that line of thought, I stop myself.

Just because I figured out a new trick doesn’t mean I have to always use it. Plus, if I keep failing to do the things I want with the new emotional magic theory, I’ll have less expectation that the technique is useful, and thus because I expect it to fail, it will!

So let’s step back from feeling our way into magic and take a more evidence-based approach. Or at least not unnecessarily use the most recent and untested theory I have.

Well, if the IPA pocket works, why does it?

I grab the pocket, attached to a silk pair of grey dress pants. I pull at the pocket, and the reason it works is because of this special pocket. Why don’t I just throw it in here?

I yoink the pants and throw them inside and go through the IPA procedures only for nothing to happen.

I step back a little and think a little bit clearer, through my hypothesis of expectation dictating magic. What are ways that I could expect to essentially transfer their magic from the small pocket to this robe?

Well, for a more mystical solution, I discovered early on with the infinite binder that by doing weird stuff, you can get yourself to expect things that would seem ridiculous.

The plucking gesture worked for the IBA, so I’ll make a similar one. So similarly, I will make a gesture for taking away magic and one for inputting magic.

So I hover in front of the too-small pocket and pluck the magic out and slap it into the huge robe bag.

I then, with expectations, ran through an IPA measure, only to succeed!

Yeah, baby, the power of prior evidence supporting your steps!

With the new, better IPA pocket running, I take my two bottles of water and create one bottle, then I create another until I have enough water that I could crush someone under the weight of the bottles!

With water in hand, I grab a premade container, a pot that narrows into a fan blade attached to a metal wheel. Attached to the metal wheel through a nail melted on one side so that it doesn’t fly off is a strange 4-jointed mechanism that pushes along a block of metal through a tube attached to a slab that is anchored to another slab.

In a design that looks like you tore out an old train's steam engine and retooled it into a shitty hydraulic press. Because that’s exactly what it is, and while ingenuity is appreciated, when I have almost all human inventions and their blueprints, it’s easier to just steal from all those old patents.

Now, what I need the press for is simple. The greatest speedbump in my production is my need to essentially hand grind my hard-to-work iron nails into iron dust that can be easily manipulated into the shapes I want.

So this is a topic ripe for some modern-day job replacement, so I devised a way to get from a rotary engine to a press in order to crush the iron nails into smaller pieces.

And now it’s within my grasp with my dupe glitch water.

I grab the charms, break them into indistinguishable shards, and replicate them enough to get a fire going.

Placing the pieces into the tray beneath the water tank, I fire up my hair braces only for the wood to melt. The wood refuses to start burning, no matter how hot it gets.