Kahli ignored Sahdi's question as she stepped across the scaly back of G'athoong the water dragon, heading towards the robot floating cross-legged in the air.

"Hey, Unit 5a23, I've talked with G'athoong. Can you help me practice meditation now?"

Unit 5a23 was lost in a deep trance. In fact, he seemed to be trancing so hard that his head started spinning 360 degrees, over and over again, faster and faster...

"Unit 5a23!"

His head started to glow, and rattle, and lift a little bit up from his automaton body somehow.

"UNIT 5A23, WAKE UP!!"

Suddenly, his eyes flew open, his head stuck back onto his body, and he fell out of the air and tumbled ineligantly over the dragon's scales.

"Damn, Kahli," said Unit 5a23 with atonal frustration. "Couldn't you have at least waited until I got out of my [Salami State]?"

"I'm sorry, your what now?" asked Kahli incredulously. Froufrou squelched an echo of confusion.

"My [Salami State]. Haven't you heard of it?" replied Unit 5a23 matter-of-factly. "I mean, it's a standard meditative experience, the [Salami State], wherein you become one with the universe, or - should I say - the universe becomes one with you. It's also quite useful for all sorts of things, like experiencing depersonalization, getting thoughts implanted in your head, implanting thoughts in other peoples' heads, melting cutlery with your thoughts, and many, many other fascinating things that I'm honestly shocked you've never heard or thought about before."

"Well, why is it called [Salami State]?" asked Kahli with a suspicion in her tone.

"Um, because of the smell."

"The smell?"

"The smell, it's got a very specific smell to it. A bit of a, well, it's a meaty odor, you might say. Really, nobody has talked with you about the [Salami State]?"

"I didn't have a system until really a few days ago, Unit 5a23," replied Kahli with a sigh.

"That's fair, that's fair... Still, a little odd. Regardless, I'm happy to get to work instructing you on the great art of meditation. Don't expect to get even near the [Salami State], though - that's a highly advanced technique you just interrupted, and my root chocolate is probably too dark to access it again until I perform even more shadow work than I already did, which of course you also interrupted. In case you're not picking up on my static based inflection considering the fact that I am an autoamton, one thing I want to be very clear about to you, Kahli, is that it is incredibly rude to force people out of meditative states such as mine, especially when they don't want to leave them. Just some food for thought. Which, being literal, mental food is especially helpful as it can make your chocolates milk chocolatey instead of dark chocolately, which will of course make meditation easier."

Kahli was kind of speechless. [Salami State], root chocolate, food for thought - was this going to be a real lesson in mediation, or was Unit 5a23 just trying to make her hungry? It was, in truth, difficult to say - but with that, she was interested in learning more. What was the worst that could happen?

Unit 5a23 held out a metal claw. "Take my claw, Kahli, and let us journey into the wide world of meditation. Your consciousness will never be the same!"

Kahli nodded solemnly and grasped his claw with her brand spanking new left hand, made fully of living wood. Immediately, she was struck with the realization that she did not get the option to add any new [skills] that made use of her new hand, and was very disappointed and indeed feeling rather impatient about it.

"Is something wrong, Kahli? You seem... troubled. Is meditation inspiring fear in your puny tauman hearts?"

Taumans had three hearts, all of which were very small, and each of which pumped at a different cadence. One heart always beat very, very fast, one heart always beat very, very slow, and one heart just kind of beat randomly - sometimes it would beat a hundred thousand times a minute, other times it would beat once a moon cycle.

"No, no, it's not that," said Kahli decisively. "It's just, well, I was feeling bad about not having any [skills] that made use of my awesome new hand!"

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Unit 5a23 suddenly lowered his claw, and indeed lowered his voice to a deeper pitch - a pitch so deep it was almost hard to fully understand what he was saying. It was comical. "Kahli, I am speaking in this manner in order to make it clear to you how serious what I'm about to tell you is."

Kahli immediately burst out laughing. Froufrou let loose a coupled of putrid squelches.

"Please take me seriously."

They laughed and squelched some more.

"Ugh." Unit 5a23 reached his claw to a small knob on the side of his head, and his voice turned back to normal. "Alright, whatever. Anyway, please take me seriously now, Kahli."

Kahli held in her laughter most of her laughter, and Froufrou held in most of a squelch - a little bit of putresence, of course, still seeped from her writhing tendrils.

"Whatever. Look, Kahli, you need to be able to fully leave the present in the past in order to enter a true meditative state," said Unit 5a23. "If you don't, well, you risk having your entire meditation being dominated by negative thought forms, thought forms that will contort and twist your view of unreality to the point where you'll get no value out of the experience whatsoever - not to even get into the damage it'll do to your crown chocolate."

Kahli mouthed crown chocolate to herself subtly in confusion. What a weird set of terms she was coming up upon - then again, she'd never really been a meditator.

"Now, will you please promise me that you will leave the present in the past, Kahli?"

Kahli had absolutely no idea what Unit 5a23 was talking about. Leaving the present in the past? How would that work? How could you leave the present moment in the past if it hadn't passed yet? Kahli had no idea what Unit 5a23 was talking about, but, at the same time, she also really wanted to just get on with it and start meditating already. Then again, she didn't want to just jump to her impulses - if he was really here to teach her, and he thought she needed to do this, then he needed to explain it to her. And so, Kahli told Unit 5a23 just that.

The automaton sighed with the trademark frustration and impatience characteristic of all long term meditators. He buried his head in his claws. "Kahli, Kahli, Kahli. By the gods, you really haven't ever heard the phrase that you need to live in the slightly future moment?"

Kahli blinked at him like he was speaking another language.

Unit 5a23 dinged. He'd just made some toast. He offered Kahli some bread, but she declined. He was a little disappointed, but not so disappointed that he didn't chuck the unwanted bread off the side of G'athoong's scaly back and watched in tumble down, down through the air. "Watch the bread, Kahli."

Kahli looked over the edge of the dragon's torso and watched the bread get smaller and smaller as it fell further and further away.

"Now, what did you notice about that toast, Kahli?" asked the robot. Despite his inflectionless voice, she thought he seemed a little smug.

"Um. It's falling through the air?" said Kahli with confusion.

"Yea, but that's not all, and that's also not relevant."

"It's not relevant?" Kahli scrunched her face in confusion, and felt a little bit of her hardening plaster crackle.

"It's not, Kahli. The toast falling, was an exercise. See, something about time is, that you need to really understand in order to properly meditate, is that the present you are observing is actually part of the past. This is easy for automatons like myself to grasp, what with our preprogrammed stimuli processing, we are often equipped with inbuilt algorithms that handle the processing of present/past discrepancy data on behalf on my consciousness. However, it is more difficult for flesh, blood, and living wood beings such a tauman beings to truly grasp this present/past discrepancy without training your perception to realize it by the augmention of your consciousness with mindful awareness. You truly do have to work towards it - but the first step is to be aware that, as you watched that toast fall, it was actually further along in its descent than you observed. This is true for more than just your sight - indeed, it is true for all stimuli sensing that your mind, or indeed my mind, can do. It is a concept also referred to as universal latency. Think of it in this way - you must calibrate your mind to universal latency in order to properly engage in meditation. Thankfully, your system facilitates this process, and will make it much easier for you than someone without a systeml. Still, without mindfulness, you will be in dire straights if you do not work to keep your consciousness focused on the present - the real present, which is of course the slight future from the perspective of, well, you or any other active observer."

Kahli nodded solemnly. She thought this was quite interesting, and indeed a lot to think about - she'd never considered much of it before, though it did make a lot of sense. After all, how would her [checkpoints] in time from [Seismic Sense] really work without the present really being the past? It always seemed to enact at just the right time. Kahli wondered if she could one day learn to trigger [checkpoints] on her own... Wouldn't that be so interesting and powerful?

"Kahli?" Unit 5a23 waved a claw in her face. "Are you ready to begin our meditation?"

Kahli shook herself. "Yes. Sorry, I was thinking."

"We'll work on that. The thinking, I mean - at some point, you'll need to stop thinking to progress in mediation. But you've got a lot to learn before you reach that point. For now, let's just sit together and take a dive into the the flurries of the mind."

Kahli felt a little nervous as she sat down. "Okay?"

"Okay. The first thing to do, ironically, is think about meditation. Your system will then jump start the process. Be grateful for this, because otherwise, you'd have to actually work to even enter a meditative state."

Kahli figured that made enough sense. Her system did do a lot for her. So, she thought about meditation.

[Mediative state activated]