Silash's automaton body was creaking as he soared through the blue skies on his jet boosted feet. He was staring ahead with his enhanced [Robo-Vision], which allowed him to see a plotted out pathway through the puffy, white clouds towards his mysterious destination. He wasn't certain what all it was that he was expected to do once he got there, but he could see the blinking pink arrow in the foreground of his vision superimposed over the sky directing his path.

Silash couldn't help but feel a terrible sense of foreboding, although he couldn't rightly tell why. Sure, this Tim fellow that had ported his consciousness over into an automaton didn't necessarily seem like a great guy or anything. That is to say, it wasn't like Tim had taken Silash's feelings or consent into the equation when he essentially drugged him, drilled into his skull, and reconstituted his mind somehow in a robotic form. And while working on the Tesserators was incredibly fascinating and rewarding for someone of Silash' mental capacity, once again Tim had essentially forced him into the situation by taking away his taumanity.

Then again, it did at least seem that, for the most part, Silash had free will. The free will to do anything, but the one thing he really wanted to do in his hearts of hearts. Wait - Silash wasn't a tauman being any more. Did he even have hearts any more? If he did, surely they were some sort of strange, robo-hearts. How disturbing. Regardless, Silash felt that he had free will. He'd, at the very least, been able to escape some of Tim's 'tutorial' by his own will, although of course Tim had planned for it. Which surely meant that if whatever Tim wanted him to do to harvest energy for the Tesserator's soul cores was something Silash didn't want to do, there was probably a way around it. At the same time, it also probably meant that Tim had planned contingencies for whatever it was that that Silash might do. Tim struck Silash as a big proponent of Whay Goa Theory.

Whay Goa Theory was, as aptly named, a theorem predicated by a woman by the name of Goa Whay. She intentionally had it named as the backwards interpretation of her name, as it was so often printed on formal scrolls as Whay, Goa. However, as any Nomachiattan was well aware, both Goa and Whay were first names as well as shenames, that is, the last names in the sequence of tauman names.

Goa Whay was known for, among other things, plotting events out very methodically and considering every possible angle of a situation. She was known for having walls covered in cutout images, connected with spools of yarn in a haphazard fashion. Some people even theorized, although this was in fact a theory that was often considered conspirational in nature, that Goa Whay was indeed a tauman of the oft hush-hush [class] known as a [Time Manipulator]. Now, it is important to realize how obscure, how occult and esoteric these whispers were. Most people had never even heard of a [class] known as [Time Manipulator], and of those that did, most of them thought that it was but a pile of bull excrement. Regardless, there was a substantial yet fringe group of people that were convinced that Goa Whay was indeed a [Time Manipulator]. Whatever the hell those were.

So, Whay Goa Theory stated that it was, in a way, impossible to plan for all possible events in all possible realities. That is to say, it stated that there was as much probability that someone had expected you to do something, as it was probable that they did not, irregardless of what it was. A great example of this was often referred to as the Punch Bowl Experiment.

The Punch Bowl Experiment was not an actual study conducted, but instead a thought experiment. And, as everyone except in people fond of meditation, it was generally understood in Nomachiato that thoughts were not real - at least, not real in the material sense.

So the Punch Bowl Experiment stated that, if one were to pick up a ladle from a bowl of punch, there was a nonzero probability that nobody had any real idea of what they were going to do with it. That is to say, since thoughts were not defined as real in the material sense, any thought of action that might be taken with this lifted punch ladle was not real. This was often thought of a bit of a cop out of a theory, however, it went further. Extrapolating this thematic inference, people could say that it was in a way just as mentally likely that the person holding the ladle of punch would be scooping up punch to pour themself a cup, as it was that they were planning of dunking it on someone's head, which was in turn as mentally likely as that they were going to run off with the ladle of punch and compete in a triathlon. Now, common sense may have dictated otherwise, in thinking that taumans would generally be planning to pour the punch into a cup instead of anything else, however again the thought that thoughts were immaterial meant that the thought-form that made up the idea of someone pouring punch into a cup was just as unlikely as any other thought-form. With this, the probability was in theory balanced out - it was just as probable that a tauman would put punch in a cup, as they would run off with it and get married to it.

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So Silash had to be prepared for everything. And for nothing, too.

His visual display arrow started blinking, and he could feel the automated propulsion system controlling his jet feet slow its power. He was reaching his destination: Flungunglia.

"Well howdy," replied the voice of Tim as it crackled through Silash's microphone. Then, white lettering popped up over his vision.

[Now viewing Tim. This hologram has been modified to fit your present field of view.]

A small hologram of Tim popped up, superimposed over his vision. Tim was short, so the hologram was small in multiple ways, which made Silash chuckle - but he kept it to himself.

"Hi, Tim," said Silash. "So... Why are we going to Flungunglia, of all places?" There was an acrid tone in his voice. Silash had never been fond of Flungunglia, which was generally contradictory to how most people would expect a tauman so interested in science, experimentation, and knowledge to feel. But, from Silash's perspective, people were always asking him why he was observing things in space back when he was a tauman when he should be answering the questions of Nomachiato's biggest mysteries, like why and how Flungunglia truly managed to be so out of time with every other region of the planet. Silash could still hear his own parents echoing in his head: "Son, I know you like this whole 'outer space' business what with the 'stargazing' and all, but how about you start somewhere a little more... close to home? You know, son, nobody's ever figured out figured out why time moves so differently in Flungunglia than everywhere else in Nomachiato. That is to say, my son, that weeks in Flungunglia are like hours in Gifflenberg. It's truly bizarre, and with your brilliant mind, I'm absolutely certain you could solve the mystery." Oh, how many times Silash had cried that he didn't want to study Flungunglia and instead he seeked to stare out at the sky in the name of science. What pain he held within his weary robo-hearts.

"It's simple, really," said Tim. "You're going to find someone powerful, someone with lots of [HP], and you're going to harvest them for a soul core. Then, once your soul core is filled, you'll immediately leave Flungunglia and - thanks to the time discrepancy, of course - you'll hopefully have only been there for all of, say, five minutes or so in regular time. With that, you'll then be covered for an alibi in case anyone comes looking for the person who harvested a soul from Flungunglia - as long as you can get out of the region fast enough to minimize your time there."

Silash, immediately, was disturbed. "Are you telling me you're sending me out here to kill someone and fill the soul core with their soul?"

"Um, duh," said Tim with a roll of his glowing eyes. "What did you think was in a soul core, anyways? It's in the name, Silash. Come on, you're a man of science, you ought to know this. Hell, how do you think I got you that nice, sparkly robot body, anyways?"

"You're saying that my consciousness isn't really in this robot? It's in a soul core connected to this robot?"

"Obviously. Seriously, you didn't already realize this? I'm kind of blown away. I figured it was dead obvious."

Silash wasn't certain how to feel as he lowered through the galatmosphere. Sure, he was a little disturbed at the prospect of essentially stealing someone's soul in order to lock it into a core. However, we was also so interested in the science behind it that he almost... didn't mind that much. That is to say that Silash was leaning towards complying with Tim and harvesting a soul. And of course, Silash's mind was presently spinning with questions related to how exactly all the soul cores being tied to a Tesserator really worked now. If those were tauman souls powering the Tesserator, were they consciously experiencing being part of a Tesserator just like he was consciously experiencing piloting the robot body? He asked Tim this, for clarification.

"No," said Tim definitively. "See, your consciousness is a direct result of long, hard hours spent burning money on research to craft you a real replacement for a tauman body in that robot body you've got. Souls in cores tied to Tesserators instead experience the default state of being in a soul core, that is to say that it's like being locked in a miasmic, never ending dreamscape. I've heard it can be quite nice for them."

Silash considered this. After all, if it was a pleasant experience, he couldn't truly feel too bad for harvesting someone's consciousness and sticking it in a soul core, right? Plus, he was excited to see the process and learn how it worked.

As he lowered towards the ground, he started to make out some of the figures standing around the main square of Flungunglia, wherein there were many large, mushroom shaped buildings. One of the buildings looked nearly completely ransacked, and partially ablaze. However, what really caught Silash's attention was an automaton standing in the square. It had something strange and boxy soldered to its chest that looked almost like a toaster.

"Say, Tim, that robot looks a lot like me. Is that another one of your experiments?" Silash asked, with only a little pain and frustration hiding behind the question.