“Dive beneath the surface, my Empathy.” Cedric took a deep breath in, holding it for a second before slowly exhaling. As he breathed out, an inaudible chime echoed throughout his mindscape. Sight, sound, taste, touch, and every other sense - even those beyond the usual five, like balance and nociception analyzed every nook and cranny of the world around him. All this overwhelming sensory input was then chopped up and blended together into something more manageable: Data. Raw, unfiltered information. Objective, not subjective. Free of emotion and opinion, but not blind nor foreign to it.
The quantity of it was still enormous, and Cedric was no faster at processing it… but unlike “experiences”, which screamed in your ear demanding attention, “information” just sat there. It was patient - waiting for Cedric to solve and understand it at his own pace. It was a soothing feeling - for Cedric may have been quick in the head, but he was easily tripped up and overwhelmed. Honestly, he didn’t know why people always treated him like some kind of genius when half the time he was by far and away the most confused person in the room.
Time almost seemed to stand still as he flickered his attention through all the wonderful new things to explore and analyze. Unfortunately, “almost” and “seemed to” were no replacement for “actually” and “did”. Cedric needed some way to filter all of this data, or a way of organizing it - aside from the obvious method of manually sorting it all. A fun and relaxing activity, no doubt, but not really one he had time for at the moment.
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Cedric summoned forth an illusion of himself as a test dummy, planning to focus his new power on it in hopes of a more targeted search. But the solution to his problem was quickly revealed to be much, much simpler. As soon as Cedric turned his attention toward his illusion, a wireframe made of dim light - like the ones in digital modeling software - rapidly formed around it. Line by line it grew, starting from a single dot at the center of Cedric’s focus and quickly forming a rough, polygonal outline of the illusory clone. As soon as the frame was finished, it faded away and a two dimensional screen made of the same kind of light appeared before him. On it read the words: “Duplicate of Cedric’s Empathy. Type: Trait. Status: Illusory. Current Activity: Reflecting Cedric’s expectations.”
Well. It appeared Cedric’s new ability effectively allowed him to install a search engine into his surroundings. It was the perfect power for him, though there was still a small part of him that wished it wasn’t.