“Status:”

I focus on thinking out loud.

“Name: Charlie.

Gender: neutral.

Level: 0.

Experience: 0.004/2

Mana: 0.006/2 “

Mana Regeneration: 1 per 24 hours. “

Cold thoughts. As always, with the slight hint of annoyance in its thoughts. Good old cold thoughts.

That was… somewhat reassuring. I had a feeling that I had been very comfortable with following rules in my past life. Also, for some reason, maths.

I stand with that for a bit, and feel how it comes out.

It feels… alright. Like, being in very familiar territory. It did not yet bring me any bad things, so I don’t mind.

Okay, so…. My options are limited. I have next to nothing else going on, that is nice. I have not had a snack in forever, I have not slept, I just…. Exist. That is a bit sad really, but maybe, that is what things like me do. IT would be bad to …

I peek at the “Core”, just to be safe. It still blinks, but I am not that sure anymore if it is as fast as it used to be. I tried the counting trick, I tried the “Let's think many thoughts at once” Trick, but the blinking is slower than it was before. So, the blinking rate is not a constant.

The drip rate is. I create my own constants.

What unnerves me is that there is nothing to do. I mean, I am sure I can sit here, and count up and down, explore concepts, and think to myself.

BUt what was I then? Everything wanted to grow. Either to grow, or to make itself known. To interact, not out of need, but out of pleasure.

I have…. Well, nothing in my area that I can affect… except the rock. Which, cold thoughts informed me, is called a core.

Well, some rules were meant to be broken.

I feel the flow around me, and start with a curious idea.

What if I can move Core?

I have more than enough time, so I think it through. Up until now, I have seen flow, rock, and only speculated about what more there was. It really fucked me over, knowing that all that there was were basically four things, three if I counted myself as a thing.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The rational move would be to get a groove on, and go explore. I have dragged my focus across the landscape, and I am bored.

I spend a while doodling on the landscape of flow, until I make a startling discovery.

States are possible.

I contain my excitement, and begin to test things out.

I mentally separate my state system into squares, which seems the most reasonable, and go in.

I place two dots right next to each other, maintain them until I have them just the way they are, and then observe. They are of stillness, and… predictably get turned into flow in a couple of drops from my improvised flow clock later.

So, flow…. Flow has a direction. That much is sure. I verify it by feeling the flow. Yea. All directions of stillness get erased, but some directions get erased earlier, and with greater force.

I nod to myself (as usual, a bit of an odd gesture, as I still have nothing to nod with, but it feels right, and at least “cold thoughts” seems to appreciate the gesture because I hear no annoyed thoughts. I take that as a good sign). IF flow has a direction, flow creation is upstream. I have a rough idea how to do this.

As far as my shifted perspective could tell, there was nothing really hindering me, so I was alright with that. The question was…. How to do it?

I move my focus across the plane, but come up empty. I hold tight to a point upstream, and pull, but manage to only shift my perspective. I put the point of perspective, along with focus, behind the “core”, and push. I pull as well, but nothing seems to work. I try again and again, as much as I can, but there is nothing.

Then, I feel the flow, and wish I had better cuss words. Fuck and shit is allright, but it does not really serve when cussing.

I realise that the more “work” I do, the more the table of stillness grows. That is… something. It gets erased back, but there is new growth. It is like the presence of the core takes in flow, and puts out stillness.

Hrm. That kind of looks like a system in use maintains a connection.

I will try to verify. I keep the focus going, and discover that yes, what I perceived as a “maintaining” is actually sort of connection keeping.

So… I had something to do.

I try all tricks that I can think of, and discover I can, in a very small way, manipulate flow. Biding my time, I start counting again. Memory seems no problem, as whatever I use to think with seems unencumbered. Like a small thing, rattling inside a bigger thing.

If flow hits stillness, and I maintain stillness, there is no degradation of stillness. If I do not maintain it, there is a change of flow. I am elated. I seem to remember a few hints of fluid dynamics, and go with it. I verify that what I think of as flow behaves as what I think of as a fluid.

Okay. There is now a U shape behind my core, and the flow just gets focussed there. On the one hand, I have no feeling of time passing anymore, on the other, I can feel how the flow behaves. It is sloshing in the U shape, hitting my core from all sides.

I get loaded and loaded with flow, enough that it does not get to be changed easily.

“Status”, I think, and am pleasantly surprised.

“Name: Charlie.

Gender: neutral.

Level: 0.

Experience: 0.964/2

Mana: 1.512/2 “

Mana Regeneration: 1 per 24 hours. “

That is… something. IT tells me that what I felt as “flow” was actually mana. So, I can see how things are progressing, and they are progressing nicely.

I consider for a second to just give up.

Then, I forget the idea. I stretch out my focus, and measure what the flow feels like away from me, and soon, I have triangulated where flow comes from. I know, I will have to blast myself there….

Then, I realise it. I let the stillness dissolve.

E=mc²

It enters my mind really simple.

There is no magic. There is no waving of sticks…. There are cold hard numbers, and these numbers say, if you have enough energy, mass is not a problem.

I try to keep the formula in mind, as I get my focus ready.

All the way, I tried to keep myself busy by pretending I knew what the game was. I tried to control every single bit of it. No matter if it was me trying too hard, or me trying to have an existential crisis…. Maybe it is my slowly returning memory, but I know, sometimes, the best lessons come from fucking about.

I raise my focus, shake imaginary fatigue off of it, and slam it down, thinking of the formula that means nothing to me. I focus on the feel of the energy, that I have as flow. I focus on creating stillness.

I get a vague sense of the cold thoughts, but I shush it. This is war. Not everything has to make sense all of the time. The focus seems to vibrate, as I use it to hammer the formula into action.

And I see how the channels that the flow uses get filled.

I nearly pass out, as I finish the last lines, but wet like a drained towel, I hang in there, as I see how every creates form. How the feeling creates a beautiful fractal, in the world that I perceive…. How flow energy gets transferred to….