Somnus observed reality as the dream seed. Despite there being no concepts. He alone remained aware.
"There is no matter to manipulate. There can be no history without time..."
"So how am I thinking?"
"It would seem I have acquired a special uniqueness. It is even more potent then my default lucid awareness in dreams. I am aware despite there being nothing to support my consciousness."
Somnus himself didn't know the reason for his existence. He hadn't figured out how he had entered this reality.
"There is no system and therefore no entropy."
Somnus remembered his days as a normal human.
"Humanity is the byproduct of a system going from low to high entropy. The change of entropy in a system gives birth to complex and intricate structures."
"If you trace the entropy from high to low all the way back to the beginning. You will find an extremely simple state."
"What exactly is time?"
"Past."
"Present."
"Future."
"Time moves forward."
"Just like how an object falls down on a planet due to gravity. If you are deep in space. The difference between up, down, left, and right depends on perspective."
"Right now I am in a timeless state."
"I am the lone observer."
"In the last reality I was in. There were different timelines. These were different universes. They had been identified and labeled by some entity."
"I had been in F555 and F554..."
"Time is simply a concept used to label events."
"The universe is infinitely repeating itself from low entropy to high entropy."
"Stars will die."
"But I will not."
"My current state is paradoxical. If I am the one to create time in this reality. I will kickstart it. Without time, there can not be any events."
"Without events. There is just eternal sameness."
In the past. Somnus had felt his intelligence drop from seizing the bodies of animals. Somnus had long theorized that the body and brain he inhabited influenced greatly his personality and intelligence.
With his current brain not existing in the normal sense and being the dream seed. It was as if his limiter had been removed
He didn't feel emotions such a boredom. He had felt some excitement after leaving his dormant state. But that excitement was fleeting.
"There is major potential to screw myself in this situation. A normal person might be in a rush to recreate their reality to alleviate boredom."
"This complete lack of a form and environment should drive anyone insane. But insanity is relative."
"I must not rush into recreating reality. I am in a place without competition."
"I must establish rules... I do not want to encounter the same issues from my last reality. I had to battle and trick alternate versions of myself in the past. I must first guarantee that that I am in full control."
"These rules are like the rules in physics. But instead of laws like the conservation of mass. I will do something entirely different."
Somnus had an eternity to think about the structure of reality.
"The reason for the constants such as light and the limitations of processing power don't affect me."
"I can make a reality so far removed from what I am used to."
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"Without a sun or a rotating planet. There is no such thing as day and night. There is no seasons..."
"Without biological organs. There is no need for sleep."
"The biggest mistake I could make is to introduce consciousness into this blank reality. That'll have to be near the end of things I do."
Somnus was worried that he would have to deal with the threat of other entities that grew up without his unique perspective. He needed to consolidate his power first.
"Without evolution and a environment suitable for life. Without the vastness of endless galaxies. There will be no intelligent life."
"The first thing I must create is Time."
"A second isn't some random length of time. There is 86,400 seconds in a day. This is roughly the time it takes the earth to rotate on its axis. But I am not on earth."
"A year is just the time it takes to rotate around the sun."
"But these measurements have lost their meaning in this reality that lacks both stars and planets. There isn't even empty space here."
"Originally... humanity thought itself the center of the universe."
"I am."
"If I am to create my own units of time. I will use my thinking speed in combination with the system genesis speed."
"I don't have Echo anymore to keep track for me. But a full rotation of my visualization technique requires it going through 2,500 stages."
"The full animations of each stage requires roughly 24 hours."
"So 2,500 days is a single cycle."
"That is roughly 6.8 years."
Somnus's thinking was not limited like it had been in the past. Just like how the dream seed grew in multiple dimensions. His thinking could split off into separate threads.
This was like a Hivemind. But safer. There was no chance of him going on attack against himself.
Somnus created a temporary thread and had it read a thread of binary.
He was living data after all.
Firstly. He needed to conceptualize language.
He was thinking in English. He quickly sorted out his thoughts and made a simple data package:
{0(16)0(8)0(4)0(2)0(1): A0 - 00000 B1 - 00001 C2 - 00010 D3 - 00011 E4 - 00100 F5 - 00101 G6 - 00110 H7 - 00111 I8 - 01000 J9 - 01001 K10 - 01010 L11 - 01011 M12 - 01100 N13 - 01101 O14 - 01110 P15 - 01001 Q16 - 10000 R17 - 10001 S18 - 10010 T19 - 10011 U20 - 10100 V21 - 10101 W22 - 10110 X23 - 10111 Y24 - 11000 Z25 - 11001: 0(1)0(2)0(4)0(8)0(16)}
He then transformed converted 'TIME' using this package.
{T19 - 10011 I8 - 01000 M12 - 01100 E4 - 00100}
He then had his consciousness scan this data.
10011010000110000100
The amount of time it took him to scan 'Time' was very short.
He called this instance a 'tick'.
So a tick was the base.
In this case.
A militick is a thousandth of a tick.
A kilotick is a thousand ticks.
But he didn't want to name his units in this way.
You had:
NANO>MICRO>MILI>CENTI>DECI>UNIT He thought that the names for a second, minute, hour and day were already familiar and usable. A second is MANY cycles of radiation. There was no such thing as atoms or radiation in this reality. So Somnus made the 'tick' the foundation There were roughly 2500 ticks in a second. A tick was essentially 0.4 milliseconds. Somnus completely discarded the original values of milliseconds/seconds. 2500 ticks was 250 decticks or 25 hecticks or 2.5 kiloticks. The speed it took him to scan '10011010000110000100' that was 'Time' he now called: UNIVERSAL TIME CONSTANT. Space and Time could be said to be linked in other multiverses. But that wasn't the case here. 60,000 ticks from the perspective of a mortal on earth would be about 24 seconds. But Somnus was in control here. The 'second' in his reality was different. There are 60,000 ticks in a second in his universe. That means that his seconds are 24 times longer then a second on earth. He then scaled things from there. So a minute is 3,600,000 ticks, and hour is 216,000,000 ticks and so on. But consciousness itself wasn't time ratio'd. If you took a human from another reality and placed them in his reality. If you did this after he had created Time. Their tools and mind's would be warped. From his perspective. They would think 24 times slower. But from theirs, nothing would've seemed to change. Why was this? Because he was the creator of the concept of Time here. He felt his thinking speed could be toggled and modified. Having 'longer' seconds was a boon. He also still had his perspective as a mortal to rely on. This meant that while a second would have passed. He would have nearly a half minute to think in reality. He essentially got all the benefits of having different time laws. But nearly none of the drawbacks. "Now that I have established time units. I must decide how time works." "If I do this right. I can perhaps even manipulate the past, and future!" Somnus had long become an entity without origin. He had left his previous cosmic orders territory. "I can go with the multiverse system. Where every reaction creates a new universe." Think of having two choices. Choice A Choice B If you choose one. You will also choose the other in an alternate reality. With each choice you make. With every decision. A new universe is created. "Or I can have branching timelines..." Think of having two choices. Choice A Choice B You choose A. But a fork opens up as a separate timeline. There isn't a separate universe being created. But branching timelines. Ones that you can only experience once. "Or have mathematical inevitability..." Think of having two choices. Choice A Choice B The universe is infinite in this sense and the conditions that led to your galaxy will repeat like a fractal. Making alternate versions of you take both options. There are variants. "My universe isn't really bound by physics. So repeating patterns won't give birth to other worlds..." "Or perhaps... I can have past and future be an illusion. The only thing that exist is the present. The other entities simply imagine and hallucinate a concept of continuity..." "So many ways to do this." "I must leave some backdoors for myself..."