After his gaudy display of flight Vonder was in a great mood. Ozzy quickly found that almost any question he asked was answered, and in a rather straightforward manner. He used that to his advantage in their conversations, and as they eventually turned to trade. He’d learned a few tidbits more about Vonders mentor and the voids he’d mentioned. Apparently they were rather easy to find once you knew what you were looking for. Which in turn gave more information about how the nodes or connections with other havens worked. The havens communicated in some way with one another and cataloged the locations of one another. Feeling or seeing them was in no way seeing the connections or havens themselves. They were simply the impression the havens themselves had of their fellows. It was why you could detect a near endless amount of them even upon your first introduction to the concept.
The havens didn’t just catalog and remember other havens. Though it was a bit more difficult to interpret and access anything else as the havens were either not as interested in anything else, or they were not as willing to share the info. Yet once you could detect them they stood out like a sore thumb as they were completely different. Vonder equated the connections and nodes to an endless multidimensional spreadsheet. The different connections were cells that had been shaded with an eye catching color saying look at me. Though there was more to the sheet than just locations the havens had an interest in. If you were attentive you could find cells that had been shaded in the same color as their data, to imply there was ‘nothing to see here’, but still had information about a place. Once you were able to recognize them they were everywhere.
Ozzy was excited by the information and was definitely going to look into these places. Ever since Vonder had first mentioned them at their first meeting he’d daydreamed about what they might look like. Envisioning a cracked portion of a planet floating in the emptiness. He was curious what he might find in such a place, but at the same time cautious. Vonder who was stronger than him, and his mentor who was stronger than both Vonder and Benjamin had not been able to handle the entity that was actively consuming these world crumbs. He would likely wait until he found out whatever the next step was in improving his domain before attempting a visit. It may be that he would wait even longer.
What he didn’t want to wait on was getting bread and other additions to his diet. The trade with Vonder would definitely help in that especially with him in a magnanimous mood. They couldn’t have been said to have haggled at all. Ozzy had tried asking for a list of things Vonder had, but even in his good graces the man wouldn’t provide him one. Instead he had to list off things he could think of that he needed though he knew he wasn’t remembering everything. The list included bread, flour, wheat, sugar, coffee, potatoes, and if possible dye. After which Vonder waved his hand as if it was nothing and said “As long as you provide the havens for these three fine birds, I can provide you most of that” He squinted then continued “Just not the Coffee, and well not exactly the dye. there are all kinds of ways to die things but I don’t have dyes myself just some of the plants the process uses”
Eventually Vonder called their rendezvous to a close. “Well the lunch was wonderful,” He said clearly implying that was the end of said lunch. “Give me a moment to grab our agreed upon merchandise” he added before heading off. Ozzy watched him leave and felt out for the connection he’d used. His heart pounded as he pushed through to the other side. Inside he found a small cat curled in the center napping. Which was quickly interrupted by Vonder stepping into and then quickly out of the square. Leaving The cat whipping its head around confused as by the time it opened its eyes Vonder was already gone.
With the success Ozzy took another risk. He reached further and through the new connection Vonder had just made. He had suspected, and hoped, after seeing that his domain and constructs didn’t register to havens, that Vonder wouldn’t be able to detect them entering his haven either. So far that seemed to be panning out, but hopefully he wasn’t shooting himself in the foot here. Again Ozzy saw a new haven a moment before Vonder showed up himself. Glad for the fact that his domain was able to traverse whatever lay between faster than anything with a physical manifestation could. This time Vonder didn’t hop away immediately. The Haven was also larger, hinting that this might be Vonders.
Ozzy didn’t see how adding a single hop between your haven and another could protect your origin. He’d been dabbling in networking and programming in college and with the havens doing half the work by cataloging and filtering connections by most recent it was child's play to follow someone even through several hops. Unless you added in false trail connections at the same time as your own as well as doubling back and maybe a false destination where you’ve stashed things it was not going to shake him in the slightest. Even then If one could connect to each of them as Ozzy could then even that would not work. As he could see the tendrils of domain if someone tried such a tactic. While Vonder was still stronger than Ozzy by a decent margin there were more benefits he was still finding to his particular method of advancement.
While Vonder busied himself with gathering what they’d discussed Ozzy took a quick look around. Vonders home was the largest he’d seen so far. Which wasn’t saying much as his own and those in Benjamins haven were all just shacks really. Maybe tiny homes if one was being generous. Vonder had a sprawling rambler that took up at least five times the space his own did. There were windows large enough that he could see inside and there was a couch and some chairs. The windows were rough and wavy. The couches were covered in rough spun cloth, as were the chairs. Despite that it had the look of a modern home. Which made a lot of sense. Vonder seemed like the type to want everything pristine even in a post apocalyptic scenario.
Ozzy surveyed the rest of the haven. It was smaller than Cederick’s by a wide margin. Though larger than Benjamins. It was arranged in such a way as to give the appearance of a small homestead with large trees grown on the edges to hide the non-existent horizon. There were much larger trees than the fruit trees Ozzy had grown. He didn’t know all the different types, but there were some he had learned to recognize by leaf shape in elementary school. He didn’t recognize the leaves of any of them though. Some of the trees had needles, but he hadn’t learned any of those types.
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While he was glad to have found a vulnerability he could exploit, he felt a bit like being a voyeur watching from the shadows. Pulling his domain back he focused on the portions he’d left in his home. Not a tendril this time. He connected instead to the many constructs he had there and felt for the havens connections. Comparing what he felt to the descriptions Vonder had given he found a grain of truth behind how he saw it. It wasn’t a literal database but that wasn’t a terrible description for it either. Compared to his own previous understanding it was a much closer approximation. Now that he knew he was perusing a collection of information managed by the haven he could feel obvious things he’d been misinterpreting before.
For instance the reason recent connections stood out so blatantly was they had tags, for lack of a better word, indicating they were just connected which faded over time. The information wasn’t actually fading or disappearing, but as it was intent not text or images it was altered over time. If translated to text it would be in all caps with three exclamation points that something had connected “JUST NOW!!!”. Even waiting a few minutes would result in something more sedate like it connected “Recently!”. Having a bit of domain connect to a random haven he watched the process repeat a few times.
A few particulars stood out as he alternated the variables. The way it smoothly adjusted and the way the information felt partitioned hinted at multiple categories of information which were adjusted automatically. There might be ways he could single out locations to visit without needing to resort to espionage if he could simply filter the information instead of getting it all dumped onto him at once. Maybe he’d even be able to add his own information to better organize and interact with it. He’d definitely be looking at this in more depth when he had more time. Focusing back on Vonder he found him still busy gathering up different things they’d discussed and a few they hadn’t.
Despite his suspicions the practice would soon be obsolete Ozzy still went through the tiles in Vonders Haven finding another menagerie of beasts. Most weren’t anything worth mentioning except something that looked quite goat-like. He made a note for himself hoping he’d be able to get some milk from it which he’d forgotten to ask about. He’d never tasted it before but figured it would be better than nothing. Now if only he could find Coffee and chocolate. Which reminded him to ask Vonder when he came back if he had any. He also decided to just ask him for any other contacts he had. As stuffy as the guy seemed he was actually pretty open once you got past his strange way of wording things. Sometimes it pays to give someone a second chance.
The exchange went smoothly with Vonder explaining the extra things he’d grabbed could be used to dye things but he had no idea of the process or which colors each could produce. Vonder apologized but explained he didn’t have any chocolate. Using that as a segway Ozzy asked about other possible contacts for trading more things, hinting that he’d keep an eye out for anything Vonder had an interest in. The man appeared to be almost as much a hermit as Benjamin so the hope being he’d rather someone else do the work trading on his behalf. Sure enough Vonder jumped at the possibility, though not without caveat. He made Ozzy promise to still visit every other week in exchange for the contacts. When he did, not only did he provide a few names that he recommended as good sources, but a list of things he wanted as well. Only one of the people had a dedicated place to visit, the rest Vonder said he’d leave a note here for him if they were open to visit and they could also come here. The suggestion hinted that the reasoning was that Vonder actually wanted more people to talk to.
After showing Vonder the connections to the three birds, and receiving the one connection for a new contact in turn he took his trade goods and hopped back home. Going over his haul he organized it. Vonder had packed in both bread and some seeds he’d labeled wheat. The text looked a bit weird. Like he’d just learned to write recently, and was still nailing down a concrete shape for things. Ozzy dismissed the oddity not wanting to bother with it. He already had a million other mysteries he was trying to solve.
With all the new things he’d need to plant he wanted a nice place to do so. Which in turn made him wonder about the layout of his haven. He’d started out just letting things lie as they fell, but then organized them along with Benjamin's plan. Though now he needed something new. He could always adjust them later so didn’t waste time investing in the future. To make organizing things easier he decided to name the direction of his current tree lined path south. Using his infinite tile glitch he gathered more imp tiles and created a cardinal walkway heading twenty tiles in each direction. His shack he moved to the NW quadrant along with the water and clay squares.The random selection of new tiles he added to the NE quadrant. Finally he adjusted the two lines of connected havens to the SE quadrant.
He had suspected this move to cause some kind of issue but they simply moved like any of the others had. The nearly instantaneous pop from one location to another was itself a hint, but the fact that entire swaths of tiles were able to shuffle about as easily as anything else suggested there was some kind of dimensional shenanigans going on. Not just the fact that they were moving but the edge of his domain adjusted as if there wasn’t anything wrong. He’d let the thought slide over him when looking at the other havens he’d looked at but the havens seemed capable of folding space, not just to move their offspring about but also, to appear to only be slightly larger than the tiles they contained. Yet it was beginning to look like the havens were gargantuan and somehow folding themselves down to accommodate whatever they contained.