Chapter 150 - Realignment of Thought Space
No way that Nexus just forgot it had one more person to send back, right?
Right?
He pulled out his notepad, hoping to ask the Nexus's spirit itself what the hell was going on. Golden runes hovered around the pad, combining and disintegrating into shapes he still couldn't comprehend.
Furrowing his brow, he imagined the trace of Lady Sylphina and, by proxy, Nexus's and wrote, 'Please send me back.'
He stopped moving his pen and, after that consistent delay of two and a half seconds, watched the inked words written in the runic alphabet morph into new blazing runes as they streamed into a new list that popped up.
Whirrr, came a sound.
He snapped his head towards the noise and noticed a tiny spark of light in the pillar behind him, which housed the throne of the first observer. Suddenly, an invisible force tugged on his body in a particular direction.
Ahh, it was that simple? He chuckled.
Yet, just a second after he closed the notepad, the sound died down with a mechanical groan, and the unnatural pull halted in its tracks.
Huh?
He stood there, waiting for something to happen.
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Nothing did.
"What the hell?" he asked the empty air, his hands spread apart. As if to mock him, the slight hint of light in the pillar behind him fizzled away.
An uneasy feeling washed over him, and he paced for a while, only to give in and open his notepad again. With a flourish, he rewrote the last request once again, all the while ignoring the plethora of runes that formed around his words even before he could send them. It said, 'Please send me back to Hotel Inkwell in Elmhurst in Calidian Empire in Quartzford Continent.'
Whirr, something buzzed again, and an even smaller blue light sparked around the bottom of the pillar only to die out instantly. However, this time, the force that was supposed to send him back couldn't even begin before everything shut down.
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"Fuck me," he cried out. He was very familiar with such behaviors. Engines and contraptions that were out of steam or coal had a habit of groaning like this, too.
Uneasy, he tried one final time and sent another similar note to Nexus.
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There wasn't even a peep, just like a machine with zero fuel.
"It's really out of power!" he groaned, stomping his foot. What were the odds? Fifty or so people managed to escape before him. How did he manage to be so unlucky?
Soon, he grimaced, Did I overdo it with Rupert? After all, he'd used Nexus's energy to suppress him there. Pacing on the platform around the center dimly lit by nothing but the stars and nebulas beyond the tinted canopy, he racked his already fried brain.
What do I do? It was an absurd problem. Who the hell would expect such a facility to run out of energy just like that? Worse, his Thought Space was pulsing intensely, making it hard for him to think through the current situation.
Soon, however, the choice was taken from his hands.
His eyes blazed on their own, and the ring within them shone brightly. Feeling a sensation of rising through space wash over him, he gave up on any further investigation for now and settled down on one of the seats on the eighth row.
Looks like my thought space is further aligning the new insights I gained today. He'd now become quite familiar with this feeling and could tell it from miles away. This one was specially quite a significant one. The conscious effort on his end to let the situation destabilize as far as possible before reversing it and striking the balance had been pivotal in this monumental result.
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and delved into his thought space. A large, ethereal sphere with eight sharp boundaries on its surface covered his vision.
Caged by three such boundaries, the upper-north-western octant—structural octant—was populated with swaying lights, more than two-thirds of it covered by their illuminating lights and connections.
Surprised, he thought, That's a big jump. Last he remembered, only a bit over one-third of it was covered.
So, I'm about sixty-six percent done aligning my viewpoint to the first shade? However, he knew not to rely too much on this kind of indicator.
First, it was hard to make out the scale of this sphere when there was no reference for size. Who was to say this sphere couldn't get bigger or smaller? That would make any absolute visual calculations entirely useless.
Not only that, insights were a fickle thing. He'd often delved into his thought space and seen some odd things happening here. Kind of like what was transpiring right now.
A bunch of the lights closer to the sphere's north pole detached from their neighbors, the bright bond between them dwindling into nothing as the whole thing displaced a bit to the west.
This happened everywhere in the octant as the 'tiny islands' drifted away from their original location, breaking their previous bonds and making new ones in a different territory.
Heck, one that veered around the boundary of this octant tugged and pulled for a while before completely snapping its bonds as it crossed into an adjacent octant.
Vern watched it with fascination as the feeling of 'correctness' spread throughout him with every second that passed.
After a bit, some Insights merged together and grew taller—further making his previous visual estimation of two-thirds progress inaccurate—while others split and filled some of the gaps.
Yet, this is where his biggest deficiency came to light—the lack of foundational insights. He already knew it to be the case based on his gut feeling, but it wasn't visually apparent before this restructuring of his insights.
After all, newly learned insights blossomed into random spots, filling the octant haphazardly without proper rhyme or reason. From his understanding, insight sifting sessions existed for this very reason—to help one align these insights to better fit with the rest of their viewpoint.
Something he got for free thanks to embodying his tenet to such an extent and causing such a wave inside his thought space.
He would probably need to align them further, but that would have to wait for some real introspective moment. And not just that, if he'd done it before today, the gains wouldn't have been massive as this new influx of insights would have thrown it all in a mess again.
So, one had to pick between stability or speed, all the while juggling the redundancy of efforts.
Though, he didn't really know how it worked for others. They might not have an organized thought space like he did.
Anyways, the point was that this realignment made the holes in his insights evident. Between and inside the islands of flowing lights were gaps. Not tens or hundreds, but thousands. Annoying little holes that signified his failure to comprehend the subtle nuances of structure.
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Vern clicked his tongue and murmured, "This won't do." Embodying the tenet of 'Instability before Stability' helped him gain huge influxes of insights, but these subtle gaps in his knowledge regarding structure were hard to fill with just having big events like today's.
He needed to find some ways to better attune himself to this fundamental.
Until now, a big chunk of his time as a first-shade observer was spent training under Mistress Amelia, and while he wouldn't change that for the life of him, it was a trade-off.
He missed out on possible missions and situations where he could have gained and deepened the insights needed to plug these very holes.
"One step at a time," he murmured with a shake of his head.
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Sitting in the silent Nexus, he continued to observe all the transformations that happened inside him, and after what felt like half an hour, his thought space finally settled down, and all the changes halted.
His head felt lighter, and the throbbing ache from before gave way to flowing thoughts as he watched the beautiful symmetry of the new islands in this octant of the ethereal planet-like thought space.
They looked perfect, and he seemed to realize something new about structures.
However, the moment that thought registered, a couple of new insights blossomed out of thin air into the thought space and broke the perfect symmetry he was just admiring.
"Noo," he lamented, only for that insight to burn even brighter as if to mock him.
Hahh, he sighed and opened his eyes.
The eerie sight of the dim Nexus helped him forget all about his complaints with the ever-changing shape of his thought space.
He rubbed his eyes, and a clear Paa sound echoed in the hall as he lightly smacked his own face and stood up. "Alright. Let's see what the hell is going on here."
Walking over to the giant pillar in the center, he ran his hands over the glassy surface and pressed his face against it to better see the throne nestled inside the pillar.
How is anyone even supposed to sit on it if this thing's closed off like this? he wondered. The pillar had no gaps or openings. Who would design something impractical like that?
Anyone sitting on a throne inside a glass pillar would look more like an experimental subject than a god.
This reminded him of Lady Lennix. Unfortunately, when he imagined her likeness sitting inside this tube, the image wasn't as funny as he'd hoped. Instead, it seemed…regal and untouchable?
Shaking his head, he dismissed that image. Obviously, the first observer, whoever it was, wouldn't sit on the throne when it was in this state. A hand on his chin, he lampooned, Maybe it is closed off to show that only the First observer deserves to sit on this throne. Anyone else can only dream of it.
That made sense.
Except, why the hell am I even thinking about this question?
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This sent the distracting thoughts packing as he circled the pillar and began his first attempt to actually solve the problem at hand—the obvious solution.
What did one do when a machine ran out of energy? He shrugged, Give it some fuel.
A white ring shimmered in his eyes as he observed the pillar without any specific Vision or change in mind. It was kind of like how he did with the Amulet of Restoration with an intent to let the subject absorb his representation.
Luckily, many new insights had blossomed in his mind during the confluence, helping him regenerate his otherwise emptied representation. After all, he had almost nothing left after conversing with Lady Sylphina.
Keeping a close eye on his reserves, he began to channel some of it into the pillar. To his surprise, it was like an endless void that guzzled up everything Vern sent its way. Yet, it was…slow.
He backed away and stood with his arms folded as his eyes slowly channeled his representation into this deep pit. Doubt assaulted him as his stores began to dwindle, but nothing happened.
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Until it did.
Whirr, echoed a sound from somewhere high up as a light sparked on the surface of the pillar's bottom like it did before.
Vern narrowed his eyes. Is it doing the same thing as before? But I didn't ask to be sent out of the Nexus this time.
He monitored his body intently but felt no tug or pull that'd send him back to his humble abode even after a dozen seconds. "Interesting. This is different," he spoke aloud, mentally noting all the changes around him.
In the previous three attempts, he'd asked the Nexus to send him back, and it had caused the meager lights that shone to be snuffed out as quickly as they came. This time, however, the light remained shining as if representing it was stored for future use.
A bit more optimistic, he poured more representation into it, and soon, the light began to spread around the bottom of the pillar in a ring.
However, before he could fill even half of a single ring, he was only left with one-third of his supposedly large reserves of Representation.
Should I keep going? he debated, eyeing his notepad. He didn't know how much energy was needed to complete his return. What if the current amount wasn't enough, and he got stuck somewhere in the middle of his travels?
A gruesome image formed in his mind, and he wiped the sweat off his forehead, That would be a terrible way to go out.
However, he didn't want to use up all his representation either. The journey itself was to be covered as a ball of consciousness rather than his physical self. And while he was no expert, it wouldn’t be a stretch to extrapolate that being completely 'unrepresented' in such a situation would be a terrible idea.
After some deliberation, he slowed down the flow of energy and waited, his eyes glued to the end of the half-ring. He wanted to see if this storage was temporary or permanent. What if the nexus lost the energy soon after he poured it in?
That would make some of his ideas unviable.
If the ring depleted rapidly, then he might be in big trouble. It would mean he couldn't slowly regenerate his own representation and pour it into the Nexus over time.
Heck, in that case, it might be better for him to just try and get out right now—assuming there was enough energy to even initiate the process.
Similar fears and thoughts swirled in his mind, but as seconds turned into minutes and the lowest ring of light remained lit without even flickering, his paranoia fizzled away.
He sighed in relief. "Wow, this ancient machine is more efficient than most stuff available in the market nowadays."
Thump. He settled back down on a chair and tried to wrap his head around these circumstances. He knew it had yet to sink in because of his prior excitement, but this situation was worse than it looked. What if he was really stuck in here?
Yes, the Nexus was inextricably linked to Lady Sylphina, who was…nice to him but said she wouldn't interfere with his life's path. Then, who was to guarantee she wouldn't just watch voluntarily or involuntarily as he slowly lost himself to hunger and loneliness in here?
He wasn't inherently against the idea of being inside Nexus, but he didn't want to remain here longer than necessary. After all, he had a life to get back to. And while hunger and sleep had yet to beckon him, they were sure to come knocking in due time.
It would be one thing if he had control over his entry and exit, but he didn't. And that gnawed at him.
Rapping his fingers on the armrest, he assessed his options. One was to try and explore this dim, dark, and ancient palace all by himself in hopes of finding food and shelter.
He didn't like the sound of that. Who knew what the hell was hiding in the 'Nexus of Elyndor' which housed an ancient family at some point in time?
Yea, not my first choice.
The other option—the best one. was to stack enough representation inside the pillar to be able to leave safely, but it had its own complications.
Maybe getting a little desperate by these uncertain cases, he even thought of what to do if worse came to worst.
I can probably send a note to all Visionaries, asking them to pay the costs to keep Nexus running for a while longer. Though, he didn't know what reasoning to give for such an absurd request.
Though it had to be the last resort since it would hurt the mighty image he'd just built after so much effort.
Shaking his head, he reasoned, It looks like I'll need to slowly fill it up with my own representation and explore the nexus if it doesn't work out in a while.
Something of a plan at hand, he dived deeper into the problems with this solution. I don't know exactly how much energy is needed to send me back. One ring? Two? Twenty?
That's when a sudden flash of inspiration struck him, "Oh, wait. I can just try asking the Nexus's spirit."
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Surely, such a simple idea eluded him until now because of all the thousands of worries running through his mind.
With a quick flourish of his pen, he imagined Lady Sylphina's trace and began writing, 'How much representation is…'
However, as his hands moved to pen all this in runic form—something he did intuitively rather than deliberately, the golden symbols that were floating aimlessly until now suddenly rushed towards the paper.
Vern furrowed his brows. This wasn't entirely something new. However, until today, he'd been unable to make sense of what these runes meant. And ever since he'd entered Nexus, he had little time or energy to spend on anything that didn't directly help him solve the issue at hand.
After that realignment, however, he felt it might be worth spending some of his brain power to focus on and decipher exactly what these specific runes said—the ones that congregated around his writing even before he finalized and sent the note.
Nodding, he concentrated on them.
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Scratchhh, The pen's nib that was flowing to his whims until now suddenly came to a halt as he stared at the congregation of the runes beyond his words with wide eyes.
Beyond his own words, which read, 'How much representation is…' appeared another set of glowing words in a handwriting not his own which added, 'inside a night beast's heart?'
"What the heck is this? I didn't mean to write that."