Chapter 66 - Shading The Perception
He sat up straight and placed the pocket watch in front of him to check the time as he pondered Esther's words—ruthlessly suppressing any lingering emotions that made him want to mourn. There was a specific time for those emotions, and this wasn't it.
Vern remembered she said, 'Take these thoughts that are floating in your mind—the ones that you're constantly repeating to maintain the state of your perception and imagine a shape for them.'
Now, one way to go about doing that would be to slowly go through the thoughts in his mind one by one, shaping them—even repeating some of the procedures to ensure he didn't miss out on some important details. All this while also forcing his thoughts into a mental construct. Or, he could be a little smart about it and make use of the resources available to him.
He obviously chose the latter. Leaning over, he grabbed the Insight Sphere and closed his eyes. He had left that final cloud of foreign thoughts within the sphere just for this moment.
Whenever he used those thoughts, his mind went into overdrive—his memory became perfect, and his reasoning abilities soared. That was exactly what he needed right now. He had about four seconds worth of enhancing foreign thoughts in there.
He quickly rushed from the Void of Initiation to the lower-north-western octant. The moment he came in contact with the foreign notions, he let them wash over him.
And Clarity became the norm.
Every node of thought in his brain became distinct, and fuzzy ideas became solid. Without wasting even a fraction of a second, he followed Esther's words. He just had to mold the thoughts into his desired shape.
He had considered this question beforehand and knew exactly what he wanted. It wasn't just a simple sphere. He had a better idea. Something marvelous.
An Insight Sphere.
So he began. First, he took all his general thoughts and molded them into a sphere. But this was just the start. Next, he picked each thought node related to Stability inducement and decided which Fundamental it primarily belonged to.
Notions associated with Structural Fundamental were pushed into a section of this newly created hollow sphere—the upper-north-western octant. The very same one where Structure was defined in an Insight Sphere. Whenever he came across ideas of varied fundamentals like Creation or Force, he aligned them in their respective octants.
He knew that this might not matter in the grand scheme of things. That this extra effort might just be a waste of time, but if there was a perfect shape for a Thought Space, it was an Insight Sphere. Every one of these spheres embodied the mysteries of the universe in the most efficient and saturated manner.
Positioning each and every concept within an Insight Sphere meant something. It was like someone with nigh-infinite thought and care deliberately put them there to make it easy to understand. Some believed it was Lady Lennix. Regardless, every idea complemented the ones surrounding them, while those on the borders of the Octants embodied multiple schools of thought.
Right now, he predominantly had thoughts related to Structure, so it wouldn't make much of a difference, but who knew about the future? If he could progress on paths other than just Structure, he would have the most scalable foundation. He was quite proud of having thought of it.
As he perused through the shelves of his mind, seconds felt like minutes, and the arduous process of segregation soon turned tedious. But he wasn't about to stop now. This was it!
This current scenario far exceeded his expectations. He would never have guessed that he would be shading his perception like this. It was neither generic nor immeasurably groundbreaking, it was…balanced.
Apart from imprinting the ideas of Vision onto his Thought Space, he only let one other thing distract him—the ticking of his pocket watch.
TICK
TOCK
TICK
TO—
*Done!*
It didn't even take him the full four seconds, and he was finished. It was over! He could sense it…within himself.
Scattered thoughts were transient, one could barely grasp or engage with them. But this was different—it was substantial, like a steadfast planet rotating in the core of his consciousness.
A planet whose one section was covered with innumerable small lights, roughly forming the boundary of an octant, and the rest of it was emptiness, interrupted only by a tiny island of thoughts of varied nature.
CLINK
The Insight Sphere slipped from his shaking hands as he let out a sharp breath. His head throbbed, and exhaustion seemed to claim him, but beyond all that was relief.
.
.
.
*Now what?*
.
.
.
He kept waiting. Instants turned into seconds, and seconds soon turned into minutes. Nothing happened.
Vern paced around frantically. Things were going downhill. His perception was supposed to populate on its own once he had a Thought Space—it didn't. Instead, the image of the pseudo-Insight Sphere in his mind began to deform and distort.
He was about to lose all his progress.
The fuck was he missing!?
His fingers clawed through his hair, grasping at the strands with a weary desperation, "I shouldn't panic. I shouldn't panic," he muttered to himself, each repetition a feeble attempt to stave off the rising tide of dread over imminent regression. "I need to try something. Anything!"
He grabbed a handful of paper confetti from the ground and manually perceived it like usual—deciding on the grays based on how big they were. Then, without a moment of respite, he visualized them merging into one.
*Stabilize.*
CRACK
His mind blanked out, and a profound silence enveloped his consciousness.
*That actually worked!?*
He didn't know if this was the right step forward or what to expect, but it was better than sitting there twiddling his thumbs.
In that fleeting instant, he drifted in an abyss—a realm stripped of thought, sense, and perception. Suddenly, a constellation of luminescent streams emerged, cascading in unison towards a particular direction.
He traced the luminous path and there it was—his Thought Space. He mentally heaved a sigh. *This has to be the right step. It feels…correct.*
The sphere had a dark surface that shone under the incoming lights. Millions of white illumination sources sparsely populated one specific section of this otherwise barren and unlit construct. Soon, the fresh cascade of light from above weaved into the existing ones, each beam settling amongst the stars, intensifying the collective gleam.
But soon, he noticed something.
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The pulsation of each of the lights—which probably represented ideas—had a pattern to it. In an instant, they flared with intense brightness momentarily, then, the next moment, their darkness seemed to devour the surrounding light.
They were the two extremes.
And just looking at them birthed a sense of disharmony within himself. Extremes were not in his nature. At least not in the same sense that everyone understood them. Being extreme could have its advantages, but if one was always extreme, that's where things would start to fall apart.
Consequently, he felt compelled to find a balance for each one of them. He knew, almost instinctively, that the intensity of the lights represented how prominent that particular idea would be in deciding the results of his Vision or maybe even his perspective.
So, he immersed himself in the process. It was quite similar to what he had done a while ago to shape his thoughts. But this time, he was in control. Anything he wished, his Thought Space would obey.
The ideas whose prominence he manipulated were very basic in nature. Like the concept of complexity versus simplicity, where one light shone too aggressively, advocating for elaborate frameworks and multifaceted approaches, while its counterpart suffused a subdued glow, promoting the elegance of simplicity and minimalism.
Vern worked to balance these extremes, allowing for systems that were robust yet not unnecessarily convoluted, where each component served a purpose without contributing to entropy.
Another set of lights represented change versus stability. One flared with the intense glow of constant, uncontrolled change, while its opposite was a faint glimmer, signifying rigid stagnation.
Here, too, Vern sought equilibrium, enhancing the dim light of stability just enough to temper the brightness of change, seeking a dynamic yet controlled progression.
Moving forward, Vern discovered the interplay of form and function in the architectural and organic structures, where one light dazzled with aesthetic beauty but risked impracticality, and the other, too dim, signified purely utilitarian constructs devoid of inspiration.
He sought aesthetic functionality, a synergy where beauty enhances utility and structures serve their purpose while elevating the space they occupy.
As Vern adjusted hundreds of such fundamental aspects of his Vision, he felt a profound sense of alignment. His Thought Space no longer seemed like a chaotic collection of ideas but more like a well-orchestrated symphony, each note playing its part to create a harmonious whole.
It was a perspective that embraced the complexity of life, acknowledging that there were no absolute answers, only balanced approaches tailored to each unique scenario.
It was a very intriguing process if someone asked him. It was like introspection but tangible. Some concepts that he used to think of as contradictory in nature when given an opportunity to fiddle with like this didn't seem so mutually exclusive anymore.
The more he repeated this routine, the foggier his recollection of the events became. Moment to moment, he knew what he was doing, but the monotony of the task dulled his consciousness.
When he came to, a cluster of innumerable lights of various intensity greeted him. And in a single glance, he felt at peace. It was the perfect equilibrium.
In that moment of clarity, the rush of thoughts and the weight of uncertainties that had plagued Vern stilled. There was no sudden revelation, no cascade of knowledge—it was simply a quiet certainty, a knowing that seeped into his bones.
He had crossed a threshold, his mind now moving in sync with a deeper set of rules that had always been present, yet just beyond reach.
It was as if he had been squinting all along and now, for the first time, he opened his eyes to their fullest, seeing everything in sharp relief. But he knew that was a relative concept. Maybe he was still squinting, and just didn't know yet.
But that didn't matter right now.
This was the moment of breakthrough, marked not by the dramatic, but by the profoundly simple. The balance he had long sought in his new life didn’t arrive with a flourish—it was a silent accord, a natural alignment of his perceptions with the world as it truly was.
His senses, now keen and attuned, picked up the transformation. The dark expanse that was his thought space began to coalesce into distinct shapes and shades. With each steady breath, the shadows receded, revealing the intricate tapestry of his newfound sight.
His dreamlike encounter was cut short as he registered a change in the darkness beyond this tiny sphere of lights. Grays seeped into his vision, and soon, the blurry vista had details breathed into it.
Outlines became apparent as curves—smooth and jagged, combined to form silhouettes of the quirkiest objects one could imagine. Soon, he noticed the similarity of the shapes to his physical surroundings to that of land of dark sun.
That meant he was waking back up to the reality.
However, his Vision—a world of grays was getting crazier and crazier by the second. A lot was happening inside, and he couldn't figure out half of it. There were gradients, a lot of them. No, seriously. It wasn't a single puny gradient that he was so used to manifesting all the time.
Some were even overlapping with one another, confusing him further as to what was happening there. So, instead of trying to comprehend the meaning of unknown structures out in the world, he turned to himself. He brought his hand up—which felt awkward for a second—opening and closing the fist repeatedly.
Vern gazed at his hand, marveling at the array of grayscale tones that now illustrated the once-familiar landscape of his skin and bones. The grays danced in a spectrum from the palest of silvers to the deepest charcoals, each hue shifting subtly with the motion of his muscles and sinews.
As he clenched and unclenched his fist, certain shades deepened, mirroring what seemed like the natural tension within. It was an intricate play of light and shadow, reflecting a balance between the exertion and relaxation of his muscles. The gradations of gray provided a visual symphony of movement. He didn't expect this.
But this wasn't even close to the end of it. Each time his pulse throbbed, a corresponding ribbon of lighter gray pulsed along his wrist, a visual echo of his heartbeat. He recognized the synchronization between the visual cues and his own biological rhythms, a perfect balance that was momentarily disrupted by an out-of-place streak of darkness—a signal, perhaps, of an imbalance he could not yet interpret.
Fascinated, he continued to explore, noting how the grays aligned with the known structure of his hand. Yet among the familiar, anomalies surfaced. A stress line of gray in the webbing of his fingers seemed to stretch too far. When he moved his hands, it abruptly changed its direction with no pattern in particular.
*This…*
The grays blurred yet again as he stared beyond his hand into nothingness and pondered on the meaning of all this.
*It seems like multiple types of Balances are currently overlapping in my perception. One of them portrays something akin to Harmony-Disharmony with its shades, while another depicts energy flows. And that line—it seemed…off.*
And if he thought about it, it made sense. He was a Mechanical Artist himself—he understood a good deal about structure and energy flows, but he didn't grasp all the nuances of these topics. Since his perception was directly related to his understanding of the world, he obviously was making some guesses that didn't make any sense—like that line that reached out to nothing in particular.
There were actually a bunch more subtle aspects of balance that he could almost notice—but he was unable to put his finger on what exactly they represented. The information overload was real.
But he would take nothing less than this. It was blowing him away, just looking at his hand. There was the whole world yet to be Observed with this lens.
Shaking his head, he focused back at the hand and tried to identify the more intricate facets that took place here, like that unusual glow on some of the joints of the wrist or that darkening trail that seemed to follow his hand.
It was surreal. And he didn't want to wake up.
Letting out a deep breath, he deliberated, *If I had to guess, these are all the various types of balances I could Observe in structures. But they're more specific in nature than simple Instability or Stability.*
They were like Complexity and Integrity—two different kinds of balance for exactly the same scenario. But these weren't as limited in nature. He would have to take some time and figure out what each one of them did.
And he surmised it was best he tried this in here, in this land of dark sun. Who knew how what Representation cost was attached to viewing the world in so many shades?
So he dropped his hand and shifted his focus to the whole wide world. Time to see the fruits of his labor.
.
.
.
But he expected too much of himself. There was so much going on in the grays that he could barely make out all the edges of the world, but he didn't want to open his physical eyes and distract himself from this life-changing experience.
So he decided to compromise. He wasn't going to be able to see anything with all the facets of Balances overlaying one another. Thus, he focused.
He focused on the gradients that seemed to belong to the same 'art style' and willed that one to take over his perception—and it did. He wanted to call this one, Pathway Balance Sight because of how it allowed him to see clear functional pathways running—
But that's when he noticed something out of the norm. Something that didn't make sense in this Vision.
Circles.
There were circles everywhere. Be that next to the dormant outline of his coat on the ground or by the pillar he had repaired. What was even more disturbing, however, was that each of these circles had some energy moving to and fro almost constantly.
He spent a minute or so contemplating the nature of these circles or what they could mean, but he couldn't arrive at a satisfactory answer. So he gave up on this particular kind of sight and switched to another one of the many.
This time, it seemed like he picked a simpler kind of sight. It depicted everything in a bunch of gradients, but there was clearly a pattern. However, he couldn't figure out what it was because his attention was entirely concentrated on those fucking circles.
They showed up in this one, too. Not exactly as circles, but instead, a sphere that seemed to embody a gradient that was lighter around the surface and became darker around the center.
He frowned, *What the hell is this?*
An uneasy feeling began to creep up his spine, so he stopped playing around and snapped open his physical eyes. And his breath caught in his throat.
He had been facing that dark sun when he began shaping his Thought Space. But that voluminous celestial body surrounded by the ring with liquid luminosity was…staring back at him.