Chapter 96 - What is Observation?

So, he thickened his skin and braced himself for potential ridicule before asking, "Can we start from the start? Could you explain precisely what Observation is and how it functions?"

She stopped her routine of looking at him before adding a few more strokes, clearly taken aback. Then she tilted her head for a while before finally speaking up, "It's not often I get such a stupid question, so I had to organize my thoughts."

Vern rolled his eyes before gesturing with them for her to continue, and she did, "For understanding's sake, let's think of reality as one big painting. Then, Observation is the process with which you can change the details of that painting."

Vern blinked his eyes to convey that he was following her train of thought, and she gladly went on—with her drawing and the explanation, "However, Observation in itself is divided into two steps, 'perceiving,' and 'envisioning,' respectively. The first is to perceive or interpret the world according to a specific Viewpoint. But this is where complications begin."

Dipping a smaller brush into the palette, she carried on, "The painting that is our world is made up of colors that one can never replicate, no matter the material used or the colors mixed. But we still have to perceive it, right? So what should one do?"

Vern began, "Paint—"

But she interjected, "PAINT it with the colors you have," answering the question herself. A menacing look emerged in her eyes, threatening him not to move or speak unnecessarily.

Vern blinked again for confirmation, and that was all it took for her smile to return, and she continued, "That is the first step done. Now that you have the world painted with a limited color palette, you can make changes to it however you'd like. After all, you still have all the colors needed to paint the world, right?"

Vern wanted to frown at these words, but her dead stare and still-moving lips deterred him from doing just that.

"Wrong!" she declared, pointing the tip of that brush towards him as if he was in the wrong here.

Hey, I didn't even get to say anything! But he kept that complaint to his heart.

"In one sense, yes, you can alter that picture however you'd like, but what was our end goal again? It was to change the details of the painting with myriad colors that was reality, and not our personal painting with limited colors."

Vern blinked. It made sense. This was all according to his own understanding of Observation as well.

Picking an even finer brush, she began detailing what seemed like the eyebrows of his portrait and resumed, "So now we come to the second step of Observation, which is to envision the changes we'd like to happen. The catch here is to only alter the painting in ways where you know what colors should be used to paint that in reality."

Vern had something to say again, but she waved her arm and overruled him, "I know, I know. I just said reality has infinite colors, and they can never be recreated. But we, as Observers, only have to do our best in guessing the colors of reality. Rest is handled by that lens in your eyes as long as it's molded properly."

Vern clicked his tongue. She had indeed put it very nicely. He also had to change the shades of grays to manipulate reality instead of messing with it directly. He first 'perceived' the world as grays of Balance and then 'envisioned' them getting lighter or darker before they finally changed the world.

A few questions had already emerged in his mind from this condensed explanation, but she wasn't done yet, so he let her have the stage and decided to enjoy the show. Her take on the matter was quite interesting to listen to.

She cleaned the tip of her brush on her poncho and began again, "Now, that was a very broad and surface-level explanation of how Observation essentially works, but it misses out on a dozen of nuances."

Vern let out a dry laugh when she wasn't looking. You're not kidding about that. Those nuances are a bit too…nuanced. He had worried over them so much he might have already aged by a year in ten days.

Before she could intimidate him, he was already back in the required posture, though that expression was quite hard to maintain. Now working on replicating his coat, she elaborated, "The most significant challenges with Observation are the…Whispers, Viewpoints, and the Visions."

He blinked, and she carried on, "Viewpoint is the palette of colors you have to make your personal painting, whereas Visions define the colors you can paint back into reality."

Then her expression suddenly turned serious, and she added, "Then there's the whispers."

She even placed her brush back in the bracket for a while and turned toward him, "Whispers are our reminder that we shouldn't be trying to mess with the painting of reality in the first place."

Vern relaxed his stiff posture and tried to figure out what she meant. And she didn't mind him getting out of that pose and kept going, "They've given it such a simple name that it undermines the gravity of what they signify."

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“They signify our mistakes.”

With her hands behind her body, she leaned back and looked at the roof and said, "If your personal palette—Viewpoint, and reality's palette of what you alter—Visions don't mesh well, the Whispers will tear your psyche apart, one color at a time."

She then looked at him from that tilted angle, her blue eyes glistening in the moonlight, "They leave nothing but an empty husk that knows nothing but to rave and echo the whispers until they lose themselves."

"They leave nothing…"

Then her voice turned into a soft mutter, and he only heard a small part of it, "…not even m…,"

Soon, however, she leaned forward in a swift motion, a somber gleam in her eyes, "Any mistake you make in your progress to find the best colors, know that the whispers will be keeping a toll."

Her voice rose with her every word, "Try to use a Vision that makes no sense for your Viewpoint, and congratulations, you've cut your mental lifespan short by a month if you stop in time."

"Do that ten times without recovering, and the whispers will be there with you every step of the way, eroding your sanity until nothing but shillings remain."

Then, as if letting out her personal grievances, her words picked up speed, and she rattled, "Want to see if you've progressed and can envision this new change you've been working towards? No, too bad, you've instead killed ten innocent people because you lost your head and didn't even know."

"Well, maybe it would get better once you shade your perception, right? Haha, no! It only gets worse and worse the higher you go! Honestly, everyone should just reach the peak of their current shade and never advance again!"

"It's just…stupid!" she yelled.

Vern looked at the outpour of emotions and reassessed his thoughts on the matter. He hadn't really been worried about the whispers too much. He essentially only encountered them once due to an Observational mistake. And that was when he knew pretty much nothing about Observation in the library.

The only other time was when he'd gazed at the gash in the sky, but he attributed it to his bad luck rather than lack of caution. Who could have expected the ravings of madness from looking at the sky?

But her words painted a very different picture. It appeared as though these whispers were an intrinsic part of being an Observer, and the consequences of any mistake might very well be the erosion of one's psyche.

He wanted to console her, but anything he said would come out as shallow. Their positions and experiences were too different for him to conjure the right words.

But she was clearly not one to stay down for too long. Before he could muster up the courage to get up and physically comfort her, she picked up the brush and pointed at him with an angry shout, "AGHH! Get back to that stupid pose…please."

Vern didn't say anything and obliged. What else was he supposed to do? Give a fake assurance that everything will be alright? He didn't even know what exactly she was upset about.

He hadn't even known that whispers were this big of an issue before today. How was he supposed to sympathize with it?

So he chose to remain silent and allowed her to paint in quietude, making sure to remove any hint of judgment and awkwardness from his expression.

.

.

.

After a while, she bit the tail of her brush again and looked at the half-finished painting with a dubious look. She then turned towards him sheepishly and asked, "Can you move to the right?"

Vern stared back, not sure what she meant.

She pointed at the stained glass window behind him and said, "The moon has shifted a bit too much."

He nodded, picking up his stool and moving to match the shadow's angle as best as possible. He plopped the wooden article back down and heard, "Sorry about that. Do you wanna ask anything else?"

He let out a sigh of relief. He thought her mood wasn't going to get better any time soon. Readjusting into that specific pose, he asked, keeping an eye on her expression to make sure she was stable, "What exactly is an Observation Record, and how is it different from a Viewpoint?"

Going back to her previous routine of looking at him with a merry gaze and painting a couple strokes—almost as if that outburst hadn't happened, she answered, "Well, it is quite complicated, but let me try to stick to my previous analogy, and see if I can explain it that way."

"Visions, in essence, take an altered painting with limited colors and revert it back to one with infinite colors. And we, as Observers, imprint these Visions into our perception, making them an inherent property of ourselves."

Then she narrowed her eyes, "But the catch here comes from the first Axiom of Observation, which states that all viewpoints are unique. That is to say, the personal color palette of each person is their own and distinct from everyone else in the world."

Ahhhh. A look of realization dawned on his face before he quickly buried it after a pointed look from her. Vern saw the problem. Though it might be better to not come to conclusions until she was done. So he listened with rapt attention.

"I guess you see the problem, eh?" she nodded with a pleased smile. "The Visions can only take paintings made from a very specific color palette and turn it back to the one with an infinite palette of reality. That is to say, they can't do the magic for your unique colors."

Vern nodded vigorously with each of her words in his mind. They slowly took off the shroud of mystery that had been settled on some of these ideas for too long. His brain was already leaping ahead, trying to figure out what this meant for him.

Then she took an even smaller brush to draw his eyes, its bristles barely visible. "So the problem is that there are actually three palettes of colors, not two. One for reality, one uniquely for you, and then one that the Vision expects."

"So what us lowly humans have to do, is try to bend and reshape our unique Viewpoint or color palette to match what the Vision expects. And that is what Observation Records are for. They describe the methods, ways, and ideologies to help one mold their Viewpoint in a specific direction."

Vern really couldn't hold it in this time, and his eyes widened in understanding.

Maybe pitying his unlearned soul, she cut him some slack this time and carried on, "For example, there might be hundreds of ways to view reality as fire, but there are only two or three Observation records in existence that define a stable path, or a shade sequence to progress in that domain."

Then her eyes took on that somber edge again, "And I think I've already hammered it home on what happens if you don't follow these paths properly."

Vern nodded gravely. Things finally started to make sense. Except he had one big question that was still unclear.

So he first bribed her by retaking her desired pose and waited until she was back in a good mood before asking, "What exactly is the measure of progress of an Observer? What do Shades of Perception signify?"