Dr. Edward ‘Eddy’ W. Strom frowned at the thick wad of papers held in his hands before him as the lights of the regional rail station flickered yet again. Someone had lied on their maintenance report, no doubt. He could hardly believe that the normally fastidious German people would fail to do something like change a failing light bulb. Not that it was the business of a researcher visiting an international conference whether the maintenance schedule for a local station had been fudged. Mostly it was making it hard to read the supposed breakthrough mathematical work done by his greatest compet… colleague at the conference. They had been pushing the boundaries of the understanding of complex fluid-like flow in superheated plasmas and their interactions and response modes to artificial electric and magnetic fields.
The possibilities for absurd power dense applications, new forms of electromagnets, dynamic high energy structures much like and FPGA for extreme energy electric and magnetic field research… it gave him goosebumps. Rather, it gave him hives that the conference seemed to think that the esteemed Dr. Yarovich was a greater mind than his own. The equation was unnecessarily expanded, that entire section would condense to a rather basic formula, which did not…
“A-HA! THAT BASTARD MADE A MISTAKE!” Laughing maniacally, Eddy ignored the increasing flickering of the lights and pulled out his favorite pen. It was fashioned after a rather old-fashioned quill tip pen that you would have to refill every so often, the kind used for calligraphy and such. It was a deceiving appearance, hiding the true genius of his graduate research from nearly two decades ago. He’d taken the challenge of that style of pen and sought to apply a new complex theory of fluid mechanics of semi-viscous fluids such as gel inks, then created an arguably superior performing pen that neither bled nor failed to provide excellent flow and crisp lines. Even upside down. NASA’s zero-g pen was so much more complicated. Granted, his entire $5,000 R&D budget had gone into the single working prototype he now wrote with, but it landed him a nearly blank check job immediately after the thesis was published.
Plus he had the coolest pen, not that he’d admit that was the actual main reason he’d developed a habit of handwriting notes and corrections at conferences and meetings…
The equations were quickly simplified or generalized, the error corrected. He followed the now correct formula to its inevitable end and the resulting governing equations. They were close, very close to what Yarovich had derived. At the level of accuracy they’d simulated and for the specific conditions they’d tested, the results would be close enough to assume measurement error, but the governing calculations were wrong. In fact, Yarovich’s small error caused by an effort to look smarter they actually were had missed what was, truly, an incredible breakthrough in the prediction of super-heated plasma. The equation could be generalized across not only a specific material, but any material real or hypothetical.
“No… no! Even more! If I add in my governing equation for the usage of multi-element plasmas and the findings on the behavior of N element mixes and their variance predictions for any concentration… my god Yarovich. Your arrogance has lead to your downfall.” Perhaps he’d have to give Yarovich some credit. The original concept may have been executed with some rather basic errors, but even Eddy had to admit he might never have considered this way of thinking. There must be some reason that Yarovich was considered the 2nd foremost genius in the field, though he admitted to it only grudgingly.
The lights flickered violently once more as Eddy put the final touch on the universal equation, simplified to the form most useful for control with external manipulation by electric and/or magnetic fields. It was almost too complex for a model state prediction approach, but with the onset of lab grade quantum computing--!
The fucking lights went straight out, leaving the station in complete darkness. It must have been more overcast than he’d noticed, there wasn’t even starlight or moonlight. There wasn’t any light at all really. If not for the reassuring sensation of the acceleration of gravity and the opposing forces of his footwear against the station platform, he would have thought he was suddenly floating in total nothingness. Shifting his foot in irritation, he felt for his phone to use the light, finding his pocket empty. Had he been pickpocketed? His thin wallet was gone too. At least he had his bag with his laptop, research notes, conference badge, and passport… or not. It wasn’t hanging from his shoulder anymore?
“How the hell…” he froze as he shifted again during his increasingly panicked search. The sound of dirt and rock underfoot was not at all what he anticipated from the smooth concrete platform. When starlight abruptly returned to the world and the sky revealed itself in its total cloudless clarity, he stumbled backwards and half sat, half fell down on the hard packed and scrubby earth. The vegetation dotting the landscape in the small clearing was unfamiliar. It looked dry and not too vibrant, though the trees bordering it looked reasonably healthy. The air was warm rather than the frigid cool of the German fall weather on an open platform.
The air smelled nature-y. Not that Eddy had experienced a whole lot of nature, but it was definitely nature-y. His clothes were the same, but his pockets were empty. His bag was missing. The only thing still on his person other than the clothing itself seemed to be Yarovich’s corrected research report, grasped in one hand. No, wait, there was his pen, dropped in that clump of grass. With preternatural calm, Eddy picked up the pen, moved the tethered enameled titanium cap over the gracefully ground to form diamond shaped tip, and carefully stowed it in his pocket.
“Quite impressive, I must say.” Eddy’s head whipped around to the deep, though feminine voice. One he knew all too well.
“Yarovich? What the hell is going on!” Dr. Elen Yarovich smirked at him as she walked a circle around where he sat. Angry that the shorter woman was quite literally looking down at him, Eddy scrambled to his feet. Shock and confusion gave way to irritation and old rivalries. He tightened his grip on the flawed research that he’d fixed, waving it in her direction as if admonishing a lazy student. “Your equation had a basic error in it! Even if the premise was actually, though I had to admit it, insightful… you made an error not even a half-drunk grad student would make!” Yarovich’s smirk became a frown and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Do you have any idea the complexity of the math you just performed there in less than twenty minutes, by hand, without errors? The field of super-heated plasma behavior prediction for the purpose of high energy, high complex flow pattern management is so obscure that even if, as you claim, the math error I intentionally introduced would be noticed, it would be decades, perhaps even centuries, before anyone even gave a shit about this little obscure corner of the research community.” Eddy was about to protest but she seemed to practically teleport closer, she approached so quickly. He barely even registered the gust of wind that followed in the wake of her passage as she started jabbing a finger into his chest to accentuate each word.
“You corrected the intentional error. You combined no less than five seemingly highly disparate areas of plasma-fluid-electromechanics together into a unified equation. You generalized the entire equation for not only any singular base element, but for any base element, including theoretical elements. You then… you then introduced the math for intermixed and complex material combinations! That equation would even apply to molecules beyond just simple elements, if the molecular bonds could survive the plasma state! You just… that…”
“It was the natural and predictable result of combining the research. Anyone should have been able to solve for this governing equation…”
“NO! Just no! The equation, simplified as you made it, takes almost half a fucking page in your tiny ass flawless handwriting! Nobody could do that. That’s the work of generations, not one angry, jet-lagged Ph.D standing alone on a regional station in Germany on a cold night. FUCK. You don’t have any fucking clue the significance of what you just did.” She ran slender, shaking fingers, through auburn hair, tearing loose the various pins and clips and discarding them on the ground. She’d never had it in anything but a tight bun or braid before and he’d never realized just how much hair the woman had, reaching a little past her shoulders now that it hung in loose waves.
“If you’re trying to seduce me, it’s not going to work.”
“Seduce… fucking hell, I hadn’t even considered you capable of such human biological function by this point, Strom.” She paced back and forth a little, taking controlled breaths and clearly seeking to calm herself. For once, being simply unaware of what was actually happening and a little unsure of his usual assessment of the situation after her outburst, Eddy just watched in silence. After a few minutes she had noticeably calmed and turned once again to him.
“Alright. I’m going to give you the most basic rundown of the situation, then I’m going to let you do your own thing. I’m not exactly Yarovich, not entirely. You may have noticed that this isn’t the train station and that the plants around you are similar to, but not identical to anything from Earth.”
“I mean, they look like plants. I don’t know much about plants, so I don’t…”
“Fucking forget the plants. Shit, gotta treat anything that’s not math and physics like I’m speaking to a goddamned child. You’re not on Earth. This isn’t even the same universe. Not a parallel universe, though with almost identical physics and an infinite choice selection, you’ll find that the evolution on this world is basically totally convergent. Plants, animals, people, will all seem familiar, though not quite the same.” She plucked a dry stalk of grass. “See? Grass is grass. Makes seeds, has roots, etc. Basically the same. With me so far?”
“Yes. Did you suffer an aneurysm by chance, when you realized I fixed your research?”
“Are you still on a train platform in Germany?” she responded. He had to admit, he definitely could not reason away the instantaneous translocation. If he’d been drugged, maybe, but he wouldn’t still be holding the papers nor would he have come to so cleanly. Hypnosis? Possibly… though unlikely, plus was that even a real thing? He wasn’t sure. “Alright, let’s assume you’re with me since it doesn’t fucking matter. I am, or was, an avatar of a trans-dimensional being that seeks to inspire the development of new understandings of the physics shared by the infinite universes, so that I and my own actual piers may better understand it ourselves.” She continued pacing, but stopped talking when Eddy held up a hand.
“Wait,” he interjected. “I’m supposed to just accept that you are using lesser lifeforms to generate original research?” He shook his head. Now that, that was too far-fetched.
“Sure. Why not? I don’t exist under the same rules as you do, myself and those like me aren’t confined to rigid, testable frameworks like that. We’ve never had a need to understand, not until we started exploring the universes. They gave us something to do, something to learn about, play with, only the so-called ‘laws of physics’ are unfamiliar to us. Ours is a life of instinct, yours is one of research. Plus the whole adage of an infinite number of monkeys typing on typewriters and eventually recreating the entire works of Shakespear.”
“I…” understanding truly began to dawn. Assuming she wasn’t lying, then with the scope of the test subjects being infinite, the need for carefully considered and directed research and interpretation wasn’t necessary. “I see!”
“Yes. I think, somehow, you do. In either case, you made a breakthrough that would have resulted in experiments with energy density so great the result of 99.9999999% of all universes I introduced it to resulted in complete destruction of the entire universes within less than a decade. That and, you solved a problem that has been plaguing us in worlds, such as this one, which have a variant framework.” She smirked again, much like when she first appeared. From a pocket, she pulled out a small leatherbound notebook. “Here. The most complete, condensed set of information on a state of mass-energy that only exists in these variant universes. One you are unfamiliar with. Read it carefully.” She also handed him a greasy brown marble.
“What the hell is this? It’s gross!” He almost threw it away, but she grabbed his hand and closed his fingers over it with inhuman strength.
“Swallow it. You won’t need to eat, drink, sleep, nor eliminate for up to a month, more or less. I’ve also made sure that no predators or environmental elements will disturb you. I will return in a month to find you and see the results of your research. Until then.” The air shimmered just behind Yarovich. Her form vanished into the shimmering as she stepped into it, like going through a curtain. The distortion was gone just as quickly and he was left with the notebook and greasy marble in his hands, balanced with the research papers.
For several hours after that, he explored the area around him, growing tired and hungry and thirsty and generally more convinced that he wasn’t just dreaming or hallucinating. Eventually, not knowing a damned thing about surviving in an unfamiliar, or familiar for that matter, wilderness, he grudgingly swallowed the marble. It tasted like meatloaf, weirdly. Then like popcorn. Then like… metal? Weird. At first there was nothing noticeable, though it curbed the edge on his hunger a little. An hour later he realized the hunger and thirst were entirely gone.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Not only that, but he felt incredibly refreshed. The weather changed from being too warm for his coat and too cold for just his shirt to just right regardless of his dress. Not entirely certain if the month prediction could be trusted, Eddy decided to try reading the notebook. Initially he sat and leaned against a tree, flipping through the small pages of neat, almost mechanical handwriting, flawless graphics, and error-free analysis. It reminded him a bit of those eastern philosophy based ‘cultivation’ novels one of his grad students had tried to get him into. She’d had very pretty blue eyes that had won him over just a little more than was appropriate, but the novels had been such utter trash when it came to the physics that he just couldn’t stomach them, even as entertainment.
The notebook, though, suggested that this alternative mass-energy state could be generated and manipulated by any living thing, with sufficient training and clarity of thought. Apparently very early single celled organisms developed an organelle that allowed for interaction with this ‘Mana’. Later on, intelligent species developed from a common ancestor that had an organelle in the brain and an entirely separate nerve-like system that ran throughout the body and allowed for more detailed, directed, and dense manipulation and usage of Mana.
Not one to believe anything without experimentation, he went through some of the proposed basic exercises with a healthy amount of doubt. Doubt though, did not mean sabotage. For an experiment to be trusted, where failure was anticipated, success must be assumed and then disproven. Thus he assumed the described methods would succeed and went through them with that belief as wholeheartedly as possible.
Ultimately it was very much like meditation. Eddy was actually no stranger to the practice. It helped to focus one’s mind and inspire creativity and productivity. He often reached a deeply meditative state while doing complex mathematical problems. He went through one of his favorite methods, a walking meditation. Instead of the usual equations, he thought through his solution and generalization of Yarovich’s formulae. The equations flowed through his mind and he quickly achieved a state recommended by the exercises.
Now he was supposed to turn his ‘minds eye’ inwards and find a still well of Mana inside, then begin swirling it to create a centrifuge purification effect. Mana was apparently a diverse mixture of different elements, though they sound made up from a fantasy novel, with pure Mana being the ultimate goal of the exercise. By separating out the impure elements, they could be eventually isolated and the impurities purged from his entire body, resulting in totally insane and unbelievable things which he did not even care to consider as remotely possible.
There. There was the still center. He’d often gone through a similar exercise in the past, though with no ‘result’. This was just repetition to prove ‘this universe’ was no different. Only, when he tried to mentally impose a rotation on the ‘still center’, something happened. Something that he could not deny in the slightest. The fluid-like material in his imagined core swirled weakly. With a bit more time an effort, it accelerated a little, until a very striation of different feeling components started to vaguely appear.
Unaware that he’d started to sweat, Eddy diligently followed the next step of the experiment, mentally probing the very center of his core for holes. There were several and he picked one at random, tugging a thin thread from the slightly more pure center of his swirling core-juice-fluid-stuff into it. The threat sucked his very thoughts with it through a winding and nauseating trip in and around his kidneys, then back into the core, rejoining with the swirling fluid. His eyes open, the meditation was broken, and he desperately needed to pee.
The pee was black. BLACK. Also sludgy. That and it burned. Was it as bad as his uncle had described, in far too much detail, passing a kidney stone? He did not know, but Eddy did scream while he passed the black sludge through that which should not have experienced that. Thankfully end result was a strong smelling yellow urine that more or less replaced the burning worse than death with the burning discomfort not entirely unfamiliar to any man who had a very ‘active’ day.
Breathing heavily and regretting the life choices that had led him to this state, Eddy nearly ripped apart the little notebook. If what was recorded within was true though…
Instead he paced back and forth now, shaking and reading on. The author was neither arrogant nor lacking in confidence. There was an absolute certainty present, with a completely unbiased expression of the information. Do this, that will happen, simple as that. No discussion of the significance, no lauding the innovations. It was as dry or dryer than any textbook.
Eddy could not get enough. When he reached the end of the little book, a week later, several things had occurred. First, he’d completed the exercises within the book, introducing very simple, though the book listed them as ‘advanced’ swirling patterns to increase his refinement of Mana as well as introduce a stronger vacuum pull on the external mixed energies just… floating… around him. All life on this world just gave off excess, though impure, Mana. His centrifugal refinement isolated the impurities which could then be removed through other careful methods or employed directly.
He ’purged’ all of his ‘meridians’. Kidneys had been the first, then the liver, then his heart, nervous system, his brain, skin, skeleton, muscles, eyes, ears, tongue and nose. His testicles had their own meridian too and he’d had to experiment for a few hours after clearing that one, eventually no longer sure he would ever experience a so-called refractory period again. Not that he now had, or ever had had, a partner to benefit from that.
He was stronger, faster than ever before. The notebook discussed the process of further strengthening his body with purified Mana and the eventual complete replacement of his physical form with the mass-energy state, reaching theoretical immortality and god-hood. There was a huge flaw in the material though. All of the ‘refining’ techniques were so basic. The effective separation of densities and the handling of the different Mana elements was a complete joke. The ‘pinnacle’ only boasted a few thousand intermingled rotating zones and was entirely two-dimensional! There was a definite ‘in’ and ‘out’ side of his core, though the exact nature of it was not strictly three dimensional. There wasn’t like… a top and bottom, rather the in and out and meridians were all together in the center.
Only the fluid itself seemed to be governed by three dimensions, and even that he suspected was totally false. This Mana did not obey the same spacial rules, though it behaved as a fluid with mass. He believed that in truth it was essentially within a tesseract within his body, taking up no physical space and occupying some additional dimension. To that end, he turned the pages of Yarovich’s research report over to their blank backs. Paper and ink were cheap, so of course he’d printed the entire thing on one side. That kept it easier to read and gave him lots of scratch paper for notes without carrying redundant pages around.
Now those hundreds of pages were nearly filled with his smallest and neatest writing as he combined all he knew with what the notebook held within it. The Mana behaved very much like a plasma, though it was different yet. The notebook described experiments for determining the exact mathematical constants for pure Mana, but neglected more than a perfunctory examination of the so called contaminants. Using his generalized formula and adapting it to the Mana, he reversed out the material properties of the different types of Mana. Armed with the information and validated by additional experimentation, he proceeded to plan out a maximum density system of refinement, storage, and usage for the Mana.
His core had a finite size. The notebook said this size was fixed and was related to the brain organelle of the particular species, total cellular mass, concentration of Mana organelles in the cells, etc. In other words, without genetic modification or simply bulking up to increase one’s mass, it wouldn’t be possible to expand the space. Still, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t expand, so he added some rather basic recursive logical functions into the flow patterns so that they would automatically adjust and multiply at maximum density if there were changes in total capacity. The result wouldn’t necessarily always be the most optimal, however, it would automatically seek to get closer to the optimal.
Eddy was unaware of how long he’d worked to finalize the calculations for the pattern. He did it slowly and carefully so as not to make any mistakes. In the end, he lay down, spread-eagled, under his favorite tree. He spent most of the night falling into the deepest meditative state he could. The world was absolutely excluded. Stray thoughts were recognized and sent on their way. His core was, according to the notebook, a pinnacle of refinement pattern, yet he did not have years or centuries of gathering and storing energy, so it was a wispy thin, but the patterns were there and self-sustaining. He picked them apart and brought them all to a complete halt.
His new pattern could simply not be grown from the existing one, though bringing the system to a halt could be potentially life threatening, if the notebook could be believed. His meridians would eventually bloat with stagnant Mana and all of his Mana cell-organelles would rupture. At the least, he’d be crippled. At the most, he would explode or burst into flames or something.
Those thoughts were acknowledged, then released. The new pattern was started, bit by bit, going through the process he’d planned out. In three dimensions, the pattern grew, an intricate interweaving of moving elements. New swirls and currents spawned and died in an unending, mesmerizing sea of what looked like utter chaos, but what was actually an artificial flow structure that was self-sustaining and had a recursive program within it, resulting in a gradual optimization response. The organized chaos, once started, quickly exceeded the complexity that Eddy could possibly even track. Only time would tell if stability was reached. A specific amount of time, as the confirmation of stability was part of the programmatic elements.
Aaaaaand… there it was, the regular status message, which to any random observer would look like a weird pattern of pulses in a particular section of the swirls, but was an intentional message indicator. Eddy was instantly sure of the message content, but he observed it through five cycles, seeing no change, then compared to his notes.
STABLE, EXPANDING.
STABLE, EXPANDING.
STABLE, EXPANDING.
STABLE, EXPANDING.
STABLE, EXPANDING.
The pattern would dramatically increase the ‘vacuum’ effect over the next several days until it expanded to fill the entirety of his internal container. After that he estimated that it might take literally decades to achieve full saturation, though the negative pressure pulling in raw Mana would no longer increase. Rather, instead, he would have to find areas of naturally higher Mana density if he wanted to accelerate the process. All of that also assumed he wasn’t investing refined Mana into ‘enhancing’ himself. The actual quantity involved in that could be, apparently, monstrous.
It would be five days before the intake rate achieved stability, and the message changed.
STABLE, 0.067% CAPACITY.
Amusingly, on the seventh day after starting his new pattern, Yarovich returned. His senses could now extend only a little into the Mana about him, but the ripple in space that she stepped through registered immediately. Namely it was because if the Mana in the environment was like breathing air, the flood that rushed into him from the ripple in space was like getting blasted by a fire hose. His meridians screamed and so would Eddy, if not for the fact that no sound would escape his throat. Every part of his body was burning from the influx of such dense Mana rushing through every cell in his body on the way to the vacuum that was his core.
It only lasted a few moments, just long enough for Yarovich to step through, but it was enough that there was literally steam curling up from his blistered skin.
“Greatest of all fucks, what the hell was… oh, Strom. Strom, that abomination in your core is beyond anything I had ever imagined.” She knelt before his smoldering, sobbing form and touched a cool and gentle hand to his forehead. “I dare say that you might just survive this stupidity on your own, but it is my own fault I suppose for not expecting something like that.” Coolness ran in pulses throughout him. Whatever it was, it was enough like Mana that it ran easily through his channels, yet unlike Mana at all, failing to be caught by his refinement patterns and simply passing back into his body over and over until the damage was healed.
“There was too much…” he started to say, but she gently shooshed him.
“I know. Shhh. The place I came from is very dense with Mana. I meant it to provide a little test, a boost if you will, to whatever feeble pattern you had managed to spin up. You’re condensing Mana at a density just shy of crystallization though, with an intake pressure I’ve never observed on any being. Yet… yet your body isn’t enhanced. I strongly recommend that you start investing absolutely everything you pull in, into that process.” She pressed something into his hands. A bladder full of water, made of some kind of leather with fine stitching and a rubbery material sealing where the layers met and were sewn together, and a similar skin pouch with a rough twine drawstring passing through simple holes cut around the top of the pouch.
“What are these for?” He wondered aloud.
“Some food and water. I would take you to a more hospitable universe through my rifts, but the Mana density would kill you. It nearly did with just a few moments of indirect exposure. Passing to the in-between as you are now would be a guaranteed and horrific end. There is a village roughly two days of easy walking in the direction the sun rises from here. Once you have traveled about five miles, you will leave the area I protected for you, though the protection will fade within another week in either case. There is also little chance you will survive on your own in the wilderness with your lack of outdoor skills.
“Your core will not be readily visible to anyone unless they are dramatically more powerful or incredibly sensitive. The latter is extremely rare in these parts, the Mana is very thin and those with any sensitivity instinctively seek higher densities. The former is similarly unlikely due to the thin Mana, though they may travel through these lands or seek dungeons, which still occur in the region. I didn’t really intend to strand you here, but between enhancing yourself enough to survive your intake rate or absorbing enough Mana to reach full capacity, you will likely need at least several years.” She smiled with a tenderness he felt ashamed to inspire in someone he’d so despised and envied in their academic competition.
“I’ll check in again, though perhaps not with this avatar. To borrow the attitude of the locals, may you live with power and die in a glorious explosion.”
“Wait, what was that about dying…” his protest was lost though to the sudden gust of wind that followed the shockingly fast departure of Yarovich as she practically disappeared. Straight out into the sky. Like a fucking missile. “…because that is somehow less believable than being in a different universe where goddamned Mana cultivation is a thing.” After a few minutes, he felt the much, much more dilute, but still intense flow of Mana from the direction of her departure. She must have passed back through one of those rippling rifts again.
“Nothing to it, but to do it I guess.” With the research notes and notebook bundled carefully into his now discarded jacket, refashioned to protect the invaluable documents, a bladder full of water in one hand, and a pouch full of… dried meat, waxed cheese, and some hard biscuits? With these things, he stood, ready to walk to his next destination. A few hundred steps along he looked up and the sky and paused, a feeling of dread in his stomach.
“I’m going the wrong way, it’s after noon.” With an about face and glad nobody was around to notice his error, Eddy marched off to his current destination. Random fuck village in random fuck universe, now with the pinnacle of high density Mana refinement and self-optimizing flow structure happily sucking down everything available, in his fourth dimensional gut space.