Dark clouds echoed with thunder, a sudden squall forcing cultivators indoors. The appearance of a sudden storm disturbed the initiate's scheduled classes. Kai, secured in the private room of the Archive, was unaware of his peers' plight.
He sat in the Blooming Lotus position, peering into his core. The God’s Eye Art sat abandoned, open to the third page on the desk near him. He’d been at it for an hour, trying to establish a return stream of energy from his core to his soul space. This after laboriously transcribing the first three pages of the God’s Eye Art. He expected to be able to simply just dictate the text to Relay, who would record it for later viewing, he didn’t expect the cultivation method to be steeped in geometry and illustrations of meridian pathways making it nearly impossible to dictate anything.
So, there he sat, hoping that creating a return energy flow would somehow allow the passage of imagery between his body and Relay directly, only he wasn’t having much success. Each attempt to create a separate return energy flow collapsed as soon as he withdrew his concentration. He could make a twin stream that flowed back alongside the other easily enough, but only a temporary one that would immediately dissipate with any change in concentration.
If I can’t create a new stream, maybe I can make a two-way flow inside a single stream. With this theory in mind, he began sending energy back through the single thread. With some concentration, he was able to push the flow back toward the soul space. That just reverses the flow, that isn’t a two-way flow. The entire thread began siphoning a thread of power from his core to his soul space.
Well, this will be good enough to test the hypothesis. Kai moved his awareness to his eyes, this time encouraging the energy to flow to his eyes from his core up one side of his body, then return from his eyes down the other side back to his core, creating a small cycle of energy from his core to his eyes and back again. Once complete, Kai opened his eyes, shifting his awareness to his soul space.
“Connection established,” he appeared beside Relay. “Go ahead and run the analysis on the incoming energy stream.”
“Beginning,” Relay turned to the control panel, and mentally issued the commands.
Kai waited in anticipation. The room was silent, but Kai could hear the deep mechanisms inside the pagoda working, some machinery ticking, and gears turning.
“I have it,” Relay turned to another screen, “compiling the data, creating a suitable algorithm, and there…”
The screen flickered to life with an image of the small room where Kai sat in the Archive. Kai watched from where he stood, seeing the live stream of Long Yuan from inside his soul space. It was a surreal feeling.
“No audio, just visual data, well there are other data, but I can’t identify it yet.” Relay explained.
“It’s not a two-way stream, I’m just running the energy in reverse now. That will limit us until we can figure out a better way. Still, let’s move on to the next test. I’ll thumb through the first five pages. You record the visual data and try to extract the information. I’ll be back shortly.” Kai relayed, then shifted his attention back to the private room.
From where he sat, he picked up The God’s Eye Art and turned to the first page. After 10 seconds he turned to the next. He did the same for the next four pages. When complete he returned his awareness to the soul space.
“Did you get that?” Kai asked as he materialized back into the soul space.
“I recorded it. See.” Relay nodded towards the screen.
Kai looked at the images of the manual on the screen. “This is so much better than trying to transcribe it. This way we get all the illustrations, the diagrams, everything.”
“We can certainly use this to capture the information, but I think if you connect your sense of hearing, touch, and smell. I can probably create a replica here. Then you won’t have to use a screen with it.”
“Oh. That’s a great idea. Give me a little while. I’ll see what I can do.” Kai disappeared from the command hub.
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Kai sat upon a dais in the central hub of the pagoda. He patterned it off the dais used by the Treasure Hall elders. It gave him a perfect platform from which to watch Relay working in the command center. In his lap, he held The God’s Eye Art. Running his fingers along the spine he was astonished at the accuracy. He opened the book and thumbed through the pages.
“This is remarkable,” Kai examined the leather tome, smelled the ancient pages, and examined the parchment's surface. “An exact duplicate in every way I can detect. This was an excellent idea Relay.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
The second manual, The Soul Shearing Art, also sat next to him on the dais.
“I’ve completed my analysis on The God’s Eye Art. It is rather remarkable that they were able to come up with such a complex system. I find it difficult to believe it was the product of a single person, even if they lived a remarkably long time.” Relay thrummed as he stared at a screen. The screen showed the overlapping geometries found in The God’s Eye Art.
“Thoughts on the cultivation method?” Kai asked, opening the book to a page that contained a diagram of the 12 core shapes used to vary the cultivator's awareness.
“My thoughts are that we have underestimated their understanding of the mechanical principles of the world,” Relay began. “Some of this feels remarkably like the TTRX Probalistic theory, but they have identified additional fields that are susceptible to the observer effects and the harmonic frequencies needed to observe them.”
“I mean, what do you think about the claims? I find them hard to believe.”
“I have no opinion on the claims, other than to say we can test them and verify them with some work, so we will discover the truth. I do find it fascinating how much is not explained, as though understanding the actual interactions in play was not the point of the manual.”
“Hmmm,” Kai flipped through a few pages, “it’s like someone took a much more advanced Probabilistic theory, and wrote it purely to be applied, rather than studied.” He set the book down and picked up the Soul Shearing Art. “The same can be said for this one, it’s just assumed that the Soul has shear lines where it can be split with some regularity, but no theory as to why that might be the case, or why it shears into a prime number of fragments so consistently.”
“I think this world only rewards those that can make their knowledge useful, the idea of knowing something just to know it, without regard for what the knowledge can be used for; this is not a practice Long Yuan rewards.”
“To be able to live long enough to have one’s pursuits bear much fruit, to have that potential and not be able to realize it because of the continual conflicts, feels so wasteful,” Kai frowned.
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“Speaking of waste, you still have half a day left on your first study day. What do you plan on doing with that time?”
“Not wasting it,” Kai stood; the two cultivation manuals vanished into thin air at a thought from him.
Kai vanished from his soul space, opening his eyes in the private room of the Archive. He stood and stretched, shaking his arms and legs out. With renewed circulation, he sat back down and got comfortable. He was getting better at sensing his energy, tracing the flows of it through his body’s meridians. He’d wired in his ears, and nose separately but when it came to his sense of touch he realized he had a problem. Touch was a sensation that was present everywhere in his body, wiring that into his energy circuit like he’d done his eyes, ears, and nose was impossible or very difficult. Instead of even attempting that he’d attempted to wire the sensation of touch in at the brain where the sensations were processed. In following the flow of energy through his meridians he’d discovered vital intersections in the body where multiple meridians converged. One such convergence was in the portion of the brain that processed sensation.
Kai undid the previous flows he had wired to his ears, eyes, and nose, and replaced them with the single cycling loop to that convergence and back again. Relay analyzed the changed data pattern, and was able to extract much more information from that simple circuit, including the sensation of touch and taste.
This simple single loop from his chest to the brain and back to his chest was able to transmit all of his sensations and even his steam of conscious thought.
Now he only needed to figure out the energy flow problem, and he could establish a two-way communication channel. The first thing he thought to try was alternating the flow of energy.
Kai took a deep breath and got started. Concentrating, he reversed the flow of energy again. He practiced reversing it again and again until he could reverse the flow multiple times per second. That seemed promising, but like the separate thread, when he stopped thinking about it the energy flow settled into the direction it was going when he lost conscious control over it. Another dead end.
He was thinking about what other approaches he could take when he heard Relay speak from behind him.
“Testing 1. 2. 3.” Relay’s voice was low, but became clearer as the sequence progressed. Kai turned to look behind him, but the small room was just as empty as before.
“I can hear that,” he replied, “it sounds like you are behind me.”
“Ah. One second. I need to correct for spatial displacement.” Relay’s voice bounced around the room, coming from different locations until he settled into a universal location, sorta right in front of him if he had picked a point of origin.
“There that’s right in front of me,” Kai informed his partner. Then he refocused on the internal stream. The stream was flowing in one direction from his soul space to him.
“Relay if you can hear me please acknowledge,” Kai spoke aloud, but expected no response.
“I can hear you,” the response came immediately, “I’ve been hearing everything since you reconfigured the data stream.”
“That is…” Kai focused on the incoming energy stream again, examining his by shrinking his awareness till he was looking inside the stream. He saw nothing but the steady flow of energy, that seemed to move in a coherent direction. “I don’t understand. How can you receive data through the connection if we don’t alternate the directionality of the signal?”
“I think you may be thinking of the soul space being a physical place and treating the energy connecting us as you might if you were connecting two physical locations, but the soul space is a mental plane, a distinct mental plan to be sure, but still mental. There’s likely some kind of conscious sympathy connecting us.”
“I was thinking of it like a separate place because it feels like a physical place when I’m there.” Kai blew out a breath in a long sigh. “Okay I’m going to send some internal dialog along, let’s see. How about: this is a test of mental dialog data.”
This is a test of mental dialog data. This is a test of mental dialog data. This is a test of mental dialog data. This is a test of mental dialog data. This is a test of mental dialog data. This is…
“I have it,” Kai heard Relay’s reply.
Do you have it already? Then repeat after me. Braxon is the most talented engineer I’ve ever known.
“You are the most talented engineer I’ve ever personally worked with, but I know about quite a few exceptional engineers, including Openhedrix, Caustelle, Fron Brahmin, and Gretlsel. Need I continue?” Relay quipped.
“I got it.” Kai smiled, he might have felt comparable to Greslsel, but Openhedrix? Not a chance. “At least I have the option of silently communicating with you.”
“Are you ready for the visual test?”
“Moving quickly I see,” Kai looked around the room, “Go ahead and start the visual test.”
Kai continued to look around the room, trying to notice any changes, when he noticed Relay blip into the space to the side of him, then blip to the other side, then back to the side.
“I see you,” he stared straight ahead, “you’re about 30 degrees to my left and about my height above the ground.”
“Ah,” the voice of Relay caused the warm glow of the orb to cycle in time with his words, “correcting for spacial displacement again, and there.” Relay blipped in front of him, hovering from the same location where Kai could hear his voice coming.
“Seems good,” Kai nodded, “Synchronicity doesn’t seem to be a problem, and neither does latency, there really must be something to your mental space connection theory.” Kai hopped up, and moved around Relay, or tried to. Relay moved at the same speed and direction as him keeping him permanently out of reach, always in the same position relative to Kai, no matter which direction he turned.
“Ah, I see what you’re doing,” Relay thrummed. “I haven’t figured out how to compensate for incoming movement data. That’ll take me some time, but at least now I can use this system to send you data to review.”
“Oh?” Kai returned to the small desk and sat. He looked at Relay awaiting a response when a screen popped up in front of him. It was a glass screen identical to the ones he created in the soul space. The text was a warm amber color against a dark background.
This simple screen can be used to transmit visual data or to communicate when you are otherwise listening to someone else. When finished reading, think “Close screen” and the screen will close.
The screen hovered just out of reach but was easy enough to read. Close Screen, Kai thought. The screen closed.
“Great work Relay, but I can already see an issue if a screen appears at the wrong time.” Kai stood again and started pacing. “Okay here’s what we’ll do…”