Silence prevails throughout the slums. With the minor exception of someone doing a hard line of drugs up the street, nothing provokes my Empowered Senses as I sit in meditation with Alayna.
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
[ Through repeated actions you have unlocked the skill: Psychic Attunement(Minimum, Passive) ]
[ Psychic Attunement — Allows the user an easier experience using and gaining Psychic-based skills. 10% bonus to Intelligence and Wisdom when performing a skill under this purview. ]
[ Through possession of skill: Psychic Attunement(Minimum, Passive) skill: Magical Mental Blast(Minor, Active) has evolved into skill: Mental Blast(Minor, Active) ]
[ Mental Blast - Allows the user to collect their thoughts, empower them with mana, and forcefully send them into the mind of another. Works in the mindscape. ]
"You have it," Alayna declares, breaking the silence. "We can begin work. You will first try and enter my mind. Normally, you need a significant boost over your stats to enter someone's mind, but that can be overcome if they let you."
I extend a tendril of Clairvoyancy towards Alayna; however, instead of just connecting my senses, I connect everything that is me.
I begin to feel…things fade away. My eyes remain open, but things get a little fuzzier. And before I pass out completely, I see two things, clear as day.
[ Through exemplary actions you have unlocked the skill: Mind Delve(Minimum, Active) ]
[ Mind Delve — Allows the user to focus on a target and enter the next layer of their mind. The average of the user's Intelligence and Wisdom needs to be 150% of the target's average Intelligence and Wisdom. Both the user and target are prone if successful. Heavy backlash on the user if unsuccessful. ]
That's…worrying…
————————————————————————————————————
Details clear up again. My eyes come back into focus, but everything seems off.
I'm still in Alayna's house, but it appears…darker? Maybe longer? No. Neither of those are right. It's just disproportionate. Everywhere.
Oh, and the artistic rendering of hell outside the window is a good indicator that something's off.
A voice speaks up behind me, "Welcome to the Conscious plane." I turn to find Alayna, or, at least, an ideal form of her. She's a little taller, cheeks a little fuller from a balanced diet, and she has this…aura about her.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
"Are you…really Alayna?"
She chuckles. "No. Not really. And you're not Alice either. We're both Mental Constructs of ourselves. Of course, since this is my world, I have much easier control over what I look like.
However, if you were to delve on me again, you might enter my Subconscious plane. So, keep in mind that the direct representations of people can bypass any security in here."
"Okay. Noted. So…what? Are you going to show me around?"
"Not quite. Before you learn how to defend your mind, you need to learn what types of defenses there are. Some natural, some you have to make."
Just as she says that, orange energy streams that collapse into the corporeal form of an imp.
"The basic natural defense of the mind, for lack of a better word, censor thoughts that don't belong. Those intrusive thoughts that tell you to do things you wouldn't ever do, and you immediately push down. That's these guys at work. The first line of defense."
The imp growls, specifically, at me.
"They also are the defense for people like you that sneak in here." The imp jumps at me, forcing me to dodge and deliver a punch to its gut. Sending it to the floor, I catch my breath.
However, it walks it off and charges at me again.
"Physical attacks aren't as effective as one might think. Luckily, if you or the target die, then you just wake up. Try blasting it. Magic might not work here, but Psychic skills will."
I take the advice, because I'm not crazy, and collect all my negative thoughts about work and life and everything that's happened in the last month and fire it at the imp. Unlike the real world, where my opponent would be stunned, this actually forms a beam that blasts the imp apart.
I feel slightly more strained than before, too.
"Keep in mind that if you try to implant ideas in a target; these guys can sniff them out. You would most likely have to trick the person into coming up with the idea."
More imps spawn. Five of them, and just as fast as they appeared, they're blown to smithereens. This does leave me with a pounding headache, though. Oh, fuck!
"Any advice for this?" I point to my temples.
"More of it? Training the skill will help in here. More uses before your brain melts."
"What?!" I don't want my brain to melt!
"Don't worry. You'll be long past the point of no return then. Anyway, you will be looking around my plane. Get some ideas for your own defenses. Thing is…I won't help."
Then, by some invisible force, I'm kicked from Alayna's home and into the hellscape. A surprisingly cold wind blows through, whistling in the empty street. It looks reminiscent of the real world; the buildings are caked up with red vines and…fire. Smells like rotten eggs, too.
Sulfur. Brimstone. Ha ha.
I run through the empty streets. Worry fills me, mainly because I can't open my Status menu. I've lived with that thing my entire life, and now it's been stripped away. I can still use some skills though.
For example, Danger Sense still works…kinda. It's prickling me saying that danger is everywhere. Obviously. I'm inside the mind of someone that is most likely actively hunting me. At least my headache is quickly subsiding.
It's the minor things that help.
Wait, not physically, but wait. I hear something. It's…clicking? Like the fleshy kind of clicking you hear from aliens in those movies when the alien is blind and right around the corner from the protagonist.
It means echolocation, but we're in the mind—so psychic echolocation. Does that mean…stop thinking?
"Reeeee!" Too late for that.
The love child between a bat, an octopus, and a goat flies around the corner. Tentacles frothing at the mouth and bouncing off the walls, it decides to take a dive towards me. I blast it not once, not twice, but three times before it stops moving.
"What the hell was that?" Inspect doesn't work in here. I guess since they aren't real creatures, then the skill wouldn't work.
'An Intrusive Thought,' Alayna says throughout the space. 'If you stuck around, then you could see the Censor imps attacking it. Check this out…'
At that ominous statement, of which nothing good has never proceeded, hundreds of Intrusive Thoughts begin forming out the the air. Coagulating into a big monstrous pile, the unholy mash-up of thoughts begins crawling towards me.
It's surprisingly fast.
Overtaking me faster than should be possible, I'm crushed under the weight of the thing, feeling each and every bone break. Shards pierce my lungs, brain, heart, organs. At least Pain Resistance still somewhat works here.
————————————————————————————————————
I blink. Once.
Then twice.
Thrice more just for good measure.
I'm not dead? That's a relief. I'm also back in Alayna's house, the real one. A relief, too.
Pounding headache to boot. Wonderful.
"And that's why you should always be weary of another Psychic," Alayna says while handing me a glass of water. I nod in thanks and chug the whole thing. Ugh, that headache's not going away anytime soon.
"So now what?" I ask, rubbing my eyes. "Do I start on my own defenses?"
"If you feel up to it," she comments with a shrug. Trying my luck, I Mind Delve into myself. This time, I don't enter my mind immediately. There's a…feeling. Like I can go somewhere other than the Conscious plane. Somewhere more ethereal is calling to me. There's an empty void and a place fulls of chaotic traffic, too, but they're ignoring me.
The other planes then, I assume?
I wonder what my subconscious is like. Probably a pretty bare place, what with my external personality being nonexistent. It's easy to deal with the problems of life if you go with the flow and give people nothing. It solves so many issues. Nothing to worry about if you never care.
Let's go.
————————————————————————————————————
It's even worse than I thought.
I'm in a white room. Unknown size. I'd walk until I find a wall, but since everything is the same shade no matter which way I look, then it's impossible to keep a reference to size.
Alayna walks through a wall, incredulously staring at me, mouth agape. "What the hell is this? And that means something; I used to live there!"
"I don't know. I just got here!" I refute, voice rising. "It's freaking impossible to navigate, and you just walked through a wall!" In frustration, I slam my fist on the wall. It wasn't much, but my fist went through the wall as if it were drywall. Cracks creep out, and a portion shatters.
Flying into the cosmos of my mind.
"Interesting," Alayna mutters. "Very, very interesting." She turns to me. "Typically, we set up defenses on the Conscious plane, but it seems that your Subconscious plane will be easier to manipulate."
A shooting star flies past in the cosmos of my mind. "What…is this?"
"Amazingly, nothing. Your experiences and memories and everything that's you are so scattered; it'd be impossible to find anything. This…box seems to have been built as a way of sheltering yourself."
"Right. Understood little of that, but I'm guessing I have potential?"
"Not exactly the word I would use. Something more along the lines of stealthy. You can build your defenses, and if someone where to break in, they would never realize that the stars are what they're looking for."
I stare into the constellations. None that I recognize. Kinda. None that exist in the real world, but if I squint, I see the outline of Natalie.
"I'm going to point out: in your mind, you're essentially a goddess," Alayna, helpfully, offers. I reach out towards the stars, and I grasp.
In the next moment, we're floating out in space, and no box to be found. No surrounding stars except the big, blue one in front of us. Alayna looks confused. She doesn't know what I'm doing.
Inducing a solar flare, a bad idea that's the equivalent of forcing a star to vomit, the strands of plasma that flow dissipate into different gradients, forming an image of a memory. Maddy, Natalie, and me gathered around a camera for our graduation picture.
The humming of the star, in what should be a silent vacuum, fills the sound of the memory.
Plasma fading away, Alayna and I reappear at the box. I can feel her watching me. She's not going to tell me what to do, just watch. Guess I'm on my own for this one.
First, let's get rid of this box.
A distant star, one in the constellation of a house, glows for a second. Not a moment later, a meteor, similar but bigger than the one that hit me in the head, shoots through the box, shattering the thing into millions of fragments.
Then, during the instantaneous change from one moment to the next, we're standing in a city, void of any inhabitants. Kinda creepy.
I feel it. Right in the corner of my mind, which I guess is this place, a little tingle. Something that tells me what it is I need to know. Like the fact that this 'city' is only a single mile…squared.
A circle would be much better. Infinite angles, and a shift in perspective might trip people up, too. I'm just going to form the unit circle real quick.
…
The tingle's going off on a feeling tangent. Something isn't right. The area. It's just 3.14. A perfect approximation, but that isn't right… I wanted a unit circle. It needs to be Pi, but… that's mathematically impossible.
Then again… Nothing's impossible with a multiversal System. Or if I had, Thomas's buffing skills.
How did Newton do it? Dang, it's been so long since I took a math class. Wait.
A star lights up, in a constellation reminiscent of my college diploma. I remember now!
Put one minus x squared to the further power of one-half into the Binomial Theorem. Integrate it from zero to one, and multiply by four. It's slow, but it's better than transcribing shapes around a circle to find a range of numbers. Now, this is all well and good, but Pi is infinite.
Could I… Maybe?
The body does a lot of things without me realizing. Passive actions like breathing, digestion, my heart pumping blood. The question is: can I have my mind calculate something in the same way? A passive calculation…
I would just need to calculate a number, then store each sequential part in a variable. Forever.
Sparks flicker, and bolts of lightning connect various stars between the diploma constellation. They feed into an empty spot, and create a spinning dwarf star. Each pulse of the spin outputs the next number in the sequence.
Then I just use that variable to multiple with my radius for the area and circumference of my city. All I have to do now…increase the radius. A single mile is nice, but I have a planet to mess with. Let's just make it bigger, little by little. The edge is already fleshing out as Pi becomes more and more complex anyways.
The radius reaches five miles, before I hit a roadblock: my own mind. Attempts to increase the size are met with a headache. More stats are needed, I guess.
"Good. It's good. Needs some passive protection, like Constructs. The circle solution was pretty good, too. Typically, people just memorize large amounts of Pi and live with the imperfection, but we'll cover those in your next lesson. Only remaining thought is that it's missing something."
Hmm. Oh! I know.
Alayna and I are near the edge of a crosswalk. Nothing wrong there, but it's the prime spot to do something I once saw in a movie.
I push her.
"Wha- AHHH!" She trips over the edge, landing on a replica of the city below. It appears that I can make multiple, identical planes, but I had to halve the radius to make the copy. Even optical illusions still have surface area.
"Yeah," she says while jumping back up. "Yeah, that's it. Let's get out of here." Without any input, she flashes away. My…mind feels less burdened now. More at peace.
————————————————————————————————————
[ Through exemplary actions you have unlocked the skill: Subroutine Synapses(Minimum, Passive/Active) ]
[ Through exemplary actions you have unlocked the skill: Telekinesis(Minimum, Active) ]
[ Through exemplary actions you have unlocked the skill: Psychic Spatial Transport(Minimum, Active) ]
[ Subroutine Synapses — Allows the user to name and set biological processes at the cost of stats. ]
[ Telekinesis - A skill used by Psychically attuned beings. It allows the user to expend mental focus on lifting an object. ]
[ Psychic Spatial Transport — Despite what science says, the user has used the principle of 'Mind over matter' to transport themselves and others to a place in their perception. Transport to an unfamiliar place is not recommended. ]
[ Please name your subroutine (-3) : _ ]
Pi.
[ You have made a subroutine (-3) named: Pi ]
Now, about that transport, does that work in the real world?
I grasp, with my mind's eye, on the space about a yard in front of me. Then push.
Something happens. The air and I switch places. I've teleported.
I've teleported! Fuck yeah!
Oh, fuck! My nose is bleeding.
"I'd teach you how to use that, but there's people better than me at messing with space."
Groaning, and bleeding, I say, "Yeah…I know a few."