-Chapter IV-
Lab Rats
“I don’t know what to tell you Dr. Doe… It’s just magic, shadows made solid.” I say as I shrug.
“Lain, I have performed every test that I can think of on this material that you generate, and I cannot figure out what it is. It doesn’t react to chemicals, it gives off no forms of detectable radiation, it has no mass and yet it is solid. Observed under a microscope, there is just nothing there. It might as well be a void. When put under extreme pressure from a hydraulic press, it resisted until the point of seemingly shifting into a superfluid like state and refused to break or alter its shape. Releasing the pressure has it return back to solid. Cutting it was virtually impossible until I used a laser cutter. But this only caused the sample to evaporate and disappear…”
“Because you broke it. When I made it, it wasn’t supposed to change from being a cube. The shape was destabilized so the mana leaked out. As for the press. The pressure eventually became too much for it to stop, so it broke through the outer layer and passed through. The cube is empty, there is nothing inside for the press to push aside, so its shape didn’t change. If the press was bigger than the cube, it would have broken it and made it disappear instead. As for chemicals and radiation, the cube is nothing. What are they going to react with?” I tell her.
Dr. Doe simply sits at her lab table for a while and looks at the third shadow object that I have given her. This one is shaped like a card to make it easier for her to examine. At first, she was worried about handling them with her bare hands, but now she doesn’t seem to care much. The object is literally nothing. There is nothing there to make her sick.
Well, at least to her eyes and her tests there is nothing. To my eyes, it is a construct of mana holding nothingness together, something that inherently doesn’t want to be here. But she can’t see the little motes of black light that are leaking off the object at a steady pace. The card’s structure slowly losing its stability and ability to remain manifested.
She lets out a tired breath and sets the card down. It noiselessly clinks against the table and a small burst of mana falls away from it, disturbing the other motes in the air around it.
She eventually says, “Just calling it magic isn’t good enough. You can’t make something out of nothing. You say that it is made from mana, which has to be some kind of energy. But none of our machines can detect it. Yet somehow, you are able to not only see it, but yet also manipulate it.” She clinks her fingernails against the table and thinks, eventually she asks, “Why did the first cube evaporate after eighteen hours?”
“Because it ran out of energy.” I point to the card. “This one is leaking mana, but new particles aren’t going into it, only out. Eventually it won’t be able to hold itself together and will fall apart.”
“But the material that you wear on your body? It doesn’t disappear. Or are you just replacing it when it does?”
Naturally, I had shown her all the different things that I can do with my shadows. Well, not all of what I can do with them, only Sky gets to see that… So, she knows that I have taken to wearing my shadows as underwear now and always have them on my body.
“Nah, I’m just keeping it fueled. The stuff I make on my body leaks mana too, just slower. And because I am touching it, I can send more energy to replace what is lost.”
“And where are you getting this energy? You hardly eat and you don’t sleep. You can’t just be pulling it out of thin air…”
“No, I basically do. Maintaining my shadows drains some energy from my reserves; feels like a little ball floating just under my stomach. When it starts to get low, I open myself up and absorb mana from around the area until it feels full again. It’s sort of like meditating.”
“That makes no sense… I’ve thoroughly gone over all your scans. You don’t have a little ball in your stomach. Checking for abnormal growths is a very important part of our checkups for you. Tumors and other cancerous growths are common in mutated creatures after all...”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it is some kind of metaphysical thing. Not really physical, but still there or some other crap… I can definitely feel that there is something there though… Just double checking, but Sky and I are clean right? No tumors or anything weird?”
“No, the two of you and Private Smith are probably the healthiest people here on base. Sky in particular seems to be rather impressive when it comes to resisting viruses, bacteria, and parasites, her…” She shakes her head, “Ahhhh, we aren’t here to talk about that. I apologize.”
I just smile, “It’s alright, and thank you. Uhm, disregarding my core, or whatever it is. If you’d like, I could help you understand what it feels like when I manipulate mana? It’s not pleasant for the people around me though, so I keep it reeled in around others. Still, it might help you understand what magic is better. I tried this with Sky to see if I can help her learn magic too.”
“Are you referring to this ‘Field’ that was mentioned in your report? I heard that it makes people feel stressed, like a pressure is pushing down on them. Is it harmful?” She asks, sounding very intrigued.
“Not as far as I can tell? It does make people scared of me though…”
She stops and thinks for a short time and considers. Eventually, she nods her head. “Do it please.”
“Even if it makes you afraid of me?”
“If the fear is an involuntary response, most likely caused by ‘Fight or Flight’, then it will fade on its own so long as you don’t actually give me a reason to be afraid of you. The human mind is quick to adapt, and fear of the unknown is simply a survival tool. Please, go ahead.”
“Ok… On zero then.” I tell her, feeling a little apprehensive.
I raise up three fingers and slowly count them down. Once I reach zero, making a fist with my hand, I release my hold over my Field, no longer constraining it to just my body, and let it expand out around me. Instantly, I gain control over all the mana in the area. Shadows in the corners and under the furniture swell and grow darker, the entire room growing a bit darker despite the fluorescent lights bathing the room in light from above. Across the table, Dr. Doe flinches and for the first time I see fear grow in her eyes as she looks at me. She is quick to squash it however, but her body still shakes in response to my presence covering her like an oppressive weighted blanket. Off on the other side of the room, Sky lets out a yelp and jumps a bit from where she was playing with a microscope. She yells over, “Lain! Warn me when you do that. I almost dropped a slide I was looking at!”
I laugh a bit from giving her a scare and call back, “Sorry Sky!”
“Geez…” She gives me a little smile and gets back to playing with the microscope.
I look back to Dr. Doe. She is still shaking, her body clearly not happy about what she is experiencing, but she is busy scribbling away on a note pad, her eyes looking very focused and a bit excited. “Fascinating… Lain, could you tell me what it is you are doing?”
“Uhh… Well, currently I am doing nothing. Normally, I have to keep my field contained. It’s sort of like holding my breath. Right now, I’m just letting it expand and do nothing.”
“What can you do with it?” She asks excitedly.
“Well, the field itself, at least from what I have figured out, is just my area of influence over the mana in the surrounding area. If I use some of the energy that I have stored, I can use it to basically tell the mana around me what to do.” I point to the shadow of the microscope sitting next to her. “Watch.”
With a push of will I make the shadow grow and grow until half of the lab table is covered in darkness. Almost as if a lake of void had just formed on the tables surface. Releasing it, it instantly snaps back to how it was.
Dr. Doe watches, fascinated by this. Her body continues to shake under the pressure, but she seems to already be growing used to it. She looks back up from her notes and asks, “This pressure, what is it?”
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I scratch my horn and try to think of an answer. “Uhmmmm, normally the mana in the air just does whatever it wants, sort of just floats around in the air like dust or hangs out in places. With a normal person, it sort of just flows around them, like water moving around a rock. Some people, like me, Sky, and a few others that I noticed, it gets repelled away from us like magnets of the same poles, refusing to come close. Although, again like a magnet, I can flip it and draw the mana in to feed my core instead of pushing it away… When I have my Field spread, the mana around us stops moving around unless I tell it to, especially the black motes. So, instead of just flowing over people or being pushed away, it is instead staying still on the normal people and resisting being repelled by the other people. My best guess is that people just aren’t used to feeling this. Like a fish that lived their entire lives in flowing water, suddenly having all of the water around them go still and solid.”
Dr. Doe nods, her body still shaking as she records my metaphors. “Hmm… Yes, it’s quite possible that this energy, mana, was always here then? We simply never noticed it, every human always growing up living under its presence but never learning how to properly feel or use it…”
I pipe in, “Or the people that could were just really good at hiding it…”
She scoffs, an interesting thing to see, considering how her body is still shaking. “I prefer to not hypothesize about hidden organizations or secret cabals of mages or whatever else. There is little point is doing so. I am far more interested in why it is that you are suddenly able to do these things now, although I do have a guess as to the catalyst of all of this.”
I put my elbows on the table and rest my head in my hand. “Let me guess, the //World Tree?”
She nods her head, still making notes as she talks. “The pulse, the sudden wave of bending space that hit the world and traveled its surface in seconds. The moment of being hit by it, felt quite similar to what I am feeling now, only sudden and spread out. We already know that the //World Tree is more than just a normal tree. Even just saying its name carries a weight, the words forming themselves against the will of the speaker… Are you aware that even spoken in other languages, those listening will always hear it said as if in their first language? The words somehow go beyond the barriers of language…”
I raise an eyebrow at that, “No, I wasn’t aware of that. I typically just avoid saying its name, it feels weird to say. And honestly, I prefer to not talk about it much anyways. The damn thing is responsible for all of this after all.” I look across the lab, and to Sky, where she is still playing around and give her a smile. “Well, some of what it brought with it is good. Still don’t like that damn tree though…”
“A point that I am certain most people share. Back to the pulse though, this raises a question. What if the pulse was more than just a wave of bending space? Some action made by it for unknown purposes. What if it was something more and the wave of bending space was simple a byproduct of its actions?”
“You're saying that the //World Tree was expanding its Field over the Earth. That the wave that hit us was just the edge of its Field expanding.”
She nods and I start to reel in my own Field, noticing how her shaking settles as she is freed from my pressure. She smiles and continues, “And the sheer force of its own will expanding was enough to bend and move space itself… The only question then is why we aren’t all being crushed under its pressure?”
I look up at the ceiling and think about it for a bit before settling on a simple idea. “Maybe it’s all about scale? Back to my metaphor... Were fish living in flowing water. A river, a sea, the ocean, it doesn’t matter. Just so long as the water keeps moving… Even if it suddenly starts moving in some other directions than we are used to, it would mess us up in the moment and confuse us, but eventually we would adjust and get used to the new currents. Maybe because of just how large the field is, we just haven’t even noticed that the currents have moved. We were all too busy picking ourselves up after the pulse and having society collapse around us to really care or notice…”
Dr. Doe puts her notes down on table and thinks for a while, chewing on my words. Eventually, she speaks up. “Shortly after the pulse, there was a period where many people became weak and sick, eventually slipping into a coma before slowly dying. Physically, they were perfectly healthy, but yet they would just sleep and slowly die, their bodies eventually giving out on them…”
“The Sleeping Sickness? I remember people saying that the pulse probably carried some kind of radiation or something. But now I know it was just mana.”
“Going back to your metaphor, what if the cause was the shifting in the currents? What if those that fell ill were those who couldn’t get used to the new currents? Their bodies simply couldn’t take it.”
“Like putting a fish into a new tank of water? We used to have fish, and a couple of them died after a move to a new tank. They just couldn’t handle the new water, getting all sluggish and eventually just dying… The others adapted and were fine after a little bit. A little shaken, sure. But I gave them some food and they were back to being happy again. I miss our fish… Dad eventually got rid of the tank because it was a lot of work to maintain and pretty expensive…”
Dr. Doe just gives my look and I get a bit sheepish. “Sorry, got a bit off subject. Mind likes to run away with itself sometimes…”
“No, no, it is quite alright Lain. It is a good example though. This hypothesis certainly spreads some light on that old incident. The Sleeping Sickness, as you call it, is a common concern for us in the medical field. We had no idea how it was contracted or how to cure it, always concerned that it would pop up again. But if this hypothesis ends up as true, then so long as the //World Tree does not do anything to majorly alter its Field, we should not have to worry about a reoccurrence of this incident…”
“I don’t think it will, at least not for a long time. It is a tree after all. They're pretty famous for not doing much.” I say with a shrug.
She nods, picking up her notes and getting back to writing. Leaving her to work in silence, I sit in my chair and decide to play with my shadows to help practice my control a bit. Generating a knight in armor with a sword and shield on one side, I make a small group of enemies for him to fight on the other. I try to make the knight’s armaments as detailed as possible, while the enemies are a collection of monsters, each one a different shape and form, with little details like spikes and tentacles. Anything to try and increase the difficulty and make it more fun for me.
Ordering them to move about and attack each other, I have the knight fight defensively behind his shield, while the monsters try to swarm him. I don’t really know how to fight with a sword and shield, so I can’t guaranty if my little knight is doing a good job or not, but I mostly mimic how I have seen some characters in video games and anime fight with them. The monsters on the other hand are a bit easier to control, requiring less focus on control and form, and more on just mindlessly attacking.
Backing away from the monsters, the little knight continues to fend off attacks with his shield and stabbing out at any openings. Another tricky part of this practice for me is to control how damage works. Normally, so long as I tell two shadow objects not to merge with each other, they will just bump like two blocks knocking into each other. For the little knight’s sword and the monsters’ claws and other weapons, I have to make it to where they cut and make openings in the other objects. From these openings, or little wounds, mana would leak out like blood and destabilize the manifested shadows, ‘killing’ the object. The only exception to this is the little knight’s shield and the thickest parts of his armor. Meaning that depending on how he gets hit, he can deflect attacks without taking any damage.
The little battle continues to play out on the table, part of it spilling out onto some lab equipment and books as the fighters move across the battlefield. The knight continues to fight a defensive battle. Working his way back as he fends off attacks from his flanks, warding off his assailants with a turn of his shield or forcing them back with a poke from his shadow monster slaying sword.
Eventually, he finds himself between a beaker and a large textbook. Using the space between them as a chokepoint, he forces the mindless monsters to fight him one at a time rather than all at once. Slowly, he ‘kills’ the monsters as they come at him, a small pile of mana leaking corpses further tightening the chokepoint, building until he is fighting on a small bloody hill of his own making. With a final thrust, he runs his sword through the body of the last beast that was gnawing on his shield, and then tosses its corpse of to the side.
With his last enemy slain, the little knight puts away his weapons and starts dancing in a certain dance that would have had people on the internet cringing. I cheer on the inside for my little knight, pumping my fists at his valiant victory.
I hear someone clear their throat and I look up from my little makeshift battlefield to find Dr. Doe watching. A look of amusement and curiosity on her face.
I give her a smile, “Sorry. You done taking your notes?”
She just laughs a bit, “Yes, but do you mind if you tell me what it is you were doing?”
“Practicing. But really, I am just playing around. It’s like toy soldiers, but instead of it just being my imagination, I can actually have them move around and fight for real. It’s a childhood dream come true.” I tell her with a giggle.
She raises an eyebrow and points the knight dancing on a pile of corpses. “Are they automated?”
“A little, but I have to control all of their movements. Most of what they can do is stand on their own without falling over. Controlling eighteen monsters and one knight is my current limit before it becomes too much for me to focus on, plus they all have to be in my vision, or I might lose track of them. Like I said, its practice.”
“Very interesting… Well, I think that this should be good enough for now in regard to your shadows. I will have to see about trying to find other ways of studying them; try to find a way of detecting mana… In the meantime, I had other things that I had hoped you could assist us with. We have made some finding in regard to the use of your blood that you might find interesting.”
On the subject being brought over to my blood, I grow a bit depressed, being made to remember Nathaniel and what I am probably going to have to do soon… I force it down and nod my head. This work is important, and my feelings aren’t going to change that.
Generating a giant snake from behind me, I command it lunge out and swallow the little dancing knight and his pile of corpses before quickly vanishing back into my clothes. Dr. Doe jumps a bit in fright, and I have to hold down a giggle from giving her a little scare. It makes me feel a little better…
“Sure, I’m interested in what you guys have found so far. You’re not testing on humans, right?” I say half-jokingly.
Dr. Doe shakes her head, “God no. We’re using lab rats. After what happened to the first batch, there is no chance that we will be conducting human testing for some time now. Far too volatile.”
“Is it that bad!?” I ask, reeling back a little.
She nods her head, “Yes, quite so. But let us save this for when we get there. We had to dedicate another lab for special testing after the first one got ruined. Maintenance is still working on the repairs…”
They broke a lab! What the hell have they been doing with my blood!?