CHAPTER 1 - OF DREAMS AND DECEPTIVELY INFLUENTIAL PARCHMENT

Keys clattered out in the gloom of the room. Code formatting and debugging in real-time as my fingers flew over the keyboard. Hardware whirred behind me as they struggled to keep up with my relentless usage.

Mental Essence actively ran through my mind as my fingers parsed and translated its responses into code.

I was attempting to replicate my mind. Artificially of course. Any synthetic brain would be severely limited and lacking, organic brain-matter is so extremely cohesive and so acutely attuned to each other that replicating it would be an impossible task. Neurons fire off electrochemical impulses at speeds just shy of light, and they adapt and manipulate parameters within nanoseconds of setting them. And they do it all with barely a fragment of change in stimuli. Organic material is too versatile to fully replicate. Hell, fractions of it should be impossible.

I had some advantages, that helped me immensely. But what I was doing still bordered on unattainable.

Being a dual essence Wielder, I would be considered as magnitudes above the average Ascender, considered with respect. People would have heralded me to greater heights, all trying to curry some future influence.

If only I wasn't a duel Wielder in the most disfavored essence types. This is also greatly compounded by my deformity.

When born, we are mainly comprised of 5 things. Organs, tissues, bones, Medians, and a Core. A Core circulates some Essence type you can manipulate. Genetic material usually has some influence over a Core, mainly size and intensity, but it has no part in the Essence you Wield.

3 Essence types are usually the maximum, but there were some extraordinary cases with more. 2 were ideal, as with more essence types, your potency with each decreases. 2 essence types permitted a good balance between potency and versatility, and so it was greatly favored.

Medians were your carriers for essence manipulation. There were 7 Medians in total, 2 Radial Medians that branch through your hands, 2 Patellan Medians that travel through your legs, and the Pulmonary, Pericardial, and Medullar Medians that fuse to your lungs, heart, and mind, respectively.

My deformity resulted in the lack of 6 medians. I had my Medullar Median. Nothing else. I had one stringy little Median.

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After we pushed the Celestials back into the Magellan System, in the Great Repel, people worshipped the Primordials. The Primordials were the original 304 who stood against the Celestials during the Shattering. They were tempests of power that broke the sea of Celestials against them like proud and steadfast rocks.

During the Shattering, democracy was abolished. It was time for absolute decisiveness and barbaric might. Not meticulous consideration. This cemented the authority of Primordials. The idolization of the Primordials was nearly the sole reason for the transition into a society of strength.

Power was absolute. It completely skewed perceptions of identity. Can you imagine being judged by the sole fact of where you stand on the Road to Primordial Ascendance? I felt this acutely.

Deformed they said. Unworthy they whispered. Pathetic they mocked. It hurt.

I was eight when I finally realized what all that whispering was about, what all that pointing was about. They thought me worthless. It was amplified by my heritage. Being the descendants of two of the Primordials, people couldn't say 'no' to me.

I was eight when I realized my friends only associated with me because of my ancestry. They thought my grandparents, the 800-year-old icons, would rebuke them if they did not humor me. That hurt too. The people you grow up with, the people you laugh with, the people who are supposed to pick you up. It was all fake.

I was eight when I realized my future ability was relatively useless. My growth would always be faster, but less potent in battle capability. Growth, as depicted in Ascension Theory, is an indirect proportion of Potency to Quantity, Quantity to Speed. More to Ascend, slower you Ascend and after your Ascension to higher Realms, your potency has to stretch itself out over greater quantities and will thus have a smaller throughput for any single output. With so much Essence chambering into my mind, it excelled to astonishing heights. Retention, comprehension, visualization, and coordination, would soar.

Wonderful. The grandson of two Primordials – a glorified accountant. Pathetic.

Cruel conclusions, but such was my reality. Looking down on yourself hurts the most. So, I decided to stop. Pitying yourself doesn't yield anything. I would reach the top. I would reach the pinnacle of strength. I'd gain so much power until I stood above the Primordials and they looked at me with respect, warily. This wasn't the sort of thirst that was fickle and weak, simply 'because'. No, I was going to seek power to understand 'why'. Why I had to lose my childhood. Why Ascension was so important. Why I had to be judged. Why having a varied genetic mark-up was so wrong. I would discover the 'why' behind Ascension. Why it fucked up my life.

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My solution was synthetic minds. Being a Reaction Essence Wielder, I'd learned the value of coordination and reflex. I'd need to build on that. I could also potentially power several neural devices, with my Mental Essence. If I could manufacture one, that is.

Neural devices weren't made. The resources required to produce them were exorbitant and in our current community, Mental Essence Wielders were scorned. They were just smart, not strong. It's piteous, the trajectory of our species. But, it was a good thing that I was literally a Prince. Albeit a disgraced one. In either case, money was no issue for me.

My comprehension and retention were levels above any other Wielder, even other Mental Essence Wielders who would manifest similar abilities later on. The curriculum was simple, so I told my parents to let me out of the grouped tutorship all nobles have to attend and asked them to hire tutors in neurology, computer science, number theory, and geometry. Strange thing for an eleven-year-old to ask, but they obliged with some needling. They didn't care enough to raise me properly. And it was hardly a dent in their wealth.

However, it wasn't healthy, being smarter than your maturity should permit. It stunted my social development, but who would want to be friends with a cripple anyway? I had some mental consequences as well. But those were easily ironed out with physical stimulation and meditation, which helped calm some of the turbulent discombobulations in my mind.

By the time I was 13 I had gained some appreciation and interpretation of the subjects I was tutored in, and so, I started working on the project I had been aiming toward all along. Synthetic Minds. Not just synthetic, but actively, in real-time, adaptable, learning, and consistently adding more and more Minds to a collection. Data storage had reached an extreme, small chips could host yottabytes of data. Not one. Millions of them. That level of technology was insane, but it made my job easier. Millions of yottabytes were theoretically enough storage for millions of Minds. I'd likely never require more than a couple hundred.

My first step was mapping out my mind. Mental Essence made my job exceptionally easy. Sending Essence to my brain, I split slivers of it into snake-like constructs and sent them into every groove, every furrow, and investigated each lobe extensively. Viewing the electrochemical impulses and testing regions against various stimuli, I gathered enough data to gain some momentum into beginning the project.

It took nearly a year. Neurons were everchanging things, the cytons, the nucleus within the cytons, the DNA within the nucleus, the nucleotides within the DNA, the separate codons within the nucleotides, all matter.

Then you consider the axon, the synaptic terminal, the myelin sheath, and so many more constituents. And you have billions of them. Every single part, however negligible, might not do anything more than fill space, but everything else takes into account its presence and works with it.

Meticulous care, careful investigation, proven hypotheses, it was impeccably precise work. It took months of trial and error until I got it down to a science. Six months from there and I had enough to work with.

Following that, I had to translate the various workings of my mind, generate generalities of any mind, formulate hypotheses on the application of lobes, and figure out how to attune each Mind to a specific topic. Brains were complex things, with boundless potential, they were irreplicable. Even if I tried to maneuver through the infinite complexity of its working, technology is sequential, it doesn't react the same way. I had to impose certain limitations on it so that it could work with the functionalities I'd outlined. I didn't want it to compile zettabytes of data on every subject, and come online 5 decades from now. Thus, I had to give each Mind a specific topic. It was one of the greatest liabilities of advanced technology, when it can do anything, it will do everything.

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After that, it was rising over an extremely important of the brain. Something that I needed to sort out from intruding, something that had already snuck into my mind-mapping. The subconscious. A strange thing. This was another of the complexities I had to filter out. Most of our intuition resides within the subconscious, but it would just get in the way of several functions that need to be immediate. Intuition is instinctive guesswork based on situational expertise and experience. I didn't want my Minds to start guessing. I took an extra year of study before I figured out the underlying theory of it. The subcortical region was no joke. That thing is massive and uneven.

Laying down the parameters, finishing up the logic, and the geometrical rendering was especially time-consuming, meshing the reflexive regression was an especially nasty piece of work. Setting up the hardware was simple enough. Compressing the data values to a manageable size without harming the quality was an easy enough application of the Renegade Analysis.

It was time to put it all together.

Time to code a story.

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It's been three years since I began coding. I've nearly finished, with most of my functionality applied and ready. I was 17 now and getting ready for Training.

And it was going to be a terrible pain.

After the Celestials were pushed into the Magellan system. We achieved a standstill. The Primordials went on and founded Academies, Sects, and Empires. I'd need to attend one of them, something I could technically go through with my family – nobles didn't have as many restrictions or requirements. But I finally wanted to be disassociated from the royal family. I was pissed that it came during my Training – it was another place I'd be chained to for years, but it was still better than remaining here.

I lifted my fingers off the keyboard, cracking my knuckles and going over a mental checklist of my options.

There were currently four main Empires.

The first was The Roaring Flame Empire. The Empress of this Empire has borders pushing 300 planets. She has an extreme affinity for fire.

The next Empire is the Thunder Fist Empire. The Emperor is known for his devastating prowess in unarmed combat. His blows’ cacophony could be heard planets away. He is also known for his unnatural obsession with dumplings. He occupies a territory similar in size to the Roaring Flame Empire. An Air and Shadow Wielder.

The Infinite Wealth Empire. The Emperor of this Empire had coffers that literally encompassed an entire planet. Their territory was relatively small. Occupying a little less than 40 planets, they were on the lower end of the spectrum. However, they are a major power. The planets they do hold dominion over, are lush. The Emperor is an Earth Essence Wielder who is almost solely responsible for the terraforming of spatial objects in the Milky Way, the Maffei System, and the Cygnus System. Being an Earth Wielder, material objects generally had little value to them, but he has a peculiar obsession with gold and other valuables.

The final largest and most significant Empire is the Immortal Blizzard Empire. The Empress of this Empire is ruthless. She is an extremely specified user of water. She’s attuned herself so extremely to ice and the similar. In the war against the Celestials, she conjured a blizzard that lasted for the better part of a year, capturing and massacring more than 400,000 Celestials within that period.

The Thunder Fist Emperor and the Immortal Blizzard Empress get along fabulously.

The Rulers of these Empires have used so many names throughout their eight-hundred-year life spans that no name can be accurately attributed to them. They are referred to by their respective titles.

Talking to them was a terrible nuisance. The Immortal Blizzard especially. Family is a rotten obligation.

After my dear folks all but disowned me for my deformity, which is not exactly a private circumstance, I knew that any Training I received would have to be anonymous on my part. Taking me in was too ambiguous, in that they didn't know whether they would retaliate as a tarnish on their name if they were to refuse me, or if my family would see them as pathetic charity for taking in someone with minimal use. However, if I could change my identity, a simple enough implementation, joining would be a plausible endeavor. There were tests, but while strength was the more utilized form of entry, having an army of muscle buffs was idiotic. Logistics was a crucial part of any working institution. There were intelligence tests and I would pass those to gain entry.

After my parents paid for 4 years of tutorship, they largely left me to my own devices. They had two better children to dote over. My mother was a duelist. She had reached amazing heights in a short period on the Road to Primordial Ascendance, cementing her early on as an infrequent prodigy. She respected strength, and to have an Ascent deformed son? Bye. My father was a Prince who hailed from the ruthless Immortal Blizzard Empress. It's obvious – bye. Parents who did nothing for me and only got me the tutors as a skewed perception of genetic obligation got, in the early months of my isolation, extremely disheartening. But I had long since ascertained my familial sentiment, excessive feelings were staved off easily enough.

I lived in a corner of my grandmother's palace, a semi-forgotten place, not visited. However, to me – a haven. Filled with failed experiments, hundreds of pieces of scrap glass and metal, and melted toy trucks that I had messed around with, when I was young and learning, I was left in solitude. Leaving would likely be easy enough.

I planned on joining the Ruinous Cloud Sect. They existed within the Thunder Fist Empire. The Sect was backed by the Emperor himself, being a trifold Ascender with Air, Light, and Umbral Essence, the Sect aspected mainly towards Air Wielders. They accepted all types, however. They would have to be extraordinary fools not to round themselves properly.

They were also a Sect that respected intelligence. According to the common word, 'a versatile group that did not judge'. The Sect was financed and given name by the Emperor, but the Matriarch of the Sect was similarly a Primordial that had a knack for teaching.

An unsegregated Sect. It was what I needed. I could join with a resume circulating smarts, and allow myself to progress without the hierarchal stigma attached to might before mind.

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As the clacking of my keyboard petered out I considered my plan. I would leave within the week. I'd been putting it off for too long. The Ruinous Cloud Sect was constantly available, the tests that were hosted could be taken at a multitude of times and the mass trials had passed, but it wouldn't do to put it off indefinitely.

If I wanted to leave within the week, I had to integrate my Minds soon. I had been stalling this too. Quite frankly, I was scared. What if something went wrong and I lost my only advantage?

Living with only my brain, relying on only my brain, that sort of dependence doesn't die easy. But I didn't need to stave off that reliance. I simply came to the frightening conclusion: I ain't worth anything without it. I had worked for 7 years on a project I wasn't going to use? Ridiculous.

My life was shunned by all, if I ever wanted to feel the sun without the aggravating judgment of everyone, I would either need to become a hermit, or I would need to grow strong enough that they couldn't afford to judge me. The latter would be so much more satisfying.

My one servant, Agora, was an unassuming man that performed all his tasks with a worked efficiency. I chimed the bell that signaled him.

He glided in with that unnatural grace. Staring at me with empty eyes.

"Agora, pack my clothes and fetch 400 silverbacks. Place the rest within my account at Arye's." I told him, with a short catch in my breath. Leaving, however unwanted you may be, was never easy. I escaped to a secondary room where all my experiments were hosted.

It was...different, as far as most laboratories go. More of a living room than anything else. Priceless equipment firmly demarcated its property... in a closet, removed when needed. Walls were adorned with various maps, layouts, and integral, precise drawings of brains and spinal cords labeled in dark, diminutive writing.

A large screen hung upon the far wall where code was displayed, lazily jutting across as my final debugging synced up. 'Laptops' from the PreCelestial World were encased in glass as my proud collections.

Holographic Screens presented their keyboards for me to begin their daily abuse with incessant typing. That was barely a quarter of the room. The rest was comfortable and warm.

Red, dulling, couches decked the inner portion of the room. Stylized, happily covered lamps hung from walls and tables that basked the entire room in an orange, healthy hue. And finally – my books. Those gorgeous beauties.

Bookshelves lined every available wall. There was a haphazard organization to it. All my subject books were in my bedroom. Those were books to be read at any time. These intimate worlds contained within deceptively influential papers were to be read alone in private corners where you can experience them in all their glory.

The books that were so lovingly retained on my bookshelf were the ones that depicted fantasy, of a perfect world. One wrought with danger and glorious creatures. Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Milton, Alighieri, and so many more. Machiavelli and Milton were special kinds of torture, but ones that were respected. Alighieri was a marvel, in that his bland characters seemed to not subtract, but to add so much more by leaving it to the imagination.

The best books, however, were the ones written by Freud. To watch him paint women as inferior lit a fantasy of him meeting my grandmother that gave me tickles for ages. The 'Oedipus Complex' is the funniest shit. He literally depicts everything false about psychology.

But today wasn't for books. While Agora packed my stuff, I needed to integrate my Minds. I had run simulations upon simulations. I could confirm that they would learn at incredible paces.

Time for the final stretch.

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I laid myself down on the angled cot and strapped myself in. All good things come with pain. I was injecting something into my skull, there was going to be agony like I never felt before. Breaking sutures and splitting my skull in two. Essence would heal it quickly and with minimal fuss, but it was still going to hurt.

There were 6 Christophers as I called them – after Alan Turing – that would contain my Minds, 4 would connect and furrow into my brain lobes, the fifth would attach itself to my medulla oblongata, and the final one would affix itself to my 14th vertebrae.

I clicked a button and injected myself with a Solution of Satiation. I could be bedridden for 3 days or up to 3 weeks. I didn't want to die after all this due to a lack of sustenance.

7 years. 7 years of work. 7 years of diligent study. It culminates now. It was either up or up from here. There's no more bottom for me. Death and I leave this wretched life or Power and I leave this wretched existence. I'm done. The project's done. Now it was time for me to rain fire and fury upon those that ever said I was worthless.

I could finally fucking breathe. I was free.

I steeled myself.

I stabbed the toggle and my code uploaded into my Christophers.

A short whirr...

A pregnant pause...

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14...

A dream of more...

It pierced my cranium.

I screamed.