As Pae'eyl turned away to continue “helping” his grandson learn to create a fire, A memory flashed through my mind.
I was walking through the jungle early on in my existence, perhaps on my second or third mission. As I proceeded on foot towards the objective I kept having to stop because of a cable that would extrude itself from my left wrist without warning. This cable was actually a prehensile fiber optic device that could not only be used to see under doors and around corners, but also interface directly with other fiber optic cables to allow me direct access to their information. The problem with it was that none of my virtual training had consisted of operating a body outside the standard humanoid shape.
'What am I going to do about this?' I was asking myself after forcibly shoving the cable back into place. As if to respond to me, it popped out again once I put my arm down. My frustration growing, I considered simply cutting it off and saying it was damaged in combat, but I knew better than to try something like that when my operation was being fully recorded. 'I need to figure out how to control this.' I remembered thinking. Finding a spot where I was nestled between vines and trees so as not to be visible, I set about my work.
A short while later I had figured out the problem, the cable's extension motion was somehow mapped to the same mental pattern that controlled my right triceps muscle, but only the portion of the motion that happened from maximal extension to around half contraction. The latter half, from half contraction to full contraction, retracted the cable. As I practiced, I managed to transfer the mapping from my triceps to my left hand by associating the movement of my triceps with movements in my hand, then using those motions against the triceps motion to disrupt that association.
By the time I reached the warbreed base which I was to be infiltrating, I had full control over the cable and could manipulate it with only so much as a minor twitch in my left finger as a residual reflexive action. This technique, which I later learned was similar to a human practice for working with and manipulating muscle memory, was something I used extensively whenever I was placed into a body with some non-standard components like integrated weaponry or devices which were manipulated kinesthetically.
“You can't just gesture,” Pae'eyl said, breaking me away from my memory. “You moron, you have to visualize.” I had been trying to decide on a hand gesture to use as a basis for learning the fire-making ability, modifying the one I had seen Pae'eyl use until it was more comfortable for me.
“Tell me, sir,” I began, “have you ever heard of taazmoydh causing someone pain when they use it?” I made sure to put a little bit of venom into the honorific, but not enough to constitute trying to start a fight. Was that flash of pain I felt during the fight with the merchant's guards the sensation of using this ability? I wondered.
“Never in my life,” Pae'eyl replied, “but an idiot like you might be cooking his own hand from the inside, so that could be it.” I frowned, and Pae'eyl sighed and grumbled something inaudible to himself. So it wasn't, I thought, maybe I somehow healed myself so quickly that the darts failed to penetrate me? But the healing is automatic, so how could that have worked? I got caught up in thought for another few minutes before the snapping of Pae'eyl's stick on Yaevb's head drew me back to the task at hand. There's too much to think about right now, I grumbled, and not enough information available. I need to focus on the tasks at hand.
I placed my hand directly onto the quarter log in front of me and thought about what Pae'eyl had said. I need to visualize fire in order to make it appear. But visualize it how? I wondered. In my mind, I could summon up many images of fires that I had seen. Some small, some large, fires in nearly every visible color, fires which had a wide variety of heats, there were so many choices. In front of me I could picture a roaring campfire if I wanted to, a fire arising from an oil lamp, or a fire coming from the top of a chemical spill that ignited on contact with air. Not one of those images manifested anything in the real world.
What if I can't do it? I thought suddenly, what if my body isn't equipped with the proper organs, or tools, to do this? The leaders of the village seemed convinced that I could use some type of taazmoydh from my fight, but the actual definition of that word was still up in the air. Mihvay even said that I appear impossibly strong, I thought, they could just be making an assumption that the differences in our physical abilities are from me doing something like this, when in reality it's because our bodies are completely different on the inside. It was a logical conclusion that the people were simply incorrect in their assessments of me, after all they had no idea what I really was.
A strange pit-like sensation began building inside my stomach. At first, I wondered if I was hungry, but a quick check of my heads-up display said that I could still wait a little while before eating. Try as I might, I couldn't get my mind to focus on any other subject besides the ominous possibility that there might be a major defect in my disguise. They can all do this, I thought as I shook my head, there's no way my operator would have been stupid enough to leave such an obvious hole in my cover, right? Asking that question to myself summoned up all the memories of realizations about my current body, which did nothing to help my confidence.
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“I did it!” Yaevb cried out joyfully. I looked over to see the log in front of him burning slowly from a small flame, and Pae'eyl looking proud above his grandson. Yaevb looked to his grandfather, whose face went stony before the boy could see it, and his smile faded.
“You did it once,” Pae'eyl said, “now you're going to do it again as fast as you can. Put that out and start over.” The boy nodded, rolling his log to extinguish it, and I looked back to my own log.
“Are there people who cannot perform taazmoydh?” I asked without looking up. I heard some footsteps toward me, then a hard stick smacked into the top of my head. It didn't hurt much, so I didn't react.
“You've got rocks in your head, forest man,” Pae'eyl snapped. “Maybe an idiot like you can't do it right away but even animals figure it out eventually.” Animals can use this to make fires as well? I thought, slightly stunned by the possibility. Pae'eyl smacked my head again, presumably for not responding quickly enough, then sat down by his grandson again. There's no way my operator screwed up, I said with renewed confidence, I can use the healing even though I'm not really a living thing. I can use this as well, I must be able to. I'm just doing something wrong.
I tried for another few minutes to visualize fire, overlaying it in my mind on top of the log in front of me to no avail. There must be a difference in the qualia between myself and these people, I concluded, their same method isn't going to work for me because our minds differ too much. Visualizing, in my mind, was largely the same process as recalling information. It was not an external action, it was confined to my mind alone and none of the effects of it reached my body. This was convenient for mentally going over skills or tasks, but was working against me now.
Heat is stored as motion, I thought, more specifically it is stored as periodic atomic motion inside a material, and transferred through various means to other materials. Fire arises when heat causes a combustible material to ignite, which for wood's case involves the spontaneous production of gaseous combustibles which immediately react with oxygen due to the heat near the site of their creation. In front of me, I could imagine the wood as a collection of particles. Many different types, arranged in many different ways, all moving and vibrating. Still, I could not conceive of the true amount of atoms or molecules in the block. Very few minds had the ability to simulate particles in the amounts found inside visible matter, and mine was certainly not one of them.
Heat can be averaged, I thought as I changed my mental image. Instead of particles, the log was now a flat gray color. Then it turned blotchy, with some sections becoming a bit lighter or a bit darker. These represented the average heat in the log which I could feel as I ran my hand over it. I could almost hear the subtle squealing of the vibration of the log in my mind, which was a bit more high-pitched on the end facing the sun and a bit lower on the end in shadow. If I want to create fire, the log just needs to be hotter, I thought. I laid my hand on the center of the log, then began to imagine the portion I had placed my hand on turning white. A false sound squealed in my ears, the sound of heat flowing into the log from an unknown source, and the illusion snapped.
I pulled my hand away reflexively from the log and inhaled, smelling burning flesh and wood. The palm of my right hand was blackened and stung fiercely as it stitched itself back together and shed clear fluid, recovering from the burn it had received in seconds. In the center of the log, a flame that was some four centimeters tall by two and a half centimeters at the base had formed, along with a large black circle the same size as the white one in my vision. I reached out with my hand again, touching the flame to test if it was actually real and burning my fingertips for the trouble. I did it, I thought breathlessly, I don't know how but I managed to do it. It responds to... visualization and intent?
“Good,” Pae'eyl grunted, “you practically cooked your hand but you figured it out. Happy?” I saw that both he and Yaevb were looking at me, Yaevb with very wide eyes for some reason.
“I need more practice,” I replied, “I'm not sure how I did that.”
“Figure it out somewhere that isn't here,” Pae'eyl snapped. “Get off my property, now. Consider yourself lucky if I don't complain to the patriarch about you.” I nodded and stood up, stretching out my limbs and hearing a number of cracks come from them. Did they heal together while I was sitting? I wondered. I walked away, hearing Yaevb and Pae'eyl speaking quietly to one another.
“I can still smell it,” Yaevb whispered. “Did you see? It was black.”
“He's a savage Yaevb,” Pae'eyl replied in a less quiet whisper. “They don’t feel pain the same way that people like us do. Their minds are too simple for it.” Maybe I should try to affect more of a pain response when I'm in the presence of humans, I thought, warbreed always respected me for never wincing or flinching, but these people are unafraid to show when they're hurt.
I walked through the village after leaving Pae'eyl's property, taking the shortest route I could find back to my cabin. I still got stares as I expected, but the whispers had changed somewhat. From what I could piece together Mihvay had told someone about how I had cut the trees down, and instead of being upset, the people were impressed. Not only that, the story was already becoming embellished. I don't know where they got the idea that I felled it in a single swing, I thought with a derisive snort, Truly humans love nothing more than twisting the truth for its own sake. They're even worse than the warbreed in that regard.
When I got back to my cabin I ate some meat, then felt strangely tired. I guess I can lay down in the bed for a while, I thought. I was asleep before my head impacted the pillow.