I was getting worried. I had gotten used to constantly having a clear goal. But now I was back to not knowing what I should do. For some reason, I was growing afraid of it, and that stress only made it harder to focus.

What should I do? Should I do anything? Is there something important I should be doing?

I shifted my hand slightly, only for it to bump into something. I picked it up. It was the smooth stone with the carvings.

Right, there must be more to this stone. How can it create that complex pattern only by me thinking of an activation word? Is there something special about the word? Or does it have something to do with the carving? Or is the stone special and the carving is only for telling me the word? Is it a combination?

I thought of the activation word again. A spark appeared next to my hand holding the stone. I felt the now familiar pattern activate. But I focused beyond it, trying to find something else. And I did. There was another, weaker pattern there somewhere.

Yes!

I memorized it carefully, summoning several sparks in the process, before entering my mental space again. To be once again trying out different patterns to replicate that feeling felt nice. Safe. Sort of like being home.

Home? Do I have a home? Since I woke up here without any previous memories except knowledge of a bunch of different things, I have no way of knowing whether I once had a home or not. I could very well have not existed before that. Can this mental space be called a home? Could I try to imagine a happy life here? No, I will always know that this isn't real. Whatever I do here, be it fly or have a family, it will never feel important.

...

The new pattern seemed much simpler, taking a much less uncountable amount of time, which worried me. But when I tried to use it, nothing really happened. It seemingly did nothing. When I released it, I felt that it worked, but nothing changed.

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I took another look at the smooth stone.

What could it be doing?

The theory that sounded the least wrong I could come up with was that it had something to do with the activation word.

Looking back at the stone, I noticed something. Even though I wasn't using it, I could still feel the faint pattern inside the stone.

Is it... always active?

I tried using the stone again, this time focusing on the pattern. It appeared that due to my intense usage of my mind when experimenting, it had grown in some way. It was almost as if time around me slowed down slightly when I focused so hard.

I thought of the activation word. Something happened. It was very fast, but I momentarily felt some change in the pattern. Ignoring the newly summoned spark, I repeated the activation word.

There!

The pattern pulsed faintly before that pulse then triggered another pattern in the stone, the one that summoned the sparks, to activate. This immediately got me more excited.

So the 'sensing pattern' is always active, and triggers the 'summoning pattern' when I think of the activation word... But how is it always staying active? And how does one pattern cause another to activate? And how can it observe my thoughts?

I decided to start by figuring out how to make patterns stay active. It doesn't turn out to be too hard. I managed to do it by simply continuing to think of the pattern after creating it, but not keeping it in the front of my mind. Just letting it hang out a bit further down in my consciousness. This turned out to be a bit more taxing than simply letting it go, but I managed it without problems.

While keeping the pattern active, it tried thinking of the activation word. I felt the pattern pulse in the back of my mind, much clearer than with the stone likely due to it being within myself. Nothing happened after that, as expected.

Now to the next question. How can it cause another pattern to activate? If a stone is able to create such an interaction, then so must I.

I study the stone a bit further, trying to figure out where exactly these two patterns reside within it. After viewing the whole process several times from different angles, I was quite confident that I knew it.

It at first looks as if they're overlapping, but they're actually perfectly interlocked without disturbing each other. And I'm guessing they need to do so in a specific way to work...

In order to do so, I would need to create both at the same time, carefully adjusting them during the creation. I had a feeling that would be very difficult, and that feeling was right. Just something as simple sounding as adjusting the pattern while creating it took a very long time to learn. But the hardest part was as expected to create two at the same time.

But as long as I had something to focus on, something to work toward, I could continue forever.