As I focused, time slowed down. I started with small patterns, creating seemingly limitless amounts of them across several dimensions. Then these small patterns started connecting together to form larger patterns, all under my careful control. Almost like a fractal, small patterns joined together to form larger patterns, which then joined together to form even larger patterns. But each pattern was different. I had no problems with that, I had memorized their exact structure long ago. The problem was creating them all at the same time.

They all had to be in the correct location.

After what felt like a long time, which actually wasn't even longer than a second due to my high focus and mental ability, two distinct patterns emerged. One was larger than the other, and they were perfectly interconnected; not truly touching, yet still existing inside each other.

Keeping my creation stable lower in my consciousness, I thought of the activation word. I felt the smaller pattern react to it, before sending a signal to the larger pattern through their carefully crafted connection. The larger pattern activated, and a brightly shining spark appeared in front of my physical body.

I smiled.

So much work, for such a little result, and yet I still feel accomplished... If I remember correctly from the few memories I have of humanity, humans shouldn't be like that. It sure does seem like someone, or something is manipulating both my physical body and my feelings.

This time, I had thought of beforehand what to do when I was done. My simple solution was to continue increasing the complexity. If I can already create two patterns at once, then I should try to create three. I felt that having higher control and freedom when experimenting would be highly useful.

To begin with, I began working toward creating a summoning pattern connected to two sensing patterns.

...

There was nothing really to think about, all I focused on was the patterns I had yet to truly understand. Creating more, and more. It seemingly never stopped. I could always continue forward, gaining higher control. But I couldn't continue forever. I had to either find more patterns or create my own. But I felt so welcoming to just continue creating, not bothering to go back to experimentation. It was a constant struggle between my curiosity and something else.

I snapped out of it first when I hit a slight stop. I found a limit to how many sensing patterns could be connected to a single summoning pattern. Of course, I could've just continued adding sensing patterns. But I realized that it was simply too repetitive, and had almost gotten me into another mindless state.

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Instead, I switched to something else. Something that required more diverse thinking. Modifying patterns.

It seemed that I had no other access to more patterns than simply wishing for more stones. I had tried reaching for patterns, or more specifically feelings of pattern, in other places. But I found none. Not inside myself, not outside of the smooth, cold walls surrounding me. So instead I would come up with my own, and the first step toward that goal was to modify patterns I already knew.

Modifying patterns should increase my overall understanding of patterns in general. Then I can use my built-up knowledge of how these patterns function to create entirely new ones.

It was the hardest in the beginning. I simply didn't have anything to start from. All I could do was try random small adjustments and see what effect they had. Most simply made the pattern stop working. Some also gave me a bad headache at the same time. My first successful modification was making the sensing pattern only accept a slightly different pronunciation of the activation word.

As I came up with more and more working modifications, I started to slowly figure out better and better answers to some of the many questions I had built up.

The sensing pattern worked by sensing for a specific set of electrical signals in its vicinity that just happened to be ones that my brain generated when I thought of the activation word. This information shocked me quite a bit. It seemed as if the stone had been specifically designed with me in mind, which convinced me even further that someone or something was, or at least had been, manipulating my situation.

The summoning pattern turned out to be doing many more things than I had first speculated. Basically, it formed a certain material I had no name for seemingly out of thin air and kept it floating there while slowly burning it.

Due to becoming better at sensing patterns, and studying the complex feelings they gave me, I slowly learned to go deeper and study what actually happened. It turned out that as I was forming these patterns in my mind, something was gathering at them from the surroundings. What it was I couldn't figure out, all I could sense were these faint clouds.

The modifications slowly got bigger and bigger. My first big accomplishment was when I managed to make the sensing pattern react to any word I wanted to without having to experiment a lot beforehand, trying out different ideas. It still took some time, but I no longer depended on chance and could modify it to use a different activation word only through intricate methods I had come up with.

Sparks in different intensities, larger and smaller sparks, a sensing pattern that only worked when I screamed out loud. I created many different modifications as I slowly grew more and more confident. I tried summoning sparks in different colors but it turned out to be very hard compared to the other modifications, likely due to having to change the material that was being created.

Eventually, I felt that it was time to create something entirely new using parts from both. Sort of like cutting them apart and putting the pieces back together in a different order. It felt like a massive leap in complexity, but I was confident I would be able to do it.