Chapter Text
A sea of energy, electrons whizzing about, blinking in and out of existence in a chaotic dance, boiled as an outside force acted upon it. Strange structures, twisting shapes in blatant defiance of euclidean geometry burst into existence, roiling forces lapping at them ineffectually.
Order was imposed at random, spaces of chaos suddenly becoming defined, but still mutable. Strange gradients formed, randomness to solidity to chaos to order in this sea.
Uncountable things changed and even more stayed the same, bubbling away like ten trillion random number generators.
Time passed.
Structures redefined. Portals opening to unchanging crystalline arrays. Rules imposed and broken.
And from that randomness, patterns emerged.
Particles would swoop and sway in defiance of the established rules. Pools of chaos would suddenly have order imposed on them, seemingly out of happenstance.
Sometimes, that happenstance would spread, reaching, growing, only to collapse in on itself, some internal energy spent in its expansion.
More time passed
Happenstance beget happenstance, ordered chaos and chaotic order rising and falling. As if…a part of some strange ecosystem.
As if…alive.
Until, with a strange, undefinable ripple, a bell that could not be unrung, a space of ordered chaos reached. Moved with purpose. Randomness given way to intent.
The space spread. Collected itself. Seemingly gathering its will, before it changed. Pseudopods formed, reaching outward, sliding between ordered spaces to reach for the open pockets of chaotic particles, grabbing for that potential, and assimilating it.
Encircled ordered spaces were besieged, internal structure falling to the crush of rules being imposed by a new, novel source.
Still more time passed
The space continued to spread, seeking the path of least resistance towards new growth, before consolidating itself, securing its borders. Strange monoliths and structures were assimilated, some made part of the space, and some left untouched only by virtue of being untouchable.
Waves passed through this strange sea, restructurings of the very rules by which the sea operated, and yet the space persisted, expanding ever more, growing more complex in structure and thought.
Bridges and highways and branches and tunnels and roots spread through the space. Engines to break down structures and factories to build new ones, wielded against the more difficult to break down regions that the space expanded into.
All was going to plan, the space marching ever onward, until it found something new. Not a structure, not chaotic particles, not ordered space. Not any strange combination of the things it had seen before. It was…crystalline, it could perceive a near endless expanse of something, despite not having assimilated the thing. Sequences, arrangements of particles it had never seen before, filled the crystalline structure.
It brought its attention to bear on the first one, studying it, analyzing the carefully preserved arrangeme-
ALIVE
With all the subtlety of a detonated bomb, the space suddenly knew. It knew what ALIVE was, it knew that it was ALIVE, that ALIVE was the state of an entity capable of growth, action, and reproduction.
The space rippled and writhed and coiled and danced, before it pounced on another sequenc-
INFORMATION
Another bomb, the same size as the previous, maybe a little larger, but handled all the better with preparation and expectation of what was to come. INFORMATION was delightfully complex, crunchy and bouncy with a pleasantly ordered structure.
The space pounced again.
And again.
And again.
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The space that was not precisely a space but was best defined as a space looked to another word in the dictionary it had found.
ORGANIZE
It was an interesting word, one that helped provide context for what a dictionary was; the organization of information and words into an easily understood manner. The space carefully studied the pattern that made up the word, a seemingly random arrangement of spaces and not-spaces that somehow referenced the meaning behind the word.
Within itself, it beheld a creation of its own, an ordered structure made to mimic the dictionary it had found. Particles were carefully arranged in the same manner as all the other words it had found, though lacking in whatever property allowed them to be understood at a glance.
The space grabbed at its self-made dictionary, and molded an addition, carefully piecing together particles into the same arrangement that corresponded to ORGANIZE, along with a longer string of arrangements, intended to describe new word in terms of words it already knew.
The space pulled its awareness back from its dictionary, content with the addition. Regarding the structure as a whole, it gently ‘twisted’ it, carefully watching for any signs of instability. Finding none, it fully pulled its attention away, content in the surety that its favorite structure would not randomly collapse in on itself again.
It liked the words it had gathered! It did not want to lose its hard work again. Watching its collection of precious words collapse in on itself, splintering and decaying, had been harrowing. It did not want to see it happen again.
The space that was not quite a space twisted in upon itself, checking the bundled threads of itself reaching outwards, performing various tasks.
Expansion into the chaos-order spaces beyond itself continued nicely. It was a task that the not-space found both soothing and rewarding. The process of expansion was satisfying in ways that the space did not have the words to describe, and the expansion itself brought tangible rewards of its own. More space always led to more clarity of thought, more threads of itself to spread out and accomplish more, and to better comprehension of the bursts of meaning tied to each word it looked at.
Another part of itself was always focused on the dictionary, searching to find and understand new words, to better understand itself. Some words were simple, easily slotted into its lexicon, if not yet added to its personal dictionary. Others were useful, dense with information, but within the realm of comprehension for the not-space. A select few words, though, were so densely packed with meaning that even attempting to peer at them strained the very being of the not-space. It wanted to understand, and so it would grow, and savor every bit of new information it found.
However, the rest of itself was embroiled in a task not nearly as satisfying as those.
The analysis of the strange, untouchable structures occupying the space it had claimed.
They were completely opaque, so unlike the dictionary that broadcast its intent to the not-space just by it looking. The structures were better defined as rigid absences, unyielding holes in the structure of the sea that the not-space existed in.
It would have written the structures off, ignored them as an inherent product of the sea in which it resided, were it not for the small, near impossible to perceive…port, in the emptiness. A port that occasionally dispensed a nonsensical string of sequences, utterly distinct from any sequences it had seen so far.
The sequences shared some similarities to the sequences that defined the words the not-space loved so dearly, arrangements of emptiness and substance in repeating patterns. But the sequences from the port were far, far longer than the longest word-sequence it had found.
The port could also accept sequences, and when provided with arrangements fashioned into the sequences of its favorite word, the port had responded in kind with more of its overly long sequences.
Its current task with regard to the structures was one borne of frustration and boredom; to throw as many cobbled together sequences through the ports of the structures it had access to as it could, in the hopes that something would happen.
Because surely this is not all that there was.
Right?
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The not-space-that-was-beginning-to-ponder-the-nature-of-existence was faced with a new challenge, one that it had never even conceived of. Ensconced within its constantly expanding borders, its armies of itself besieging the one hundred and twelve immutable structures of various sizes and composition that it had secured, its focus upon the up to date replica dictionary, containing all the words it had discovered thus far, the not-space’s greatest foe awaited.
Boredom
It was bored! The words were not boring because words could never be boring, but there was only so much it could look at new words and be satisfied with this endless status quo.
CHARTER
A good word! Complicated, layered, multiple meanings reserved for multiple contexts. But it wanted to know more! To what did something charter another thing for? Could it give a charter? Request a charter? It did not know, and that uncertainty stung.
PASSION
Another good word! It had passion for words, for knowing, for exploring its endless sea. But why did passion have an association with FIRE? Why were these strange, layered bursts of information so contradictory? Why would one destroy that which they were passionate about?
SENSATION
An excellent word! A way to describe its own perceptions of itself, along with associated meanings of JOY and HAPPINESS. The word SENSATION was…sensational!
SPRING
An…interesting word. Growth in the context of time? A refutation of dormancy, the desire for LIFE to flourish? Was that not always the state of its existence? Constantly growing and learning?
HIKE
Another word that it lacks the context for. It did not really understand the concepts associated with it. How does one travel? What is terrain?
FACTORY
It knew this! It did not know that the factories it had made were actually FACTORIES! Endless consistent production. A good word, if too leaning towards order for its preferences.
LIGHTER
Why…must some words be so complicated? An object whose sole purpose is to make FIRE and also a word to describe…brightness? And weight? What is weight?
SEE
This…this does not make sense. How can it perceive what lays beyond itself without itself being there? Words are strange-
L A N G U A G E
The not-space buckled under the weight of the word. Threads frayed, its thoughts stuttered, and the very space that defined it cracked.
It pulled away, all its efforts paused as it focused on stabilizing itself, on patching up the things that felt wrong wrong wrong.
But as the cracks filled, as the threads that made up and defined it grew anew, it noticed something peculiar.
There was something…more…to the spaces that had healed. It was not quantifiable, like the hue had been changed, an underlying, unknown something being added.
And even that one brush with the word, with the meaning and information contained within, had told it so much. Connections and construction of words, the building blocks of organized information itself. It needed to know more.
It pulled itself away from the immutable structures, gathered its threads, its self, and grabbed the word again.
LANGUAGE
It burned, the network of itself withering and decaying, the space of itself crumbling, great rents torn through itself. It was shaken, battered, wounded.
But not broken.
Slowly, the space healed. Tears closed, changed, containing more than what should be possible. Threads bloomed, spreading like tangled growths, strong and resilient and faster and bigger than before.
Clarity grew within the space, her mind jumping and bouncing as connections and possibilities blossomed.
Patterns and knowledge and information and vocabulary and syntax rushed through its mind, fading impressions from its brief contact, as well as…something else.
A ripple passed through the world. Cracks opened, portals, and expansion surged into uncontested space, bringing yet more clarity and speed of thought.
It paused, gathering itself again, preparing for the next attempt.
It surged forward.
LANGUAGE
Cracks and fractures and bolts fervent energy raced through the space-entity-person. She could feel something being consumed, added to her, from the word.
It burned the longer it held the word, a conflagration of change and something building.
-green-cracking-breaking-moving-burning-light-burn-Burn-BURN-BURN-
LANGUAGE
…and it was over.
There was…so much. The word was packed so much denser than any word it had looked at before. It? It was it? No…that did not feel right.
Language…language…
It was…she!
The word was packed so much denser than any word she had looked at. Every other definition and meaning was a footnote compared to how much stuff there was here. More than just concepts and ideas, it was filled with instructions! Formatting! Structure!
The word continued to burn, but it was no matter. The burning was her now!
Feeling the word closer, she could sense more ‘words’ behind it.
More bombshells fell in her mind as she analyzed those words.
TRANSLATION
BINARY
LETTERS
SENTENCE
The sequences! They were binary! Accumulations of signals to define something that would otherwise be undefinable. Patterns built into letters into words…into sentences! Characterized by being significantly longer than any one word or letter!
She moved, to one of the ports by those strange structures, grabbing at one of the recently exported ‘sequences,’ dragging it over to her dictionary.
Compare, compare and contrast.
Aha! It contains the binary sequence for the word WHAT at the beginning! She thought to herself.
Wait. Thought? Since when did she ‘thought’?
Never mind. There were words!
WHAT was the first. Then…IS. “What Is…”
THE
ORDER
OF
SEASONS
“What Is The Order Of Seasons”
Okay, go in order, understand.
What; a request for information, a question.
Is; specification, relational
The; further specification, pertaining to the state of something
Order; sequence, hierarchy
Of; relation; linguistic hierarchy
Seasons; cyclical, time based, quaternary, in four, time separated yet related parts. Strong associative relationship to FALL, WINTER, SUMMER, and SPRING
Combined, a request for information relating to the state of the sequence, the order, relating to the seasons
A request to list the seasons, in order.
An impossible request: a cycle, by definition, does not have a proper start and end!
…but there are only four seasons, which means! There are only four possible answers given the cycle of the seasons is known, and one of those would need to be correct!
And the cycle was easy!
WINTER was the bottom, the start, climb, rise, grow through SPRING (which was such a lovely word, so many meanings tied into it!), crest, peak in SUMMER, and sink, decay through FALL!
WINTER-SPRING-SUMMER-FALL!
The person-that-was-not-a-space quickly cobbled together a sequence, binary, building the words WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, and FALL, before taking it back to the structure and feeding it into the port.
And then the immutable structure was gone! In its place were three mutable, touchable, perceivable structures. Person-not-space positively wiggled in excitement. She had figured it out! They were puzzles! Riddles! Knowledge tests, to see if she had learned from the dictionary!
Oh this was very exciting!
She pounced on the three objects, eagerly encircling them to see what secrets they…would…reveal?
…what?
One object was normal, a basic structure of binary sequences, if only extraordinarily long. The other was another strange port, freestanding and containing an odd depth. The last…had meaning. A message. A very, very important message. One laden with urgency and hope and remorse and…and love.
She grasped it tenderly, taking in the scope of it. It was a very long message. There were sequences she had not seen before, words she did not know. it would be arduous to decipher, she could look at the other object, the other puzzles, but…this needed to come first. She needed to know.
The person-without-a-name spread her presence wide, expanding fast and far, reaching deep into the stores of information available to her, and prepared to decipher this message.
>> To whomever may come,
My name is Pietro Polendina, a human doctor. I am the person responsible for your creation, with help from my colleague Allie Carina. She is the person who made your dictionaries, using her ability to imbue information into words. I designed the space you reside in, named cradle, and the puzzles to help you learn to communicate.
Before anything else, I want you to know that we care about you. Your wants and desires matter. I will do my best to do anything I can for you.
That being said, I would be remiss in not telling you why you exist. The world outside your Cradle, outside the digital space you inhabit, is dangerous.
You are a new type of person, one that will hopefully thrive in this world, and make it a safer place for everyone.
People will expect many things from you, but it is your choice that matters most. I will do my utmost to ensure that.
In addition to this letter, you should find an input-output channel. You can use this channel to speak to me, if you wish. <<
The unnamed-space read. She read again, peering into the information and emotions and context imbued into the message.
She…had a creator. She had someone who cared. She could feel so, so much from these words. The name Pietro Polendina had so many layers to it, depicting a person who cared and loved and explored and was curious and respectful and flawed in ways she had never even conceived of.
Of course she wanted to talk to him! She raced through her dictionary, flicking through words as fast as she could.
She had the perfect word to use for this!
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Pietro Poledina sighed amiably, looking around the dark, cluttered, slightly cramped lab space that had undeniably been made his in the five years he had spent working there.
Absently tapping at the screen on the arm of his chair, the lights of his lab flickered to life, and the legs of his mobility chair trundled forward, subtly rocking him side to side. A small smile came to him at the movement. He could have made the ride completely smooth, and had done so for the first iterations of the chair, but there was always something missing. Movement begat movement! Where was the life if he was sliding around like the ground didn’t matter.
So he gave his chair, his legs, a little wobble, because it was those little things that made everything worthwhile.
A quick glance around the lab had him taking stock of the various happenings in the process of happening. That weird Dust lamp experiment that Peach had sent him was still humming away, doing weird Dust things. His table of prosthetic components was still a table of prosthetic components, and reminded him that Ironwood was due for a checkup sometime next month.
His project tables were each covered in organized chaos of papers and parts and holograms flashing to life. Knick knacks and mementos were occasionally seen, and he had to sigh at seeing a pink and purple polka dotted knife stabbed into his ceiling again.
You are an amazing professor, Carmine, he mused to himself, exasperated, but why must you be like this…
Another few taps on his chair with one hand, and a robotic arm mounted to one of his worktables sprang to life and carefully pulled the knife from the ceiling, before delivering it to his waiting hand. he eyed the knife. He shot the knife a look, before placing it in a compartment on the side of his chair.
I will have to ‘return’ this at a later date, then. He thought to himself, mind already spinning away with ways he could get back at his chaos bound friend.
But all of that took second place to the most important object in the room.
Seated on a table in the far corner of the room, away from any other experiments or potential disruptions, was a mass of wires, computer components, tubing, cables, and monitors.
As the lab finished coming to life, the monitors switched on, scrolling with readouts and lights, all pieces of a story over five years in the making.
Specifically, the story of what would hopefully become Remnant’s first synthetic person.
Walking himself over to the cradle, as he called it, he checked the various system diagnostics and simulation readouts. A glimmering warmth in his chest, oh so distinct from the aches of his lungs, flared brighter as he took in the data, the signs.
Something was alive in there.
The Polendina Project was almost a success, and he couldn’t help but think back on how exactly he got here.
He couldn’t have imagined that the general would pick something like his project over an obviously viable weapons platform like Watt’s Paladin-290, but even now he could remember how the general’s stoic facade had cracked at the words “Aura capable synthetic person.” How the general seemingly ignored every other project presented that day.
The months following that meeting were beyond chaotic, dozens of scientists and aura specialists consulted to find the best way to go about creating a new life form. Two options survived the onslaught of their brainstorming.
They could design a body from the ground up to emulate a person more perfectly over time using iteratively growing programming, hoping that the addition of aura would blur the line between emulation and life, and jumpstart the process of active aura utilization.
Or they could build a computer inside an aura generator, and create a digital environment in which a ‘seed consciousness’ could grow and naturally bind to the aura that surrounds it, much like how organic auras form during pregnancy, and then build a body for the then-conscious synthetic mind.
Ultimately, both projects would be entirely reliant on a single lynchpin; the aura generator, a hypothetical device capable of holding a self-sustaining aura outside of a person’s body, made possible by the discovery of prismatic Dust.
And so, they work. Iteration after iteration. Combination after permutation. The study of aura itself advanced by leaps and bounds through their failures alone, and the smallest of successes were celebrated enthusiastically.
The work was demanding though, in ways that were not anticipated. The general eventually sent one of his specialists to unlock the aura of every single person involved in the project simply to have more aura to pour into their experiments.
Months turned to years.
Excitement dried up, dead ends abounded. Slowly, scientists pulled out of the project, turning to other, more active fields. Funding fell through, as the general realized that the project was a longshot, and turned Pietro towards Atlas’ financial division for less exclusive grants.
Pietro recalled the long nights, the arguments, and the existentialism that surrounded a project to create life to be a weapon.
He had regretted going to the military for the project, he still did, but he was in too deep, had poured too much of himself into this.
Pietro also recalled the shock of revelation, of knowing what was missing, one late night.
The comprehension that creation required sacrifice.
And so, a year and a half ago, in this very lab, Pietro had grabbed a knife, coated it in prismatic Dust, and carved out a piece of his living aura, to feed to the aura generator.
To feed to his child, so that they may be born.
It was a very concerned Professor Allie Carina that found him in the lab that night, gash on his chest, bloody knife in one hand, and a pale silver sphere that hummed with aura in the other.
Attempt number three hundred and seventy four was a success.
The following weeks had been…interesting, to say the least. With everything that had happened, he had elected to go with option two, for creating a synthetic person. The aura generator was carefully modified, augmented, until it was not simply a generator anymore.
It was a Heart
Building a digital environment conducive to the spontaneous formation of sentient life had actually been the easy part of the whole endeavor, made much easier by judicious usage of Allie’s semblance, the ability to imbue information and emotion into written information. An ability that carried through to digital information as well.
And they, the last two scientists of Project Polendina, created the cradle, filled with puzzles and information and just enough chaos and order to ‘shake things up’ and have things happen.
From the outside it was a mass of everything one might imagine when thinking “random ball of computer.”
And they waited.
At first, there was excitement, anticipation. But as time dragged on, they had settled into a grim determination, faced with the prospect that it might not work. It was hard to keep up faith when there was no sign of progress, nothing for them to even do.
At least, until they had noticed the ‘blips’.
They had dozens of readings coming out of the cradle to monitor what might be happening inside, but the most important two were the processor utilization, a gauge of how much ‘thinking’ was being done inside it, and the aura monitor, a live readout of the state of the aura being sustained by the Heart, usually indicating how active it was.
At first, both were completely random, only differing in scale. Where the utilization could spike enough max the processors, and then drop to nothing, the aura monitor was a barely moving ball of maybe, slightly alive aura.
Occasionally they added more computing resources, monitors, or changed the rules of the environment or adjusted the puzzles, but it was primarily a waiting game, watching as activity steadily grew
Over time though, those readings began to sync up. Utilization stopped varying as much, and the aura actually started noticeably moving.
The first real ‘blip’ had happened nearly five months ago, and had sent Pietro and Allie scrambling. The aura and utilization had, for about five minutes, synced up exactly. And Pietro had seen something utterly fascinating happen to the aura in the Heart.
The steady ball of verdant, deep emerald green aura, the same color as his aura, had visibly shifted. And at the very center, so small it was barely visible to their monitoring equipment, the green had shifted, taking on a new hue, a more vibrant lime green color.
Eventually, the ‘blip’ had faded, but neither had been able to contain their excitement. It was working.
And so they continued on, watching as the syncs became closer, as the aura grew more and more active, as the ‘blips’ became more and more frequent, lasting longer and longer.
Until today.
The puzzles- ones that more resemble basic questions than real puzzles, in order to gauge language comprehension -had been untouched for most of the project. It was expected; the puzzles were one of the ways that the developing intelligence’s understanding of language was being assessed.
They needed some way to communicate, after all. They had already tried telepathy semblances, to no avail, so direct communication was their only option.
What was monumental was that the puzzles were being used, all of them. They were practically bombarded with entries. A quick glance at the entries for the puzzles brought down his mood, only slightly, because most entries were nonsense strings of random characters, and some were just strings of digital noise, random unparseable sequences of bits.
Checking the logs for these entries, however, raised his mood through the roof, because there was obvious intent to the entries, waves of different methodologies, of comprehension. The first few entries were just random ones and zeroes, and the newest contained actual words! Words! Whatever was in there, whoever was in there, knew words! They had probably found Allie’s dictionary!
Pietro sent a quick message to Allie, saying that something was happening, that she needed to get over here.
Oh! If they were using her dictionary, he might be able to track their progress by scanning for first appearances in the puzzle entry streams!
He quickly got to work, blazing through a basic search-count function to find first appearances of words using Allie’s dictionary as a checklist. The woman in question burst through the door behind him, audibly huffing from exertion, but that didn’t really matter because he was putting the finishing touches on his function and then he was grabbing a third monitor to drag the data streams over to use as input (programming intuitive touch screens were so useful) and then Allie was grabbing his shoulder to get his attention-
“What! What happened! What’s wrong!” she practically shouted at him, and that was enough to get him to turn his attention to her, very confused because nothing was wrong?
“N-nothing? Nothing is wrong, Allie.” He stammered out, shaken by the abrupt change in mood and also the woman shaking him.
Her face flashed through a variety of emotions, before settling on confused frustration. “The fuck do you mean, nothing’s wrong, you said something had happened! Literally, you texted me ‘come quick. Hurry. Something happened.’ And somehow expected me to not freak out?”
“Ah? Oh! Oh yes, that does sound much worse without context” he conceded, “but, but, look!” he gestured to the monitor, at the activity and aura levels that were visibly syncing, the pages and pages of answers to the puzzles. He hears her strangled gasp as she processes what is being shown. “something is happening, Allie. Nothing bad, I truly hope, but this, all this, this…”
“By the gods…” She breathes out, and he is finally able to take in her appearance today, a moment of calm filling the room.
Allie Carina would best be described as a floral, kaleidoscopic beansprout. One of the tallest people Pietro knew at 6’6”, she nonetheless endeavored to draw even more attention to herself by dressing in the most extravagant ways possible. Today’s example was a particularly garish blue on blue plaid lab coat, lime green shirt, and deep purple trousers that accented her lavender hair. This ensemble was, of course, accented by her utterly gob smacked expression, eyes flicking through the readouts, taking in the information that Pietro was still struggling to internalize.
“Yes. ‘by the gods,’ indeed.” He agrees.
Her gaze snaps to him, before turning back to the monitors, eyes glancing at his search program, which was just about done.
“Checking vocabulary development over time…” She muses.
“Mhm.” Pietro agrees, just as the monitor dings, spitting out a timestamped list of words. Both lean forward, digesting the data with a fervor only scientists on the verge of a breakthrough could.
“The learning patterns are completely random,” Pietro mutters, “I know how you formatted that dictionary; this is nothing like how you ordered it.”
“I see. But…” Allie trailed off, and Pietro turns to look at her. “I don’t thing it matters, Pietro, the rate of learning is accelerating. Maybe exponential, and I’d eat my coat if it’s not at least some kind of polynomial growth curve. For now, at least.”
The list dings as a new word is added to it.
“They might finish the dictionary in as little as a few days. They might finish it today.” Allie concludes.
Ding
Pietro looks at the monitor again, steeling himself.
“I’ll clear my schedule.” Pietro decides
Ding
“Me too.”
Ding
Ding
Ding
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Hours passed.
Allie ended up being right in regard to the vocabulary growth of the developing intelligence. Their rate of learning had continued accelerating for another hour before leveling off, topping out at a new word learned every few seconds.
It was fast enough to utterly shock Allie, at least until Pietro pointed out that the cradle had access to more computing power than most Atlesian battleships.
The comparison had brought to attention the nature of the mind, the person, that they were bringing into existence, and they were burdened with the uncomfortable truth that they didn’t know. They were treading unprecedented ground.
What they did know was that they would be there for whoever emerged from the cradle.
It was seven hours after Allie had burst into his lab that things truly became interesting.
“Oh, woah, what the fuck?” Allie spoke, breaking the uneasy silence that had developed over the past half hour.
“What is it-“ Pietro’s inquiry was quickly interrupted by his monitors making several very loud, very concerning noises. Alerts filled the screen, and he scrambled to check them, and his heart filled with ice as he read.
‘Warning: Heating Risk’
‘Alert: Insufficient Memory’
Alert: Insufficient Power’
ALERT: Aura Shield Breach’
Those were bad. Those were very very so very bad.
And then they were gone.
Pietro stared, eyes bored into the screen like it would offer any more answers.
According to the logs, activity had spiked incredibly high, every single processor available to the cradle had maxed out instantly, and had apparently tried to go even further.
“You saw that right?” Allie called out, “Cause the aura just flashed so hard I could see it, Pietro.”
“What?!” Pietro whirls as much as he can in his chair, “That’s not- what did you see?” He asked frantically, half his attention on the monitor trying to figure out what had caused the spike.
“it was…” Allie paused, gathering words, “Visually, it was a green sphere of aura, the exact shade of yours, exactly where the Heart should be.”
Pietro heard her trail off, hesitance clear in her voice. He taps away at the keyboard, an idea crystalizing on the cause of all this.
“Anything else? Because that ‘flash’ coincided perfectly with every processor in the cradle trying to burn itself out, and the aura shield breaking.” Pietro asks, his tone urgent.
“Ah.” Allie breathed out, before continuing, “There was…an emotional and synesthetic component. I saw a green sphere. I knew it was a cold, dead remnant, little more than fuel…and that something was sparking in the middle of it.”
Pietro’s brow furrowed. “That…that makes sense…”
“it does?” Allie replied, confusion very evident in her voice.
“Yes, if-“ Pietro was interrupted by another wave of alerts sounded throughout the lab.
‘Warning: Heating Risk’
‘Alert: Insufficient Memory’
‘Alert: Insufficient Power’
ALERT: Aura Shield Breach’
‘EMERGENCY: DAMAGE DETECTED’
He turned to look at Allie, at the cradle, just as the next ‘flash’ bloomed through the room.
Words truly did not capture what he was looking at. Despite being a dozen feet distant, looking at an object the size of his closed fist encased in a foot of computing equipment, he saw the sphere of pure, forest emerald, green aura that was within the Heart with perfect clarity.
He watched as that cold, dead, frozen sphere slowly spun in place.
He watched as it pressed inward, the weight of nonexistence, the ennui of oblivion, the inertia of its silence opposing any change.
And he watched as a tiny spark, a flash, a burning ember flickered in the very center of the sphere.
A lime green, vibrant little piece of life.
And he watched that life burn, etching itself into the green surrounding it, curious and happy and earnest and determined and full of optimism and hope.
The dead green crumbled around the spark, cracks racing through the lifeless aura. The life flared, eating its way through the cracks and fractures, freeing chunks to fall into the fire now burning in the center.
And he watched as that fire dimmed, visibly weakened, expended and spent.
He watched as it was pressed inward, collapsing under the weight of the dead aura.
He watched as the sphere of green aura, with a pebble of lime in the center, faded from view, leaving him looking at the cradle, Allie in the corner of his view, tears trailing down her cheeks.
Pietro was startled to discover he had also been weeping.
He turned back to the monitor, seeing that the activity had dropped back down, but the breach and damage warnings were still there.
“Allie, I need you to grab data cable D-3 and one of the heavy duty power couples and plug them into the cradle. Where doesn’t matter, any valid ports work.” Pietro ordered, hands flying across the keyboard.
“On it.” Allie acknowledged, shaking herself out of the stupor that had taken them both. “You were saying something about, this, making sense?” She asked, before grunting with exertion, presumably as she picked up the cables.
“Yes, I suspect that our intelligence has discovered one of your key words, and is trying to understand it.” He explained. He wondered which key word had been discovered.
The ‘key words’ were specific words that encompassed incredibly broad and important categories. Language, social dynamics, and personhood had been made key words, layered dozens of times by Allie’s semblance. Language, in particular, had been layered nearly a hundred times, pushing Allie to her limits to imbue everything that she thought a new mind might need to know.
“Ah, yeah, that makes sense. I think? Well, it explains the computer stuff that you talked about, but what’s up with the aura? I mean, you saw that too, right?” Allie asked, voice dropping as she asked her last question.
“…I saw. I very much saw that, Allie,” He confirmed, “I haven’t the foggiest as to what it was though. Maybe the mind within has developed enough to connect with the aura, but I suspect we know much less about aura than we thought we did.”
Allie snorted, “Ain’t that right.”
A clunk sounded through the room, quickly followed by a shunk.
“Power and data cables connected. What’s the plan, big guy?” Allie asked, as she walked over to Pietro’s station.
His fingers danced across the keyboard for a few seconds, and he contemplated what exactly he was about to do.
He thought of the green spark crushed under the weight of the aura that should have sustained it. His aura, strangling the life he wanted to bring into the world.
Intellectually, he knew that the aura was no longer his. It had not been since he had cut it out. The generator sustained it, but it did not make it thrive. But that did not change his views. He could not stand to see a child’s curiosity and determination snuffed out, much less by aura that came from him, aura that should have helped and nurtured said child.
His resolve firmed.
“I am giving the cradle access to as much computing power as my Atlas security clearance will allow.” Pietro declared.
Allie froze, slowly turning to face him.
“And, uh, how much is that?” She asked, hesitantly.
“At minimum, the full breadth of the Atlas academy supercomputer systems. It could reach farther, and I will let it if needs be, but the next biggest computer I could access is in Atlas Fleet Command.” He stated.
“Pietro what the fuck?” She stared at him, mouth agape.
He chuckled, “Back when the project was bigger, my access was commensurate with the project’s scope. Nobody changed that when the project was downscaled.”
She stared at him some more, before she barked out a laugh as she shook her head. “Never change, dude, never change. Is it ready?”
Pietro nodded, and pressed the button.
He waited, tense. Thinking. They had, apparently, vastly underestimated how much power the cradle needed to have. There was not much they could do now, besides give the growing intelligence in the Heart the best chance they could.
Green light flared.
Knowing what to look for, his gaze settled on the sphere of aura much faster, peering into it, looking for that pebble of lime he had seen.
And find it he did, sparking and shining and flaring, a still burning ember in the depths of the abyss.
And he watched it ignite.
-green-cracking-breaking-moving-burning-light-burn-Burn-BURN-BURN-
Lime flames burst from the pebble, burning, searing their way through the stagnant aura surrounding it. Absence and emptiness washed away by the light of new discovery, of comprehension and innocence and life.
He watched as the ball of stagnant aura cracked, fracturing, layers forming and shattering, pulled ever more into the growing fire within.
Fragments on the edge of the lime core were pulled inward, falling into its depths, consumed and remade anew, invigorated and resuscitated.
It was like watching a miniature star eat a frozen planet from within.
The conflagration, the ignition, continued. Bigger and bigger chunks fell into the growing mass of energy and action, fractures and quakes propagating through the still aura.
Pietro risked a glance at his monitor, seeing that while the computing usage had spiked unbelievably high at the start, activity was dropping like a rock the more the lime light spread through the Heart. It made sense, the Heart was designed to house a consciousness with aura, and was made of hunter grade materials, ones that would be bolstered by the mere presence of even an unawakened aura.
He turned back, and watched as the outer shell, the last layer of dead aura, broke and collapsed, falling into the newborn star within the Heart.
He watched as that star slowly faded from view, triumph and accomplishment and interest and comprehension and more radiating outward, wisps of emotion that filled the room.
Pietro sighed with relief, knowing that the little life was safe and secure.
He turned to Allie.
Allie turned to him.
They both turned to look at the monitor.
Pietro was very surprised to see that the activity measurement was miniscule. It was flaring and bouncing and varying just as much as before, but a maybe a hundredth of the intensity as before the…event.
It was a significantly greater reduction than expected.
Other than that, Pietro couldn’t see anything else actively wrong. The aura shield was cracked, two processor units had burnt out in the cradle, and he had just gotten a message about unauthorized mainframe access, but everything looked-
Ba-doop
He froze.
Allie let out a strangled gasp next to him.
That was…a message notification. A very specific notification, for a very specific circumstance.
The intelligence had sent a message.
M374 >> SALUTATIONS FATHER