Luca DR
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Edge of apocalypse 75
🕑 Added 2023-06-30 14:03:39 +0000 UTCAfter seeing that there had been no naturally occurring daily quest for more than a day, Albert literally tried blackmailing the system into giving him one. The system did not budge. Which meant that, with no daily quest, the only things he could tackle were old dusty quests he had been procrastinating for ages. Of them, the viable ones were either the development of lightning magic, or of a skill to rewind time.
Body was there too, the quest asking him to absorb an absurd amount of mana into his own body in order to be granted the possibility to develop his own level system. There was a simple reason he was not yet doing the task. Two reasons, actually: the first one was that absorbing mana turned out to be harder than he thought. But the most important was that he didn’t want to rush it.
Albert was instead spending a good portion of his free time thinking about how to best approach the leveling mechanic for when he will eventually receive the blueprint.
He wanted to make the best of it, but at the same time he didn’t want to bloat his whole system and make it a pain to use.
It was a text message, surprisingly, that changed everything. From Marc. The contents: a simple text link leading to some nerdy stuff Marc was into. Understandable, as he was an aspiring physicist.
Computational Foundations for the Second Law of Thermodynamics—Stephen Wolfram Writings
“Mm?” Albert hummed. Curious, from the title he could already guess what was about to happen.
He decided to not immediately resort to the use of Analysis Mode or else he would be stuck in the endless rabbit hole of the internet with no chance to escape. Instead, he started to read through the article, methodically going over the many concepts within. Realizing, somewhere halfway through, that perhaps he shouldn’t slack off on his studies too much, because one never knew when they might come in handy.
Then it was finally time to get to work. “Analysis Mode.”
The core idea – for him – was the shift in view from entropy as ‘chaos’ to entropy as a form irreducibility for a computationally bound observer. Truth be told, there were many parts of the article that would have demanded a deeper investigation, a click on the hyperlink, a nosedive into the technicalities. Perhaps one of these days Albert would do just that.
Even without all that, it was clear that such a change in view could be the key to finally moving past the infamous Perception V roadblock.
Already it felt like some new paradigm was being established in his mind on how to approach the investigation of reality mediated by this inscrutable level five of his perception skill. If all the world was ultimately computation, and it was the impossibility to reduce this computation to a simplified model his mind could understand that resulted in the catastrophic failure he experienced when he used the skill…
If you look at the state of the system, and even know the rules that brought the system to the state it was in… could you find out what the initial conditions were without running the simulation in reverse? Could you skip some steps, reduce the amount of computation needed to go back in time?
Perhaps not. Perhaps there were – and indeed he knew there were – computationally irreducible systems. Systems that look random even though they aren’t. They look random because you happen to have no clue about the initial conditions of the system! And those are very delicate systems, from which entropy emerges as a property. The world as a whole is one such system, of course.
Then all he needed to do was find a way around that. Either he could outsource computation to some external agent – presumably the system or some sort of mana machine – or he would need to come to terms with the fact that what he saw wasn’t 100% accurate but just a shadow of what really was going on in the universe around him.
He couldn’t understand entropy as a puny little human, but perhaps he could not do it even if he was a gargantuan computer spanning entire solar systems. Why even bother? There was, of course, the whole problem about the brain needing to decode information in some way. He couldn’t just say ‘eff it’ and not do anything – he had tried, and it failed. There was no reason to believe it wouldn’t fail now.
Still, piece by piece, the more he thought about it the more things began to make sense for him. He just needed to reduce the amount of information, surrender to the idea that he couldn’t process it all. What if he tried to isolate a single portion of his visual field, and only tried to perceive entropy around that?
It was surprisingly hard to pull off. Without the system’s help, as the skill was already there and developed, it took conscious effort not to let attention wander. Even Analysis Mode was beginning to show signs of being overwhelmed by what was being asked of it.
But he knew what would happen if he got distracted even for a moment, and thus Albert took special precautions.
He set up a candle, and began to meditate while staring at it. Only when the world around it started to recede did he gingerly try to activate the perception skill.
And it worked! Incredibly, it worked! The excitement was enough that Analysis Mode was disrupted. The deed was done, however, and Albert could only stare in wonder at what he was seeing.
It was mesmerizing. Seeing the flow of… stuff, whatever it was, going in and out of the flame, up and down the air, circulating, swirling, exchanging energies and information. There was a noise all about, some sort of chaotic motion that he knew was the result of hidden parts of the world he couldn’t even fathom.
It was so alive. So real.
Skill: Perception V is no longer UNSTABLE
Quest Update: Racial Evolution – Psionic.
· Find a way to make Perception Level 5 usable.
· Plant the Iperborea Seed to restore the shield around Elvenhome.
· Cross to the other side.
· Return.
· Reward: Race evolved into Psionic Half-Elf.
***
Albert didn't need to test the psionic powers he got from PsyOps. Not that he could, with the skills being unstable. He just took stock of them, because thanks to the Usurp skill he knew perfectly well what the skills could do and how to theoretically achieve their maximum potential.
Correction. Not actually their theoretical maximum, but only up to what PsyOps had been able to achieve when he was alive. Every improvement beyond that point had to be the fruit of Albert’s hard labor.
The skills were, frankly, quite scary. Too powerful. Telekinesis, mind control... PsyOps had to be very stupid to lose against Albert when he did, or too cocky, or a combination of the two. Because psionic powers were really, really strong.
Albert's mother explained one of the reasons PsyOps was not nearly as dangerous as he could have been: the brainwashing done to him at the CARF, that thankfully clouded his ability to think, making him believe that his mastery over his skills was actually lower than it actually was. Another reason was his nature, not entirely human.
Albert was unclear as how it was relevant, though.
***
There was a lot of preparation to be done while the event Albert’s mother was tracking developed. Some of this preparation involved training in martial arts. There was no way to tell whether the event would deposit humanoid opponents, of course, but a good foundation in martial arts was going to do more than just prepare Albert to fight other humanoids.
It would help him understand his own body and powers, and allow him to become a true war machine. Strength alone is nothing, and while he had a lot of it thanks to his skills, without technique he could not really claim to be putting it to good use.
However, it must be said that what pushed Albert to pursue a martial path was a very peculiar event. He was idling about in the Open Office, sprawled on the sofa, when a random idea popped in his mind. Its contents were irrelevant, and soon forgotten.
“Lair, where is my mother? I need to talk to her.”
“She’s in the training room.” The Lair dutifully responded.
“Training room?”
“She had me expand the gym the other day. Added a training room to it.”
It was when Albert went there to check that his jaw almost dropped to the floor. His mother was in a large, somewhat empty, and slightly dark room. Alone as the only person there in the flesh but surrounded by many holograms of various people, armed with weapons, guns, spears and sporting various degrees of armor.
She was sitting on the ground in the lotus pose, eyes closed.
The holograms started to rush towards her.
Her eyes shot open.
What followed was a display of skill that left Albert speechless. His mother thrashed her opponents, holograms upon holograms approaching her and fighting with unique styles of combat that ranged from traditional to modern to utterly unfair. And she did so with total ease. She danced around them, delivering blows and dodging attacks, like a vicious snake feasting on defenseless prey.
She jumped, ducked, blocked, counterattacked.
Without even breaking a sweat. Her face was a stone mask of concentration. Her body was a weapon.
Albert left without saying a word, after a few minutes of silent watching.
“Lair, I need a computer.” He said.
“Okay. I'll take one from your mother's room. I'm sure she won't mind. What do you need it for?”
“I’m going to watch martial arts videos, UFC tournaments, conditioning exercises, and a bunch of other techniques with Analysis Mode active to commit them to memory.”
“Sounds smart. Have you thought about the possibility of descending into a rabbit hole?”
Albert cocked his head.
“Your mother warned me about the risk, although she used a different wording. She suggested you set a maximum time to spend focusing, after which I will attempt to pull you out.”
“Oh. Great idea, actually. Make it… 8 hours.”
***
Sometimes, Albert wondered whether he would see video-Albert ever again. He had no reason to believe he wouldn’t, of course, but as of right now, the current state of Quests had none of them offering to show him a video as a reward. He felt relieved, because videos usually required a considerable mental effort to actually follow the instructions, but also a bit saddened. Did he miss other-Albert?
***
In the two days leading to the fracture, Samantha had monitored the forming of the event closely, and had sent Albert to scout the area beforehand to get a feel of the lay of the land and to add it to his teleportation map.
She also had him prepare for it, stocking up on weapons and ammo so as to not end up like in the fight with the dryads. She had prepared an impressive arsenal for him, with the help of Transit providing some high-grade weapons, half of which were not even supposed to exist.
He also requested to be provided with blades and all sorts of weapons, to which she happily obliged. When the Lair told her what prompted him to go down this path, she could barely contain the smug grin.
Finally, with the alarms blaring in the control room, she burst out into the Open Office where her son was resting on the sofa, almost taking the door down in the process.
“It’s happening.”
Comments
luca de rosa
Corrected, thanks!
Findell
This should be 75
