The Caged Soul - Wanderers
The Forum
It took Noliel several gasps and coughs before she regained a feeling of what it was like to swallow her chest and pull air into her lungs by her own will. Pinching her own skin on her tummy felt painful -wonderful pain surging through her nerves into her mind. She had never been in any way masochistic but the fact that she could feel parts of her body that had been as good as dead to her brain for so many months that had been like years was something that filled her with such joy surging within her chest and warming her heart like non she had felt before in her life. She passed her fingers over her breasts, belly, her waist and then her hips. It felt like electricity prickled between her skin, tickling and exciting. It was just after several minutes to get used to feel herself again that she started to rationally think of why this had happened? And where was she now? Why was everything pitch-black, why did she not feel the tiniest surge of wind or air movement? Why the air was so tasteless and lukewarm? - Not cold and not really warm either. Question after question stapled in her mind as she slowly regained the balance and control of her legs, standing up slowly. She passed her hands once more over her own body feeling her skin, her warmth, and the tiny details of the muscles, thin layers of fat under her skin and the form of the bones that gave her limbs their unique form. It felt too real to be a dream.
She started to try and find out where she was, trying to desperately find something to fixate her vision upon. As she wandered around she suddenly stopped, pondering if the people that made her pass through this process may still be close by and be in audible range. She started to shout for someone.
“Hello, is there anybody that can hear me?” She yelled into the darkness.
“Hello, can anyone hear me?” She yelled again, this time with a slightly softer voice.
As she was about to keep her head hanging and give up the darkness was ripped by a voice she had heard before today.
“Yes we can hear you Noliel. You must be very confused about your current condition. This is Dr. Andreas Jason Hill, one of the three men who brought you to our facility.”
“Where are you, I can’t see you. I can’t see anything. Am I’m blind?”
“You are not blind. There is just no light reflected within your forum which your eyes could catch. There is something that you must first understand about your condition before I continue explaining how you can improve your current situation so you don’t get overwhelmed.”
“My condition? I can talk, walk and feel again and you say that I’m not blind and that the lights are just switched off. What is there to improve about my condition? I feel perfect! I have never dreamed that I would walk or talk again.”
“The thing is that you don’t realize your current condition. You are not actually talking walking and feeling like a regular person. What you are doing is all happening within the bounds of something we call an ASC.”
“What in the world is an ASC? Can you speak bloody English?”
“An ASC is a short term for Aether Soul Cage. It is a device we use to store human auras in an electronic device.”
“You say that I’m actually living inside a toaster now? That must be the most absurd thing I have ever listened to in my life.”
“Well we had great success seven times now. And an ASC is something more sophisticated then a ‘toaster’ young lady. Far more sophisticated than anything that you might know.”
“You are saying that you place human souls, mine included inside a computer system? Isn’t that murder?”
“Technically yes, but your souls survived, so how much of a murder is it if the victim does not die.”
“Wait a moment, if my body is stored on a hard drive now, why do I feel my own body? Why did I feel pain when I pinched my own belly? Why do I feel pressure on my skin and under my feet?”
“The body you are feeling now, the feeling of your body and general perception of your surroundings as a human are thought stimulants. The ASC stores your living essence, a unique energy signature that some would call the soul upon a physical data storage platform. A platform that is more sophisticated than any microprocessor ever invented and a memory and data storage capacity larger than most server clusters made out of cheaper materials.”
“You mean that this body is not real? That this is all some kind of computer game?”
“That is not at all what I’m trying to say. The ASC is build in such a way that it feeds your consciousness’ event horizon with electronic stimulants that replicate your persona. You could consider it as ascension to a new kind of being in its own world.”
“But doesn’t that mean that I can’t interact with anyone that is not part of this world?”
“Oh don’t worry Noliel, you can interact with humans. Aren’t you doing so right now, talking to me?”
“Yes, but I mean the other kind of interactions you know, nasty stuff.”
“Nasty stuff?”
“You know what I mean! But… considering that I didn’t really do anything before being zapped into a toaster by you guys it doesn’t really matter right? Why look a gift donkey in the mouth, right?” Noliel said trying to be optimistic for once.
“That is quite a positive attitude, Noliel, just what you need to be able to fulfill your task.”
“Task? No one said I would be working for you guys. Besides I’m still just a student at the academy. I don’t even have a citizen class license with work permit yet!”
“Well your mother signed a contract with our organization to save you from your miserable situation. In return we need your help in order to help humanity overcome a catastrophic situation.”
“So if I like or hate my current condition I can just complain at my mother? Great!”
“Look, what you are going to learn is not very tedious, but it is not very easy either. And when I explain to you how grave the situation about humanity in our world is I’m sure you will understand. But first I don’t want to make you panic before you know what you are capable of and I don’t want to bother your mind with too much talk as you are in a new unknown environment. I am going to explain to you how you can positively change your conditions, even living within a machine, as it’s not our desire to leave you suffering in a cold dark place. The ASC is quite sophisticated at being manipulated by their residents.”
Dr. Hill’s voice went silent for a moment before he continued talking.
“The condition in which you find yourself now, your perception of a body in your world is what we call your Avatar. It is your subconscious need for clinging to the world with a body that it is familiar with. To accomplish this, the ASC creates the necessary stimulations for your consciousness to perceive your reality, a digital reality, as similar as possible to the world you once knew yet with its laws completely free to be changed by the Resident of the ASC. Think about your code of live as the following: your imagination designs - the ASC creates. It’s that simple. In the case of your avatar the subconscious has already very detailed plans for the ASC to create it through the experiences of your previous life and imprints of your genetic code being available as information within the subconscious sections of your aura that is stored within the ASC.”
“Well if my new body is so great, how comes I don’t see a thing in here? I’m not a mirror hugging makeup goat like some of those bitches at my academy but I would fancy a look at myself.”
“That is what I was going to explain next. The room you are standing in is actually space less and only air is simulated with normal density to avoid causing you to enter a panic that would follow breathlessness. If you started walking in any one direction without stopping you would never reach an end. This darkness you are standing in is what we call a Forum, your forum in which within it is where you live while within the bounds of the ASC. We will give you the opportunity to interact directly with the outside world as well, but first you should know how your forum works.”
“My forum? Like an Internet board where people whine at each other and fill out the web with meaningless trash talk?”
“No, no,” Andreas laughed.
“Your forum is your base ground to extend your living place through your imagination. There are no limits to what you can do here. This place could be compared to a clean sheet of paper, and you are the artist!”
“That sounds like magic. I’m starting to get interested in this stuff. How does that work?”
“Simple. You imagine it, it happens. Before you start thinking about strange stuff now, I’d like to remind you that your aura is still a living thing that requires as much rest as it did within your human body. The necessity for sleep and dreaming is still almost as strong as it was before and using the Forum to create will strain your consciousness, which you will experience as exhaustion and if abused can cause severe consequences to the hardware that will have to compensate extreme spikes in conscious activity. Your ASC is now the body you must care about as well as to the actual energy signature which is your Aura.”
“Well it would be boring to be forced to do one-nighters for the rest of my life anyway he he.”
“Ehm… right. I will now explain how the process of shaping works. The first thing you will want is a source of light in your forum, so you can have a view of your avatar and make an image of your surroundings which will be important to be presented with your work.”
“Well can’t I just imagine up some light bulbs?”
Suddenly the girl heard a shattering noise as if thin glass broke on the floor.
“Haha, you are quite energetic. Well, the light bulbs you wanted don't provide light by themselves, besides needing something to be fixed upon, do they? Besides you need to work out positioning of things you shape in your forum.”
The girl rubbed her chin. This was going to be more complicated then she thought.
“Before you start shaping something to be created in your forum you should think the consequences of doing so through thoroughly. You are too familiar to how things are in the real world not really considering each detail of how your world actually functions and only using it superficially, but there everything is already inserted into a working system, a system that just like yours had its source from something simple that evolved and changed through the work of billions of years.”
“So where should I start? I don't know anything specific of how the world started out besides knowing that it was once a huge liquid pile of lava and such.”
“Well you must think harder than that. You don’t need to recreate the planet as it was, as you can simply invoke the world as you know it, yet you must respect the laws under which it works right now. Just think about it: What makes things live in our world? Where does all the energy come from in its most simple natural source?”
“The power plants?”
The man laughed hard again.
“Alright, that is not so wrong, but I’m not only talking about electricity. Where does all energy come from, the one that makes live possible, which makes plants grow?”
“Ahhh you mean the sun. You want me to create a sun in my forum? Won’t I get burned to death?”
“Ok, slow now. What you must know about the act of shaping is that the objects you conjure have physical properties that you must control. There is no way for your avatar to die, but negative experiences will still be perceived by your consciousness just like the positive ones and a unsupportable amount of stress or pain can cause you to fall into a coma, which causes your subconscious to protect itself from things that it cannot deal with. Always keep that in mind when you are shaping in your forum or you could irreversibly be lost within your own ASC never to return if we are unlucky.”
“Ok so even though I can’t die from burning myself to ashes my brain wouldn't like to deal with the consequences. Got it.”
“That’s mostly correct. For you to have light I would suggest we start learning about distance while creating. An easy way for your ASC to correctly interpret the distance between you and a desired object, it is a good idea to try and focus on a known distance from your lifetime which you have experienced before. Even though you might be unaware of the distance you actually might have travelled, your subconscious will have this information memorized and the ASC will be able to localize and use it and you will be able to use that distance as a reference in the future. You will discover that things learned within the ASC are very easy to recall in the future.”
“Alright. I guess you want me to test it?”
“If you would be so kind. I’d like you to think about an apple, a red juicy fist sized apple.”
“What if I don’t like red ones?”
“Oh girl... then just let it be a green one. The color really doesn't matter. What I want you to do tough, is to think of a distance first, a short distance that you remember from your earlier life. Can you do that, Noliel?”
The girl started to like the challenges placed upon her head. She realized that this was not the real world, but to her everything felt new and exciting, a long forgotten experience. On top of being able to move and feel with her entire body she had something to do that would not vanish in her memories, something that would remain permanent, her own real world. She did not miss her previous condition at all so she gladly accepted her newfound personal freedom. She wondered to which extensions she could manipulate this empty room she was in, creating things with mere thoughts. She felt never so alive for the first in a very long time.
“Let’s bring it on!” Noliel shouted energetically into the void.
She focused on what Dr. Hill had told her. She closed her eyes and first imagined a distance from her past, in this instance the steps used to take to go from the kitchen to the living room in the apartment she lived in most of her life. She remembered it well, as she always helped mother to bring cutlery to the table along with her aromatically smelling food which she enjoyed so much. Her thoughts wandered over to impressions of smells and sounds as she suddenly shook her head realizing that she was not concentrating on the right memory, her mind drifting. She tried to focus on the number of steps, the time taken to go from the table to the kitchen suddenly seeing the distance like a red line in her mind, walking along it and the distance between her feet becoming a real factor on which she focused before opening her eyes. She was surprised that even though fractured, she could quickly find the memories she was looking for without her mind wandering off thinking about something that had nothing to do with the subject.
“I think I have a good feel of a short distance.” Noliel exclaimed to Dr. Hill.
“Excellent. I would like you to think about the distance as if it was a line between you and the apple I talked to you about. How long do you think the distance between you and the object is, so I can verify it?”
“About 8-10 meters.”
“Alright. Now imagine the fruit, but while doing so please picture the distance between you and wish it into existence.”
Noliel closed her eyes, focusing on the nature of the object, its texture, its feel. She tried remembering how it felt to bite into a green apple which had not ripen yet. She remembered the sensations of tough clean peel, a spongy yet pretty hard pod which caused a sour-sweet juice to spread in the mouth when broken off the apple with the teeth and chewed upon. She remembered the presence of the carpel and its seeds in the center of the fruit, its dry caulis and a small green oval leave attached to it. She tried to combine this thought with the distance between the kitchen and the living room of her old home, carrying the apple in her hand, placing it on the table and turning around going backwards to the kitchen, trying to feel the distance. A crackling noise sounded through the forum as she opened her eyes when she finished.
“Excellent work - I can see that you created an apple in your forum in just about 9.23 meters away from you, really precise work.” The voice of Dr. Hill sounded through the dark.
“Well it’s all good and nice to hear that, but I don't see the apple. Not that I am hungry, but I would really like to taste it!”
“Then you should let it be light. The next thing I want you to create is your own sun. But of course I will lead you through the necessary steps to avoid any accidents.”
“Maybe I should whish for some sun blocker lotion first?”
Dr. Hill disregarded the comment and continued.
“What I want you to do is to think about some time in your life when you were exposed to an agreeable amount of sunshine.”
Noliel closed her eyes, even though it was already completely dark in the Forum. She tried to remember the time she was lying in the sun on the beach. She summoned the smell of warm air into her thoughts, the rushing of the waves as they rolled over the sand of the white beach, white foam slowly seeping into the granulated microscopic pieces of stone of which the sand was composed, changing its color dark through the difference in which light broke on the surface of the wet sand. She imagined the smell of salty, humid air with the slight scent of algae and blue mussels which were attached to the rocks in the water, exposed to the wind because of the low tide. She tried to focus her thoughts towards the sky, her objective being getting a feel for the intensity of the suns light, its warmth. She imagined a blinding light which caused her eyes to close in reflex, strong enough to burn out the receptors in her retina causing blindness if she would expose them to this light for too long. A live giving force, so strong and large that even its extreme distance from the earth was but a minor obstacle for its radiation to induce warmth and light upon being reflected by all the things on earth, giving the impression of color and existence to everything the human mind could perceive with their eyes in the world.
Yes, such would have to be the force that would illuminate the world she had to create for herself. She felt warmth filling her, not from the sun being reflected and partially absorbed by her skin, but surging from her insides, a mixture of pride and joy making her smile broadly at the heavens in the images of her mind.
“I have the perfect definition of the sun for my forum, Dr. Hill” Noliel softly said, her head still turned towards the nonexistent ceiling of her forum. As she opened her eyes, her lenses contracted as if her eyes where looking into real light in her mind.
“Good work. Hold onto that feeling while we now have to make up the correct definition of distance for the sun in your world. Of course this time we have to use measures that you could impossibly have experienced, which however can be visualized through the help of outside information. The ASC allows you to access and browse the internet of the world for information on any subject you might be interested in, to increase your pool of resources that allow you to shape your forum. To do that, I will teach you how to Link into the outside world but staying within a connected system. This sounds complicated but is a really simple process.”
“For now go about 13 steps forward and see if you can find the apple you created before.”
Noliel slowly started stepping forward; she could feel her foot rolling over the seamless surface of the floor in her forum. She counted the steps in her head slowly moving forward within the complete darkness, trying to move completely straight. It was in this situation that she began to understand how difficult it was searching for something without having any visual reference or difference in the nature of the ground which was completely featureless. She felt aimless and lost, trying just to move forward. As she finished counting to 13, one step being given each time, she crouched down, spreading her arms in search of the apple. She placed one knee down and waved her hands over the floor. Suddenly her small finger knocked against an object. Noliel placed her hand around it and lifted the object of the floor, standing straight once more. She groped the object with both her hands knowing that it had to be the apple she created, it felt hard clean and cold. She brought the apple to her small mouth, opened it and took a relatively large bite out of the fruit, the piece she just bit off slowly spreading its taste in her mouth, a sour-sweet juicy flavor passing over her tongue. As she breathed in, savoring the ability to appreciate food, an ability from which she was disabled for such a long time, she felt the aroma of the apple flowing through her nose enhancing the taste even more, the scent of flowers and all the small little components that made up the fruit's aroma lowering themselves over her consciousness like a sheet of airy translucent silk.
“Judging from the way your chewing on that piece of apple I assume you are satisfied with the results of your creation. Remember that it was your imagination, your memories which created the properties of that apple, as it will be with anything you do within your forum.” The voice of Dr. Andreas Hill sounded in the air.
“Thish tashtesh really naische!” Noliel responded with a full mouth.
“Alright. I will now teach you how to get information from the outside world. But first I’d like to heed a word of warning. The Internet is very useful to receive information, but it is crucial that you keep a low profile. The ASC is designed to protect you from any unauthorized access from the outside, but if someone would came aware to the nature of your existence through leaked information, I don't know to which extends someone could go in terms of reverse engineering the defenses acquiring knowledge about the technology that the ASC is composed of in the process. So there is a strict rule that you may never brake, in the form of not sharing the nature of your existence to anyone through the Internet. Use it like you would use a library when you are in need of resources, information that you might need in order to enhance your creations' properties. This is in the interest of your own safety, always remember that Noliel.”
Noliel nodded in the darkness, her left cheek still swollen from the un-chewed piece of apple in her mouth she just added to it.
“The way for you to access the outside world’s electronic systems is through the creation of windows to the information you require. The ASC is linked through the outside world through a wireless connection which is heavily protected through firewalls and subprograms against assault of your stored information, your memories and the entire consciousness supporting hardware and software. The way connections to the outside world are represented within the forum, once called upon, is lines across the surface of the floor to which you can communicate. To do that a simple body contact is enough to link you up. There are many different lines within the floor you are standing upon, and simply touching them will enable you to get a mental image of the information you are searching for. You will need to guide your vision through the Internet yourself, supported by the ASC's intercom which allows accessing any existing network and translating the information to stimulations that your consciousness can correctly interpret.”
“So I can surf the Internet without a holo-board or a fingerpoint? That sounds really cool.”
“Well the thing about consciousness oriented browsing of information is the need for your mind to be able to guide your reception correctly through the correct sources. It is a very straining process that will require some time to get used to, but for now we will only need to lookup information about a distance of a star and yourself, to get some light and warmth into your forum.”
“Alright, what do I have to do to start?”
“I’d like you to crouch down and touch the floor with your left index finger and move it along the surface until you can feel a tingling sensation.”
Noliel shrugged and crouched down extending her left arm holding her left index finger extended. She slowly placed it onto the flat ground and started pushing it over its surface. Suddenly she felt a prickle in her left index finger. That must have been what Dr. Hill was talking about.
“I found it, Dr. Andreas.”
“Very good, now I want you to close your eyes and welcome the images that the ASC provides regarding to your starting point.”
Noliel closed her eyes, suddenly a white square appearing in her mind. It was blank except for a small symbol in the middle that looked like a house with an uncommon triangular ceiling. The words 'home' where printed under it.
“I can see a little house on a page.”
“This is your reference starting point. A blank page generated by the ASC as the bridge point to which you can come back to when you are finished. Remember that symbol well, as when you want to turn back to your Forum you will have to access the home page first and then recede into your forum, doing so will require you to focus on that symbol to be brought back. As for looking for information, simply think about what you would like to look for and the ASC will give you options that fit with the images and information that are passed forward to it within which you can narrow down your search by browsing through them.”
“So I just have to think about the sun or astronomy and I will find the information and impressions I need?”
“Yes, just like that.”
Noliel, still clinging to that memory of the sun shining on a bright day on a beach, thought about it floating out in space, like a large lonely ball of fire. As the thoughts crawled through her mind the page in front of her started to be filled with icons and descriptions about numerous websites and links ranging from stars, space, planets, spacecrafts to science fiction movies and tourist guides for moon visits. She focused her thoughts on the results that seemed to have to do with astrology, images of descriptions and pictures of the solar system, data about distances between planets, planet sizes, composition, laws of gravity, time tables and a lot of other information being rearranged into a list in front of her consciousness all unrelated results disappearing from the list as she focused more and more and the subject she was really looking for. She was surprised how fast she was able to read and memorize the information displayed in the pictures, descriptions, informative grids and equations and how easy it was to browse through the information and guiding her consciousness through it.
“Wow. I learned almost everything there is to know about the solar system in a few minutes.” She exclaimed as her mind flew back to the home page and she opened her eyes, lifting her finger from the ground.
“So you do know the distance between the sun and the earth, along with the size of the sun?” Dr. Hill asked.
“The average distance between the earth and the sun is 149 million km, the mass of the sun is 333000 times that of earth and the size is about 1.3 million times as big as the earth. The earth is around 6 sextillion tons heavy, having an average diameter of 12700 km, 39842 km to cross its equator.”
“What can you tell me about the chemical composition of each of those celestial bodies?”
“The sun is by 71% composed of hydrogen and 27.1% of helium. It is also composed to minor degrees by oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, neon, iron and sulfur. The earth's atmosphere contains about 78% nitrogen 21% oxygen 0.93% argon 0.038% carbon dioxide and very minor amounts of other gases. The atmosphere’s influence towards outer space is about at an altitude of about 120km.” Noliel listed know-it-all style.
“Exactly. As you see, physical laws apply to your forum as much as they applies to the world normal humans live in, the ASC respecting a known ambient of existence to ease synchronization with the aura. So while you are able to breathe right now due to a simulated presence of air, it would be in your best interest when you replicate earths conditions to think about the atmosphere as well, if you don't want to get roasted.” Dr. Hill explained, his voice echoing through the forum.
“Now I’m going to create my sun, watch me!”
“Ambitious in getting the big things done first, hum?”
Noliel closed her eyes, extended her free left hand towards the sky and tried to imagine the sun, in conjunction with all the information, distance, composition, size and how its light felt. She lowered her head slightly, her eyes shut so tight that wrinkles formed on the skin around them, her teeth held together so hard that the muscles on the back of her maxillary emerged causing a slight elevation on the skin around her jaws. Her left hand held with its fingers straddled she moaned softly at the stress that was being exerted on her mind. As the pressure on her consciousness released, she suddenly opened her eyes looking around. She smiled. Yet it was still pitch black.
“Alright the sun is done. Now I have a couple minutes before its radiation gets here to create an atmosphere.”
“Smart girl. Most of our previous subjects before you created an atmosphere first in fear they would be burned, not realizing that at 149 million km distance light takes around 8 minutes to reach you.”
“Well let me think about if I can remember the feeling of wind and air in those 8 minutes then.” Noliel said cocky.
She started to try and find out where she was, trying to desperately find something to fixate her vision upon. As she wandered around she suddenly stopped, pondering if the people that made her pass through this process may still be close by and be in audible range. She started to shout for someone.
“Hello, is there anybody that can hear me?” She yelled into the darkness.
“Hello, can anyone hear me?” She yelled again, this time with a slightly softer voice.
As she was about to keep her head hanging and give up the darkness was ripped by a voice she had heard before today.
“Yes we can hear you Noliel. You must be very confused about your current condition. This is Dr. Andreas Jason Hill, one of the three men who brought you to our facility.”
“Where are you, I can’t see you. I can’t see anything. Am I’m blind?”
“You are not blind. There is just no light reflected within your forum which your eyes could catch. There is something that you must first understand about your condition before I continue explaining how you can improve your current situation so you don’t get overwhelmed.”
“My condition? I can talk, walk and feel again and you say that I’m not blind and that the lights are just switched off. What is there to improve about my condition? I feel perfect! I have never dreamed that I would walk or talk again.”
“The thing is that you don’t realize your current condition. You are not actually talking walking and feeling like a regular person. What you are doing is all happening within the bounds of something we call an ASC.”
“What in the world is an ASC? Can you speak bloody English?”
“An ASC is a short term for Aether Soul Cage. It is a device we use to store human auras in an electronic device.”
“You say that I’m actually living inside a toaster now? That must be the most absurd thing I have ever listened to in my life.”
“Well we had great success seven times now. And an ASC is something more sophisticated then a ‘toaster’ young lady. Far more sophisticated than anything that you might know.”
“You are saying that you place human souls, mine included inside a computer system? Isn’t that murder?”
“Technically yes, but your souls survived, so how much of a murder is it if the victim does not die.”
“Wait a moment, if my body is stored on a hard drive now, why do I feel my own body? Why did I feel pain when I pinched my own belly? Why do I feel pressure on my skin and under my feet?”
“The body you are feeling now, the feeling of your body and general perception of your surroundings as a human are thought stimulants. The ASC stores your living essence, a unique energy signature that some would call the soul upon a physical data storage platform. A platform that is more sophisticated than any microprocessor ever invented and a memory and data storage capacity larger than most server clusters made out of cheaper materials.”
“You mean that this body is not real? That this is all some kind of computer game?”
“That is not at all what I’m trying to say. The ASC is build in such a way that it feeds your consciousness’ event horizon with electronic stimulants that replicate your persona. You could consider it as ascension to a new kind of being in its own world.”
“But doesn’t that mean that I can’t interact with anyone that is not part of this world?”
“Oh don’t worry Noliel, you can interact with humans. Aren’t you doing so right now, talking to me?”
“Yes, but I mean the other kind of interactions you know, nasty stuff.”
“Nasty stuff?”
“You know what I mean! But… considering that I didn’t really do anything before being zapped into a toaster by you guys it doesn’t really matter right? Why look a gift donkey in the mouth, right?” Noliel said trying to be optimistic for once.
“That is quite a positive attitude, Noliel, just what you need to be able to fulfill your task.”
“Task? No one said I would be working for you guys. Besides I’m still just a student at the academy. I don’t even have a citizen class license with work permit yet!”
“Well your mother signed a contract with our organization to save you from your miserable situation. In return we need your help in order to help humanity overcome a catastrophic situation.”
“So if I like or hate my current condition I can just complain at my mother? Great!”
“Look, what you are going to learn is not very tedious, but it is not very easy either. And when I explain to you how grave the situation about humanity in our world is I’m sure you will understand. But first I don’t want to make you panic before you know what you are capable of and I don’t want to bother your mind with too much talk as you are in a new unknown environment. I am going to explain to you how you can positively change your conditions, even living within a machine, as it’s not our desire to leave you suffering in a cold dark place. The ASC is quite sophisticated at being manipulated by their residents.”
Dr. Hill’s voice went silent for a moment before he continued talking.
“The condition in which you find yourself now, your perception of a body in your world is what we call your Avatar. It is your subconscious need for clinging to the world with a body that it is familiar with. To accomplish this, the ASC creates the necessary stimulations for your consciousness to perceive your reality, a digital reality, as similar as possible to the world you once knew yet with its laws completely free to be changed by the Resident of the ASC. Think about your code of live as the following: your imagination designs - the ASC creates. It’s that simple. In the case of your avatar the subconscious has already very detailed plans for the ASC to create it through the experiences of your previous life and imprints of your genetic code being available as information within the subconscious sections of your aura that is stored within the ASC.”
“Well if my new body is so great, how comes I don’t see a thing in here? I’m not a mirror hugging makeup goat like some of those bitches at my academy but I would fancy a look at myself.”
“That is what I was going to explain next. The room you are standing in is actually space less and only air is simulated with normal density to avoid causing you to enter a panic that would follow breathlessness. If you started walking in any one direction without stopping you would never reach an end. This darkness you are standing in is what we call a Forum, your forum in which within it is where you live while within the bounds of the ASC. We will give you the opportunity to interact directly with the outside world as well, but first you should know how your forum works.”
“My forum? Like an Internet board where people whine at each other and fill out the web with meaningless trash talk?”
“No, no,” Andreas laughed.
“Your forum is your base ground to extend your living place through your imagination. There are no limits to what you can do here. This place could be compared to a clean sheet of paper, and you are the artist!”
“That sounds like magic. I’m starting to get interested in this stuff. How does that work?”
“Simple. You imagine it, it happens. Before you start thinking about strange stuff now, I’d like to remind you that your aura is still a living thing that requires as much rest as it did within your human body. The necessity for sleep and dreaming is still almost as strong as it was before and using the Forum to create will strain your consciousness, which you will experience as exhaustion and if abused can cause severe consequences to the hardware that will have to compensate extreme spikes in conscious activity. Your ASC is now the body you must care about as well as to the actual energy signature which is your Aura.”
“Well it would be boring to be forced to do one-nighters for the rest of my life anyway he he.”
“Ehm… right. I will now explain how the process of shaping works. The first thing you will want is a source of light in your forum, so you can have a view of your avatar and make an image of your surroundings which will be important to be presented with your work.”
“Well can’t I just imagine up some light bulbs?”
Suddenly the girl heard a shattering noise as if thin glass broke on the floor.
“Haha, you are quite energetic. Well, the light bulbs you wanted don't provide light by themselves, besides needing something to be fixed upon, do they? Besides you need to work out positioning of things you shape in your forum.”
The girl rubbed her chin. This was going to be more complicated then she thought.
“Before you start shaping something to be created in your forum you should think the consequences of doing so through thoroughly. You are too familiar to how things are in the real world not really considering each detail of how your world actually functions and only using it superficially, but there everything is already inserted into a working system, a system that just like yours had its source from something simple that evolved and changed through the work of billions of years.”
“So where should I start? I don't know anything specific of how the world started out besides knowing that it was once a huge liquid pile of lava and such.”
“Well you must think harder than that. You don’t need to recreate the planet as it was, as you can simply invoke the world as you know it, yet you must respect the laws under which it works right now. Just think about it: What makes things live in our world? Where does all the energy come from in its most simple natural source?”
“The power plants?”
The man laughed hard again.
“Alright, that is not so wrong, but I’m not only talking about electricity. Where does all energy come from, the one that makes live possible, which makes plants grow?”
“Ahhh you mean the sun. You want me to create a sun in my forum? Won’t I get burned to death?”
“Ok, slow now. What you must know about the act of shaping is that the objects you conjure have physical properties that you must control. There is no way for your avatar to die, but negative experiences will still be perceived by your consciousness just like the positive ones and a unsupportable amount of stress or pain can cause you to fall into a coma, which causes your subconscious to protect itself from things that it cannot deal with. Always keep that in mind when you are shaping in your forum or you could irreversibly be lost within your own ASC never to return if we are unlucky.”
“Ok so even though I can’t die from burning myself to ashes my brain wouldn't like to deal with the consequences. Got it.”
“That’s mostly correct. For you to have light I would suggest we start learning about distance while creating. An easy way for your ASC to correctly interpret the distance between you and a desired object, it is a good idea to try and focus on a known distance from your lifetime which you have experienced before. Even though you might be unaware of the distance you actually might have travelled, your subconscious will have this information memorized and the ASC will be able to localize and use it and you will be able to use that distance as a reference in the future. You will discover that things learned within the ASC are very easy to recall in the future.”
“Alright. I guess you want me to test it?”
“If you would be so kind. I’d like you to think about an apple, a red juicy fist sized apple.”
“What if I don’t like red ones?”
“Oh girl... then just let it be a green one. The color really doesn't matter. What I want you to do tough, is to think of a distance first, a short distance that you remember from your earlier life. Can you do that, Noliel?”
The girl started to like the challenges placed upon her head. She realized that this was not the real world, but to her everything felt new and exciting, a long forgotten experience. On top of being able to move and feel with her entire body she had something to do that would not vanish in her memories, something that would remain permanent, her own real world. She did not miss her previous condition at all so she gladly accepted her newfound personal freedom. She wondered to which extensions she could manipulate this empty room she was in, creating things with mere thoughts. She felt never so alive for the first in a very long time.
“Let’s bring it on!” Noliel shouted energetically into the void.
She focused on what Dr. Hill had told her. She closed her eyes and first imagined a distance from her past, in this instance the steps used to take to go from the kitchen to the living room in the apartment she lived in most of her life. She remembered it well, as she always helped mother to bring cutlery to the table along with her aromatically smelling food which she enjoyed so much. Her thoughts wandered over to impressions of smells and sounds as she suddenly shook her head realizing that she was not concentrating on the right memory, her mind drifting. She tried to focus on the number of steps, the time taken to go from the table to the kitchen suddenly seeing the distance like a red line in her mind, walking along it and the distance between her feet becoming a real factor on which she focused before opening her eyes. She was surprised that even though fractured, she could quickly find the memories she was looking for without her mind wandering off thinking about something that had nothing to do with the subject.
“I think I have a good feel of a short distance.” Noliel exclaimed to Dr. Hill.
“Excellent. I would like you to think about the distance as if it was a line between you and the apple I talked to you about. How long do you think the distance between you and the object is, so I can verify it?”
“About 8-10 meters.”
“Alright. Now imagine the fruit, but while doing so please picture the distance between you and wish it into existence.”
Noliel closed her eyes, focusing on the nature of the object, its texture, its feel. She tried remembering how it felt to bite into a green apple which had not ripen yet. She remembered the sensations of tough clean peel, a spongy yet pretty hard pod which caused a sour-sweet juice to spread in the mouth when broken off the apple with the teeth and chewed upon. She remembered the presence of the carpel and its seeds in the center of the fruit, its dry caulis and a small green oval leave attached to it. She tried to combine this thought with the distance between the kitchen and the living room of her old home, carrying the apple in her hand, placing it on the table and turning around going backwards to the kitchen, trying to feel the distance. A crackling noise sounded through the forum as she opened her eyes when she finished.
“Excellent work - I can see that you created an apple in your forum in just about 9.23 meters away from you, really precise work.” The voice of Dr. Hill sounded through the dark.
“Well it’s all good and nice to hear that, but I don't see the apple. Not that I am hungry, but I would really like to taste it!”
“Then you should let it be light. The next thing I want you to create is your own sun. But of course I will lead you through the necessary steps to avoid any accidents.”
“Maybe I should whish for some sun blocker lotion first?”
Dr. Hill disregarded the comment and continued.
“What I want you to do is to think about some time in your life when you were exposed to an agreeable amount of sunshine.”
Noliel closed her eyes, even though it was already completely dark in the Forum. She tried to remember the time she was lying in the sun on the beach. She summoned the smell of warm air into her thoughts, the rushing of the waves as they rolled over the sand of the white beach, white foam slowly seeping into the granulated microscopic pieces of stone of which the sand was composed, changing its color dark through the difference in which light broke on the surface of the wet sand. She imagined the smell of salty, humid air with the slight scent of algae and blue mussels which were attached to the rocks in the water, exposed to the wind because of the low tide. She tried to focus her thoughts towards the sky, her objective being getting a feel for the intensity of the suns light, its warmth. She imagined a blinding light which caused her eyes to close in reflex, strong enough to burn out the receptors in her retina causing blindness if she would expose them to this light for too long. A live giving force, so strong and large that even its extreme distance from the earth was but a minor obstacle for its radiation to induce warmth and light upon being reflected by all the things on earth, giving the impression of color and existence to everything the human mind could perceive with their eyes in the world.
Yes, such would have to be the force that would illuminate the world she had to create for herself. She felt warmth filling her, not from the sun being reflected and partially absorbed by her skin, but surging from her insides, a mixture of pride and joy making her smile broadly at the heavens in the images of her mind.
“I have the perfect definition of the sun for my forum, Dr. Hill” Noliel softly said, her head still turned towards the nonexistent ceiling of her forum. As she opened her eyes, her lenses contracted as if her eyes where looking into real light in her mind.
“Good work. Hold onto that feeling while we now have to make up the correct definition of distance for the sun in your world. Of course this time we have to use measures that you could impossibly have experienced, which however can be visualized through the help of outside information. The ASC allows you to access and browse the internet of the world for information on any subject you might be interested in, to increase your pool of resources that allow you to shape your forum. To do that, I will teach you how to Link into the outside world but staying within a connected system. This sounds complicated but is a really simple process.”
“For now go about 13 steps forward and see if you can find the apple you created before.”
Noliel slowly started stepping forward; she could feel her foot rolling over the seamless surface of the floor in her forum. She counted the steps in her head slowly moving forward within the complete darkness, trying to move completely straight. It was in this situation that she began to understand how difficult it was searching for something without having any visual reference or difference in the nature of the ground which was completely featureless. She felt aimless and lost, trying just to move forward. As she finished counting to 13, one step being given each time, she crouched down, spreading her arms in search of the apple. She placed one knee down and waved her hands over the floor. Suddenly her small finger knocked against an object. Noliel placed her hand around it and lifted the object of the floor, standing straight once more. She groped the object with both her hands knowing that it had to be the apple she created, it felt hard clean and cold. She brought the apple to her small mouth, opened it and took a relatively large bite out of the fruit, the piece she just bit off slowly spreading its taste in her mouth, a sour-sweet juicy flavor passing over her tongue. As she breathed in, savoring the ability to appreciate food, an ability from which she was disabled for such a long time, she felt the aroma of the apple flowing through her nose enhancing the taste even more, the scent of flowers and all the small little components that made up the fruit's aroma lowering themselves over her consciousness like a sheet of airy translucent silk.
“Judging from the way your chewing on that piece of apple I assume you are satisfied with the results of your creation. Remember that it was your imagination, your memories which created the properties of that apple, as it will be with anything you do within your forum.” The voice of Dr. Andreas Hill sounded in the air.
“Thish tashtesh really naische!” Noliel responded with a full mouth.
“Alright. I will now teach you how to get information from the outside world. But first I’d like to heed a word of warning. The Internet is very useful to receive information, but it is crucial that you keep a low profile. The ASC is designed to protect you from any unauthorized access from the outside, but if someone would came aware to the nature of your existence through leaked information, I don't know to which extends someone could go in terms of reverse engineering the defenses acquiring knowledge about the technology that the ASC is composed of in the process. So there is a strict rule that you may never brake, in the form of not sharing the nature of your existence to anyone through the Internet. Use it like you would use a library when you are in need of resources, information that you might need in order to enhance your creations' properties. This is in the interest of your own safety, always remember that Noliel.”
Noliel nodded in the darkness, her left cheek still swollen from the un-chewed piece of apple in her mouth she just added to it.
“The way for you to access the outside world’s electronic systems is through the creation of windows to the information you require. The ASC is linked through the outside world through a wireless connection which is heavily protected through firewalls and subprograms against assault of your stored information, your memories and the entire consciousness supporting hardware and software. The way connections to the outside world are represented within the forum, once called upon, is lines across the surface of the floor to which you can communicate. To do that a simple body contact is enough to link you up. There are many different lines within the floor you are standing upon, and simply touching them will enable you to get a mental image of the information you are searching for. You will need to guide your vision through the Internet yourself, supported by the ASC's intercom which allows accessing any existing network and translating the information to stimulations that your consciousness can correctly interpret.”
“So I can surf the Internet without a holo-board or a fingerpoint? That sounds really cool.”
“Well the thing about consciousness oriented browsing of information is the need for your mind to be able to guide your reception correctly through the correct sources. It is a very straining process that will require some time to get used to, but for now we will only need to lookup information about a distance of a star and yourself, to get some light and warmth into your forum.”
“Alright, what do I have to do to start?”
“I’d like you to crouch down and touch the floor with your left index finger and move it along the surface until you can feel a tingling sensation.”
Noliel shrugged and crouched down extending her left arm holding her left index finger extended. She slowly placed it onto the flat ground and started pushing it over its surface. Suddenly she felt a prickle in her left index finger. That must have been what Dr. Hill was talking about.
“I found it, Dr. Andreas.”
“Very good, now I want you to close your eyes and welcome the images that the ASC provides regarding to your starting point.”
Noliel closed her eyes, suddenly a white square appearing in her mind. It was blank except for a small symbol in the middle that looked like a house with an uncommon triangular ceiling. The words 'home' where printed under it.
“I can see a little house on a page.”
“This is your reference starting point. A blank page generated by the ASC as the bridge point to which you can come back to when you are finished. Remember that symbol well, as when you want to turn back to your Forum you will have to access the home page first and then recede into your forum, doing so will require you to focus on that symbol to be brought back. As for looking for information, simply think about what you would like to look for and the ASC will give you options that fit with the images and information that are passed forward to it within which you can narrow down your search by browsing through them.”
“So I just have to think about the sun or astronomy and I will find the information and impressions I need?”
“Yes, just like that.”
Noliel, still clinging to that memory of the sun shining on a bright day on a beach, thought about it floating out in space, like a large lonely ball of fire. As the thoughts crawled through her mind the page in front of her started to be filled with icons and descriptions about numerous websites and links ranging from stars, space, planets, spacecrafts to science fiction movies and tourist guides for moon visits. She focused her thoughts on the results that seemed to have to do with astrology, images of descriptions and pictures of the solar system, data about distances between planets, planet sizes, composition, laws of gravity, time tables and a lot of other information being rearranged into a list in front of her consciousness all unrelated results disappearing from the list as she focused more and more and the subject she was really looking for. She was surprised how fast she was able to read and memorize the information displayed in the pictures, descriptions, informative grids and equations and how easy it was to browse through the information and guiding her consciousness through it.
“Wow. I learned almost everything there is to know about the solar system in a few minutes.” She exclaimed as her mind flew back to the home page and she opened her eyes, lifting her finger from the ground.
“So you do know the distance between the sun and the earth, along with the size of the sun?” Dr. Hill asked.
“The average distance between the earth and the sun is 149 million km, the mass of the sun is 333000 times that of earth and the size is about 1.3 million times as big as the earth. The earth is around 6 sextillion tons heavy, having an average diameter of 12700 km, 39842 km to cross its equator.”
“What can you tell me about the chemical composition of each of those celestial bodies?”
“The sun is by 71% composed of hydrogen and 27.1% of helium. It is also composed to minor degrees by oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, neon, iron and sulfur. The earth's atmosphere contains about 78% nitrogen 21% oxygen 0.93% argon 0.038% carbon dioxide and very minor amounts of other gases. The atmosphere’s influence towards outer space is about at an altitude of about 120km.” Noliel listed know-it-all style.
“Exactly. As you see, physical laws apply to your forum as much as they applies to the world normal humans live in, the ASC respecting a known ambient of existence to ease synchronization with the aura. So while you are able to breathe right now due to a simulated presence of air, it would be in your best interest when you replicate earths conditions to think about the atmosphere as well, if you don't want to get roasted.” Dr. Hill explained, his voice echoing through the forum.
“Now I’m going to create my sun, watch me!”
“Ambitious in getting the big things done first, hum?”
Noliel closed her eyes, extended her free left hand towards the sky and tried to imagine the sun, in conjunction with all the information, distance, composition, size and how its light felt. She lowered her head slightly, her eyes shut so tight that wrinkles formed on the skin around them, her teeth held together so hard that the muscles on the back of her maxillary emerged causing a slight elevation on the skin around her jaws. Her left hand held with its fingers straddled she moaned softly at the stress that was being exerted on her mind. As the pressure on her consciousness released, she suddenly opened her eyes looking around. She smiled. Yet it was still pitch black.
“Alright the sun is done. Now I have a couple minutes before its radiation gets here to create an atmosphere.”
“Smart girl. Most of our previous subjects before you created an atmosphere first in fear they would be burned, not realizing that at 149 million km distance light takes around 8 minutes to reach you.”
“Well let me think about if I can remember the feeling of wind and air in those 8 minutes then.” Noliel said cocky.