by Aer-ki Jyr
“Of course it does. I should have seen this earlier. Essence must be the root of all adaptation, and the lesser it connects to the body the less it can have that effect. Draining Essence partially separates the body from it, disrupting or postponing the adaptation.”
“No,” Cal-com said firmly. “You are grasping the truth but it is slipping through your fingers.”
Paul looked at him oddly, sensing his voice patterns alter a bit. He looked around the tent, stretching his senses to see if he could detect any anomalies, but before he could find them Cal-com alleviated the need for such a search.
“I am speaking to you, and my ability to do so is limited. Your ability to adapt is not rooted in Essence, but something else you have not discovered. You have stumbled upon it, and that contact has precipitated the changes in you. They are multiple. You have a lot of unpacking to do from numerous sources.”
“Who are you?”
“Paul?” Cal-com said, looking at him oddly. “Are you alright?”
“What did I just say?”
“You asked who I am.”
“Before that?”
“You were silent for a long moment.”
“3rd vision.”
Cal-com’s chin raised. “What was it this time?”
“You talking again, but more pointedly. And I can feel the fatigue again. I am being drained somehow.”
“What did my twin have to say?”
“That adaptation is not rooted in Essence, but something else. Something that I’ve stumbled upon without realizing it.”
“Then there is someone else here.”
“That or my imagination has upgraded considerably.”
“Where?”
Paul shook his head. “I don’t know. Nothing conventional. Scan me for implants, no matter how small.”
Cal-com connected a nanite tendril coming out of his shoulder plate to Paul’s arm. “If there were I would not have missed them previously. Have you developed a new ability not yet logged?”
“I can’t feel anything.”
“The Regenerator can detect no anomalies within you, other than the previous alterations. Nothing akin to a transmitter or foreign coding, yet it still can’t identify the source of the genetic alterations. We may be looking at a natural effect or different form of technology used by the intruder.”
“He also said there were multiple things happening to me at once.”
“If Essence is interfering, then not using it again is the key to continue unlocking the transformation, is it not?”
“A better idea I do not have. I won’t use it again. Hopefully I didn’t permanently lose what was left.”
“An ally?”
“Starting to feel that way,” Paul said, standing up despite a wobbliness from the drain. He didn’t feel more sleepy, but less alive. As if his Essence had been depleted from his body in large amounts, but it hadn’t altered. This was…something else.
“My fatigue,” Paul said, looking down at the sitting Voku’s head. “This part of it may be sourced elsewhere.”
“The same source as adaptation?”
Paul glanced up at the ceiling. “This has to do with the Life Springs, doesn’t it?”
“Very good,” a waspy, almost electronic voice said as Cal-com disappeared. Paul turned to his left to see the Zen’zat, but the voice didn’t match.
“Kosh?” he guessed.
“Your memory of that image is vague, so I must use something more recent to make it appear real,” the Zen’zat said, looking at him through an opaque black faceplate with hints of green worked into the nanite armor here and there. “The longer we speak, the more a toll it takes on your body.”
“What did I do to start this?”
“You cracked the barrier twice. The first time I did nothing, then you lost it when your duty to conquer the delinquent planet overrode your intuition. You cracked it a second time once arriving here, and when you did I acted. I reached across and created a larger fracture, one that wouldn’t so easily seal. I could not risk you losing it again.”
“Losing what?”
“Your first step into a much larger world. You have no idea how important you are, but if I explain further I will do damage to your body. I cannot speak to you again for some time until you heal wounds you do not know exist. Let the changes in you continue. Rest, reflect, explore. Do not train for advancement. The pressure blinds you,” the Zen’zat said before disappearing with Cal-com reappearing, though now standing and looking down on Paul with a concerned look on his face as he spoke, but Paul couldn’t hear the words as one more sentence was spoken by his new contact.
“And so it begins…”
That phrase, and the meaning imbedded in it, sent a chill down Paul’s spine a moment before he collapsed to the ground…except Cal-com caught him before he hit, though he was now limp as a rag doll.
“I think I need to sleep now,” Paul said half sarcastically. “Fill you in…later…”
The Human dropped asleep even as the Voku held him a meter off the ground, scanning him with the Regenerator again and not finding a cause, though the side effects were quite visible. His body was reacting as if it had just run 20 miles, and badly needed refueled.
Paul couldn’t eat when asleep, so Cal-com set him down and used the Regenerator to disintegrate and relocate water and food cubes to where it was needed in his body as he waited for his friend to wake, knowing there was no use in forcing a conversation. Rest was what he needed most, and was least inclined to indulge in given his habits. The best thing Cal-com could do for him now was be patient and watch over him…though it was clear that this entity he was in communication with had a means to hurt him, and it was one that Cal-com could not defend against.
That did not sit well with him, and he spent the next 18 hours trying to search for any knowledge that could give him insight into the nature of the enemy, but he couldn’t find the smallest anomaly to work with prior to Paul suddenly blinking his eyes and sitting up as if he’d heard an alarm.
“How long?”
“18 hours. How are you feeling?”
“I can feel it now. The burning illuminates its presence.”
“What presence?”
“It’s similar to the Essence realm, but different. I can barely feel it, but it’s everywhere in my body…yet nowhere. The doppelganger…who is now speaking in Kosh’s voice…said I broke through the barrier on Ha’shavi, then lost it. He said I broke through a second time here, and he acted to prevent me from losing it a second time. He also said that due to the length of our previous conversation that I’d be on my own for a while. Apparently it does damage to me if contact lasts too long.”
“Contact with him or this other realm?”
“Not sure. He recommended rest and introspection. Not training.”
“Not something an Archon is receptive to,” Cal-com pointed out.
“Which is probably why I didn’t go through this earlier,” he said, getting to his feet and walking outside, having to push his way through a dune that nearly covered the entrance to the tunnel.
When he got outside he looked back, seeing the entire shelter was now buried under sand…while the ground a few meters off was now exposed rock. Everywhere he looked he saw repetitions of this, with the terrain undulating in all directions under the night sky with a small bulge of light on the horizon.
“Dawn or dusk?” he asked.
“Dawn,” Cal-com said as he followed him out, wondering why Paul wasn’t recognizing the cardinal directions.
“Fitting. I just got accelerated into overdrive on my path. I don’t know where it’s going, but from here on out I think it’s going to move rapidly…yet I have to stay low key and observe more than act. I don’t feel like going back into space, but I’m tired of desert. I need to get lost somewhere with more stuff to explore and lose myself in. This is too wide open.”
“There are other remote regions on this planet…or do you want to travel to another?”
“I’ll stay here for now, but bring our ship in. I’m tired of using the local food and gear.”
“We’re getting low on it anyway,” Cal-com said. “Do you want me to go get the ship?”
“We’ll both go,” Paul said, referencing their hidden starship that was programmed not to respond to comms. They’d have to make physical contact to unlock it and the cloaking device…or to look at the messages it was collecting from the comm grid. They’d done that to get further disconnected from the empire, though now it was a bit inconvenient. “Leave the tent and excess gear. But rig up some pole that will stay above the sand to let travelers know this is here if they need it.”
“Are you strong enough to walk?”
“Advice or no, I need to do some running. Stagnation is still my enemy, and if I don’t have something to rest from I won’t be able to relax. We’ll take some water and foodstuffs in a light pack each and leave everything else here. We’ll go straight back and not stop until we get there.”
“The sand will sap the strength from your short legs.”
“I’ll handle it,” Paul scoffed at him.
“Will your friend be coming as well?”
“I don’t know where or what he is, but he’s been on two different worlds. So maybe he’s hitching a ride with us.”
“We don’t know how he travels, so running might leave him behind.”
“I doubt it, though I don’t have a logical argument as to why.”
“Does it not concern you the damage that he is able to inflict on you?”
“It does, but I can’t control that and I’m not dead yet. The appeal of the breakthrough and everything else that is going on with me is enough to distract from the danger. Besides, the sooner I figure this out the sooner I can develop a defense. So there’s no point in lingering.”
“We’ve been blindsided.”
“By something that was probably there all along and we just didn’t realize it. Better a scared knowledge than ignorant confidence.”
“We have no choice but to be reckless then?”
“Afraid not. Fun, isn’t it?”
“It is not,” Cal-com said, moving off to create a makeshift pole to mark the site as Paul stayed put looking at the horizon as the local sun began to creep toward breaching the horizon, preceded by a glow that expanded outward eating into the visible starfield above.
Paul sighed. “It’s gonna be a hot day for a run.”
Wilson slapped his palm down on top of Davis’s desk, half waking up the drowsing Director as he was looking over some stats in between sparring sessions with the trailblazers…which were keeping him half exhausted at all times.
“Got it!” he declared.
Davis saw a datapad left behind where his hand retreated from. “Got what?”
“Essence use dulls our connection to the body.”
Davis frowned. “How?”
“I can’t be too specific, but it’s necessary to connect our Core to our body. If we diminish the amount, we diminish the effect. If we take on someone else’s Essence, it’s the wrong ‘frequency’ and doesn’t match until we convert it. Either way, there is an inefficiency until we get back to 100% full.”
“But 100% has changed over time.”
“Yes it has. In response to us being low, we adapt to create more in order to compensate. That’s why we didn’t notice a problem. But when we stop drawing it down, we see an increase in ability.”
The Director raised an eyebrow as he stood up and brought the datapad with him, staring at it as he began to pace around his office as a rainstorm dumped gallon after gallon of water onto the panoramic windows that would eventually see it run down and rejoin the Pacific Ocean below.
“I’m not seeing any ability increase,” he said as he scanned the obstacle course runs and the summary notes added to the stats. “This is coordination related?”
“Weapon familiarity. Gloves versus no gloves,” Wilson replied short hand. “Precision increase leads to Ultra Instinct with remarkable frequency.”
“But they only got to this point by using Essence all these years?”
“True. But it was slowing them down as they did so. And it’s speculation now, but I think it hindered their ability to adapt to training.”
“Precision,” Davis echoed, knowing that Training Effect required repetition, and if your movements were different each time you wouldn’t get as much effect. So the more precise your training was, the bigger bang you would get out of it when you were doing repetitions to induce an upgrade.
“It may not seem like much, but I’ve always suspected there was something there. You can choose to keep increasing your Essence well, or to use your physical abilities at full power. You cannot do both simultaneously.”
“And we didn’t get Essence until we got Saiyans,” Davis said, cringing. “That covered the speed slowdown with the speed increase.”
“Good catch,” Wilson admitted. “I hadn’t put that together yet, but you’re right. They were growing more than they were being held back, so we didn’t see it. And if it dulls their precision of the body, it may also be dulling their minds as well.”
“Hence the pouting.”
“I wouldn’t call it that. Their vision has been obscured and they can’t see their way beyond doing the same thing over and over again. I can see a universe of possibilities ahead of me. They can’t. That’s not pouting.”
“It’s pithy and angers them, so I’m saying ‘pouting’ until they figure it out. A little payback for the beatdowns they’re giving me,” Davis said as he continued to look over the limited data, then he tossed the datapad back onto his desk. “What do you recommend?”
“We treat it as weighted training clothing. Now that we know it exists, we can work around it when needed and embrace it otherwise. Essence is too useful to abandon, but for certain periods of training it should be avoided. I’ll get basic parameters established shortly, but it comes down to more specialization in their skillsets. We can’t have one Archon being a master of all anymore.”
“We figured that out long ago.”
“Well they haven’t. Paul sort of did, but he still tried to straddle the line. They won’t relent from being the best in everything. That’s their strength, but when options vary widely and they have to choose between them, they can’t handle that. They’ve been doing the impossible so long, they’re finally facing something they can’t cheat.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I’d be happy to be proved wrong, but the do-it-alls are going to have to retool or become the jack of all trades, masters of none.”
“They won’t accept that.”
“No, they won’t. But something is going to have to give. If I’m right, Saiyan skill needs the higher precision. Essence needs larger wells. You can’t have both at the same time, and if you split your training between the two, you’re going to fall behind the specialists. The trailblazers’ head start only lasts for so long.”
Davis huffed. “Give them the playing field and they’ll figure it out. That’s one problem I don’t have to worry about.”
“It won’t be that easy this time. This has been stretching them for a while. I don’t think they can juggle this one, but it will be interesting to see how they tackle it.”
“Have you told them yet?”
“You’re the first.”
“Call them all in to the amphitheater.”
“All?”
“Let Paul be Paul for now. He can catch up later, if he hasn’t already figured it out by now...”
5
June 22, 154930
Poolion System (Home Two Kingdom)
Turron
It had been two months since Paul and Cal-com left the desert and returned to their ship. From there they’d flown under cloak to various parts of the planet, skipping over the cities and settlements and going for the raw nature that existed in many forms. First was jungle, then ice, and now the pair were camped out on a secl
uded island that had more beach than forest, but the air was warm, the waves gentle, and absolutely no one around.
Their ship was sitting invisible on one of the beaches with its landing skids making imprints into the sand, but otherwise you couldn’t tell it was there with your eyes or sensors, though Pefbar could see it. That said, Paul rarely used his nowadays, and let Cal-com get supplies out of the vessel whenever needed. Since arriving on the island Paul had remained outside, choosing to sleep under the stars or a primitive lean-to he’d made from dead trees.
The Human had said he needed to disconnect further from everything, and the Voku hadn’t argued. This was why he’d brought him out here initially, though he hadn’t expected the payoff to be so grand. Every day Paul changed some more, though the big swings were a thing of the past now. His genetic code was still shifting away from Human and towards something else…something more powerful, as attested by the fact that his cellular density was surpassing Human limits, and according to Cal-com’s Regenerator scans he was no longer physically capped.
That revelation had drawn raised eyebrows from Paul, but somehow he knew before he told him. He was gaining a very spooky sense of precognition with regards to information, but Cal-com put that down to introspection. If this was a buildup of adaptation surging forth now that he could finally relax, then with it would come a new sense of normal, and through that Paul was going to be able to see and understand things differently than Cal-com could.
What caused his initial change was still unknown. The mysterious companion hadn’t spoken to him since they’d left the desert, and Paul had spent most of his time sitting and observing. He guessed the ocean waves gave him something more to look at, and even now he was sitting on a rock with his bare feet dipping into the waves when they made their way up to him, and Cal-com knew to give him his space. His job was to watch over and protect, not monitor. Whatever was going on inside of him was beyond his knowledge or control, and Paul was going to have to ride this out on his own in one way or another.
From the outside he hadn’t changed much. His eyes were the biggest difference, and his skin had gotten a little redder. Not from sunburn, but from the alteration of his skin cells with different elements that normally would not be there. Somehow his alchemy ability was being used to manufacture stuff his body needed that didn’t exist in his foodstuffs. Paul said it was auto-activating, which had never happened before, and that was just one of many changes happening to him.
