Chapter 494 – Pillar’s Lovely, Excellent, Very Good View (Patreon)

Wahooo, we're back! I did promise the plot would pick up yet again, now that we're past the halfway point. Big juicy, big delicious, let's juggle, let's manage, let's get the ball rolling and make sure we catch it when we toss it!

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“Are we sure that Pillar is the best one to be doing a diplomatic visit? If that is what this is.”

“It volunteered, and all the rest of us are… well, busy is putting it lightly. And it’s probably the busiest out of all of us. It’s just sort of designed to be really good at being busy.”

“It’s designed to be really good at data processing and pattern recognition. Which, yeah, ok, that’s basically the same thing. Dang. Do you ever think that we–”

“Use this medium of communication to externalize our thoughts unnecessarily as a way of testing our connection, maintaining a cohesive set of identities, both individual and plural, and alleviating stress by verbalizing things?”

“Yes, Effigy, thank you.”

“I am welcome.”

“Anyways. It’s fine. Pillar is good at… well, literally everything, pretty much. And if it needs help, it’s probably even less shy about asking for it than the rest of us are, and we’ve gotten really, really healthy about that. Super willing. Borderline happy to do it, really.”

“That’s true. I just worry sometimes.”

“Yeah, we know. I know. Comes with the territory of being the mom of the group.”

“Oooh! Catty. Jealous much?”

“You literally know that I am. Cause you’re me, and I’m you. Duh.”

“Awww, repeating the obvious because you’re so jelly-jealous?”

“Pillar is going to be fine. And if it isn’t, then great news, we’re literally already there, and will be there, and will have been there.”

–Internal discussion relating to relevant current topics

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Analysis: the world is larger than it should be. 

Reasoning: mathematical interpretation of the laws of gravity and space using self and Dao of Space as foundation indicates that the physical mass present in the observable levels of reality this self currently has access to should compress all conventional biology, chemistry, and general physical matter to a state approximately 3.485k times its current state.

Data can thus be used to extrapolate approximate, appropriate size of planet in the context of current biological, chemical, and general physical matter relative to gravitic weight and Spatial Dao. Estimated “true” world-mass: 5.9846×1024 kg. Current estimated world-mass based on observation of physical soil structure, tectonic movements, and orbital analysis of curvature and scope: 7.660288 x 10^26kg. 

Analysis: atmospheric bodies do not compensate for this substantial dissonance in perceived versus practical mass. 

Reasoning: the sun is approximately 1/1000th the size required to properly illuminate such an environment. All three moons are too far away from the surface and too small to be seen at the scale they are experienced by mortal-baseline human-baseline ocular organs (eyes). 

Analysis: the world is shaped incorrectly. 

Reasoning: see previous notes relating to solar and atmospheric bodies. See previous notes regarding functions of physical scale and mass. See previous notes regarding the composition of subterranean tectonic functions and land-mass (i.e. loose dirt and stone rather than hyper-compressed and altered materials due to density of matter). 

Additional notes: Dao of Space and nascent Dao of Gravity provide comprehensive and equivalent data. Dao of Space altered by Dao of Gravity. Dao of Gravity altered by substantial amounts of physical mass. In isolation, experimental results remain consistent independently of number of repeated trials and modified circumstances: mass activates gravity alters space, leading to an accumulation of central mass. Formation of what Raika-unit 4: Pillar titles a “planetary body” is confirmed.

Planetary bodies gain curvature, approaching spherical composition over repeated long-term exposure to friction, compression, and gravitational fluctuations. See for reference: the Sun, Lua, Rua, Jasmira, the Cold Sun. 

Additional notes: the world does not possess the curvature associated with its mass. 

The Raika-That-Is-Pillar stares down at the world, experiencing the closest thing that it can to wonder. 

The others believe that it has lost the capacity for emotional recognition, regulation, or generation. This is incorrect. The nature of Pillar’s neurology has shifted substantially enough that the original “wet” neurochemistry functions it possessed have been replaced, and no longer possess experiential equivalents, but remain logically consistent. There is a response to things beyond oneself, worthy of admiration. There is still fear, anger, pain, and all of the other associated responses, but they are not messy chemical things any longer. 

Pillar can still feel, though it is “colder”, or perhaps less “volatile”, than the rest of Raika. It is simply more data to process, crystallize, and store. 

The world is wonderful, and this is fact. It is awe-inspiring, and this is truth. 

It is also illogically designed, with many contradictory facets to itself, and held together by unknown forces.

The world should be too heavy for humans to exist. It should be too heavy for life outside of beings like Pillar and Raika’s stronger high-variants to exist in general, all the way from nearly first principles. And, more than this, it should possess a curvature to match the mass it pretends not to have, so as to fit into the structure of the rules of existence as recorded through observation. 

There is some curvature, which further clarifies and supports the analysis. 

However, there is a point where that curvature should continue that should not be looked upon. 

Raika-That-Is-Pillar is a data-driven entity, the same as all creatures. Everything that exists which experiences linearity and the fusion of action and consequence is data-driven, and being analytical, having emotions that operate differently, doesn’t change that. 

This does not mean that it is better at understanding things, simply that its process is equivalent, but different. It cannot extrapolate results from data it does not have. 

What data it does have is that, if it looks past the superficial curvature of the world to where it should continue, things happen. 

It has currently catalogued six hundred and sixty one thousand, four hundred and thirty two entirely distinctive and entirely paradigm-shifting consequences to looking past that threshold. None of them directly antagonistic or intentional, perhaps, but all of them with lasting and fundamental effects on the parts of Pillar that examined it. 

There is a point where reality seems to have forms and functions which do not cooperate with the rest of the world as it is known. Awareness of this point, or the act of observation, can lead to intense consequences. Not exclusively, not every time, but often enough to present a pattern. 

There is only so many times a data-driven entity capable of learning will look at a place where shadows are sharp lines and where sharp lines are fractures that let in things which should not be before that entity learns to not look. 

So Pillar, from its perch on high, instead looks out at the world that can be looked at, and tracks where it is going to deploy its next unit-self. 

Pillar-Observation-Unit-6440-B sits approximately three-hundred and sixteen miles above the ground. At this height, some of the effects of gravity are lessened, and the Dao of Space and Dao of Gravity both can be manipulated by Raika-That-Is with Pillar as the arbiter. Still, Unit 6440-B occasionally ignites a chemical reaction within its mass, producing raw energy from that distant [STAR] inside the Ur-Raika, that is then transformed directly to kinetic thrust. The Dao of Energy allows for near-instant transformation between subsidiary forms of itself, and the kinetic thrust allows the unit to bob gentle up and down in its “orbit”. 

From this perch, eyes that are made of a mixture of fine crystals, glass, gelatin and minute fibers expand and contract, zooming in on the world below with a panoramic view. It, and the four others in the upper atmosphere, can see almost the entire width and breadth of the world below, their visions carefully restricted to take in no information from beyond a certain edge. 

At the center of it all, and below the units, is the Sun. 

Looking at it causes grief. Grief, as an expression of loss, of disappointment, and of pain, crystallized and analyzed as no different than any other form of data. The Sun is painful to look at. A thing of suffering, purer than almost any other. 

Raika knows Pain. All of her knows Pain, and the fact that It’s Not Just Pain only makes the Sun worse. 

It’s hard to analyze. Too dense. Too powerful to know simply by looking at it, and she has so much to do, though Pillar does still analyze it. 

Beneath the Sun is that unknowable thing, the plateau of the first ring. Protected from sight, defended by strange magics best left untouched for now, just analyzed. 

Then the second ring. Then the third, and the Wall, which defines the world by what it excludes from the center and what it keeps in. Everything within that border is fuzzy, blurred, part of another’s territory, but Pillar has become adept at cross-referencing with the Raika within the border and to gain the details otherwise protected against her. 

Beyond it is the world. 

The space behind / within the Wall is massive. Massive. The equivalent of a few times the relative size that the gravity of the world says it should be. So vast that there are hundreds of thousands of miles within that space. 

It is less than one third of the rest of the world, without even taking into account the outer fringes which are best not looked at. 

The Overgrowth is a series of green, blue, purple and now red land-masses, covered in rivers and lakes and oceans. Trillions of lives, billions of people, all of it ruled over by the grand Apex of the Pack, the weakest yet vastest of them all, Many-Mouths. It takes up nearly all of the eastern, north-eastern, and south-eastern sides of the world, like a spreading tumor or mold that provides more richness and depth than anywhere else. The very edge of it to the far east is a dead place, ruled by ghosts and madness, and the Republic of Morae is a miniscule bubble at one end of it, but overwhelmingly, the Overgrowth is the world, for most of the world. 

But not for all of it. 

To the north and south, there is ice and fire. 

The northern side of the world, where the sun goes to rejoin, is a place of frozen violence. Even looking upon it makes a Unit’s eyes freeze over, and only by studying and integrating that ice does it manage to keep watch. Massive, jagged mountains, colossal things,  some of them reaching up nearly to the moons above, make up the majority of the land. The greatest of those peaks have starlight and reflected gazes looking through them, offering strange lights and impossible music through their jagged shapes, but even the least of them are so cold that they defy conventional laws. The Will of Heaven states that cold cannot be truly absolute in these circumstances, but there are materials and things in those mountains that break that rule simply by existing.

And at the furthest north, where the world turns to breaking realities, there is an ocean. 

It is there that the wyrms of the sun go to rejoin. It is from there that they climb back into the sky. It is the largest, bluest, darkest ocean in the world. 

But where they separate is opposite. There, the world is glass and molten magma, eternally refracting iridescent lights. The world all the way to the Wall and the Overgrowth is burned, starved, dehydrated, a beauteous blend of desert and sahara. The sands cover every possible color of the spectrum of light, and when it looks closely, the Unit, and Pillar through it, can see trails, patterns, tunnels beneath the earth and down into strange caverns, and signs of so very much life, spreading and surviving in those beautiful and alien places. 

And to the far west, there is–

Well. Pillar is a data-driven creature. When one burns their hand upon the flame often enough, one learns that fire can burn. It does not look at the world beyond that far perimeter, for it does not want to look upon the parts of the world that turn blue, where blue means inversion, where inversion means compression and expression and expression means fractal lies and lies mean–

It does not look past certain edges of the world.

It does look at the west, beyond the Empire.

But it does so carefully. With many redundancies, and many protections. 

On the eastern side of the Wall, there is a point, east-northeast, where the Wall is broken. The Breach is a vast, open wound, cauterized by massive superweapons, infested by the dead and the living, by bioweapons and massing hordes of creatures and soldiers both. It is there that the Wall is weakest, and there that the War is fated to start, at least in some ways. 

On the western side, the Wall sort of… blends. 

There is the clear boundary. The border between what is the Empire and what is not. But there are also patterns. 

Roots, that extend out in that direction. Like the fortresses of the Wall have been… inverted, for want of a better term, their trench-cities extending out of the Empire rather than in. Industry and architecture, spreading like mold out into the wider thing beyond. 

There are some patches of the overgrowth in the north and south. Some that even have adapted, shrunk or changed themselves or slipped past, over to the north-northwestern and south-southwestern sides. Smaller things, relatively, only the size of nations rather than continents.

Many-Mouths, the Divine Heart of the world, blessed and created by the Will of the Heavens to be part of the fundamental nature of all that is, has spread to almost the entire world, in some way or another. Not necessarily in force, but consistently. Millions and millions of miles, it extends.

There is none of it to the far west. The true west. The western space that gleams of gold, where architecture and structure grow like mold.

Where there is a city, gilded and perfect, which to look upon is to know ruination and remolding. 

Pillar-Observation-Unit-6440-B is the one in charge of watching over Pillar-Observation-Unit 6451-B. Pillar-Observation-Unit-6451-B is the one responsible for watching over and attempting to examine, using part of Pillar’s resources, the Gilded City, whose name is not its true name, whose nature is infectious and unknown. 

Units 6442-6450 all experienced consequences from prolonged examination of that distant place. 

Many things. Many, many things to work on, to see, to prepare for, to use, perhaps. 

And the expansion is going well. The Flame of Raika, after all, has found something worth seeing down south. 

Unit 6440-B finds where the Flame is calling for aid. 

Hello big snake I am here.

It has been 0.00000018 seconds since Pillar volunteered for the duty, which means it is almost late. The world is wonderful, and it is a joy to witness it, even if it does not seem that way superficially through the stranger chemistry of the wet. Can it be faulted for wishing to take a moment to enjoy the view? To gaze in true awe, down at this broken, imperfect, strange world that is all it knows and has ever known?

Analysis: no, it cannot. Such is only reasonable.

Reasoning: see previous notes relating to and summarizing the nature of reality and the beauty of all things.

Unit 6440-B activates a series of nodes along its port side, a spiraling cavity of meat widening to allow room for active construction. Within it, a frame of mechanical parts is extracted from Ur-Raika’s inner world, then constructed and designed into shape within the different nodes. A larger, central space allows for the combination of all of those pieces, made up of altered steel, tungsten, carbon, Radiant Metal in seventeen different forms, Blacksteel, Cold Sunstone, Thousand-Year Ice Crystals, hyper-enhanced bones, and paracausal hypermaterials 16, 32, 7, and 15, which don’t really have proper names yet, but happen when you compress and chemically modify things enough, and bite out the Fate that demands cause and effect. 

Pillar fills the rest in with meat, biologically enhanced components crafting an intricate web of neural tissue, tendons, muscle, and more, out of both carbon, nitrogen, and iron-based biologies. 

Pillar-Observation-Unit 6452-C opens its eyes, running its body through a series of four hundred and nineteen thousand, eight hundred and three system checks to ensure total readiness. 

It has been 0.00000027 seconds since the conversation where Pillar volunteered has ended. 

Unit 6440-B stretches, opening itself up to the vacuum of the space so far above the world.

A garden of Dao is analyzed, and comprehension of Energy, Force, Space, Movement, Momentum, Inertia, and more are all selected, activated, and fused into the Unit 6452-C being, and it goes from no movement at all to moving at 0.032% the speed of light, the fastest natural speed that the Pillar has been able to examine. 

It still takes it nearly half a minute to arrive at its destination.

Analysis: the world is shaped wrong and does not follow conventional laws properly.

Reasoning: see relative speed notes, see theoretical mass and planetary scale modeling.

It/She lands, cancelling out 99.99985% of the force of its landing on arrival, so that dust is the only thing that is disturbed as it seemingly comes to being beside the Flame and big snake.

Much to Pillar’s non-wet chemical annoyance, it finds that the Flame was simplistic but accurate in its assessment of the situation.

There is, in fact, big snake here.