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[LuckyKobold]

Attempt To Gain Immortality!

[Dorsidwarf]

Attempt To Gain Immortality!

-1 we are already immortal enough.

Modify the pigment symbols into our dread name, to ward away bothersome interlopers while we explore.

[Salsacookies]

Infect the under dwellers with our will

[forsaken1111]

Your smallest Self examines the metallic panel. The pigment symbols are clearly writing in some form, very precise. Printed? Likely.

You decide to modify the panel's writing. A task which is no small effort for this extension of your Will, but it will suffice and this printed effigy will further your cause. The crystalline worm relays your intent, fields coalescing around the panel. Molecules dance and rearrange into your dread name. None of this time will know it, but seeing its form they will feel its power and Know you, for you are Araqiel who was taught the signs of the earth. Arâkîba, who knows the ways of fire and forge. Aretstikapha, the world of destruction. Arkas, the prime Geomancer.

For you are known of many names but none know your true name. The One name by which you were brought into being. That name you would never lay down to stone else it could be your undoing.

The metallic panel's writing warps and turns, struggling to contain the power of your given name. All around the panel the stone begins to change. For a distance of several meters, the raw earth and rock become crystalline, reddish spines rise and curl away from the wall. The panel has become an effigy, a shrine to your power, and you feel it pulsing in resonance to your smallest Self.

You can see much more clearly now as your power resonates throughout the cavern. Beyond the blocking timbers you feel lines of iron and steel, oddly pure and straight... unnatural. This is an age of industry unlike any you have seen. The steel construction you observed briefly is some sort of mechanism with hundreds of small moving parts within. It is covered with a molded substance that feels curiously dead and detached from the living world. It looks as if a human would sit within the device and operate several controls, but to what purpose you do not know.

You hear movement from the blocking timbers, a voice, directed light is playing about beyond the barricade. The words are strange, you do not know them.

"Yeah I'm just checking 12 before we close up this whole area. This branch is played out, no more coal."

A mortal man is approaching the barricade and seems about to enter through a metal gate.

What will you do?

[Salsacookies]

break off a small part of myself, for the human to "discover".

[forsaken1111]

You have an idea. You could break off a small portion of the relay and allow the mortal to discover it. This would allow you to follow it, learn from it, perhaps to control it.

This plan is not without risk.

Your smallest self is so named because it is the smallest vessel you could create which would still serve as a decent relay for your vast intellect. It is approximately a meter in length, though only a few centimeters thick. It is mobile, ambulatory, and functions as a remote sensing apparatus and relay. Through it you can focus a fraction of your Will and affect the area nearby.

There is also the problem of the Effigy. You are unsure what will happen when the mortal is exposed to the raw potential of the sigil which is your Name.

To create an even smaller relayed Self will introduce significant latency in sensory intake and response, as well as degrade the quality of the relayed information. It will be not much more than flashes and glimpses of what is happening, and hardly realtime.

Still... to allow the mortal access to even your smallest Self is also dangerous, so you proceed. Quickly you form a fracture along the tail end of the smallest self, the crystal snaps away and rolls towards the grating. It comes to rest just as the mortal opens the door, and your smallest Self retreats to the shadows to observe.

The mortal uses something in its hand to open the grating and enters. It shines a handheld lamp around briefly before noticing the glimmer of crystal at it's feat. "Hey what's this?" More strange noise which you do not understand. It is obviously a language, well ordered but strange. You can tell its words have many roots, some possibly from languages known to you. With study you should be able to decipher it in time.

The mortal reaches down an---


---Discontinuity---

You are Thomas Eugene Nelson, a coal miner. You work in the Cordero coal mine in a state called Wyoming, in a country called the United States of America. Your shift is ending and you have been tasked with checking the disused Shaft 12 before closing this tunnel. You entered the shaft and noticed a small chunk of crystal on the ground. Curious, you picked it up.

The moment you touched the crystal, there was a quiet spark of light. Suddenly something strange happens inside your head. You experience dizziness, nausea. You stumble a bit, holding tight to a crystalline fragment. You shake your head and it clears. What was that? Might be some gas leakage or something down here. You pocket the crystal without thinking about it. In fact it is gone from your mind.

You have the strangest feeling that you should do something but you can't remember what.

What is it you were supposed to do again?

[~Neri]

Check 12.

[Xantalos]

Check 12.

[forsaken1111]

The feeling passes. You guess you'll just check the shaft and close up.

You look around, shining your flashlight. It's an old disused mineshaft, a bit dusty. For some reason you avoid looking at one wall. You're not really sure why and on a conscious level you're only peripherally aware that it is happening, but some part of you is trying really hard to ignore something there, something that claws at the edge of your vision and begs for you to peek.

You blink, the feeling fades. What is going on? Your mind goes back to the gas leak theory, and you resolve to report it to your supervisor.

Nodding to yourself, you're sure that's all it was, you close up 12 and hop in the little travel cart. Your leg itches a bit, and when you reach down to scratch it (right under your front left pocket) you notice something hard in the way. Did you pick something up?

The thought is gone almost as soon as you have it, like a sheet of paper blown away in the wind. You quietly wait while the cart runs along the rail back up the tunnel. Soon you are topside. You make your way through the mine complex, but something is nagging at the back of your mind. You really feel like you forgot something, or you have something important to do.

When you reach the foreman's office you see Saul, your supervisor. He is arguing with another man that you don't know, a man in a suit and dark glasses. They stop talking as you approach but you heard something about geological activity in the area. Saul was saying something about evacuation.

You greet him, "Hey Saul." He nods at you. "Tom, is the branch clear? We're closing up but we have a man missing. Did you see anyone down there?"

You should really tell him about the gas leak, you think. "Nope, everything is fine. Nobody down there, all locked up now."

He looks back at the suited man. "Agent O'Neil here says that the USGS detected some sort of localized quake here and that we need to shut down for the day while they send out a survey team. Did you feel anything Tom?"

You remember how you got dizzy down there... that could be a sign of a microquake. "Nope, didn't feel anything." Your voice is even, soft, somewhat hollow even to your own ears. Strange. Saul doesn't notice, he is speaking to the suited man.

"See? Nothing going on. Tell the labcoats that they need to recheck their data. I can't shut down a mine just because someone in a lab gets jumpy. Go on home Tom, I'll straighten this out."

The agent does not look happy. You nod and leave the foreman's office, walking towards your bus stop. It's almost 6pm now. According to the timetable the bus should be there at 6:15 but you know it's almost always a bit early, so you walk a bit faster to arrive on time.

Your leg itches again, but you don't scratch. You don't notice the sharp pain that follows. You stop at the bus stop, eyes slightly glazed, and stare at the timetable. There are a few other miners there, waiting to go home.

Suddenly you are startled out of your daze by a horn, the bus is here and the driver is staring at you impatiently. Everyone else has boarded, and so you follow suit though a bit embarrassed.

If only you could remember...

What were you supposed to do? It seems so important.

[Detoxicated]

We were supposed to buy amounts of salt because you wanted to take a saltbath of epic proportions.

[forsaken1111]

Ah yes, the salt! You remember there was.. something on TV? About salt baths being good for your skin.

You get off the bus at the stop near the local grocery store and walk in. You bump into someone by mistake and apologize, "Mmrh...srry." The woman you bumped looks a bit startled, and stares at you for a moment. She asks if you are okay but you just walk past her. You feel fine, why would she ask that? Weird.

You make your way along the aisles until you see one that indicates its contents as "Bathing and Foot Care". You see bath salts of various fragrances and mixtures of varying cost. You grab several pounds of salts of a particular mixture. You aren't sure what is guiding your hand in selecting ingredients. Oh yes, you remember a specific recipe from the health show probably. The thought seems strange but it's hard to focus. You're quite happy, you keep thinking. So happy.

You place the salts and a few other mineral supplements into your cart. You also grab two cans of Comet cleaner for trace minerals. What? For bathroom cleaning. Right, of course. You feel strange.

You make your way to the counter, dumping the salts and other items on the counter. The cashier looks at you for a moment and asks if you are feeling alright. You tell her that you are fine "Yesh good. How much?"

She shrugs and begins ringing up your items. You hand over a sliver of plastic for some reason which momentarily confuses you. She hands it back. Aha, data encoded via a magnetic strip. Fascinating. Wait, why is that fascinating? You know how credit cards work. The cashier is staring at you, you realize you are staring at your credit card. You clear your throat and put it away, taking the bagged items and walking home without meeting her eyes.

The walk home is short. You live in a small ground floor apartment in a run down building. The neighborhood is poor but safe, and the rent is cheap. Your landlord is a deadbeat which never replies to your service requests. The kitchen sink still doesn't have hot water and your toilet takes three flushes to work.

You stumble over something unseen as you enter, forgetting to lock the door behind you. You feel great, very healthy and happy. You begin to realize something is wrong. You bring the groceries into the bathroom and drop the bags. The light comes on, did you turn it on? You must have. You see yourself in the mirror and your heart spasms.

Your skin is pale, streaked with coal dust. Sweat is pouring down your cheeks and dripping from your forehead. You look deathly ill, and your cheekbones stand out starkly as though you are malnourished even though you consider yourself somewhat overweight. Your clothing is drenched in sweat and you realize that the strange smell you've been wondering about is your own body oder.

Somehow the horror of your appearance recedes to the back of your mind. You begin dumping salt and other things into the bathtub while the water is filling. Water so hot it should be scalding you, but it feels cold. You have dumped at least 10 pounds of salt in once you start pouring in the comet cleaning powder and vitamin supplements you bought.

Something deep inside of you is screaming for this to stop, but that part took too long to catch on. What is in control now is something else entirely... something alien.

You lower your body gently into the churning, steaming water. As you slip below the surface, your last insane thought as Thomas Eugene Nelson is that your cat will probably starve without you.

---Discontinuity---

You are Araqiel. Some time has passed. Your smallest Self has long since lost contact with the Relay. The mortal Thomas was stronger than anticipated, and there was some strange reaction to contacting the Relay. As soon as he touched it, the Relay went dark and ceased transmitting. You have been considering possibilities for the last few hours, wondering what may have happened.

You did get a burst of data before transmission ceased, but it was strange. Thoughts from the mortal were mixed in with the pure data of the Relay. With some effort, you decipher the information received... or at least enough of it to draw some conclusions.

You have learned that these people now count their days on a new calendar, one which begins with the death of Y'weh's son who is named Christ. This Christ is a historical figure who is said to be literally an embodiment of the god Y'weh. You wonder how such a thing is possible. The mortal Thomas was devout and religious, attending regular service. The structure you have come across in the depths is a Coal Mine, where mortals mine the remains of long dead plants and creatures to burn for heat. An interesting idea. It seems their entire technological base (A new concept for you) is centered around the application or harnessing of fire or magnets in some form. They heat water to produce steam which pushes turbines which turn magnets which produce streams of negatively charged subatomic particles in ferrous substances which are then used to perform work. Crude but effective.

Your ruminations are interrupted by a sudden transmission directed at your smallest Self in your own thought language:

"Local processing resources have been co-opted. Foothold established. Standing by for orders."

You get a visual stream. It is distorted... you're looking up from beneath water it would seem. You begin interrogating this newly discovered entity only to realize that this is Relay. Somehow it has taken over the mortal's mind! This coal miner must have been of exceptionally low willpower. Even so, Relay was not designed to do this. Curious...

The Relay device is now a fully functional entity. You examine its memories and discover that it has been wielding some subtle influence over the man and is now utilizing a bath of pure salts and other minerals to build itself a more capable form. Commendable initiative for what was intended to be a dumb device, perhaps you did a little too well in creating it. You will have to watch it closely for any other 'initiative'.

Well, you have an ambulatory entity outside of the cage now which is an order of magnitude more powerful than your smallest self. It has become rather obsolete.

What will you do now?

[Salsacookies]

Explore the place the Relay as gone too.

[forsaken1111]

You decide more information is required, and so you open a communications line to the new Entity, which you will need to name at some point. Your Voice booms through the ether, disrupting radio communications across a few miles but only for a few seconds. It will likely be dismissed as static. You know about Radio now, which accounts for the buzzing and strangeness across the Ether.

"ממסר - Activate. Information is required: Local/Regional. Topics: Technology, Religion (Christian), Y'Weh. Determine if any sorcerers exist in this area and recruit/co-opt."

---Discontinuity---

You are ממסר, Relay, a newly formed entity. You lie submerged in a roiling froth of organic waste. Your form is approximately 0.5 meters in length, a bilaterally symmetrical arrangement of blue/green crystalline outcroppings encased in a calcium carbonate matrix. Your mind has incorporated all knowledge possessed by the mortal Thomas Eugene Nelson, who now exists only as organic residue floating in the water, and the calcium and carbon laced through your outer shell.

You shudder at the Voice of Araqiel, it is deafening and sweeps the Ether clean in its wake. You have been commanded, and so shall you act.

You rise from the roiling waters and immediately they quiet, congealing into a frozen mass as you suck all remaining energy from the bathtub. You are in a bathroom, hovering about 3 feet off the floor. Feet... inches... meters... you assimilated two sets of contradictory measurement systems. Thomas knew of both but was unclear on the conversion between units. He used Meters and Kilometers at his...job. Some equipment came from... overseas. Far away places. This equipment used a metric system. Local equipment manufacturing uses an Imperial system. It is all highly illogical. You know of other differences. Apparently some overseas places drive steel conveyances on the other side of small asphalt strips. These things seemed to matter a great deal, but you don't know why.

The bathroom is small, you sometimes scrape the tiling. Where your form touches tile it slices, for your edge is razor sharp and new. This would have upset Thomas, he was very concerned with the physical appearance of this place.

You know from Thomas that your appearance would cause undue concern, so you exercise the small portion of Araqiel's will with which you have been invested. Space ripples around you as light is bent and warped, and in the mirror you observe your form apparently vanish. With the loss of visible light your sensorium is diminished, but you have many other senses and it should not impact navigation.

You move into the living room. You see a desk with a...computer. A device of simple logic gates and relays for the storage and retrieval of information. The television is on, a program about cooking. Cooking is the preparation of dead plant and animal matter for human consumption.

In some ways the computer is an unimaginably primitive version of yourself, for you are an Entity... an autonomous information gathering drone capable of self-actualization. Thomas also possessed something called an Internet Connection, which you believe (though Thomas was very vague on the details) is a link to a network of other devices across this whole world.

You wonder if this would be a good place to start, but there are risks. You could also watch the television for a while, or go out and physically scout around.

Another possibility exists. Thomas's memories indicate that this structure has several other mortals within it. You could attempt a lesser version of the influence you had wielded over Thomas and utilize the memories of these other mortals.

You cogitate for a few minutes, pondering various options.

[AoshimaMichio]

Internet is sea of information. Access it through the computer.

[Hawk132]

Internet is sea of information. Access it through the computer.

+1.