I felt that my previous update was risky, either it would be one of the biggest flaws of this story, or it would be one of the very best parts... judging by the replies, it seems to have been the latter. I'm honored to be the one to write this story, and glad that I possess what it takes to do it properly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The forces of time... they drive mountains into the sky, then wear them down again, they make civilizations grow, advance, turn to ruins, then turn to dust, it sets the stars and planets in motion... but it will never have an effect on my love for Fale, my mother... that, is eternal... beyond time. I love you, Fale. Now, in your memory, I progress...Blitukus kept smiling in realization of what was happening, but also shed tears in his mothers memory. He checked his timepiece... it read, "10:05 AM, Sandstone 17, 1083". It was time... Blitukus walked back down the tunnels, entered his room, and sat on his bed. He quieted his eagerness to allow himself to rest. He lay, and shut his eyes, digging into the wooden surface with his claws for a moment, a few drops of tears pooling beneath his head. It took quite a while to get his mind settled enough to sleep... but eventually, he welcomed his exhaustion taking over, and settled into a slumber. That day, he had the same dream... only now, he was equipped with the knowledge he needed. The secret was the space the puzzle existed within... the problem was the plane itself... Blitukus thought for a few moments... 11 dimensions... chaotic space, and at the heart of it all, the smallest possible level... all realms were so unified, they were unable to be told apart. After those few moments... it dawned on him. The puzzle was impossible to solve as it was, laying on that transparent plane... the secret was to view and analyze of the universe from multiple levels... and higher dimensionalities.
Blitukus grabbed the side of the puzzle, and lifted it off of the plane, forming an edge. Then he folded the puzzle further, forming some more edges and corners... assembling the previously flat puzzle into an object with depth and volume. Bit by bit, he assembled the marvelous, twisting, yet geometrically perfect and simple structure, and at the top... at the very corner of the top... it fit. The puzzle was solved. Gravity, the planets, the stars... miniscule particles, electromagnetism, and the forces that bind matter itself together... matter, energy, the forces, the universe, all shone in unison and sang together. Blitukus sat back and watched in awe as the structure, beautiful, intricate with the entire universe shining within, yet astoundingly simple at heart, seemed to move on its own, the entities within dancing in a plethora of countless cyclical motions. Despite its intricate beauty, its simplicity made Blitukus wonder why he never thought of it before... the feeling that always comes with true, complete insight, the heart of the greatest discoveries.
All around Blitukus, the equations that he had amassed and learned over time from books and insights, seemed to shed their contents, a fireworks display of sorts erupting as entire sections of math became irrelevant and disintegrated, equations merging together to form more and more general and unified statements. The brilliant display of light shrunk down before Blitukus, finally condensing and dying away, leaving a single, small equation. Blitukus walked over to the floating math symbols, and looked at it. He felt overwhelmed by the simple beauty of it. It was indescribable in words, yet easily described in math. All of the forces of the universe were related, in a space less than an inch across, and it was stated so simply that nearly anybody could use the equation... but Blitukus realized he was one of the only people in the universe to have truly understood it. He stood motionless in sheer awe at this inch-long equation, for this inch contained the universe in a nutshell.
He shut his eyes in the dream, and opened them slowly, finding himself awake... he felt a strange sensation of power, omnipresent power, not of Armok, but just raw, latent power. He felt as if something supernatural had occurred, and laughed again. He sat up, and found himself simultaneously depressed and ecstatic. Just as opposing heats could drive a machine forward, these opposing emotions drove him towards his goal. He took in a deep breath, and let it out... now was the time to start putting it to use. He began thinking of this new unified expression... all of the other equations he knew could be derived from it... and then some. He held the key to other equations that he would need to use. He began to pick it apart as he walked to the river and drank. Limitless possibilities lay before him. He walked back to the smelter, and retrieved coal dust... then walked back out, character by character, marking the true unified equation onto the wall. As he did so, he felt his sense of scale numbed by the significance of these simple coal dust markings. He finished, stood back, and smiled silently at it, taking it all in. Blitukus found his smile fading... something was very wrong. He took in a deep breath, and sensed the presence of Armok... scanning and analyzing the equation. Armok boomed, "Szo ye hast finaaaly ssolved the problem...." Blitukus sighed through his nose, then walked out to the front of the tunnel, peering out into the sunset sky. Blitukus spoke, "God of Blood, what use is this to you?... Are you not all-knowing then?" He was going to play dumb about what the universe had told him regarding the gods... no evidence of his contact could ever be uttered. Armok blasted out, "SILENCE MORTALLL! How DARE you imply that I am not all-knowing?" Blitukus spoke, "... I sense you wanted me to solve that puzzle because you yourself wanted the solution... you never gave me any other tasks to indicate otherwise, and I know you would never allow a mortal to gain this knowledge without good reason..." Armok replied, "I... ok, thennn.... you art a very clever mortal, and this is why I chose you. I am masster of several universzes, several of which I have created, several more of which I have conquered. In order to grow, I need more pure energy. This universze is vast, and full of richesss of energy, vasst treasurezs that many gods are battling over as we speak! This universze has made life very... difficult... for us gods, many of our powers do not work here, and we are forced to stoop down to the level of mortalss and gain our knowledge within this universe by exploraation and sciencze. We gods demanded that we be provided with all knowledge as we had always been before... but the univerzse would not provide... this is why I have my... ssslavesss... to do the science and exploration for me... you have proven to be a very... vaaaluable... szlave, Blitukusss. I ussed to have to reszort to converting energy to matter to manipulate gravity... a very expeensive and ineffiscient processs. It never yielded any returns. Now, with this tool of unification, I may bend gravity and space with pure energyyyy! We gods war over the enegry and now I have the advantage. IMAGINE the looksz on their faczes as I send their PLANETS FLYING INTO THEIR PARENT STARSZ!!!" An evil, sadistic laugh permeated all. Blitukus felt an anger rising within, an anger directed at Armok... Armok was going to abuse what Blitukus had worked hard to achieve... it was a cruel defacement of such a beautiful equation. The anger intensified exponentially... Armok had also caused the death of his mother... Blitukus asked, "Why did you cause the dwarves to begin the campaign? Why... WHY LET MY MOTHER DIE?! You could have given it to me directly, with the same result... but, no..." Armok laughed again, "I, being the God of Blood, receive certain benefits whenever blood flowsz... your mother brought peace to this world, and I could not stand for that. By placing the book within the handsz of the dwarvesz, I eliminated the source of this peace, drove YOU to work, and in the end provided you with the materials to build MY new tools... all in the same move." Blitukus sniffed, and began to cry, "So... you killed my mother, and exploited my work... all for your cosmic war games?" Armok boomed, "It is NOT a GAME, mortal!... I sensze the universes avatar has come through here... for the sake of your soul and your motherzs soul I had better never learn of you being involved in ANY WAY with the plans of the collective universze. For now, szlave, you have outlived your uszefulness to me... this-" Blitukus interrupted, growling deeply, "I do NOT care if I have to RAISE HELL AND BRING DOWN HEAVEN to see my mother again! My quest is of greater importance here than yours, and I DO NOT care how powerful you th-" A bolt of lightning rained down, striking the side of the cliff. A large lump of snow was toppled from close overhead, landing right on Blitukus, burying him underneath. Blitukus grunted, and felt the snow chilling him from all sides. Armok boomed, "Cool it... mortal... You may have done much for me, but you are now a uszeless sslave... and I do not tolerate rebellion among sslaves. That was a warning. You are no longer uszeful to me, so now I leave you here to freeezse."
Blitukus sensed the presence of Armok moving off into the distance. He dug himself out of the pile of snow, and stood, shivering. He felt freezing without, and burning within. He let out a fierce mix between a yell and a growl, kicking a lump of snow against the face of the cliff. Ears laid back, still growling, he walked back into his tunnels.
What Armok wants is irrelevant... I developed that equation in order to reach my mother, and it will be so. He... he killed her... after all that we have done in his name. Slaves to Armok indeed...
He took in a deep breath, and sighed it out, tempering the fires of his rage. Anger wasn't productive at the moment but Blitukus had to be. He let his fingers uncurl, and breathed deeply, ears still laid back. He gathered more coal dust then walked back toward where he had written the equation. He set the coal dust down, sat, and thought... how was he going to form a portal through time? He needed to create and manipulate one of those holes through space that occur so randomly throughout the scale of the absolute smallest. Gravity... he had the power to create gravitational effects from pure energy too... and just as it was predicted that a relatively small amount of the force that binds particles together could create a massive amount of other energies... a relatively small amount of electromagnetism could create a massive amount of gravity, and gravity was unique in that its entire effect was derived from dragging and distorting the fabric of space itself. But, to punch a hole through and manipulate that hole in space... the amount of gravity needed would be truly astronomical, so great that not even light itself would escape its center. Mass commanded gravity, but energy and mass became in essence the same thing when viewed in totality. This tear, this rift in space, could be most efficiently begun by compacting so much energy within a single fundamental unit of space that that one fundamental unit collapsed in upon itself, creating a rift. Then gravity could be used to prop open this rift, wide enough for objects on familiar scales to pass through. The 'death ray'... it was precise but it wasn't precise enough to fit all of its energy within a single fundamental unit of space... it was many orders of magnitude short of that. But, these energetic charged particles were pushed around by magnetic fields. Adamantine... no resistance to current... so in an adamantine coil, as current levels approached infinity... the space the particles would be confined within would approach zero. This was how it would be focused. But at such levels, even adamantine wouldn't be able to hold it for much more than a second before it began to dematerialize as its particles flew out from within it. All of the energy would have to be channeled within a second, then. Blitukus looked back at his equation... a large rotating mass would drag space with it, allowing electromagnetism around it to take on a space bending effect, creating gravity within this rift. It would force the walls of the tunnel apart, spreading it across multiple fundamental space units... more and more, until it had been spread large enough for standard objects to pass through. It was the basics, enough in his mind to create the rift. The rift would be guided by a reduced field, produced by external sources of electromagnetism. A ring of silver spheres would suffice. Through the bridge to gravity, it could nudge the destination of the rift around as it expanded... as the rift reached the size of Blitukus, the probability of it having a solid destination approached 1. The energy involved would have to be in and of itself out of the ordinary... capable of freeing a spot of space from the confines of compact and expanded dimensions. Unfortunately, the center of the rift would still lay within the small scales, subjecting it to the chaotic nature of fundamental space. It would not remain stable forever. Plus, a lot of adamantine would be involved... he was going to have to bridge the magma and dig deeper to find it, if it was there at all.
Such a project would take a large amount of improvisation since he lacked the resources of a vast and advanced civilization to create numerically perfect designs and machines. He would design each component individually. First, he needed basic parameters... size was a non issue, he could carve a chamber of any size he needed out of the mountain. He needed to know how much energy it would take to collapse space within the smallest fundamental unit of distance. He stood, and took the coal dust. He began to pick apart the equation, using all sorts of maths to relate the collapse of space and the smallest possible distance... that small constant, 6.626068*10^-34 m^2*kg/s... the units on it hinted of the smallest possible distance... and he found how he could derive a new formula to find this distance. As a byproduct of producing a number for the smallest possible distance... a truly numbingly small number... he used a closely related equation to get the mass that would cause this space to break. At this scale, trying to tear it open efficiently using magnified gravity wouldn't work... no machine was accurate enough. It would have to be done by natural gravity, by mass... and all mass was was compacted energy. Mass converted to energy, and... the number for the energy needed was about 2*10^9 J... not a ridiculously large number, but still... it was a little more energy than a decent bolt of lightning would contain, and it had to be all discharged within a second... Blitukus stood silent for a moment, then laughed a bit at the number before him. Adamantine wires could be used to carry the charge, but he definitely wouldn't be able to conventionally produce 2 gigawatts of power. It would have to be discharged from a capacitor... and that capacitor would take up several rooms worth of space to hold the entire charge. That was an immense amount of power for a lone kobold to try to channel...
At least if I mess up I won't have more than the slightest fraction of a second to regret it.
2 gigawatts... Blitukus looked at his hands... he closed his eyes, then opened them, viewing an overlay of the higher dimensions. The particles within his hands danced before him, the forces holding the particles together, the particles being towed amongst eachother by electromagnetic forces, particles bouncing around rapidly, being gently tugged upon by gravity. It was all nebulous, different manifestations of the same entity... Blitukus allowed this overlay from his mind to fade, and once again found himself staring into his familiar hands. He perked his ears up, and smiled.
I don't need to conquer universes to gain sufficient power... 2 gigawatts then? 2 gigawatts it shall be. It is insignificant compared to the power of what drives me forward, my love for my mother.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm hoping that this doesn't come as a let-down after the last one. I've noticed that the slow points of the story tends to be when he's building things. At least the adamantine and what we all know lies in front of it might make things more interesting. I just really hope memory hacking the adamantine count works, because I definitely don't want a too-deeped message.
Author
Topic: A Kobold's Quest II (Read 76140 times)