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[Gigalith]

First the brain stuff, because it's absolutely time critical and by far the highest priority:

> unless you used a stupidly short sequence, there is something else going on than statistics. According to statistics, there are no more than 500 trillion synapses in the brain, and that's identifiable by 34 bits of information. If you read a kilobit from one it's extremely unlikely it'd reoccur even in any brain of anyone on earth for centuries assuming it's random. Most likely the "flood" was the few hundred synapses connected to the same neuron and thus firing the same sequence.

I had assumed you meant a very short sequence. I don't really see the point - except for testing?

> it doesn't matter. You managed to get direct access to a neuron by searching for it. Now read out evry last bit of information abaut any one single neuron and try to create an accurate simulation of it. Try to make it reasonably optimized, roughly a gigaflop per second should be analogue for an entirely accurate simulation

You attempt to withdraw the entire quantum state of a neuron. You prepare a special Quantum Storage drive so as to not prematurely collapse the waveform. You select a random neuron, write a simple script, and --

WARNING: This program would use more Power than you currently have access to. Are you sure you want to compile it?

It appears the 1 Hiero minimum for brain/mind manipulation is actually a 1 Hiero/Megabyte* limit. You will need much, much more power to even fully scan a neuron**.

It also appears this is specific to your brain. Scanning a equivalent area of a wooden 2x4 does not have any additional surcharge.

* Technically, a Mebibyte: 2^20 bytes.
** If you knew all that was necessary to the functioning of the neuron, you wouldn't be scanning it. You're looking at over a hundred trillion atoms at minimum.

> some basic augmented reality could make the computer thing less distracting.

Part of the distracting thing is the mere presence of the computer. Imagine you're standing at a switchboard while watching two lights. Now imagine there's two hundred lights. 

> what kind of power can batteries store before they explode; that is how large a bomb can we make.

It's a mix between capacity and safety. You could store a gigahiero in an atom, but the moment it happens to ionize--BOOM.

For pure storage, your divkit divkit appears to be your best compromise between safety and capacity. Think about a megahiero an eighth of a cubic meter.

[Armok]

Ok, it seems the divkit is deliberately made to prevent you from doing exactly what you are trying to do. Fist thing to check is if you can make another copy of the divkit hardware needed for the scanning but make your own software from it that extracts the raw data, then run the more sophisticated info software on THAT and hope it's not recognized as part of a brain.

Also, quantum level is absolutely not needed. In fact it probably wouldn't work for simulating anything other than the brain exploding in vacuum unless you also simulated the rest of the body. Just simulate cell membranes as impenetrable barriers, the quantities of molecules in different areas but not their exact position or other tracking of individual ones, electrical charge and synapses as special cases, and maybe two or three other things that seem important for the input-output behaviour after you study one for a while.

If replicating the internal mechanics should fail, using a traditional neural network tasked to learn the input-output behaviour and treating the neuron as a black box is also a possible solution.

[Gigalith]

The scanning software is very simple. It essentially calls AcquireQuantumInformation(), which leads into a morass of molecular structures and assembly code. You estimate it would take several days of effect to decode, let alone make your own. Shall you embark on this project? 

[Armok]

Don't bother looking at the existing software at all, look at the hardware and see if it's possible to do something without any computer guidance at all. Then use the existing software to decode the horrible mess that results in.

If that fails you may have to just see if you can up the resolution on mundane brain imaging tech enough for it to work.

[Gigalith]

Don't bother looking at the existing software at all, look at the hardware and see if it's possible to do something without any computer guidance at all. Then use the existing software to decode the horrible mess that results in.

The divkits internals don't appear to distinguish between hardware and software. Considering that they have the power to influence matter using software, that's not much of a surprise. Not, of course, that you would feel surprise if this was not the case.

If that fails you may have to just see if you can up the resolution on mundane brain imaging tech enough for it to work.

How would you go about this? Aside from your divkit, you are an ordinary, mildly educated, human. Not that it would be impossible to learn by any means, but you won't be able to improve on existing technologies for quite some time.

[Pandarsenic]

We should look into a way to "harvest" information using the thought interface so that we can queue up an input from somewhere else (e.g. a book) and gain the knowledge without taking the time to manually process it. Pulling some Instant Expertise whenever we need it would be a useful ability, to say the least.

[Armok]

For once a good idea from someone other than me. Try searching for a bunch of information on neurology and brain scanning online and dump it right into your brain.

[Pandarsenic]

I noticed that when reading earlier, we did have to work around the absence of boredom to notice a limit to our attention span. I figured having a way to work around our attention span would be the simplest workaround to that problem.

We should be careful with our neuroscience, though; if we tamper with something incorrectly and don't have a backup, we're fucked. If we do have a backup but don't have a way to access it, we're still fucked. I would propose that we create a second Brain (referred to as Brain' from here on) which we'll perform our changes to; when completed, we switch Brain and Brain' with an explicit failsafe that if we don't give an all-clear command, our mechanism will switch them back after a brief delay. It seems like a fairly easy way of making sure that even if we somehow render ourselves completely unable to interact with our environment meaningfully, we'll be restored shortly after.

[Armok]

Which is half the reason we're attempting to create a backup as fast as possible. The other reason is that it'll give us several orders of magnitude more time to do stuff for each realtime hour. The problem is that with our current tools we can't create such a copy without spending so much power we'll be discovered and turned into plasma within seconds.

One of my possible emergency plans is to actually do that and make sure we're accelerated so much that those seconds will be ample time to prepare and flee.

[Pandarsenic]

Well, if all we physically copy is the brain and a way to keep a brain alive and healthy outside of a body for 30 seconds....

[Armok]

I'm pretty sure that's much harder to do than copying it to software.

[Pandarsenic]

Well, once we figure out whether physical-replicating or software-replicating our brainmeats would be easier, we can overclock easylike.

Also, supposing we were to convert a number of household objects into batteries - or possibly even the house itself - could we begin to harvest and store Natural Energy for use in this project?

[Gigalith]

You explore the possibilities of directly inputting knowledge into your brain. It is simple enough to alter the thought interface to instantly "recall" texts you have read, but this is not the same as learning, mastery, or understanding. You need to "digest" the material you access to truly know it.

But there is no reason you cannot improve the digestive process.

You create a system which automatically creates a concept web from texts and the information stream in concert with your mind. The process takes approximately an hour of undisturbed meditation, and you must have REM sleep for the knowledge to fully crystallize, preferable immediately afterwards. If the process succeeds, you will have gained the knowledge of a doctorate in the subject, though not necessarily the skill. If you learned neurosurgery, for example, you could observe and understand an operation, though you would not have the muscle memory necessary to do it yourself.

You test yourself with learning neurology. Thirty seven minutes in, two distant active magical sensor begin pinging each other. The source in Omaha, Iowa, blinks out briefly before a massive wave of magical energy appears from the second source at Yellowknife, California.

Emerging from your meditation and checking the news, more meteors such as the one that allegedly destroyed Pittsburgh have leveled an apartment building in Omaha and destroyed Yellowknife. In other news stocks have further fallen, several celebrities are doing things, politicians are arguing about budgets, a large number of zombies assault Bueno Aires, some scientist has said something about time travel and FTL using negative energy, and --- halt.

Zombies?

Without the emotion of surprise or shock, you do not immediately notice odd or bizarre circumstances, because you do not feel any different about them. Only through intellectual consideration can you stop and read the article.

It appears a large number of corpses have emerged from their graves and have begun siege on the capital of Argentina. Cell phone footage shows bodies moving with mechanical, exaggerated movements, only stopped when they are destroyed by dismemberment. Even lost limbs continue moving on their own. The government forces are further harried by the zombie commanders, who possess what you believe to be machine guns that shoot black holes.

It is obvious another god is causing trouble down south, perhaps a god of death, but though you empathize, you restrain yourself from immediately going after said god. After all, you reason, it may be difficult to find a flight to Argentina for the foreseeable future, and in any case the death-god may be more prepared than you are. You return to your mediation, though you cannot put the plight of the Argentinians out of mind.

That night, thinking of all you have learned of neurology, you wonder: If emotions are the result of neurotransmitters and neurons, then how does the Messenger and whatever masters he serves expect any Stake to remain? Or are there more to emotions than mere grey matter? Consider. How would such a Stake as being eternally unable to play Dwarf Fortress be implemented? Would some watching program destroy any DF or DF-analogue nearby? But if they could write programs with such power, why do they even need recruits? These thoughts follow you to sleep, and to your dreams.

You dream of the Messenger again. "Ahem." it squeaks. "As I was saying, now that you have power, you must conquer the local world, preferably the local solar system. When all conflict has ceased in that area, we will contact you again. Farewell."

The next morning, you have a much, much clearer understanding of your brain and its working, or at least as much as any modern neuroscientist. You may have more success in your neurological explorations. However, what with the Argentinian Zombie Plague and presumably two other demigods intent on blowing each other up, you may have higher priorities to consider.

Spoiler: STATUS (click to show/hide)

You have:
an INVISIBLE CRYSTAL COMPUTATION CIRCLET, including A FUNCTIONAL COMPUTER, an INTERDIMENSIONAL INFORMATION ACCESS, a THOUGHT LOGGER, a (not-completely functional) BRAIN SCANNER, a PASSIVE MAGICAL SENSOR SUITE, and an ACCELERATED LEARNING DEVICE.
a DIVKIT, and the STANDARD, CRYSTAL, REFLECTION, CALCULATION, and INFORMATION LIBRARIES. Your DIVKIT also contains a ONE MEGAHEIRO BATTERY, and an INTERDIMENSIONAL POWER STREAM ACCESS. The DIVKIT is powered by a WALL SOCKET, WHICH ON SECOND THOUGHT DOESN'T REALLY NEED TO BE CAPITALIZED.
a SUPPLY OF CRYSTAL WAX and TABLE SALT, to make the physical embodiment of crystals.

You have, in software:

BASIC COUNTERSPELLS and ANTIMAGIC SCRIPTS
INSTANT CRYSTALIZATION and DECRYSTALIZATION SCRIPTS.

In personal modifications:

Your EYES are the HUMAN NORM. (Normally, you need glasses)

All together, you use about 10 Hiero +- 2 a second. Your use can be detected from a few meters away. Totally streaming the power, you can be detected from a hundred or so.

[Armok]

Wait, WHAT!? We can manipulate concept webs?! You did NOT mention this and if I had known it I'd have suggested entirely different things. What you said was that we only had access to one stream for text and one stream for images and failed to get anywhere from there.

Exactly how does these work, and what other things from our brain can we access that you haven't told us about? I need to know the FULL extent of possible actions in order to proceed with planing the next turn.

Using concept-web level data we probably can upload large enough parts of our brain to fill most functions with using a negligible amount of bandwidth or power. Just the core modules and concepts for second to second cognition, our programing skills, goals and planning system, and a hookup for the commonsensical and domain understandigs should be able to do 80% of everything we can. But more information is needed before I can tell exactly what we shuld do.

[Gigalith]

You don't have direct access to concept webs. Your learning method is just based on them.