Chapter 41: Thoughts
Ariel’s view
Ariel:
“Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the first football tournament!”
With my best recreation of a modern stadium, my words were sent to all the crowds by giant speakers, while my appearance was on display upon giant screens, all floating above the field. How did I do this? By taking advantage of memory sharing between clones. There’s a slight lag, but it’s only about half a second.
As for why I decided to call it football and not soccer? Football makes more sense since there isn’t a football sport in this world yet.
Despite this nominally being the big event, I’m actually not all that interested in it. It’s nice to see all the young men and women strive and grow and learn, but I’m really more interested in the work at the Academy. I’ve already decided whom I will choose to bring along as the hero, and it doesn’t really matter who wins this tournament.
The research at the Academy has been progressing pretty well. I was able to create a work around for my rank 2 clones not being able to craft anything properly, by making item manufacturing devices with the unconscious rank 3 ones which my rank 2 clones can use. Their output isn’t nearly as good as the stuff my main body can make, but it’s good enough to compete with anything the people of this world know how to make.
What exactly are the limits on my crafting? Well, I think my single object size limits are around the size of a small house. This is why I haven’t tried to do long distance transportation. Even if I stretch a clone out like a cable, I can only get to about 100 feet or so distance. While I can then make a doorway at each end and warp the space inside the clone to connect those doorways, a 100 ft. teleport gate, just isn’t very impressive. Chaining them together for longer distances would be annoying too.
As for limits on material traits, my rank 3 unconscious clones can mimic and create materials comparable to my old world’s mass produced materials: plastics, steel, aluminum, rubber, nylon. My main body as a rank 4 can create stuff comparable to the expensive composites of my old life’s world: carbon fiber’s ultra-light durability, diamond coatings, etc. While my old world had gotten advanced enough to create rank 4 materials, they were generally pretty expensive. This new world though, has no idea how to make such things. The monsters of rank 4 and up can, obviously, but the humans, dwarves, and elves, cannot.
Rank 5 materials? While I can’t make them, I can sorta imagine what they might be. Fantasy stuff, like adamantium. Materials with a trait that goes beyond what seems possible. Could make nearly indestructible armor; shields that deflect impact perfectly; perfect insulators; superconductors… maybe if I knew more about quantum mechanics, I’d have a better understanding of just how outrageous rank 5 materials could get. I don’t know enough about physics to really understand how best to break it.
As the tournament got underway, the simple fact that I was watching from multiple places at the same time, reminded me of how weird it is to literally be in more than one place and doing and thinking more than one thing at the same time. When each of my selves are doing different things, the memories feel more like I just somehow did a weirdly large number of things each day, making each day feel really long. When multiple selves are watching the same event though, the memories get a bit confused, and I’m reminded that it’s not just one long day. I was careful to ensure that I’d remain one person, and not become many people, but that caution was likely part of why it remained such an odd experience.
To help keep everything in my head organized and deal with all the memories and knowledge I now get, I’ve made a self that remains asleep, and spends its time rummaging through my memories and abilities, to make any changes needed, and optimize the organization of it all. This has helped me with figuring out workarounds for my various limitations, including the portable manufacturing devices I made. I feel like my crafting, design, and presentation abilities have all improved greatly as a result.
Presentation skills and abilities help with explaining things to the Academy. With a device capable of creating holograms, I can provide far better visual aids than before, helping me explain the design and mechanisms involved in steam power. Thanks to this, work on developing a steam powered train has been progressing rather quickly.
One trouble I’ve come to realize though: This world only has basic math, and doesn’t even know any algebra yet. I’m gonna have to fix that.
