"It's interesting, to say the least." Donovan stared at the model of himself from the comfort of the cockpit, occasionally glancing at the report to the side. "I wonder why it's happening."
"Indeed. Under normal circumstances I would suggest that manipulated or recently generated Split possesses so property that induces flocculation in ambient Split that surrounds it, however I do not know if Split can possess such properties in the first place."
The model focused in on the space between his fingers to provide a better visual. The center of the area in question contained the thread, shining brightly despite the apparent instability, and was surrounded by an aura similar to that which ford when inside of his body. The biggest difference was, as discussed, the greater degree of concentration.
"I'm not a betting man, but I would put a significant sum of money on this phenona being what actuates changes to the environnt." Donovan's mind had imdiately locked on to the process by which they could communicate, the strange auto-translate function. He had always figured there must be sothing more to it, and this might be it. "I keep being told that in order for Split to do anything, I must 'attach intent' to it, and I still don't think I've figured out what that ans."
"Intent was described to as a combination of a command and what the result of that command should be, as well as a vision of how it is accomplished." Arc brought up a picture of a docunt, a diagram the Arboreal Maiden had also made use of while teaching him. In fact, it was more of an instruction manual and test for him, a goal to achieve while she could not offer tutelage directly. "Obviously I don't know how that is done, but it should co to you with ti."
"Ti . . . yeah." Donovan wasn't expecting to have the skill mastered overnight, but he would like to at least reach the starting line just about everyone else described - the manipulation of Split being second nature. "I wish I had so more of that."
"I fear you'd want even more if I gave to you." Donovan smiled in response to Arc's sarcastic remark. "In all seriousness, I don't believe this is sothing you should rush, regardless of whether or not that option is available. We know so little about how it functions I fear you might cause damage to your person I am not equipped to fix."
"I don't think you'll have to worry about that quite yet. I've been following the Great Csillacra's instructions to the letter when it cos to strengthening my core, stripping away and discarding impurities before pushing it back in."
"Impurities?"
"Yeah, anything that doesn't feel, uh . . . I don't know how to explain it."
"What do you an?"
"I don't know how to describe an impurity." Donovan realized he was coming up on another point of disconnection with Arc. "Can your sensors derive any sort of qualitative data from its readings, or is it only quantity and concentration?"
"Would 'it's complicated' suffice as an answer?"
"That would depend on what makes it complicated." He wanted to know exactly what information Arc was getting. "How do those sensors work on a chanical level?"
"They are similar to caras in that they are passive receptors focused on an area of space. They take an 'image' based upon so form of radiation that Split exudes. To my knowledge, this radiation is not blocked by any material or phenonon, even those which inhibit the movent of Split, however it does not travel an infinite distance. It has it's own decay curve, reducing in intensity radially from its source the sa way one might expect light or sound to as well as 'bleeding' strength as it moves through space. In order to get a complete picture, two sensors are required to determine the three dinsional location of a given reading, with a third needed to verify intensity based on relative decay. In order to provide a degree of redundancy and refine the date the Noah was equipped with six."
Donovan thought about this explanation for minute, attempting to cognize the system ntally and relate it to sothing he knew more about. It didn't take long though, because it was eerily similar to a new sense he had been learning to use.
"That's . . . that's just a lower order version of 'Split Sense', isn't it?" The na Donovan had co up with wasn't exactly creative, but there weren't any greco-latin placeholders that could adequately describe it. "When I, uh, 'see' Split, it doesn't look like a two dinsional projection of a three dinsional space like with my eyes. Instead, it's more like a three dinsional projection of a four dinsional space . . . or maybe it captures all four dinsions."
"You aren't sure of this?"
"I'm going to be honest, I don't know what a projection of four dinsions is supposed to look like in three dinsional space. The best I can equate it to is a heat map in three dinsions, sort of like what the sensors look at, but there's . . . more?"
Arc wasn't responded, either incredibly confused by Donovan's 'explanation' or disappointed in his inability to explain sothing he should have a good grasp of. It was most likely a combination of both.
"Okay, it's like I can see more information about a given . . . do we have a unitary term for Split?"
"We do not."
"Shit, um, it's sort of like I can tell more information from looking at Split than just 'it is there' and 'there is this much of it'. It has qualities beyond that, along the lines of color but not, you know, colors?"
"I take it this is how you identify impurities?"
"More than just that, but yeah." Donovan had given up. He lacked the proper vocabulary to explain what it was he experienced, and Arc lacked the proper receptors to piece together what gibberish fell out of his mouth. He was basically trying to explain the concept of colors to a blind man. "Things just sort of look different."
"I see . . . one more item on the list of experints."
"Oh, I should say that the fidelity with this sight is disturbingly good. If I really focus on it, deliberately reading what I'm 'seeing', I can tell what's going on through objects that would normally obscure vision, though I should say that only really applies to objects that have a, um, either lots of Split or specific qualities in the Split that occupies them. For example, it is incredibly easy to see people, or really any living creature with lots of Split."
Donovan rembered how he made use of his unwitting subordinates to practice this skill of his, first working on his ability to detect and discern individuals based on the characteristics of their Split before trying to figure out how to 'image' them. Titanyana, by way of being the strongest and therefore clearest for him to see, was his 'model' for this skill. He took extra care not to 'undress' her with this sense, limiting the extent of his probing to the head and extremities until he felt confident he wouldn't 'see' anything he wasn't supposed to, sothing he had done on accident pretty early on.
"Everybody seems to leak a bit of Split naturally, enough to 'stain' their clothing so I can see it, but I've noticed that tals are a lot harder to detect."
"Is there a reason for that?"
"Sanna was telling that tals act as a natural diffuser of Split, and that the most effective thod of disrupting Split Sorcery is a tal of so variety. If I rember correctly, Nickel is supposedly the most cost and weight efficient, being able to interrupt from a much greater distance, though it isn't the best at protecting from physical damage and have detrintal effects on your internal Split if worn for too long. Enough of it in an area can ss with the local flow or whatever, and it becos impossible to weave sothing effective at eliminating masses of infantry."
"tals are diffusers of Split? As in, Split will not flow through tals?"
"That's what I've been told."
"That information is in complete contradiction to my understanding of the chanics." A schematic appeared on screen, one Donovan had never seen before. "Much like with electricity, most tals are excellent conductors of Split, though the specifics are not fully known. The issue I suspect they have with tals is that their conductivity is not regulated or easily anticipated, like water flowing downhill or electricity following the path of least electrical resistance. It generally follows it's initial path through the tal, though testing suggested there is so degree of scattering, possibly as a result of impurities in the testing material or abnormalities in it's crystal matrix but there was not enough ti to make a conclusion."
"So what is this then?"
"The Recursive Split Generator."
"Our power supply?" It certainly looked like a reactor, not that he knew much about reactor design. His studies were more concerned with fitting a reactor with a known geotry and power output into the design of his vessels, not maximizing the efficiency of said reactor. "How does it work?"
"Electricity is generated by a fluctuating magnetic field realized by the flow of Split through alternating layers of pure iridium and lithium iridate in a stasis state of superconductivity. An insignificant amount of Split is lost through this process."
The diagram on screen zood in to display the component in question, the 'filant' of layered iridium and lithium iridate was about a milliter in diater and almost ten ters in length, each layer being in the ballpark of tens of nanoters. Donovan didn't even want to imagine the number of layers, the ti and energy needed to pressure weld those layers together, and how much of a pain it must have been to install them perfectly straight with minimal abnormalities. The fact there were almost a thousand of these filants made him dizzy.
A graph of the magnetic intensity and polarity along the filant showed a sinusoidal progression, but it was inconsistent. This problem seed to have been solved by way of a multitude of coils wrapping the filant rather than a single large one, localizing the inconsistency of magnetic flux and stabilizing the overall amperage.
"So how is Split generated and moved around?"
"Referencing the nature of Split to pass straight through tals, milliter thick wires of gold serve as pipelines. These wires are wrapped in a thick sh of Split-saturated carbon fiber then fed through an iron pipe coated with zinc and cadmium, which is then filled with liquid rcury when the circuit is completed. The carbon fiber sh is to protect the golden wire from reacting with the rcury to form an amalgam and delay the leaking of Split from the wire as Split tends not to travel into materials that are already saturated, carbon being the most workable of the Split retaining elents, followed closely by silicon. The rcury, zinc, and cadmium are there as a retardant and insulator, the group 12 tals impeding the movent rather than accelerating it. A similar external coating surrounds the filants."
From the diagram, Donovan could see that quite a bit of Split was being lost, an esoteric equation Donovan could not decipher suggested up to twenty percent bleed over the course of one lap. Arc's 'real' loss statistics were a fair bit lower than that at four percent, likely a result of these wires being bundled together such that Split leaking from one conduit simply fed into another, but it was still a concerning amount.
"Movent and generation are handled by the sa component. The golden wire feeds into a quartz crystal lens with a cadmium iris aperture to regulate output. This lens is compressed and an electric field is maintained across it, adding 'velocity' to the Split and focusing it at an inverted lens at the other end of a chamber holding hydrogen gas under extrely high pressure. For whatever reason, this environnt causes Split to duplicate."
"Well, we've already had to throw out energy and mass not being able to be created or destroyed, so . . ."
"Which makes that much more interested in how this is occurring! That being said, I don't think we will figure it out any ti soon. As demonstrated, I clearly lack the ability to see everything going on with Split, and we are not even sure if you do either."
"True, true . . ." Donovan looked over the machine in front of him, wondering how exactly any of this got figured out. He knew that the Captain and the Scholar had a hand in it, describing so functions and fundantal concepts to Dr Helmsguard, but that didn't explain the incredibly large step from 'we know absolutely nothing about this thing and it is actively trying to kill us' to 'we built a contraption that can create infinite energy' in less then a decade. "How did we even co up with this shit?"
"I can recount the developnt history and research logs if you would like. It is rather interesting, from a progress point of view. I imagine it could help you understand Split at a theoretical level, even if it is of little use in the way you might use it."
"Of course, yeah. Let's do that."
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