Chapter 91

Hindsight truly made time appear shorter after it had already been spent.

A week became a couple of pages scattered in various notebooks.

A month became a long series of [Insight]s amounting to a minor elevation of my [Comprehension] of reality.

Several months became a routine only [Guided] could make me remember why I constructed it so.

But the underlying constant, for what it was worth, never changed.

I forged onward.

Forming my [Flow] Aspect hadn't fundamentally altered what I did with the concept.

I still observed [Flow]s, studied them, experimented with them, pursued greater [Comprehension] of what made one stable or unstable, and sought the [Mastery] required to eventually apply all of that to the one [Flow] that actually mattered.

My Essence.

What had changed was the cost.

Before forming the Aspect, much of my progress had consisted of accumulating [Knowledge], seeking [Insight]s, comparing phenomena, and stumbling my way toward increasingly accurate contact with the concept of [Flow].

Some of those efforts developed my Essence, naturally, but only indirectly.

Now, however, I had formed my [Flow] Aspect.

Using it developed it.

Pushing it developed it more.

Attempting to understand the differences between what I could theoretically comprehend and what my Tier 0 [Flow] Aspect could actually express developed it still further.

The very thing I had pursued for months so that I could eventually attenuate my overdevelopment disorder now consumed substantially more of the Essence development quota imposed by that same disorder.

How appropriate.

Consequently, when considered proportionally, rather than according to absolute time invested, my [Cultivation] routine shifted gradually toward forming my [Foundation] Aspect.

I still practiced [Flow] whenever my safety margin allowed it.

Water.

Air.

Heat.

Blood.

Energy.

Credits.

Crowds.

[Vitality].

Small and carefully controlled attempts at perceiving the natural currents already traversing my Essence without actually imposing upon them.

But every significant [Flow] [Cultivation] session now had to justify its Essence development against something else.

Dwelling on my [Foundation] was easier in that respect.

Not harmless.

Nothing capable of eventually becoming my next Aspect could reasonably be described as harmless to my Essence.

Yet, much of my [Foundation] [Cultivation] consisted of reviewing, testing, stripping down, and reorganizing things that already existed within my Path rather than actively developing one of its Aspects to the same degree.

What did one practice truly depend upon?

Which relationships between my Aspects had become fundamental and which were merely conveniently synergistic?

What [Knowledge] had become so deeply integrated into my behavior that removing it would force me to reconstruct entire portions of my existence?

Which changes to my body, Essence, thinking, and Path had settled deeply enough that I no longer regarded them as changes at all?

I had already asked versions of those questions before forming [Flow].

Now I asked better ones.

Then better ones after those.

Weeks passed.

Then months.

My days didn't become more complicated.

If anything, they grew simpler.

I carried out my [Cultivation] routine.

Stopped when further development became inefficient.

Optimized my use of the resulting idle time.

Recovered.

Then carried out my [Cultivation] routine again.

I similarly continued to carry out my weekly Pulse assignment with enough efficiency that they rarely occupied more time than necessary.

My economical experiments fitted themselves around everything else.

Calling them investments still felt prematurely generous.

Proofs of concept described them better.

I committed a small number of credits to a medical supplier whose future demand I believed the available procurement data undervalued, not because I expected the resulting return to matter but because I wanted to know whether my economic [Comprehension] could survive contact with an actual financial consequence.

It did.

Barely.

I made money.

Then lost part of the gain when circumstances I hadn't incorporated altered transportation costs.

Another experiment involved allowing an intermediary to execute standing purchases whenever the price difference of several commonly traded medical compounds between two districts exceeded a threshold I had calculated to remain profitable after transportation, fees, and delays.

That one taught me that recognizing an opportunity and possessing the infrastructure required to exploit it were two extremely different things.

A third consisted of extending an insignificantly small amount of credit through an existing lending structure toward an organization whose public records suggested it was substantially more stable than the standardized terms offered to it implied.

So far, they continued repaying.

Whether they would continue doing so remained their problem and, indirectly, mine.

The credits involved in all those experiments amounted to little.

But that was intentional.

I wasn't trying to become rich from my first attempts.

I was discovering what actually happened between possessing an economic [Comprehension] and making credits [Flow] toward me without my continued involvement.

Failures were inexpensive.

Successes were recorded.

Everything turned into practical [Knowledge] that subtly tilted toward being intangible manifestations of [Mastery].

Which, for the moment, was worth more to me than the credits themselves.

The same couldn't be said of another increasingly frustrating line of research.

[Serenity].

Or rather, every other concept I could potentially use instead of it.

The Aspirant repositories had long since stopped yielding anything meaningfully new.

I had gone through their relevant introductory material.

Their comparative Aspect studies.

Meditative practices.

Case reports.

Records touching upon Essence Volatility.

Scattered discussions of [Harmony], [Clarity], stabilization, [Recovery] following Aspect advancement disorders, and the many concepts that could approximate one small portion of what the [Serenity] Aspect apparently accomplished far more naturally.

There were still books I hadn't read.

Thousands, probably.

But [Guided] and I had become sufficiently good at identifying which ones merely reorganized [Knowledge] I already possessed that reading all of them would have been an impressive waste of time.

So I expanded the problem outward.

An expert who possessed the [Serenity] Aspect could potentially tell me what books couldn't.

Someone who had advanced it sufficiently might be able to distinguish which portions of its effects emerged from [Serenity] itself and which could be reproduced through the likes of my [Harmony], [Clarity], [Purity], and [Mastery] Aspects, some variety of [Meditation], or a concept I had yet to encounter.

Higher-ranked archives could contain comparative research inaccessible to Aspirants.

Specialized organizations might sell access.

Individual practitioners might sell their time.

And if all of those routes proved too expensive...

Then economical might would eventually make them less so.

Another use for money.

Another reason to continue the experiments.

Another alternative prepared in case my current course of action failed.

I didn't know whether my eventual solution would involve hiring an expert, acquiring restricted research, joining some temporary academic endeavor, trading information, leveraging the Pulse, or finding a wholly different path after learning enough to realize my current assumptions were wrong.

I didn't need to know yet.

I needed options.

So I built them.

And no one interfered.

That, perhaps, was one of the more pleasant characteristics of my present circumstances.

Xafsa had nothing new to tell me and apparently understood I had no need to be told that personally.

My fellow Aspirants still recognized me.

Some spoke with me when we met in front of various assignment boards or when I zipped about the Pulse Tower in search of quiet corners.

Others exchanged information when our work intersected.

A few occasionally sent me references they thought relevant to whatever they last remembered me researching.

But I had grown relatively distant from most of them simply because there was increasingly little reason not to.

They possessed their Paths.

I possessed mine.

The Pulse expected one assignment from me every eight days, minimum administrative obligations, and competence whenever I represented it.

I provided all three.

In exchange, it mostly left me to my own devices.

A perfectly acceptable arrangement.

◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇

Following the usual [Flow] of my [Cultivation] routine, I commenced yet another one of my [Foundation] [Cultivation] sessions.

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Nothing unusual.

Not that my self from months ago would be of the same opinion; as compared to then, it may as well be an entirely different [Cultivation] endeavor altogether.

From the core practices, to its dependencies, to the relationships between my Aspects, to what could be suspended safely, to what couldn't, to how many of my current [Cultivation] practices existed solely because of my overdevelopment disorder and which I would retain even if the disorder disappeared tomorrow.

That last category had expanded considerably over the last months.

Still, my [Cultivation] remained distorted around one unavoidable reality.

Restraint.

Every sixteen hours, I possessed some quantity of Essence development I could induce without driving my disorder beyond the safety margins I and [Guided] maintained.

That quantity varied.

Recent development mattered.

Intensity mattered.

The Aspect involved mattered.

Formation, advancement, synthesis, and the countless lesser expressions of Essence development mattered.

But the exact figure was less important than the existence of the limit itself.

Everything [Flow]ed from there.

What did I most need to develop?

What could be practiced without meaningful Essence development?

What [Knowledge] could I acquire while waiting?

What research would prepare a future [Cultivation] session?

How could I convert forced idleness into something that advanced my Path without worsening the reason I was idle?

The routine worked.

As it had for years now.

That fact was itself part of my [Foundation].

Without even thinking about it, I slipped deeper into communing with my Essence and followed its implications.

Had my overdevelopment disorder not existed, I would have developed differently.

That was obvious.

My [Will] Aspect would probably have advanced earlier.

So would several others.

I would have engaged in substantially more physical [Cultivation].

I would have grasped what constituted my [Vitality] concept quicker.

I would not have approached [Flow] with the same urgency, if I would have even become aware of its existence at all.

Those were all [Truth]s.

But the actual [Truth] of my Path instead was that I had learned to make progress inside a narrowing structure of constraints.

Not because I accepted those constraints.

Because until I could remove them, refusing to account for their existence would merely further hamper my Path.

The distinction mattered as much as my acceptance of reality wasn't an acceptance of its permanency.

I had lived according to that [Truth] for years.

And, somewhere while following it through the perspective of its relevance to my [Foundation], another question surfaced.

Why had I found so little on the topic of solving overdevelopment disorders?

Beyond the ubiquitous and worthless answer of letting it go away on its own, I genuinely hadn't found any fragment of solutions until the Pulse Of Eternity offered me three books that directly addressed the issue through the prism of the [Flow], [Foundation], and [Serenity] Aspects.

Three books.

That was it.

As a reward for demonstrating what I could only suppose to be exceedingly high potential by forming the [Vitality] Aspect at an absurd pace relative to my age and circumstances.

And it was the Pulse Of Eternity that offered me that, an organization that reigned near the absolute top in terms of influence and networking, with their members ranging far and wide, allowing them to gain access to [Knowledge] they had no place acquiring.

No doubt, the Pulse had more than three books that addressed the issue of solving overdevelopment disorders, but that I had only been offered three said much more than the ones who prepared my reward probably were willing to let on.

So, in the end, this question could be reconsidered from another, much more fascinating perspective.

Why, across everything I had searched, had I still failed to encounter anything approaching the sort of answer I actually wanted about how to solve my exact variant of Essence overdevelopment disorder?

Not an answer like waiting it out.

An answer for someone like me, an Essence Entity who naturally crossed into the territory of Essence overdevelopment by simply living and decided not to slow down its Essence development anyway.

I had previously implicitly attributed the absence to rarity.

Because it was the [Truth] that Essence Entities like me were a rarity.

But rarity itself had a cause.

My [Awareness] turned inward.

Not toward my body.

Not even exclusively toward my Essence.

Toward the behavior that had defined the last several years of my existence.

I encountered a limit.

I investigated it.

I reorganized my life around extracting the greatest possible progress permitted by it.

I researched how to eliminate it.

Then kept pushing against it without crossing far enough beyond it to destroy myself before finding an answer.

That sequence felt so natural to me that I had never properly considered what another Entity would do.

The answer was...

Maybe what I did, but also perhaps not.

Most would slow down.

Why wouldn't they?

Essence overdevelopment didn't prevent development.

It punished excessive development.

An Entity who touched the natural threshold could simply reduce the intensity of their [Cultivation], stop chasing Aspect advancements and formations so aggressively, allow existing changes to settle, and wait for their Essence to naturally mature enough that what had once constituted overdevelopment no longer did.

Years could solve what effort couldn't.

For most Paths, perhaps that wasn't even a meaningful tragedy.

If someone expected to live centuries, slowing their Essence development for several years might amount to little more than an irritating delay.

They could pursue mundane expertise.

Relationships.

Organizations.

Professions.

Academic [Knowledge].

Growths producing negligible Essence development.

Whatever else their circumstances permitted.

Then resume later.

Others would do more than slow.

Their Path could change.

An Essence Entity who repeatedly injured themselves whenever they pursued intensive advancement had an extremely tangible incentive to stop structuring their life around intensive advancement.

Perhaps their [Ambition]s narrowed.

Perhaps they developed concepts emphasizing [Stability], restraint, [Patience], [Recovery], or sustainability.

Perhaps an external limitation eventually became so deeply integrated into their behavior that the Path which once drove them into overdevelopment ceased existing in the same form.

Not necessarily failure.

Not even necessarily worse.

Just... different.

And once their Path stopped producing the development pressure responsible for them naturally reaching the Essence overdevelopment threshold in the first place...

They ceased being relevant examples for me.

Natural overdevelopment itself had to be rare, though.

To encounter it before natural maturation expanded one's Essence development capacity sufficiently, an Essence Entity needed two conditions that did not seem particularly common together.

First, a relatively undeveloped Essence.

Second, a Path capable of driving that Essence forward quickly enough to catch up with the limit imposed by its undevelopment.

So...

Young Entities, mostly.

Young Entities forming Aspects quickly.

Advancing them.

Synthesizing them.

Pursuing intensive [Cultivation].

Forcing development faster than time could prepare their Essence to receive it.

How many entities could that possibly describe and encompass?

Few.

How many of those, upon encountering the potentially lethal consequences—if they even survived their first encounter with Essence Volatility—responded by continuing to push onward?

Fewer.

And how many then successfully sought prospective solutions, and after finding those solutions necessitated years of specialized [Cultivation] before producing even a marginal benefit... continued anyway?

There.

That was the part I had understood intellectually but never placed within the proper structure.

Years.

Even with my [Will].

Even with my [Ambition].

Even with [Guided] directing nearly every relevant effort with an efficiency other Essence Entities could only imitate through absurd specialization...

I was still looking at years.

My Tier 0 [Flow] Aspect couldn't meaningfully redistribute my overdevelopment.

Tier 1 almost certainly wouldn't be enough either.

Before I could seriously attempt my first Essence [Flow] [Cultivation], I expected to require at least Tier 2, together with enough [Comprehension] and [Mastery] over [Flow] that manipulating Essence currents became something other than an elaborate method of making my disorder worse.

[Foundation] presented the same problem from another direction.

Forming the Aspect would matter.

Advancing it would matter more.

Tier 2 appeared a reasonable minimum before I could expect enough structural reinforcement for the difference to become significant.

And then there was [Serenity]—or whatever combination of Aspects, practices, and principles I eventually constructed to reproduce the portions of it I needed.

Three enormous endeavors.

All to acquire...

What?

I let [Guided] refine the estimate from everything I presently knew.

The answer bordered on the inane.

If my first complete system worked somewhere near the lower end of what the available cases suggested, then after years spent forming, advancing, comprehending, mastering, integrating, testing, and stabilizing all three components...

I might acquire enough additional safety margin and recovery efficiency to permit approximately sixteen to thirty-two extra minutes of light-intensity Essence development during one sixteen-hour period.

Minutes.

For years.

And that wasn't even guaranteed.

This realization brought utmost [Clarity] to the why of everything.

Looking at such a prospective return, was it surprising that an Entity who could simply wait for natural maturation chose to wait and [Focus] on their actual Path instead of "diluting" it with three more Aspects?

Was it surprising that someone with a family, profession, organization, dependents, obligations, or merely a Path whose [Purpose] didn't revolve around development decided that years of specialized effort for daily minutes of additional [Cultivation] wasn't worth restructuring their existence around?

No.

It was rational.

Just... not for me.

I wanted those minutes.

Not because sixteen minutes mattered.

Because sixteen could become thirty-two.

And thirty-two could become an hour.

A system that functioned poorly could be improved.

A Tier 2 Aspect could be advanced to Tier 3.

A crude Essence [Flow] [Cultivation] could be mastered.

My [Foundation] could be deepened.

An imitation of [Serenity] could become something better suited to my Path than the Aspect I was refusing to form.

The first return didn't need to justify the final endeavor.

It only needed to prove that the ever-tightening shackles could move.

And that, I realized, explained something else.

I had read about entities who touched natural overdevelopment.

I had read about entities who suffered from it.

I had read about attenuation.

Waiting.

Recovery.

Long-term adaptation.

I had yet to read about one who had broken through that natural threshold entirely and continued developing at a pace their Essence should not have been mature enough to sustain.

Perhaps they existed.

Civilization was too vast for my ignorance to mean much.

Maybe the relevant records belonged to ranks I couldn't access.

Maybe such entities had developed solutions so specific to their Paths that publishing them held little value.

Maybe some organization kept them secret.

Maybe I would find a hundred tomorrow and discover my whole line of reasoning had merely been the product of inadequate [Knowledge].

Possible.

But if they existed...

Those were the first entities I could think of as my kind.

My truest kind.

Not fairies.

The physical vessel I happened to possess mattered absurdly little on that front.

I meant Entities who had reached the point where the natural maturation of their own Essence declared the pace of their Path excessive...

And who had refused to let that declaration hinder their Path to making their [Ambition] a reality.

Not through stupidity.

Not by destroying themselves.

By finding another way.

If even one had succeeded, I wanted everything they knew.

If none had...

Then I would have to become the first example I had failed to find.

The thought settled with surprising ease.

Perhaps because nothing about it changed my plans.

I had spent months searching for better answers.

Years, if I included everything since Lorekeeper Avenorium first identified what had happened to me in the wake of my wings gaining their current iridescence alongside some minor benefits to the ultra-efficient flight they enabled as Essence Externalization.

The Pulse had provided the best answers yet.

External research had improved it.

Future experts might improve it further.

And I would continue seeking to better them at every opportunity.

I would continue buying [Knowledge], asking questions, exploiting whatever repository access the Pulse granted me, and revising everything the instant evidence warranted revision.

But waiting for Civilization to eventually hand me a superior answer?

That no longer deserved a place in my expectations.

There might not be one.

The circumstances producing someone who needed it were rare enough.

The circumstances producing someone who needed it, refused the obvious solution of waiting, possessed the Path necessary to pursue an alternative, survived long enough to succeed, and then produced something general enough to be useful to me...

Rarer still.

Potentially to the degree of [Nonexistence].

Ultimately, I could use other people's [Knowledge].

Their methods.

Their failures.

Their expertise.

Their [Comprehension], insofar as they could communicate it.

But the Path built from all of that would remain mine.

As would the solution.

My [Awareness] of that [Truth] brought an almost unpleasant degree of [Clarity] to the years ahead.

No hidden shortcut was required to exist merely because I wanted one.

No expert was obligated to possess the missing piece.

No repository had to contain the book that would reduce years into weeks.

Reality could simply be difficult.

And that was fine.

I had dealt with worse.

I remained in communion for a while longer, beholding the endless weaving of all the concepts I had made mine, not because another revelation waited somewhere deeper, but because the [Foundation] of the conclusion I had just attained deserved to be reviewed for aberrations before I allowed it to affect anything.

Nothing contradicted it.

My current priorities remained valid.

My [Cultivation] routine remained valid.

My economic experiments remained useful.

My search for [Serenity]-equivalent principles remained justified.

The long-term estimates remained atrocious.

And my [Will] to proceed remained unchanged.

Eventually, I surfaced from communion.

Several hours had passed where it only felt like a quarter of that.

Time kept doing that.

Passing whether I benefited from it or not.

The only meaningful distinction was what existed when it had finished.

For now, the answer remained the same three directions I had been circling for months, only understood with a [Foundation] that had become a little deeper from the journey.

I needed a structure capable of bearing more development.

I needed that development to [Flow] through it without destroying what carried it.

And I needed the disturbances left behind to settle quickly enough that the whole [Cycle] could begin anew.

[Foundation].

[Flow].

[Serenity].

Or whatever I eventually made of the last one.

Then time could pass.

And so could I.