Leaves and crickets.

Edel rests by the tree.

It was the largest one on the ring, and with no need for gravity it had already grown 80 kilometers tall. Edel assumes the old form, a human made from cells and water, compressing his core thoughts to fit within the constraints of the neurons. The rest of his mind - the vast majority of it - was there any moment he wanted it, but it was more pleasing to return to the old ways than he had expected, and, consumed by the vision of the enormous tree on the horizon, he quickly forgets. The tree grows in the gasses of the disassembled giant planets that envelop the ring. They would dissapate over thousands of years, and the tree would crystallize in the vacuum, but Edel would be long gone by then. For now his recreated neurons have been rewired so that the sky appears a faint blue, and his redesigned lungs can draw satisfying strength from the methane and carbon dioxide.

Without forcing it, for a moment the rest of his mind and pressing reality slips entirely away. Edel stands in the field of grass, the infinite tree before him, the same old sun glaring gloriously down, so that the heated air drowsily shimmers. He steps forward, again quicker, runs leaping into the air, and the ground shrinks below him, yellow grass and sand drifting away as he lifts into the air.

Another orbit.

Immersed in water, but breaking to the mirrored surface, the funny old surface tension holding for a second, stretching, and then bursting through, but still hard at work, spawning swarms of white bubbles, vibrating enthusiastically. The sun is reflected brightly, frantically.

Edel contently breathes the evaporation cooled air. Well, it wasn't technically air of course. And it wasn't really water sloshing either, the light reflected all over it wasn't formed from photons, and there wasn't an atom in sight. The light liquid blue sensation that seemed so familar when he stared into the pool was formed out of very different neural connections made of a very different matter. But the particles here did an excellent job of emulating the simple old ones. Indeed each one was almost like a computer itself, capable of storing vast amounts of information and preforming simple calculations on it, easily enough to replicate the old quantized fields. And there was so much of it, more particles in an ephemeral emulated water bubble than had existed in the entire hubble volume of his ancient home when he had left it.

And yet for all this power Edel's mind grows slightly. A subjective thing of course, and damningly tautological. The new ideas still evolved from the old, and invariably, unavoidably most of the new mutations failed. And so in a universe capable of unimaginable wonders, Edel relaxes for a moment, merely recreates the solar system, and plays in the clear water beneath the noon day sun. There was plenty of time to grow up yet.

The Glass Key

The Second Level of Reality.

Edel has made it. But, in a way, it had always been there waiting for him, buried away in spacetime, locked up in manifold knots. But Edel has found the key. He is the keymaker, all of the brilliant loop spinning around the hot blue star, his body the forge, smashing white hot particles over and over again, searching for the right combination. In celebration he conjures up his old form, a floating astronaut over a circle spanning across star system, his pride swelling. One thousand years in the making, give or take a few, one thousand orbits around the blue one, a trillion trillion trillion joules used, a million simulated lives.

The right combination is found suddenly, and the particles, all the countless trillions of them, surge through the keyhole, unlocking it from the other side, triggering a rapid localized phase change within the compactified foam. His old self, floating in space, then realizes the honor he is recieving. The emerging portal, the light in the fog, the small ring next to the large, is three meters across.

a calm voice in the sky

Edel knew he was in thoughtspace, which was different than physicalspace, but he was only six so he didn't really understand what that meant. Slouched in the warm sand, he kicks. But there are other thoughts in his head, and they talk to him quietly, and he understands more, maybe enough. Thoughtspace was inside physical space, although sometimes it was buried deep, like all the skeletons. Deep underwater, and the surface, reality, was very far away, and sometimes the glints of sunlight above that looked like reality weren't, it was still much further away, somewhere else. Edel looks up, he can see the sun, bright, but doesn't look directly into it as it slides slowly through the branches and few leaves of the tree. This thoughtspace was different though, so strong that it was almost real. Something like it had been real before. And now it was here again, it was again, it always would be, splattered hotly over cold space like steam from a steel pipe.

There was a field of long grass before him. He can just see over it. Something comes down from the sky, out from the sky twisting red. It lands and walks off, towering over the mountains on the horizon, but shrinking, fading. It was home, Edel knew, but only briefly, then off again, away for a very long time. It is gone now, faded away, smoke in the wind, and Edel knows. He must leave too. He knows, as strongly and lovingly as it holds him near, that he must break the embrace of gravity, and rise into the sky, to other things.

Had he always known this? Had he known the first time?

Testing

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The Mathematical Ensemble

All Abstract Structures of Objects and Their Relationships Exist.