Fleshbane openly scoffs at Satras profession of belief that he could take control of the fathomless system of Zerome. You are more foolish than I would have even estimated, fleshling, he says. If it were within my power to seize control, I would have already done so. Still, the dim light in the darkness that is your intellect is still a light in the darkness...
Fleshbane turns his focus inward. He is not here, he reminds himself. He has no physical form in this place, no matter how much his internal sensory subroutines insist to the contrary. This is only an illusion, a construct built upon a construct built upon a construct to grant some measure of comprehension to the incomprehensible. But Fleshbanes frame of reference is not that of these fleshy creatures bound to their shells of decaying meat. His body is only a vessel, one of several that he has discarded in his relatively short life only to arise anew in a gleaming replacement. For all his brutality and intimidating construction, he is only coding that exists independent of his body. It is only a tool he uses to interact with the physical realm.
The codeform of Fleshbane reaches outward, feeling the pulsing streams of data on a scale larger than any machine could have ever dreamed possible. There is familiarity to its design and logic, both from Fleshbanes experience as part of the Pan Skirn Consensus as well as his time spent in the Network, interfacing with constructed and biological intelligences alike. There was a time where this torrent of data would have drowned him, the basal coding language upon which his consciousness was built subsumed by the flow. But now, he is something different. Evolved. Refined beyond the systems ability to bend to its will. Instead of drowning in the defined channels of information, he skims the surfaces, leaping from stream to stream at will.
He sees his environment for what it truly is, overlaid on the falsehood of the flat expanse with its gray and colorless grass and empty sky. Looming like some malign moon on the horizon is the thought center of Zerome, lying at the center of an infinite spider web of information feeding into it.
This way.
Fleshbane turns his focus inward. He is not here, he reminds himself. He has no physical form in this place, no matter how much his internal sensory subroutines insist to the contrary. This is only an illusion, a construct built upon a construct built upon a construct to grant some measure of comprehension to the incomprehensible. But Fleshbanes frame of reference is not that of these fleshy creatures bound to their shells of decaying meat. His body is only a vessel, one of several that he has discarded in his relatively short life only to arise anew in a gleaming replacement. For all his brutality and intimidating construction, he is only coding that exists independent of his body. It is only a tool he uses to interact with the physical realm.
The codeform of Fleshbane reaches outward, feeling the pulsing streams of data on a scale larger than any machine could have ever dreamed possible. There is familiarity to its design and logic, both from Fleshbanes experience as part of the Pan Skirn Consensus as well as his time spent in the Network, interfacing with constructed and biological intelligences alike. There was a time where this torrent of data would have drowned him, the basal coding language upon which his consciousness was built subsumed by the flow. But now, he is something different. Evolved. Refined beyond the systems ability to bend to its will. Instead of drowning in the defined channels of information, he skims the surfaces, leaping from stream to stream at will.
He sees his environment for what it truly is, overlaid on the falsehood of the flat expanse with its gray and colorless grass and empty sky. Looming like some malign moon on the horizon is the thought center of Zerome, lying at the center of an infinite spider web of information feeding into it.
This way.
I was a little concerned. Shouldn't be too much longer, so now is the time to start thinking about Viss's epilogue!