A deal worth making

The little one has fallen asleep. I need to ask for her name. I hope it is nothing unpronouncable. I am looking back at the last few days. My task is to stay here avoiding being seen until the sun sets. It is an easy task for a man who has an internal clock.

I could spend the time making fruit. However, I am doing that a lot of the time. Some people might now reflect on their past deeds and performance. It is possible that I have a general aversion against that. However, a man who has traded away his memories, which are slowly coming back, lacks things to mentally ruminate on. Hence I would do two things. Either make plans for the future or explore my powers. As the former depends, to my mind, on what the latter yields, I choose the latter. I need to run a broader inventory of what I can do. In fact, while I am at it, can I burn writing into the wall? I can. So here we go:

1. Make certain biological objects (but not all of them)

2. Heal (within limitations)

3. Restore things to older states

4. Make things disappear

5. Destroy spells

6. Manipulate the air (quite broadly)

7. Cast lightning

8. Burn stuff or make it hot

9. Create images

10. Create reflections

11. Fly

12. Teleport

There are also quirks of seeing stuff and knowing stuff like the internal clock, but I wouldn’t call that doing stuff. I need to set some limits here. Yet I am adding a point here as I think about those limits.

13. Attach spells to things

And I forget things. Possibly because blood oozing down your body slowly without really touching you is not a nice thought to dwell on

14. Create wards

That is an impressively long list. Unfortunately I have nobody to impress with it available right now. Nor could they read it. I am kind of reliefed that my native language has a written form. At least I do not come from a tribe of illiterate barbarians.

It is also an impractically long list. And it is an inconsistent list. It features a whole plethora of obviously related abilities listed as one point and single abilities, most impressively among them teleportation. I can already tell that the limitations on some stuff are complex. Being able to make a lizard’s detached tail, but no other body part shows that ridiculously well. So I should start with looking at expanding abilities and closing the gaps in between them. I am tempted to start with making gases not typically part of the air. After all, every element is a gas, if you are liberal with the thermostat. Yet I hesitate. I already had a blowout. Most elements if hot enough to be a gas and finely distributed, will enthusiastically react with the oxygen in the air. No, I am not going to go there without further preparation.

I look at the hair on my left arm. No. Too risky. I take a stalk of hay. Then I try to restore it to a green stalk. Ouch. This is a new sensation. If I try to do things I cannot do, such as making a coconut, simply nothing happens. This time it feels bad, like I scraped some metaphysically organ over a rough surface at a high speed. And a lot of mana is gone. With a sigh I extend my list.

15. Absorb neutrinos to make mana

The mana deficit is thus repaired. I pluck one of my hairs out. I make half of it vanish. I restore it to its old length. Perfectly doable, but I note that the expenditure of mana is quite surprising if I compare it with things like restoring a broken bone. Is this because it is biological or I am restoring it to an incomplete state? That thought makes me decide to stop using body products for this kind of experiments. I don’t want to duplicate myself by accident. I go outside to get a few pebbles and rocks. I can drill holes into them and restore their old state just fine, but the expenditure of mana stays high. I smash a soft piece of limestone. Returning that into its former shape is cheaper.

My experiments are interrupted by a demand for milk. This may not be good for science, but it is good for me. My healing sense informs me that her bladder is about to reach critical filling. Cleaning her is just annoying. You should not need to wipe metabolic end products off people. I don’t mind doing it, but I don’t care for it either. Can I trigger the reflex? And yes, into a bowl she goes.

I keep learning stuff. I probably can replace a severed limb, but it will take weeks. I am not going to rival Wolverine. Who is Wolverine? The sensation grows in annoyance. My initial goal was to determine whether my ability to vanish stuff and restore it are fruits of the same effect applied in a reversed manner. I have not solved that question. I could use other abilities to answer that question, but the opposites of flying or teleporting are not not flying or teleporting, which everybody can do. Maybe I can prevent a teleportation. Marental certainly has been able to do that in our base and I can understand the man. Allowing teleportation renders closing the door moot, if you have or create a certain caliber of enemies. But I am the only teleporter I know. What am I to do?

Cold. It should have been obvious. I take a fresh experimental pebble. The outflow of mana feels normal and dew forms on the pebble, then frost and soon it is covered in a white, cold shell. OK, that is an answer. If I were a really dull man, I’d now make a series of experiments to determine in which way the mana expenditure depends on mass and volume of the object to be cooled. Too boring.

Could I do the opposite of healing? The thought is not nice. I will get a few rats to experiment on. The question is too important to leave unanswered, but obviously there is no safe way to try answer it now. I burn a new list into the wall and restore the piece of wall which held the old list.

1. Make certain biological objects (but not all of them)

2. Heal (within limitations)

3. Restore some things to some prior substates

4. Make things disappear

5. Destroy spells

6. Manipulate the air (quite broadly)

7. Cast lightning

8. Control temperature and heat

9. Create images

10. Create reflections

11. Fly

12. Teleport

13. Attach spells to things

14. Create wards

15. Absorb neutrinos to make mana

Obviously you could split up control of temperature into two abilities. I still need a second reversable ablity to draw at least a tentative conclusion.

I take an experimental piece of limestone. I try to kind of unrestore it. It dissolves into dozens of flimsy layers, which promptly crumble under my grip. I say something rude, because this is quite a mess and put my last test limestone into a wooden box. I can dissolve it into layers and undo the effect.

Well, so my restoration effect does come with a disassembly effect. But is vanishing just the most extreme form of disassembly or an effect of its own. I can undo a vanishing, but is that just a return to an earlier state? I see no obvious way to answer that. I cannot create arbitrary objects. I already know that. I still have time left to do some more science. Let’s do optics.

I make a mirror image of my face. It is a perfect mirror image. I get my last experimental rock, which seems to be some sort of silicate rather than limestone, and create a mirror image of it. I put a cherry on top of it. Perfectly reflected performance art. But am I truly mirroring the image of the stone or am I creating an illusion that merely looks like the stone? For that matter, am I really making light or is this in my brain? I tilt the image. This should not be possible with a standard mirror, but somebody who can teleport shouldn’t complain about light not following normal paths. I increase the image in size. That works. I am a microscope. And that is the problem. You can magnify stuff with lenses and mirrors. The experiment is inconclusive.

It is time to return to base.