Solo I Have A Magnetic Personality III

[Evarista]

10th of Spring, 518 A.V. The waters of the lake afforded the same soothing privacy as the rooftop of the estate, Evarista found. That night, she drifted leisurely through the Dockside canals in the inconspicuous visage of a jellyfish; pleasantly invisible to the world. But the world was not invisible to her, despite her having no eyes. If anything, eyes would be a distraction. Abstract, complex and yet understandable images formed in her mind's eye; a conglomerate display of all that flowed in to her other senses. And what a display that was. Sound, vibration and electromagnetic waves melted together in a bizarre and mystifying stream of information, hungrily absorbed by her inhuman organs. Interpreting these signals with her still relatively humanoid mind would be rather effortful, were they in their plain mechanical form. Which they weren't. The auristic emanations carried by those aliens senses took the shape of things she would never guess existed, but at the same time made perfect sense, and told her a far more accurate, elaborate and meaningful story than any mundane sensation could. Gradually she noticed that most of the incoming data was attributable to the electromagnetic waves, something she only recently learned how to sense. Apparently she's been missing out. At first, she had only thought of her electric cells as a way to zap things. But that was, as it turned out, the least impressive of its uses. She discovered that maintaining an electric organ at a certain low charge made her sensitive to some unseen force, seemingly inherent to every object around her, animate or not. As she slowly manoeuvred between buildings and around parked ravosalas, it's as if they had some sort of... physical aura, or a force field that pushed back against her subtly, telling her exactly where everything was in relation to her. It was as if her being was wrapped in countless layers of thick and flexible fabric, and the layers contacted or expanded in certain ways, depending on what was around her. However, the force field itself didn't tell her much besides the fact there was something in the way. The real observations came from the massive stream of auristic information radiated by the field; auristic readings far more vibrant and rich than anything she could get with human senses as conductors. Without even trying, just with her passive auristic perception, she could instantly learn a whole lot about an object just by rubbing past its force field - what it was, what it was made of, how old it was, its structural integrity, and other things that would take quite a bit of effort and concentration to learn just by relying on sight. Her trip through this canal had made her intimately familiar with quite a large number of ravosalas, and even with some of what transpired on board earlier that evening... uh, definitely too much information.

[Evarista]

Objects were already telling enough, but the real revelations came from the living. Exactly as it was with auras, electromagnetic fields generated by thinking creatures were strong and vivid. It was as if she could feel the pulsing activity of their minds, caressing her in waves, even without auristic input. However, with input... She knew that on the walkway around the corner was standing a man. He was wearing a linen shirt, canvas trousers and, for some reason, only one leather shoe. He was smoking a drug of some kind. She could tell he was smoking by the waves of mental response that came occasionally and only when he inhaled, and she could tell it was a drug due to the erratic and subtle, but unmistakeable tang of artificial pleasure in the aura. It seemed like he was a big smoker in general, since there was a certain painful response to every breath he took. There were countless details that even the man himself probably didn't notice. But to her it was all plain as day. He was only one of the many people in this area, right now, whose life story she could surmise just by reading the auras of their force fields. Auras that stretched much farther and told much more than anything the eye could pick up. In the book of epic tales her father had gifted to her, My Beloved Absentee, she recalled there to be stories told of aurists of certain races who relied on smell rather than sight. Evarista tried this herself on a few occasions, with an amplified sense of smell, and it was indeed a superior medium than sight, even if the side effects were less than pleasant. But this was on a whole different level. No, humans senses could only allow a scan of the outer shell. These mysterious force fields, on the other hand, were somehow portals directly into the mind. Maybe they were projected by the mind, just like the aura. Perhaps compounding both these ethereal perceptions could even allow one to directly read minds at some point. These were questions far beyond Evarista's intelligence. But being smart wasn't important. What mattered was the desire to know, and an intuition to be guided by. The will to claw at those questions with whatever means she had; with all of her power. No, reading minds was not exactly her ambition, considering how little of interest she expected to find there. One thing her gut told her, though, is that these senses could reveal more things... deeper things. The mysteries weren't somewhere "out there". They were right here, supple in every wave and every breeze, every movement and every thought, every drop and every fibre. Permeating everything around her, and even herself. These forces - silent workhorses ever dutiful to the thankless task of upholding reality. A reality of a depth and vastness that only a fool or a maniac could ever dare to dream. It felt like this reality was slowly opening up to her. In the dark and dreary mundane world, a massive door rose in front of her, tall enough to disappear in the clouds, covered in dust and moss from disuse. And then, that door had cracked open just enough to let in a tiny strip of light. Once she saw that light, she knew she'd never look away. All she could think of was how to pry open that door just a little more, so that she could slip inside and disappear into whatever lied beyond, never looking back.

[Evarista]

To pass that door, she understood, observing others wasn't enough. She had to turn to herself. Her own form. For the first time, the thought of one perfect form sprung up in her mind. Before, she only thought in terms of "the right model for the right purpose". You want to fly? Turn into a bird. You want to swim? Turn into a fish. The classic, standard, mundane and banal way to think. Efficient, yes, but fundamentally wrong on some deep level. She had no precise idea what the perfect form would be like, but there had to be only one. The point was that it was not about specialized forms that you assumed for specific tasks. It was about attaining the one ultimate form that could do anything. If someone said this to her a few years ago, she'd have dismissed it as impossible nonsense. But now, it made perfect sense. If there was one wisdom she accumulated during this time, it was that there was next to nothing a biological body could not do. Animals were designed to be energy-efficient. It was evident in all animal model, and humans as well. Behind all the seemingly impressive feats that animals could do was very modest and robust engineering, where everything not immediately useful for survival was eliminated. But Evarista didn't have to respect that rule. She could engineer herself based on entirely different principles if she so wished. First of all, she didn't have to look like anything the animal world had to offer. Maybe something more primal. Something closer to the source. Why not a geometrical figure? Evarista curled her oblong jellyfish form into a ball and began melting herself together. To start with, she thought to divide her current self mentally into three parts: head, stomach and flagella. There was no longer to be a head, a stomach and flagella. Each part also had to be able to do what the other two did. There was to be no mutual dependency, and so she had to combine the essential properties of each part. Her head had to not only think, but also digest food, sting and feel. Her stomach had to not only digest food, but also to think and sting and feel... and so on. Her already vague body shape began dissolving into an entirely shapeless blob of countless bubbles, spreading in the dark water grotesquely. A tickling sensation overtook her body as the sensitive particles once reserved for the flagella covered every bubble. Every bubble also had acid inside to digest food, and nerve tissue to process thought. The roiling mass of bubbles clung together feverishly, as if afraid to drift apart. A moment later, that subconscious fear pierced her mind clearly, like a long needle. If the bubbles were to disaggregate, Evarista would become many. She was not ready for that. Some primordial force within her revolted against it. She was on the verge of crossing a boundary not meant to be crossed, but it wasn't overgiving. Far from it. Her djed was in perfect order. This was a boundary of an entirely different nature... something far more mystical. Something that would definitely bring her closer to the other side of the door. But she wasn't ready yet. The bubbles remained secured together, diffusing her sense of body, but preserving her integrity as one being. All in one and one in all.

[Evarista]

The nameless thing in the water looked at itself, asking itself what it had actually done. She saw and felt with her whole body. The sky above, the depth of the lake below, the canal and alley around her, all entered her mind like a panorama. She asked herself what way she was facing, but realized that she had no face. That's what it meant to "diffuse the sense of body". She no longer had specialized parts meant for different tasks, as every natural being had. No specialized parts meant that she also had no definitive shape. All of her was everything. She was... what could it be called? Total? Universal? No, not quite there. She was still made up of bubbles, and the bubbles themselves were not universal. They still had the neurons for thinking, the acid for digesting, and the sensitive particles for sensing. The next step had to be somehow making herself a completely homogeneous flow of something that could do those many things, but had no discernible parts itself. The atom. The indivisible. That something was the perfect building block. Unfortunately, she had no idea what kind of substance that could be, and how she was supposed to generate it. Definitely nothing to be found in the natural world - at least not on the surface of it. As she continued to try to describe and illustrate it in her mind, she found her vocabulary too badly wanting for the words, and her imagination too badly wanting for the pictures. This something was so alien to mundane experience that grasping at it felt like grasping at the moon in the sky. The challenge was so far beyond her intellect that it was already giving her a headache. Well, uh, bubble-ache. I needn't get ahead of myself, she thought, with the internal voice reverberating in a chorus through her. A stifled shriek brought her back to reality. Being so absorbed in her own thought, she had floated out of her canal without noticing. Rapidly focusing her attention on the source of the sound, she realized that the man she was spying on earlier was standing on the walkway only a meter away, looking straight at her. She couldn't see his expression in the dark, but she saw his auristic corona practically overflow to the brim with all-consuming terror. Panicked almost as much as he was, Evarista dived below the surface, sinking into the water like a rock and instantly disappearing from sight. She felt her entire bubbly body flush with embarrassment. It felt like someone walked in on her bathing, or something. A very private activity, and perhaps not so wisely done in the public canals... although staying away from the manor was more important. She returned her attention to the walkway somewhere above. It was empty. The man was already long gone. He didn't wait to see whether the thing he saw would come back, or assure himself that his vision wasn't just a product of the drug he was smoking. The way her senses were constructed in this new form, it turned out that she had trouble perceiving herself. You couldn't very well look at your own eyes, or lick your own tongue. Was she ugly? Scary? Judging by the poor fellow's reaction, that would be an understatement. It was to be expected, though. All things that violate the natural patters are scary and disgusting at best. She already knew that, but she wasn't put off by it. In fact, there even was a certain perverted appeal... She enjoyed the silky comfort of the deeper water for just a little while longer, feeling how the water flowed through her. The lake permeated It reminded her slightly of bathing, and that pleasant feeling when Hwyn poured a perfectly aimed scoop of water on her head. She wondered for a moment what he would think if he saw her now. Deciding to turn towards home, she began feeling the exhaustion set in. Not so much physical exhaustion, but her mind felt strangely heavy. A reversion to the more basic and familiar form of a jellyfish eased the weight. She was back into a "body", where everything was as she was used to. A head, a stomach and some flagella, each doing their own thing. Although there were some major contrasts in how she perceived the world in bubble form compared to normal, it felt like it was only the tip of the iceberg. Without a doubt, countless subconscious switches behaved differently then, in ways she couldn't put her finger on. She couldn't even begin to guess the full extent of it, and what it could mean. *** Still dazed by the epiphanies of tonight, Evarista returned home and slept heavily and dreamlessly. On the periphery of her subconscious moved strange shadows that weren't there before.

[Okara]

Evarista

Observation 4
Auristics 3
Biology 2
Swimming 2
Investigation 2
Morphing 2

Biology: Electromagnetic Waves Carry Information
Morphing: Using a Jellyfish’s Electric Organ to Sense Electromagnetic Waves
Biology: Every Living Thing Gives off Electromagnetic Waves
Morphing: Utilizing an Electric Organ to Electrolocate Nearby Individuals
Morphing: Using Electrolocation to Explore without Sight
Auristics: Electromagnetic Waves Provide More Information than Mere Sight
Auristics: Aura of an Individual Smoking Drugs
Biology: Creatures are Designed to be Energy Efficient
Seeking the Perfect, Supreme Form for Morphing
Morphing: Experimenting with a Homogenous Form through Bubbles

Rewards/Penalties/Notes

This was an incredibly well written and well-structured morphing thread. This thread displayed enormous creativity and thoughtfulness regarding the limits and beyond of morphing magic. Well done. You covered lots of ground, I hope I was able to award appropriate lores to cover what you explored in the thread. Please PM me if I have missed anything. I look forward to following Evarista’s future morphing exploits.

Please edit your post in your grade request to reflect that it has been graded. PM me with any questions.