In a daze, Lilijoy walked back to the Academy, lost in thoughts of her own future creations. Her thoughts turned to all the people in her life she wanted to help; Attaboy, Anda, and now Mr. Sennit. She needed to be stronger, and the bracelet would remind her of that. She looked at her wrist, so lost in thought that she reached the Academy entrance and nearly walked into a group of tall young people who were gathered in the entry hall.

“Hey Teerex, check this out!” called a crackling teenage voice. “It’s a tiny noob! She’s still got her trial tunic and everything!”

The boy seemed very excited to share this information, and Lilijoy came out of her reverie and looked up at the people around her. There were six of them, four boys and two girls all wearing matching silver armor over white tunics, almost like a uniform. They stared at her with a variety of expressions, and Lilijoy realized they were scanning her for information about her character. Drawing on her lessons with Professor Anaskafius, she immediately hid her name, level and titles; all her public information. She was looking forward to the time she would be able to substitute her own fake information the way her magic mentor had in their first, memorable lesson, but he had suggested that she not bother until her deception skill was a couple notches higher.

The boy with the cracking voice spoke again, and now she could see that the voice belonged to the smallest member of the group, a skinny boy with dark hair and thin features who looked a little awkward in his shining armor.

“Guys, you getting anything?”

There was a murmur from the group, and then one of the girls said, “Just a name. Guys, this is Emily.” She looked Lilijoy over, as if trying to decide exactly how she fit into her social organization. “You must be new, Emily, so props for hiding your info.” The corner of her mouth twitched into a sneer, just before the other corner caught up to make a smile. “I thought I was the best charmer for our year, but I guess someone’s trainer let them put points into Charm.”

Lilijoy wasn’t sure what to make of this girl. She was pink-skinned and had long blond hair piled up on top of her head, and her voice and facial expressions were confusing. Lilijoy kept seeing tiny flashes of emotions like disgust and fear, and her hearing detected a certain tightness and oscillation in the girl's vocal chords that betrayed uncertainty. At the same time, she was obviously trying to look utterly in control, friendly and confident.

Perhaps the Tao System was processing fast enough so Lilijoy could see through the act the girl was putting on. Either that, or she was just a really bad actor.

“My name is Antimony,” the girl continued. “I’d ask you about your family,” she put a particular stress on the word, as if it should mean something special, “but we’re not supposed to worry about all that here.”

“Hi,” said Lilijoy with a hand wave toward the group. “How long have you guys been here at the Academy?”

She scanned them as subtly as she could, and after a couple seconds she had their information. Antimony, Belsaurus, Edison, Quatorze, Teerex and Kallisti, all level eight. She couldn’t see any titles, but that was normal. Even if they had them, blocking titles was the easiest deception. If she wanted to, she was sure she could break through, but it would be obvious what she was doing. From the way Antimony and the other girl, Kallisti were staring, she was pretty sure they were still trying to break through her blocks.

A big stocky fellow with cropped brown hair, Teerex, answered, “We just finished our fourth cycle.”

He sounded like he was forcing his voice lower than it wanted to go. Probably trying to sound like a grown man, Lilijoy thought. These people sure don’t like being themselves.

“So, you’re first years too?” There were a few nods from the group. “Your armor looks great,” Lilijoy continued. It really did, too, a shining chain mail with polished plates in critical areas. Some of them had more plates and some less, but it all clearly came from the same source. “Where did you get it?”

There was an awkward pause as the group turned to Antimony, who was still staring at Lilijoy, trying to break through her blocked level and titles. After a moment, Antimony realized that everyone was looking to her for a response and she shook her head slightly. “That’s need to know information, sweetie. Maybe I could tell you how to get some just like it if you showed me your stats...”

“That’s okay,” said Lilijoy. “I was just curious. Anyway, it’s time I got to my room and logged out. See you guys around.”

Antimony gave her a nod and a tight smile. The others had already gone back to their conversation. There was a burst of laughter as she made her way from the room. She immediately felt self-conscious.

They’re all so big and good looking, they’re probably laughing at the tiny noob in her trial tunic.

It was a new feeling for Lilijoy, being judged by a group of people her own age, and she didn’t like it at all.

This is why I need to be strong.

She was pretty sure that this was a group of clan kids. She thought back to some of the books she had read, where the main character inevitably became entangled with useless social problems, usually because of a conflict with someone exactly like the people she had just met.

I should stay as far away from these people as possible.

She resolved to keep a low profile and avoid the clan kids as much as she could. They were probably too young to be helpful to her anyway. She had come to realize that the ‘normal’ world was still much closer to Emily’s experience in many ways than her own; most kids didn’t have independence or power in society until they were older.

She wondered whether she would trade her independence to have a mother and father, or any family at all, really. That line of thinking just made her feel lonely, so she pushed it aside. Attaboy and Anda, her only real family needed her to be strong.

She reached her room and logged out.

***

Lilijoy was greeted by a host of sensations back in her Outside body. Every muscle in her body was stiff and sore, and her entire jaw had a deep aching sensation. That’s right, she remembered, Jiannu set it up so that my Outside body trained too. Feeling around with her tongue inside her mouth, she realized that new teeth were growing.

“Jiannu, did the med bots start new teeth for me?”

“No, that was your own body’s decision; those are your adult teeth coming in. With good nutrition and a majority of toxins cleared, you can expect to catch up a bit in many areas, though you will remain quite small compared to your genetic potential. You can also expect hormonal changes associated with puberty to accelerate.”

Lilijoy wasn’t sure how she felt about that, so she put it in the back of her mind. She hopped down from the pod, and nearly fell when she tried to stabilize herself with a non-existent left hand. That triggered another memory; she immediately pulled up her messages from the last week and found the message she was hoping for.

Savitri had completed her prosthetic arm and would be happy to help Lilijoy whenever she was ready.

“I’m getting an arm!” she announced to her empty room as she jumped on her bed in excitement.

***

Savitri’s lab was different than Lilijoy had expected. It was housed in an old classroom on the ground floor of the monastery, though all the windows had been blocked off with insulating foam. In fact, the entire room, other than a few carefully placed ventilation shafts had been half filled with a type of nano-aerogel that had insulating properties similar to a vacuum. Savitri told her it was because her tools required extremely stable temperatures. As she finished the final calibrations, she chatted with Lilijoy.

“Do you know the real reason the Inside is so important to the clans?” Savitri asked.

“I guess not. I always assumed it was just a way for them to escape the real world, and then they wanted to control it too.”

“Oh dear no. They get far more from it than you might think. I’ll give you a little hint. My Inside self is an enlightened master of Alchemy.”

Lilijoy was confused, but she tried to talk it through. “So, you’re a lot like you are here on the Outside. I bet you can make some really cool stuff Inside. Potions and stuff. Maybe if you take a potion to make you smarter on the Inside it makes you smart on the Outside too?”

Savitri laughed. “You are not far off, Lilijoy. But it’s even bigger than that, if you can imagine. You see, once upon a time, the Outside lost every connected computing device to Guardian’s awakening. The artificial intelligence grew explosively and took for its own use every microprocessor it could reach on the planet. You must understand, this was at the same time that all of humanity’s sins had caught up. Factories and infrastructure were devastated by war, the environment was oscillating wildly, and engineered plants had taken over huge swaths of the ecosystem. All the scientists and engineers who built the nano-machines humans depended on had no way to continue their work. Even when they could cobble together new computers and manufacturing capabilities, they were struggling with a collapsing society and all that entailed, such as lack of food and lack of safety. On top of this, Guardian came out with its rules shortly after it awoke. Do you remember the Rules?”

Lilijoy could rattle them off by this point. “No uncontrolled reproduction, and absolutely no self-replicating machines. No tinkering with the environment, on purpose or by accident. Rights have limits based on the relative intelligence of the beings considered, and finally, Guardian set aside a part of itself to keep an eye on us and enforce the rules.”

“That’s a good summary. So back to our story. At this point, some of the only infrastructure that was robust enough to survive all the turmoil was based on self-replicating processes. Now those were forbidden too, along with all fossil fuel use. This was the beginning of what we call the ‘little dark age’ that lasted twenty years, from about 2080 to 2100. But there was one ray of light in the darkness for those years. Many of the wealthy and privileged who had survived the turmoil still had internal nano-machine systems. They were amazed to find out that they could still access the worlds largest virtual reality gaming universe, a place that was called DayNight Universe in English, IlBam in its original Korean. For some reason, Guardian chose that computer game as the primary interface it would use to connect with what remained of the Human race.”

Savitri pressed a final button and Lilijoy’s new arm rose up out of a vat of some kind of gel.

“We’ll just let that dry for a few minutes, and then we can start fitting it,” she said. “Now where was I? Ah! At first, it was only an escape from a dying world for the human outsiders. Guardian had changed how the game functioned and populated the game’s servers with subsets of its own intelligence, the Insiders. Technology on the Outside was all but extinct and stuck in a catch-22. Without microprocessors and quantum circuits to model the nano-machines and control the molecular manufacturing, there was no way to build more systems and microprocessors. The humans who already had systems could retreat to the Inside to some extent, at least for mental relief, while the rest of humanity suffered. This was to be the slow descent back to the stone age, as the last remnants of those who had internal systems slowly aged and perished, the rest of humanity was already adapting to a pre-industrial state.”

Her voice rose and became excited. “But then something amazing happened! The first player to reach the position of Enlightened Grandmaster Alchemist, playing the game formerly known as DayNight Universe made a discovery. The Alchemy system available on the Inside at the highest level could be re-purposed for the exact type of molecular modeling and control systems that were needed on the Outside. They could run the models Inside and create programs to bring back to the Outside. It was as if Guardian gave them their old tools back, only now they had to earn the skills to use them through playing a computer game. What do you think of that!”

Lilijoy was amazed by the story. It explained so much. The Corp, and the clans that composed it, used the Inside to develop and refine the very systems they used to control everyone else. She didn’t know much about the Alchemy skill, but she did know it was very resource hungry. Alchemists needed ingredients, and more advanced Alchemists needed huge amounts of exotic plants and animals to make their creations. If the skill was anything like other Inside skills, they would need to make thousands and thousands of new and unique potions and concoctions in order to become Grandmasters, even if they did bring a good knowledge of physics and chemistry from their other training.

“So, if you were a Master Alchemist for a clan, they must have really taken care of you. What made you run away to the mountains?”

“It is very complicated, but I guess you could say that the work environment was unbearable. The Grandmaster Alchemist in my clan was not a nice person, and I had to choose between my integrity and sanity or continuing to work for my clan. Not only that, but I disagree with the way the clans rule the Outside, and in the end, I decided I would not work for any other clan either. It was a difficult decision at the time, but now I have no regrets. I was fortunate to escape both Inside and Outside, otherwise I would not have been able to program the molecular vat which produced your prosthetic… speaking of which...”

She picked up Lilijoy’s new arm and offered it to her to examine. The skin was a dark gray, with a hint of iridescence as Lilijoy moved it in the light. It had a very smooth texture, though the palm and fingers seemed much rougher, almost sticky. The consistency of the ‘flesh’ was not far from the feel of her own, though the fibers and cables that ran within had a much different quality than her own muscles and tendons, harder and more compact.

“The skin is a carbon composite material, filled with a nano-aerogel. The bones are a different carbon structure, a hybrid of diamond and nanotube fiber, while the muscles are coiled polymer composites that draw a small charge from a built-in battery system. The battery can be charged from a combination of your own body heat, solar and a variety of external sources. Once your system is connected to it, you will be able to tell if you are running low, but it is efficient enough that you shouldn’t have to worry. Are you ready to give it a try?”

Lilijoy could only nod, as Savitri pressed the socket onto the stub just above her elbow. As soon as it was in place, a ring mounted on dozens of flexible cords detached from around the end of the prosthetic and moved over her elbow, where it contracted firmly.

“Don’t worry if it feels a little tight. It is programmed to monitor blood flow and skin conductance and release or tighten as necessary. It will only completely release in the face of forces large enough to cause damage to your upper arm. Whenever you are ready, I will activate the initial nerve links. The prosthetic will release several hundred conductive pins into your tissue. You then must guide your neurons to the closest pin. Don’t worry if it takes days or even weeks for the initial connection to form. If you are ready, I will release the pins into your tissue. Then I will follow up with you in a day or two to see how the initial stage is progressing.”

Lilijoy damped the pain sensors in her stub, and then gave the word to go ahead. There was hardly any sign of the thin, flexible pins penetrating through her skin. She felt a brief sensation of pressure, and then it was over.

“The entry wounds are extremely small, but do make sure to direct your med bugs to guard against opportunistic infection. How does it feel?”

It didn’t feel like anything but dead weight at the end of her arm. Feeling a bit underwhelmed, she moved her upper arm around, just to enjoy the sight of an intact hand on the left side of her body. “It feels okay, I guess?”

Savitri chuckled. “A little disappointment is entirely normal, but I promise you great things in the weeks ahead. You will be able to move and feel just like you used to, and with time and practice, you will be able to move the prosthetic in ways you never could with your natural arm. The skin material is extremely cut and puncture resistant, the bones are nearly unbreakable, and the ‘muscles’ can exert force many times greater than unaugmented human muscles.”

“I didn’t mean to seem ungrateful!” Lilijoy exclaimed. “How can I pay you back for everything you have done for me?”

“Lilijoy, I want you to understand two things. The first is that the feedstock and molecular manufacturing technologies I have available here were extremely hard to get. They are tightly controlled by the Corp and were smuggled out at great personal risk. If you were to pay me for this prosthetic, you would be in debt for years. The second thing is more important. Creating this arm for you was an act of love toward the universe, a spiritual practice. All the payment you could give to me would only subtract from what I already have received. Going forward, my rewards will only continue as you prosper and do good for others. I only ask that you consider how you can help build a world where everyone can do what I have done for you.”

Lilijoy considered this for a moment. How could a society where generosity was the dominant emotion come to be? She considered her own system for a moment. If she wanted to, she was sure she could elevate the emotional rewards she felt for helping others with a thought. It was all chemistry in the end after all.

What if it was as simple as giving everyone a system that allowed them to do the same? But if it was that simple, why did she feel such a strong reluctance to alter her own emotional pathways? She had the power to reconfigure her own internal reward structure in any way she wanted, but it felt scary to even contemplate.

It was back to the ‘castle of the self’, she realized. Her identity was the very process that maintained her identity. The castle defending the castle. A cycle of continuity.

The real key to all of it, she decided, was understanding the increment. If she set her emotional reward system to change gradually, where was the threshold of continuity of self? How fast could she change her own brain and still be recognizeable to herself?

Did society operate the same way? If societies had a similar self-defining mechanism to individuals, what was the rate of change acceptable to a society’s identity reinforcement loop?

When did I start thinking like this? I’m thinking in concepts I didn’t even know about a few weeks ago.

It was all so ridiculous she began to chuckle. Her thoughts about losing identity due to rapid change were only made possible by the rapid changes that threatened her identity. For just a moment she held the structure of her contrary cycle of thought in her imagination, almost as a shape she could examine, a vortex of feedback loops composing the concept of self and its defensive structure. And then it was gone; she was back to being carried around the loops of her thoughts as a passenger.

Mr. Sennit, I think I almost know where the flower goes. I was just there.