I finally figured out my name! Or at least I’m 99 percent certain… ok maybe 90 percent. Whatever, I was at least 80 percent sure that I had finally figured out my name! Are you ready for it?

Heller.

I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about it. I mean, in some ways it was pretty cool… and I guess I can’t keep calling myself ‘Alex’ on this world. Especially because I’m fairly sure that the way ‘Alex’ sounds is very similar to the word for ‘leg’ on in this language. Or maybe knee… can tables have knees? Mom used the same word to describe the middle of her own leg and one of the legs of the table in our kitchen.

That was a very confusing encounter, actually. Here’s how it went.

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“Abwoogoo?” I asked in fluent baby-speak, pointing at the kitchen table.

Mom smiled and gave me an encouraging pat on the head. “Aspertoz cu emap or kroalex.”

I nodded sagely, gesturing for her to continue. I had already picked up the connecting words of 'cu' and 'or', but I wasn’t sure how to use them yet. It was definitely nothing like English (or Chinese for that matter).

Mom bent down to my level and reached up to pat the table top. “Emapp cu kroalex.” Then she reached down and touched the legs. “Emapi cu alex.” I jumped as she said my name, causing her to let out a delighted laugh.

She stood up and, “Qern kadenpro ad alex?”

I focused fully on her words, my heart rate speeding up. Did she know something? But that made no sense at all... was it just a coincidence?

Standing back a bit, mom pointed at her midsection and upper leg. “Aspertoz or ekro.” She then bent down, pointing at her knee area. “Aspertoz cu alex perna ta or ealex.”

She then picked me up and gave me a kiss. “Kawe-rnot ba enkkr Heller.”

Ok, that was pretty freaky, but it seemed my secret was still safe...

I was starting to pick up more and more of the language, but lack of paper or a notepad (and, let’s be honest, lack of the coordination required to write…) made things harder than they might have been otherwise.

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Splitting my time between learning the language and trying to figure out the weird vault of information in my head helped me deal with the boredom inherent in being stuck in the body of an invalid... errr, I mean infant... And while I was struggling slightly with the language, I had made significant progress in my other field of study.

I found that, for now, all it wanted me to do was to try and hold the complex formation in my mind as I went to sleep and let it somehow gather power. I felt like I was trickle charging a dead battery, maybe a few millivolts at a time, but somehow that felt like the right (and the only) thing to do.

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We have had a few visitors over the last few months, but none of them stayed for very long. Dad was usually away, and I had a feeling that mom wasn’t the most pleasant host unless she really wanted you around. She was usually in a sour mood for a few hours after any visitors left, confiding in me (or gossiping? I couldn’t tell) in a conspiratorial manner.

The one exception to this was a pretty young woman with large doe eyes who was otherwise perfectly human looking. When I first saw her I had a flashback to watching Anime in my old life, causing me to drop the little wooden horse I was playing with (err, I mean, training my dexterity with… cough cough). Mother was always happy to see her, often picking me up and bringing me over to display (like a trophy?) as they both spoke in great lengths about something or other. Of course, I tried to listen in, as I didn’t get the chance to listen to actual adult to adult conversation very often. They spoke too fast for me to even catch the syllables at first, but I started catching on slowly.

Oh, and after a few visits I figured out that the Anime woman was pregnant, not that I really cared. But I guess she is one of mother's friends, so I’d better get used to her (and whatever mutated spawn she ends up producing).

Anyway, enough boring language stuff. Tonight I am going to focus on the formation again. I have a feeling that I’m close to something…

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Pain spread through my head, bouncing from one side of my skull to the other. It wasn’t enough to cause me to call out, feeling more like the pain of a deep tissue massage than an actual wound. I could feel something changing, a passage opening, with a stream of blessed information leaking out of the celestial tome drop by precious drop!

Finally, a breakthrough! I felt energy start entering my young body, flowing through my every vein and into my chest and forehead. It was uncomfortable at first, but once I started getting used to it I enjoyed the sensation. Is this the energy of the universe – qi, chi, manna, whatever you wanted to call it? I felt my body reaching capacity as the flow of energy leveled off, storing itself away deep in my cells (or at least, that’s how I imagined it, cuz I had no freaking idea what was actually happening).

I felt a strong desire to focus on the mysterious formation again, and found that it now had a slight glow in my mind, as well as a clarity that was missing previously... and the more I focused on it the stronger and brighter the glow became. How can something be glowing if it isn’t even real? I felt as if it was shining out of my eyes like a lamp, illuminating the room around me. The formation rebuilt itself without me doing anything, rearranging how it was pictured in my mind. Moving closer and closer to.. something...

Some strange instinct told me that this was only the start, and that from here on out the formation would evolve and change as I gained the power to feed it... which would then allow me to absorb more power faster, in a positive feedback loop. I sensed that after reaching a certain point the formation would be complete, but not for a long time yet.