I left Chantelle to her warding and headed outside to the top of the sphere. It was just getting light, and I saw the top of the forest for the first time. It was a field of mostly white in all directions. The tops of the trees were thick enough that a large amount of the snow was resting on top of them. I could see small pieces of green poking through if I looked closely enough at the nearest trees, but the rest was all white.

There was a light snow falling, and where it landed on my fortress it slid off to the ground. I couldn't see it from here, but the snow bank that would form I imagined would be very deep, collecting all of the snow that would fall on my fortress.

I looked to the north, looking for the tower I had built to find the clearing. There didn't look to be any curve to the ground over long distances, but even with only a light snow falling it blocked my view over that distance. I realised that even if it had been day I wouldn't have been able to find my clearing from the tower. I just didn't have enough experience and was trying the best thing I could think of at the time.

The view was very peaceful. Everything was white, except the dark grey clouds overhead, and the walls of my fortress, which had showed as a somewhat transparent dark blue colour. They almost looked like solid sapphire. Too thick to see through, even with the lamps burning in the stairway.

After a few minutes of just enjoying the beauty of the thing I had created, in the middle of this white world I found myself in, I shook myself and got on to what I should be doing next.

Fortifications are done, and Chantelle was working on wards to make them even stronger. I could work on offensive parts of the fortification. I was confident in the strength of the defence, but there wasn't any way of attacking the attackers back.

Preparing the fortress for people to live in needed to be done as well, Chantelle's villagers would be staying here after we rescued them, and there might be refugees that the Forest Keepers would send our way. It would take very few skilled defenders to hold the fortress against anything that attacked.

I still needed to finish my AI companion as well, which I should do while I don't have any distractions.

I went through the knowledge I had of AIs and AI companions. There was a lot to it, but it came down to several sophisticated adaptive programs, programs that could learn and recode themselves based upon their learning.

It needed a program for language, to be able to communicate. A program for independent goals, independent of me, it needed its own things to strive for. A planning and decisions program, for it to plan and weigh different choices. A program writing program, to create entirely new functionality that it needed. And a master program, that controlled all of the other programs.

Once it had all of the pieces, and was left to process and learn for a bit, it would form a consciousness and become self aware. At which point it would have full control of the platform it was running on, and I wouldn't have access to its code or be able to code things myself on the platform. I would have to interact with the AI to get anything done. On the other hand, I wouldn't have to manage everything myself as I had been doing, I could just ask for something and have the result given to me.

There were interesting parallels to my existence as a digitised sentient. The term implied that I started out as a sentient, self aware, being and that my consciousness was uploaded into an AI. If the same rules held true for me as they would for the companion AI I could create, then I had a much better understanding as to how I could be tampered with once my consciousness was running on a platform. Which was, not at all. I would need direct permission from the companion AI to alter anything at all on the platform, and without it I couldn't do anything.

I wasn't sure I wanted another consciousness in my head making decisions for me. The adaptive fighting program I'd written, that was tapped directly into the planning area of my mind, was unsettling enough, and it was only giving me options and leaving all of the decisions to me.

Which might be an answer, if I could extend my consciousness onto the hardware platform I would be able to control everything just as a companion AI could, but I would be in full control. Nothing in my knowledge of Mind Links even hinted at the possibility, but I knew the areas of my mind that needed to be connected, the same as the adaptive programs an AI would need. I already knew where the planning part was, I'd just have to find the rest.

Filling my brain with my Matter Manipulation power, I found all of the parts that would need to be connected with the Mind Link, and several of them weren't directly connected including the part that controlled what other parts of the brain had control or focus. The part of the brain that was equivalent to the master control program in the AI.

The other parts that were wired, weren't wired in the way I wanted. They were wired at the edges, as inputs into the main areas, and I wanted them to be wired throughout so that I could extend the functionality through the Mind Link.

I would need to modify both the Mind Link in my brain and the cells of my brain directly. The thought of modifying my cells gave me some pause, and I twitched in phantom pain as I recalled with perfect memory of the last time I'd done it. But the brain can't feel pain, so it should be fine. Right?

I was going to need to build some more processing and memory chips to run the simulated brain pieces. I went down to the warding room to warn Chantelle that I might be doing something painful again to find her sitting on the floor surrounded by small mana crystals. I felt her concern, but she nodded and went back to what she was working on.

In my Pocket Dimension I modified the Mind Link connection there first, adding masses of connections that were only as thick as the connections between the nerves in my brain. I built a series of processing chips on top of that, and memory chips on top of that. I added more processing and memory until I had it equal to what already existed.

I summoned a model of my brain and got down to designing the alterations of the Mind Link on that side. I carefully avoided the part of my brain that was controlling my Matter Manipulation power, I really didn't want to find out what would happen if I lost the ability to continue modifying my brain part of the way through the process.

After I was done I did one last check that everything should connect properly after the modifications, and then wrote a program that would use the design as a blueprint. Even if I fell unconscious the program would be able to finish the alterations.

I spent some time hesitating initiating the program. Finally I just activated it.

Pain. Immense pain. And it wouldn't stop. I could calculate the time going by, literally millisecond by millisecond, and the pain was there. I could think despite the pain, but I couldn't move, or see, or feel anything but the pain. I was paralysed.

Half a second later, five hundred long milliseconds, the pain finally stopped. I still couldn't move or see, and now I couldn't feel anything at all.

It took me another long while, which I counted as milliseconds crawling by, to realise that it had worked. The problem was I was thinking and reacting far faster than my body could process the inputs from its senses and pass them to me. My perception of time had sped up to the point where I couldn't interact with the real world at all.

I implemented an interface to the other hardware platform through the Mind Link and expanded there, writing interfaces to the programs I'd already written, placing them under my control and tweaking their code to better interface with me. Not having access to any senses, I created a virtual place to exist.

I didn't feel human anymore, so I didn't feel the need to create an avatar in the space. Instead I recreated the model of the fortress, incorporating my memories of the views from it. I could perceive the entire model simultaneously, rather than the limited perception I had before. I didn't need to visualise models of things I was working on, I knew them intimately.

I spent some time just exploring how I was experiencing the simulation I had created. After a while, two seconds or so, I started to feel a rising level of concern. I wasn't simulating it, it was coming from elsewhere.

I implemented an abstraction layer so that I could alter my perception of time and adjusted it gradually. There was an odd jump as I slowed the perception of my simulated brain down enough for my real brain to start processing the signals being sent to it, and start sending signals back. Then I was able to see again. I could simultaneously process the image and see normally.

There was an ideal speed that the abstraction layer should set my perception of time at to perfectly interface with my brain. Setting it to that, my senses snapped back to being available. I could also feel emotion again, which I hadn't even noticed that I was missing. I did a quick check, and I was still me, a single consciousness.

Looking around I had an intuitive understanding of distances and forces. I stepped forwards a single step, and it was the perfect application of force to achieve the result, no wasted energy.

The concern I'd felt that had brought me back to reality was from Chantelle, who was still in the warding room. I closed my eyes and relied entirely on calculations of force to head down the stairs to the warding room to find out what was wrong.