Chapter 25: Technicalities [8]

  What does it take to make the perfect human?

  Estelle pondered this as a quiet hum escaped her lips. Her gaze fixed on the floating holographic monitors before her—four transparent displays that dominated her field of vision. Though most of the holographic details blurred from her sight, she could make out their green hue and the faint lines separating windows, reminiscent of the main displays from the Integrated Station Device. Her fingers hovered over the controls as her eyes tracked across the screens, her head nodding slightly in understanding—though what exactly she understood remained incoherent.

  The interface proved more intuitive than her mind had initially conceived. Perhaps it was the array of unfamiliar holographs—the sonar readings and radioactive graphs from before, or the deep scanning and independent signaling compulsion waves. Whatever it was, the comprehensive display stood in stark contrast to her scattered thoughts. Her mind drifted in and out of focus, ideas surfacing only to dissolve again in an endless cycle. Suddenly, Estelle jolted from her daze as her left hand, still suspended before the holographic display, tingled with pins and needles.

  "Ah—" she muttered, letting her hands fall to her lap with a haggard sigh that ended in a gravelly growl.

  She pulled her legs closer, wrapping her arms around them—her hands—gloved fingers pressing against the slick fabric. The gloves slithered against her leggings with a quiet rustle, their textures eerily similar. Even the insides felt comfortably like high-quality cotton. Yet, as she stared, she noticed a difference—the way light scattered off her leggings wasn’t quite the same as off her gloves. The thought of whether they were made from the same material flickered through her mind, but she let it slip away, shifting her gaze back to the holographic display.

  “Okay—!” she exclaimed, words spilling out. “What was I doing again?”

  As though the loudness of her own words muted the whispers in her mind, Estelle found herself stuck—she couldn’t quite remember what she was doing, but she felt she had been doing something important before dazing out from reality. But nothing came to mind—unconsciously, Estelle found her body felt jittery, and unconsciously began pinching the fabric tuat from her leggings and began swaying her head.

  Her mind struggled to piece together the most recent memory. 'The terminal device appeared—but it’s a different variant. It acts like a parenting— or… how would she explain this to Estelle? I know what it is, but I feel like I should explain it. Fuck, it’s basically the same as modeling—parenting one object to another, the child object following the parent’s position, rotation, and sometimes scale. Was it even called parenting?'

  She hesitated. ‘Maybe it was called ‘Child Of Constraint’? Or ‘Link Constraint’? I don’t remember.’

  "Wait… I strayed again." Estelle let out a sharp gasp, though her face remained unsurprised. 'Damn it, I need Adderall or something… fix my ADHD…'

  She frowned, the thought spiraled. 'Isn’t it weird that I still have ADHD, even in a different body? When did that become transferable? Would switching to a new body fix it? Make me more focused—ultra-focused?' She hesitated, grumbling slightly. 'No… that probably wouldn’t work—I mean, look at me, I still have my adhd, or unless this body actually came with a pre-built adhd, which is very unfortunate.'

  Then, a flicker of recollection. 'Oh—wait. I remember now. I was trying to make a body. That’s why…'

  The focus returned to her eyes as the blurring lines of the holographic display sharpened into clarity. Against a pale green backdrop, white lines divided the monitor into three distinct sections—the layout reminded her of video editing software, though clearly this was something far more alien. The left panel displayed what looked like a storage module, an inventory filled with terms that made her head slightly spin: primary sequence, plasmid, viral sectors, engineered construct. Each category spawned its own maze of subcategories—species-specific genes, bacterial strains, stem cell lines, synthetic biology components—words that might as well have been in another language.

  Estelle's eyes twitched as she stared at the intimidating menu structure. Another vertical learning curve to climb—nothing new there, she supposed, though that didn't stop her from wishing these systems came with an "explain it like I'm five" mode. With a resigned sigh, she shifted her attention to the right panel. This, at least, looked familiar—like a preview window, though currently dimmed to grayscale with a ‘not-so-good-message’ in the Architect’s Langauge: [ENERGY SETTING LOW - MAINTENANCE MODE].

  The central panel below caught her eye—at first glance, it resembled a timeline panel where she had normally arranged video sequences, but something was off. Rows and columns stretched downward, each box perfectly uniform yet pulsing with different colored glows, separated by crisp white lines. She scrolled down, only to hit the bottom almost immediately. The words were there, she'd definitely read them before, but they refused to stick in her mind. Scrolling back up, she forced herself to focus. This had to be the DNA sequencing workspace—the environment practically screamed it. At the top, a dropdown menu proclaimed [Current Workshop: Synthetic Biology]. Without an empty head, she tapped it, revealing a cascade of options: de novo gene synthesis, codon optimization, directed evolution, and more terms that disappeared into the scroll.

  "Huh... de novo... that keeps coming up," Estelle muttered, absently massaging her chin. 'I definitely didn't make this interface myself—creature design is one thing, body plan is another, but this gene stuff is way beyond my mortal mind. Even as a worldbuilder… Things like these are not fun to tackle around… Never saw the point in learning it before...'

  Her brow furrowed as she glared at the display. 'Maybe I really should have bothered to learn this stuff... Damnit.'

  Further down the screen, something caught her eye—strange peaks and valleys that reminded her of audio waveforms, though nothing like the ones she used in her animation work. Four letters she vaguely remembered from dozing through high school biology—A, T, C, G—repeated in dizzying combinations across the display. Highlighted sections peppered the sequence with annotations that might as well have been alien script: "restriction site alpha," "homologous recombination zone," "PAM sequence." The way they marked specific sections reminded her of how she had label different parts of her 3D models for rigging, though these markers spoke a language she couldn't begin to parse.

  Red pulses flickered across certain sections like warning indicators in her rendering software—the kind that screamed about broken mesh topology or rigging errors. Other areas glowed with a soft blue highlight, not unlike how she had mark editable vertices in her creature designs. Estelle’s lips puff into a pout, thinking, ‘Or maybe I should have designed the biology of this world into a 3D rendering—’

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  A sudden giggle bubbled from Estelle's lips. 'Scientists zooming into their microscopes just to find someone's dumb creature drawing? That's ridiculous... God, science can be so extra sometimes. Like, can they tone it down? There are only so much a person can consume. Though I have to admit, I love those numerous aspects too—all those theories and applications are basically worldbuilding concepts on their own. Actually, if we really think about it, a lot of my inspiration comes from—oh shit, I'm getting sidetracked again.'

  She clicked her tongue and let out a sharp exhale. "Right—focus. What makes the perfect humanoid body? No, no, don't even think about all those other body plans we had designed right now, Estelle, or we'll never get anywhere. Wait... isn't the answer just like, classic superhero? Something like superhuman? You know, laser eyes like pew-pew, steel-like skin going dom-dom, basically indestructible compared to regular humans... If that makes any sense to me—I think it does. Yeah, that fits."

  She nodded to herself, her voice sliding back into thoughts. 'But making something like that right now? Yeah, no chance. I mean, forget about having zero genetic material to work with—I barely understand how this thing operates.' Her eyes drifted back to the monitor. 'Let's file that under long-term goals...'

  "For now though," she said aloud, her head shifting around.

  The floating holographic monitors stirred a peculiar envy within Estelle. Though multiple monitors and holographic displays were nothing new—she had owned several in her previous world—their quality and features were far beyond the screens she was used to. These displays followed her movements, automatically adjusting their position to stay perfectly in view wherever she went. Now, with her back resting against one of the modular pods and legs drawn close, she couldn't help but covet their technological convenience.

  Her gaze drifted to the hovering sphere behind the monitors—the very device projected these holographs, a terminal drone. Though its first appearance had seemed menacing, materializing like a void creature from black liquid, she remembered designing it precisely that way. Hours spent crafting standardized body plans for mechanical drones, whose ordinary geometric spheres proved fitting to the Architect's setting. Built with resource efficiency in mind, yet carrying multiple possibilities for specialized applications—and knowing how advanced the Architect's technology was, she allowed herself to imagine the potential extremities of their features.

  To witness one here—its initial animation appearing in the most abrupt and oddest of ways, slightly terrifying—felt remarkable to her eyes. Though she was quite certain there had been a terminal at the center of this hall, she could hardly remember when she had changed it—however, she knew the exact reasons why her past self had made that decision.

  Thoughts drifting, 'That device from earlier... the one I wanted to create from the research table...'

  Her thoughts trailed as she muttered, "I wanted the handheld terminal to feel magical but technical, you know?" A dry chuckle escaped her lips. "But seeing this drone... I rather want to make this instead... Not only could we potentially have lots of these, and make ones specialized for combat, then I wouldn't have to worry about the outside world too much. And if someone in the mortal realm asks what these things are, I can simply explain them away as artifacts of the past—not many would bat an eye, knowing the age we're currently in.... Oh dear... I really like it... though. Still, we haven't seen how the handheld terminal device looks—so let's wait until we can see and judge it for ourselves."

  Her attention shifted to the right-hand monitor, where a detailed mapping system of the gestation hall dominated the display. Just as her fragmented memories suggested, and matching the overwhelming familiarity of this place, the layout before her confirmed the assumptions she held in her mind. Beyond the typical main bar lining the right side containing most tools and tabs, it created a bold border between the main display and these controls.

  Her curious gaze settled on the top right corner; a collapsible sorting list offered view customization parameters. The main display showcased a top-down view of the rhombus-shaped hall she had designed, with pathways running along each edge and diagonal routes cutting through to the center.

  The interface provided exactly what she remembered creating—assembly locks lined the side pathways leading to the center, with specialized zones filling the spaces between. But something new caught her eye: beyond the outer paths, rows of boxes with highlighted pods sat tightly spaced mere pixels apart—their placement made Estelle turn her head to glance sideways—only to find the same metallic walls that enclosed the space. The storage units shown on the map remained hidden from view.

  'They must be stored behind there,' she thought. 'I should check later if we can transfer them to the assembly locks. Though with so many units... I wonder if we could salvage them for materials instead? I could always rebuild them later... but for now... bodies...'

  She groaned, her voice rising, "There's not much we can do... I don't have any bodies I can use. Should I just risk and teleport? The chances of dying in the mortal realm are pretty high, and I don't want to gamble with my life when I need to be extra careful. Especially now that I am here in this world, my creation," She paused, considering. "Maybe there are bodies in the sarcophagus hall we could use... Or perhaps we should check if there are any suitable bodies in the mortal realm. I remember placing multiple sarcophagus halls across the land... I should investigate those as well… But, oh—"

  Estelle paused again, nodding before grumbling between breaths, “How do I do tha—wait, there’s that thing.”

  Her head swiveled, eyes scanning a series of monitors from right to left until they landed on a small display to her left. It resembled much like the Nexus Protocol Module interface she had seen before. At first glance, it didn’t appear much different from the Integrated Station’s—same icons clustered along a right-side menu, multiple items shifting by the second. Cuyrious, she leaned in slightly. But as she focused, she realized she was wrong. The list differed from the one in the Trigon Sphere Hall—at least, from what she remembered. Not that it mattered. Her attention flitted further left, settling on a pale green backdrop, starkly empty of icons.

  “I should be able to request info from here…” Estelle muttered, shaking the numbness from her fingers before positioning them on the display. “I mean, it looks like a sub-terminal… so—”

  Carrying the half-formed assumption in her head, she wrote in the Architect’s language:

  [Provide information on locating transferable vessels to house an Architect’s consciousness. I will be the one transferring into a vessel found in the mortal realm and require details on the transfer process, how to return to my original body, and…]

  Her fingers paused abruptly. She whispered to herself, “I should be immortal… technically, as long as my original body isn’t harmed. All the gods should be asleep, so no one can trace me—and if my consciousness dies in the vessel, the Architect’s pattern should reconstruct and restore me… At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work according to the lore... I think?”

  She mumbled the last part, tilting her head while one hand absently massaged her chin. ‘I don’t want to die if possible… I don’t want to feel pain—and, we also have zero idea how to make a body, no resources, so let’s use them reservely.’

  After a few more grumbles, trying to recall details, she refocused on the display and continued writing: [Cautions on transferring consciousness.]

  ‘Just in case…’ she thought, lifting her fingers off the display to let the system register her request. Or at least, she hoped.