---Richard---

  “What is your view on politics? What do you think is the best type of society? What is your favorite? How do you see yourself in that society?” Richard asked as he tried to calibrate a headset for Maddy.

  “I…I mean democracy, I guess? Freedom is important. Socialism has some nice ideas, but it never works in practice does it,” Maddy answered.

  “I think benevolent dictatorship maximizes the most benefit for the most people.” Richard shot back.

  “You think you would be a good king?” Maddy asked, skepticism rolling off her tongue.

  “Fuck no, I’d go mad with power! Mad! I don’t trust a single fucking person with that kind of power and monarchies suck. You know, even if you have a really great king that tries his best, it just takes a useless heir or two to fuck it all up.” Richard laughed.

  “No, realistically my ideal society has absolute power given to some incorruptible robots.”

  “That sounds like the plot of a dystopian story.” Maddy responded then bent her head and allowed Richard to clip something resembling a bicycle helmet in place.

  “How does this work by the way? I thought the system limited mental mana…how can you read my mind despite that? How will we give this control to everyone?” She asked pointing up towards the helmet.

  “First off, you don’t need mental mana or some special aether for something like this just a few more direct connections. I’d point to reading the electrical signals in your brain as an example… but mental stats and mutations break those simple methods and most of our brains are so far gone from that point it's not even related. Instead I’m ‘reading’ the aether signals and inducing mirrored signals along L paths...

  “We even have to take into account your ‘brain’ itself is probably at least partly hosted in the skill layer and we can only really interact with the part that’s here unless I send part over. That’s what this cord is for.” Richard shook a tiny wire on the bottom side as he pointed it out.

  “That’s what you call the soul plane right?” Maddy asked as Richard stepped back to calibrate something.

  “Maybe? But calling stuff ‘souls’ has some connotations and potentially incorrect assumptions…

  “Anyways. It’s more complicated than if you didn’t have any stats, but the concepts are the same. Just think of your mind as a black box. Your mind exists completely separate from reality. Reality itself is a hallucination your mind has come up with by accepting a bunch of inputs and confirming the result of some outputs. If I give you another input and output, your mind will be confused for a bit but soon enough it will adapt…and just so long as the connection is completely isolated and passive, your mental defense shouldn’t block it. Would be much easier if I could embed an AI in your body, but trying to get you to power your own AI would break it and your body is likely to fight the connection without personal aether resonance.

  “How high is your mental defense by the way? I can tune some things to help you integrate faster.” Richard clipped a few monitors to the side of Maddy’s helmet, read some readings on his AI then popped them off again.

  “Somewhere between 15-20 if you are talking about individual eyes and 180 if you are talking about overall defense?”

  “…180 it is. Okay, you should begin to notice something soon. Focus on it and feel it out… might take a while. AI are easier to integrate when you have lower stats and non invasive ones take quite a bit longer.” Richard finished then stepped back.

  Slowly Richard relaxed looking more and more tired as he extruded himself a stone chair from the stripped floor and sat back. Two of his connection hands snaked toward Maddy’s head and pumped a steady stream of power towards the device on her head. Before the silence could linger too long he returned to his rant.

  “I feel like I have to make my stance and beliefs clear, but this is important for me,” Richard spoke softly.

  “I personally think different societies maximize different shit. Some are more stable than others. Some maximize X positive trait some maximize Y common trait. Some work well at small scales and break when you scale them up. Some work for a few generations and then break as the founders lose influence. All fail in the end. They stop doing things they were supposed to. They ballon the traits they are good at at the cost of everything else.

  “The common denominator to basically every single problem is humans. You mentioned socialism – perfect example especially as what you really mean is communism no?” Richard asked.

  Maddy blinked across at him trying to pay attention to both the novel sensations on her head and his question.

  “I guess?”

  “In that case, perfect example. The reason state socialism looks so similar to fascism is due to individuals at the top making decisions for their own benefit instead of the whole. People will claim that’s not true communism and they are correct, but the true communism they imagine is a utopia that cannot exist as long as humans are around to fuck it up. Complete opposite side with anarcho capitalism has corporations running their humans slaves into the ground. Both sides have slaves and a police force they use to oppress the masses, private or not. The problem is humans.”

  “Humans are the problem, The society is ‘for’ humans but it shouldn’t be by humans.” Richard finished.

  Maddy stared across at him for a bit.

  “I think, I disagree. Some people are bad yes but humans should be able to govern themselves? How does this relate to our shared system?” Maddy finally responded.

  “I’m just trying to get you to understand my point of view. I think people aren’t motivated by pure charity. That’s na?ve. Even if the system depends on charity to exist, we need to motivate people into donating. We haven’t even figured out what needs to be donated to this system to work…but just imagine stats are needed. I think we could split the types of spells that are available into different categories linked to different base classes. Something like a builder class or a survivalist class. Each class gives a few spells or bonuses to using a few spells – or limits the type of spells that can be cast. To upgrade your class into a higher version with more slots or more bonuses you have to sacrifice some stats. Those stats go to the communal system and improve the whole. Maybe to upgrade your class to its maximum potential you need to sacrifice an affinity or one of your slots” Richard imagined.

  Maddy thought for a bit, “That’s still an exchange not a gift? I think we have to convince people in a less aggressive way. At the end of the day, even if most people don’t donate, everyone will benefit from the few who do, and that’s all that matters to me.”

  Richard frowned and thought for a bit. “I don’t believe that it will succeed as you are imagining. This is a magic thing? Even if the goal is good, the process matters? The intent behind decisions? What parts matter the most?”

  “Access to it, whoever donates to it doing so of their own free will. Not under duress.” Maddy spoke up confidently.

  Richard nodded not dismissing her this time and then thought about the problem as he saw it for a while.

  “How about anyone who donates or makes significant contributions towards a spell gets their name on it? People are motivated by fame. Being able to call it ‘Richard’s bomb ass fireball’ and somehow revealing that lets everyone know who to thank?” Richard responded.

  Maddy nodded. “I think that’s fine. That’s sort of a cosmetic thing.”

  Richard thought a bit longer.

  “I might be backtracking a bit but how about this. This system is available to everyone…somehow. Zero gatekeeping. Everyone can use all the stored spells no matter their personalities and goals. They can make their own following the rules we’ve provided, although anything done within the system will be available to everyone…but they have to use the most explicit and complicated versions. This can be the pure base.

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  “Them using those complicated versions is important because it’s the full pattern with all the information needed inside of it. Any minor changes to the full pattern change the result and the AI in charge of analyzing this can store what each of those changes do. They have to do everything because everything is the pure version. Theres work to get to the end point. Any work done on this benefits everyone but it is still honest work.

  “Maybe this state is class ‘zero’. Or ‘empty’ class or something? Either way at its very base its as pure as you are imagining. Built on top of that pure base there’s a second, slightly more self serving layer. This layer only provides convenience. Nothing else. It simplifies the complex base. Instead of having to write everything from scratch, you can call functions or refer to premade custom bits. A class could have one or more slots to ‘store’ spells for later or include spells you don’t have to write just activate. It can have a lot of the helper capabilities I’ve made. Colour coordination. The AI guesses what you will write next and pre highlights it as a guide or autocompletes it. Heavier error correction in general. This layer can then do all the dark patterns it needs to convince people to donate and whatever bad karma you are imagining can be absorbed by the second layer instead of the first.” Richard responded.

  This time Maddy didn’t outright dismiss Richard’s ideas. She thought about it for a while eyes tracking a single glowing line she was now able to slowly push along in the air.

  “I think…I can agree to that.” Maddy spoke after a while. “How do you imagine these classes would be split?”

  “This is a system for society not individuals. The existing system has splits along functional lines. Inwards magic vs outwards magic. Easy utilization aether vs hard creation aether. I think this should be split based on how it allows people to affect their society.” Richard responded.

  “Something like warriors and crafters? Combat spells on one side and crafting on the other?” Maddy asked.

  “Exactly like that but I’d prefer something different. That sounds like it could easily lead to one side oppressing the other if any imbalance was created. Combat side using their increased combat capabilities to force the crafter side to do what they want. Crafting side holding a monopoly on equipment and forcing combat people into bad situations just to keep getting it.” Richard shook his head.

  Maddy paused then responded. “This is in addition to personal power right? All the ‘spells’ I’d want to donate are utility…stuff that’s convenient and will increase quality of life not ways to fight better.”

  Richard nodded.

  “So…this is a way to split types of magic. Separating them will improve them. The limitation of only being able to use half of them will improve them.” Maddy spoke aloud now able to draw a circle in the air as she slowly got used to Richard's setup.

  Richard nodded once again.

  “What about separating out more permanent magic and short term spells?” Maddy asked after a bit more practice.

  “I like that.” Richard nodded. “Something like city builder on one side and camping builder on the other?

  Maddy seemed to suddenly get an idea.

  “Okay. Rank 0. Everything, pure and hard. Rank 1. Main split has something like ‘establisment’ magic or ‘founding’ magic. The other side has something like ‘explorer’ or ‘survivalist’. The split is based on whether you want to settle down and build a collaborative society or whether you want to go off alone or with others that equally don't want to settle down. The explorer side might seem like its individual focused, but as long as what they discover gets shared with everyone than its benefiting society as a whole. This layer stepping away from the pure spells could include stuff like a database of things explorers have found, places you might want to build a city at, new plants or monsters and how they might fight with strengths and weaknesses. On the other side city controls for people who have built themselves a city like built in system voting!” Maddy seemed more and more on board with the idea.

  “Not going lie, Explorer goes hard” James spoke from the ceiling causing both Richard and Maddy to jump as they hadn’t noticed him float in.

  “Rank two can split into types of city founding, making specific types of establishment magic easier to use. On the other side it can split into different types of explorers focused on different types of discoveries!” Maddy added.

  “What about a chef class? Or maybe fishing?” James added from above floating down to join them.

  “Easy enough to split off an explorer into a food explorer searching for rare and untried delicacies or a fish explorer searching for different types of fish and how they taste” Richard shrugged.

  “If you can make that happen I’ll sacrifice whatever knowledge the system implanted as instincts for monster meat.” James responded. “They aren’t things I need, just hobbies I want to do now that I have enough strength. Can I have both a chef and fishing class at the same time? Hybrid?”

  Richard paused and then said “I think…rather than combining classes and removing the point of splitting them, it would be better to focus on being able to change your class with minimal negatives. So…swapping between fish and cooking in this case with some time or effort in between. Maybe your progress in a class is saved instead of lost when you switch? Maybe progress in specialized 'advanced' offshoots helps the bases somehow?”

  James grinned and slapped Richard on the back.

  “Keep up the good work!” he joked then started to leave once again.

  “Ai Ai, captain!” Richard called back.

  “What do you two want for dinner. You’ve been stuck in this stuffy box all day.” James called near the door.

  “Anything,” Richard called back causing James to nod.

  “One anything for the fine Sir, And you madam?” He asked Maddy.

  “Whatever you two are having? No point in us eating something separate.” Maddy responded causing James to wave with a grin.

  “A ‘whatever you two are having’ for the madam. Fine choice. Very fine choice. Carry on with your brainstorming! If you need me I’ll be near the firepit trying to figure out what these meals are.”

  The two watched him leave a bit of his good mood infecting them.

  James had grown more and more confident lately. It looked good on him. He hadn't once gotten arrogant with his power, simply more extraverted and relaxed.

  “Alright,” Richard spoke a moment later. “I’ll put in the tutorials for each of my drawing systems in a moment. Start trying them out and tell me what you think.”

  …

  Slowly the system design continued. At one moment Richard showed off how skills could change by changing properties altering his own skills with his Esper hands and some skill shifted components. He shifted his stone hands from resonating along silicon to resonating along oxygen then heavily heavily shifted some mechanisms until he was able to manipulate water and wind. A bit of shifting let him manipulate a easily flammable oil and soon he had four hands each with one of the four elements moving around him. “Look I’m the avatar!”

  At another point Richard spoke about how Maddy had given up stat alignments for new pools. “And those alignments are just dead now? Can we do some surgery to check? The whole point of aether is allowing anyone to use any so called affinity they want no matter what they started with. We should be able to at least see what you’ve done to yourself.”

  James became a surgeon guided by Richard’s knowledge of stat manipulation and a firm kinetic hand. Then Maddy shifted her perspective into one where she just had to push to pull her dead alignments closer to James’s knife. Right near the end she got a confirmation from the system she needed to accept and then a bit of her flesh transmuted into something different. In that moment what she considered her alignment was concentrated into one spot and while Maddy had a jolt of ominous feelings right near the end, they were able to cut off all of what she considered her ‘body strength’.

  Maddy’s status no longer had a red ‘degraded’ strength on it. All her strength stats were gone. As far as her main body was concerned this hadn’t ‘fixed’ anything. She still had a pool in the way. She couldn’t suddenly gain strength stats because her new affinity was sitting in that position. Nothing anything they did could fix that because the amount of ‘slots’ Maddy had was still full.

  If they removed one of Maddy’s affinities this way, Richard was semi certain they could give her strength stats again…but of course Maddy had given it up for a reason.

  More importantly this was just if you looked at Maddy’s main body.

  If you looked at any of her eyes individually…she now had an open body strength. One of her eyes even gained an achievement awarding one teleportation muscle strength after a particularly strenuous escape from a nightstalker.

  As far as her individual eyes were concerned, they had only one affinity. By cutting out the old suppressed stats on her ‘collective’, suddenly her split forms had their blocked stats open. After a lot of consideration, Maddy ended up ‘cutting out’ all her sacrificed alignments in the hopes her individual selves could get to higher peaks with them unblocked.

  There was a bit of weirdness where her original stat alignments resonated and were shared with all her eyes, becoming something greater than the sum of her parts which these new stats didn’t have…but just because one eye gained a stat this way didn’t mean any other eye benefited…

  Still. In the long run it was an overall improvement even if Maddy dropped in strength quite a bit near the start. Without multiple bodies the chance james could achive the same sort of situation was low so he kept his locked stats as is.

  He had other avenues to increase his strength after all.

  More important than the increase in personal strength Maddy gained through these aether techniques was the study material her cut off flesh had given. Studying the ‘dead’ stats from her flesh helped shoot forward their goals by leaps and bounds.

  Richard narrowed in on just what an alignment was and how something like an affinity might be 'placed' in a body in its place.

  Finally Maddy realized something.

  “I got distracted by everything that’s been happening but! I just remembered we were going to fully embrace the others viewpoint at least for a bit. I treated magic like science for a more than enough time. Fair is fair, you have to treat aether like magic for a bit.”