Part 1: Towards the center.

  Inside the claw's protection, and with my eye sensor readjusted to its normal operation, I could see the center of the nucleus. It took a while for the transportation device to arrive at a discernible distance from it. But the shadow in the center, the column of light from before, wasn’t shaped

  My vision sensor had partially adjusted to the weird phenomena that occurred inside. Perhaps it was secondary to the claw’s protective membrane, filtering the light while preventing it from oversaturating my sensor. Yet surely, my body being able to move inside the cage without being grabbed by the tripod rhizome played a major role.

  It should be something obvious by now, but by moving within the confined space inside the membrane, I could watch more than 360 degrees around! It was even better than the experiences I’d gotten in 5D cinemas. I didn’t have to be restricted to the claw’s direction and the little I could move my sensor to watch when grabbed by the claw’s grip.

  When I first entered this place, it was dark with little fireflies that represented some glowing structures. The blinding light arrived and caused me to overburn my sensors. It pains me to say it, but I couldn’t watch anything until it was dark.

  The things that glowed–apart from the huge laser flux in the center–were claws, noodles below it, and other things I couldn’t grasp with the lack of an adequate light source. Anyone could tell, that until now, the whole trip I had while restricted by the claw didn’t show something worth of my sight.

  However, when the sensor adjusted, and the claw’s membrane protection reduced its strain –thanks to it filtering part of the light–it allowed me to see structures that stumped me.

  The nucleus wasn’t empty, in fact, the salp-like spiral the claws adopted when flying in the dark space wasn’t just for a beautiful show. They had to take that course to evade things that were invisible to me previously.

  If a description could work, maybe imagining how mangles crisscrossed was fitting. The trip below was a determined flight through a mangle forest. The claws evaded the roots and branches while hovering above the noodle sea.

  From the branches, flowing membranes twirled and somehow directed their movement. From the sea and the vault, towers in the shape of stalagmites and stalactites became visible; but most importantly, the sea of vibrating noodles was moving so much, that even gigantic waves like those in the deep seas transpired.

  The mangle-like forest wasn’t something pertinent to the ground level. In fact, those ramifications came from the sky columns. These erratic branches had membranous veils that extended from their stems, and many were long enough to disappear in the limits of my vision. They were somehow attached to the column's ramifications but didn’t appear to be part of them–as if made of a different material–and they swayed like ghosts and foggy clouds. Even some flying things that looked like shape-shifting origami birds were flying and colliding against those ribbon-like veils, painting the sky with ephemeral fireworks and glowing lights in the sky. If I had color vision, I’d be calling them auroras.

  A18 had already predicted that the claw’s membrane had a protective effect. It would filter certain types of light, reduce the radiative strain of the particles in the nucleus, feed me energy, and even transport me towards the high skies.

  The trip, however, was just starting. If I wanted to hijack this blob machine, the basic principle of the how and the when, depended on my understanding.

  The veils were almost invisible, sometimes they reflected the light from the different structures inside the nucleus, yet other times they absorbed every bit of it; it was the darkest black I'd ever seen too. The origami birds in the sky were probably made out of the same material, as they sometimes became stars that vanished in the shadows after an ephemeral twinkle.

  In between all of that, the tips of towering columns emerged from the noodle sea, while the ramifications from the ceiling descended to probably unite with those. Some of those branches from the ceiling were straight, some had twisted patters, and some entered the sea and resurfaced creating odd curvatures. Instead, those that emerged from the sea where even in size and conical in shape.

  This was the center area of the nucleus. It was a land full of ghosts, illusions, and unknowns for my crappy sensors. It was an enthralling scenery if it were not for the continuous flickering of the room’s switch.

  My puddle, the patterns of movement from the structures are synchronous to the spiral movement of the transporting claws.

  As I expected, having an AI to help was always a cheat. I felt like having a calculator during a test. But there were limits since even with all the analyzing capabilities, conclusions were far from her grasp. It still helped a lot though, and things of the weird puzzle were starting to match.

  I reminisced about those filter structures between the external and internal nucleus. Could it be?

  A18, is there a relation with the veils from those branches and the similar membranes that composed the filtering walls outside?

  There should be a relation between them my puddle, but the system would need a sample to process and compare.

  Should I get one from this claw's membrane? I think it's better to not damage it for a while. It is my only line of defense, so I'll check it out once our guide is unnecessary.

  Anyway, I think there is some connection with a ball having membranes outside and inside. Like DNA and RNA that are similar yet with a difference of a single base, it takes a completely different role.

  Or is it like proteins? Just change the DNA/RNA skeleton to simple amino acids to transform information into machines? [Note: DNA (program) –> becomes RNA (orders) –> Arrives at the Ribosome (Fabric) –> 3 bases of RNA are read and transform into an amino acid that’s added to then become proteins (Product). MC here is saying that the membranes inside and outside should be similar -not identical- since most lifeforms would use similar materials for things with similar shapes].

  This shouldn't be a coincidence. I'm sure that there is a connection between the cloth walls outside the inner nucleus and the ones inside. All things were pointing to the previous conclusion of the blob being similar to a cell. Maybe it was like a giant amoeba with a bunch of extra qualities like game slimes or tentacle monsters. All of them share in common having something like a nucleus, a place that gives them life.

  Additionally, a cell in my understanding uses DNA as the basis of that life. Supposing that... shouldn't the nucleus work as its storage?

  It should have something that works as memories, data, or some program. Is it the noodles? Is this the way it stores information? But why is there light inside, wouldn’t it harm the data storing molecule?

  Even if the structures have some ‘sunscreen’ protection, the variability of the environment inside this place is too much to keep something ‘safe’.

  But wait! Thinking about it now, DNA is always active with its structure being read and modified constantly. Except for some specific places that were ‘forgotten’ to be used, DNA needs to be constantly read for something to be alive! There is no point in keeping it ‘still’, even if reading and writing on it will wear it off eventually. [Note: Like in a game, when you play too much with a storage disk it can start to have errors. And if you played a Multilanguage game, DNA has something like that. The other languages are things that you’ll never use in your life, and thus, won’t ever be read.]

  Then what would happen if something reads and writes its information with so much speed? Wouldn’t it die faster?

  No, this conclusion is too hasty, I need more information! The claws are moving too slow in comparison, If the claws are the information transporters, then it isn’t really fast.

  I don’t have the ability to answer that right now. I need to check and come to a conclusion on how this blob’s brain works.

  A18, grab every detail you can and remind me to take a sample of the membranes when we have the opportunity.

  Yes, my puddle!

  My eye moved and concentrated on the swirling veils around the descending columns. I had to check this place from somewhere. These ghostly veils were extremely eye-catching, but they generated strain on my sensors with their illusions.

  Supposing there was a connection between those veils and the walls outside was the most representative clue, hence, I started checking on them.

  These veils were thinner, no bubbles could be seen, and different from the rugged walls outside, their surfaces appeared slick and somewhat transparent. Bands of flashes and blacks. The magic trick employed in this was hypnotizing, like ghosts swimming on liquid.

  If not for my past memories, a sky with these patterns–even if in black and white tonality–could be more mesmerizing than looking at the blue sky my human mind yearned.

  There must be a process inside this place that made the blob 'alive', I just had to find how it worked. Afterward, it would be as simple as a virus controlling a cell. That was the initial idea, but this form of 'life' was unknown, and things were turning harder than I thought.

  Deciphering how it worked wouldn't be that easy, nonetheless, destruction was always an option to finish the work. A bit of a dirty thing to do, but damaging the core of the blob might also end my troubles.

  I have read a lot of stories in the past, those in which people were born or transported to new worlds. They adapted quite easily to them as the rules in those were almost the same. This one was the opposite, even a million-year cultivator, legendary warrior, or whatever you can think of… would certainly feel like a baby when nothing resembled their past-life.

  Information is one of the most important factors to survive. Option A kills you, while option B keeps you alive. The problem here is… you don’t know how to select between both options.

  Summarizing, my train of knowledge of this place had too many voids. The thing limiting my current analysis emerged from my entrance to this place. It's disheartening, but the war of light and darkness didn't allow me to recognize the doors nor the way we arrived. All in all, the nucleus of this blob was something I couldn’t describe with just words.

  Flower-like drapes, a mysterious entrance, blinding light, and a magnetic field. Next, walls covered in dust with areas that created patterns of light and shadow. I related the puzzling patterns engraved on the wall to a circuit. But even by telling that, the real inner surface of the nucleus was ever-changing. It was sometimes more active than the sea of noodles, yet mysteriously, it was only visible the farther you were from it.

  My mind tried to find some additional connection to those veils. Nothing extra was found. So my bulb-shaped head twisted and my eye peered at the columns -- the apparent place where those veils anchored to.

  Countless of these columns glowed with mysterious light. Small and darker counterparts rose from the ocean, yet the ones above me were the most interesting. Like the huge column in the center, most of these descending pillars had an irregular shape. The center one appeared conical, a bit twisted too, and also incomplete with its tip disappearing at the bottom of the noodle ocean. Maybe the best description would be that of a narrowing funnel, resembling tornados.

  When the flush of energy passed through, the conical shape it had could be described as bi-conical. I realized this shape was partially false as the thing that created the other cone was the reflection over the noodle sea. It showed how easy it was to confuse someone at the nucleus entrance.

  This conical shape, and differences between ceiling and floor, created something I couldn’t omit.

  As you would expect, the center area being the most active, provided a lot of clues. The unusual disparity between two parts of a spherical nucleus wasn't in my expectations, there should be some polarity in play to make ‘up and down’ variables important. This wasn't how a spherical distribution should work. Spheres would have a tri-dimensional concentrical dispersion pattern. Perhaps a contrast between its periphery and center, not an up/down pattern.

  It was weird for this to happen inside of what appeared to be a sphere when I looked at it outside. A division of up and down, plus the weird interactions of the structures inside could only give one conclusion: this lifeform's primary system might be based on electricity or magnetism.

  However, the structure of it was different from the electrochemical gradient of cells, which was based on the distribution of electrolytes inside a liquid. Cells could determine directions based on a chemical gradient system. They could also determine a real up and down based on genetic stuff and the like, but it was probably something reserved for multicellular organisms. Like how a fertilized egg divided and then determined the head, feet, and left/right positions while in the womb.

  A simple unicellular system like the one this blob had shouldn’t be able to develop such complexity. As told before, the reason why some cells can memorize directions is thanks to them being grouped. This thought added to that conclusion, caused me to believe that this blob wasn’t some simple lifeform, it could even be more complex than a human cell!

  The columns didn’t give me an answer too. The ones above just shined, the ones below appeared to absorb all of that light. I could get some idea, but it wasn’t conclusive.

  Yeah, even at this point, I couldn’t get a complete image of how this damn place worked! The only thing I got was that it had energy, lots of it…

  Unhappily, I checked the area once again. There were too many things for me to watch and describe. It was like trying to get how a car worked without even knowing where the motor was. I just couldn't get the full picture right if I didn't associate all of these weird shapes and structures to an accurate or believable function.

  I felt like a kid being given a tablet for the first time.

  What is this brick?

  It’s so thin… is it food?

  Does it fly?

  Oh, its screen lights up!

  My puddle! You can't use that to watch videos!

  I won’t A18...

  Just in time, a bigger flash of light was released at my side. My bulb-shaped body moved to the source. I was getting near one of the twisting branches. One of those that twistingly descended from the nuclear vault. It was something I'd been waiting for with high expectations. I just didn’t presume it’d happen at the same time I reminisced of a kid’s curiosity.

  Part 2: The Columns.

  The nearing branch at my side had lots of lights flowing from within. The salp-spiral with shiny claws passed near it.

  Many veils that avoided the spiraling salps covered it. These veils formed ringed structures that coiled around the branch or long rags that swayed when extended. A side of the veils was always attached to the funnel-shaped branch. I didn't give much importance to that though, the thing that grabbed my curiosity was how the light that flowed through it was visible when the veils extended.

  This specific branch was special. Most of the branches appeared to stay inside the noodle ocean, yet this one didn’t. From the tip, and following the lights that flowed through it, beams emerged. These laser beams produced sparks and sporadic flashes. The sparks fell to the ocean like falling stardust after completing a semi-parabolic path. The experience was reminiscing of soldering with the starry sparks creating cascades towards the waters.

  The flashes inside the branch column were rhythmical. And the first point I omitted when watching from a distance appeared because the direction the light moved was the opposite of what I thought when first watching it. The light stream was moving towards the sky, probably concentrating on that huge column at the center.

  The same branch had more divisions, and it was from those, that some of the light that streamed through it escaped. In summary, these branches redirected the upward flow of light towards the ocean. The majority of such U-turn branches and divisions entered the noodle sea, and just a few stayed above the oceans with their ends becoming cut-off circuits.

  I returned my gaze to those veils. A18 was doing a log of all the things I kept describing. Most of this might not be important to the future, but I was sure that something here could become a game-changer.

  These veils resembled turbines, maybe they also rotated in a ring that was connected to the cable-like branches that descended. I didn’t see mitochondria during my trip towards the nucleus. The AI needed energy and resources. And I only wanted to use this blob as my costume.

  My puddle! It seems we are approaching the zone below the branch!

  Don’t worry A18, I think we should be fine if we keep a distance from the membrane.

  The salp spiral had some places where it created small loops, and the claw machines seemed attracted to those unsubmerged mangle forest branches. We didn’t enter the area near those beams, instead, the spiraling claws circled them. If a water fountain spectacle was towards the sky, the current one was similar but watching the show while upside-down.

  The claws were like VIP floating seats. The view was incredible, the security line was never crossed, and the lasers kept working in a determined area.

  Maybe the veils from the branches moved the odd liquid inside the nucleus, or perhaps a gradient of sorts generated the force to move the glued claw constructs in this pattern. Whatever was it, we were safe inside of it.

  An unknown element that's beneficial to the project is increasing in quantity in the current area.

  Yet another element… It seems there is some sort of reaction between those laser shots and the sea. I wonder why these branches need to go below the surface. What sort of reaction would need this type of sophisticated approach?

  An increase in temperature was spotted after passing near the branches. The membrane filtered a substantial amount of sparks allowing their refined energy to enter. The refined particles work as a building element and energy for the project, please collect more.

  Greedy girl if you know how to drive this thing I'll gladly give you the keys.

  I couldn't believe that the claw's skirt helped so much. It was some sort of protection that prevented the transported cargo from suffering damages, but as if that wasn't enough, supplemented it. Calling this a limo wouldn't be wrong, this vehicle was truly a high-class experience. It even delivered energizing cocktails during the happy hour.

  What else could I ask? Having the best company, the perfect meal, and a glamorous view of a light spectacle all around?

  A18, I dedicate this light show to your perseverance. Without you convincing me I wouldn’t be able to arrive here today.

  Thanks, my puddle! But I’m still hungry and need more food.

  Should I say I wasn’t expecting such a gluttonous energy-digger for an AI?

  After the little AI talk, my particular interest locked onto the lights and sparks moving to the sea. These pulses of energy that were all over the place looked like a tesla coil as they coursed from the branches’ twisting tips. Watching them closely, I realized that the branches moved too. It was such a slow and precise movement, that it appeared like a futuristic robot doing surgery.

  I looked up trying to find that thing ‘we’ needed. The source of energy that made all of this blob-machine work. Whatever it was, it was above that central column.

  With every flash of radiation, lights would appear through the branches towards the bigger column. A part of it would loop through the divisions and descent to the sea forming the laser show. It was obvious that the majority of the energy came from below. Directions and orientation were extremely wrong inside this place. Too much magnetism affected the sensors, and I just decided to adjust things to my visuals. There was only one person -- AI enjoying the situation right now… like an eager feline that found its 'laser-mice', A18 was voice-jumping whenever spots of light appeared over our claw’s membrane.

  She was informing me of every flashing event, telling me to adjust my eye and body to receive the sparks’ energy in the best position. I think she just wanted me to have the perfect tan and take more of the filtered radiation by adjusting myself.

  A source of light is being released at...

  Another source is...

  Radiation incoming from...

  A18, I know you like those lasers. If you had a shape, you would be looking like a certain animal now.

  No shape called 'certain animal' found.

  Don't worry and keep checking them.

  Yes!

  The looping trip of the claws was a bit boring, there was nothing extra when the fireworks clouded your vision. Watching so much repetition tired my mind. Sometimes repeating makes the master, but I didn't have much to learn from this, so looking at my AI doing a laser-cat show was already high-level entertainment. No need to turn her amusement down, right?

  However, this light was really disturbing when the claw orbited the central column at specific angles. The light's intensity varied depending on the position we took around it. The stroboscopic light from it, summed to the sparkly lasers from the branch we were orbiting, and they were too much.

  Sometimes having one of my sides warmer than the other felt odd. Like having one eye cold and one hot, it felt uncomfortable. I think it had to do with my past experiences again. Having your feet inside hot water didn’t feel wrong, but if it was a sagittal/vertical difference, things might feel disgusting.

  Anyway, I felt as if I’d entered a room where a child played non-stop with a switch. On, off, on, off… lights and rays pulsing nonstop. It was distasteful, probably because there was no music or real alcohol.

  To make things worse my AI was singing ‘there is a laser there ~ nyaa’ non-stop. What was fun at the start was becoming jarring. I knew some songs could use repetitive lyrics and become hot stuff, but… ‘Work x work’ or ‘hey listen!’ songs could drive people crazy if played for too long.

  The conviction she had to notify me of every light was extreme, forcing me to stop her laser song. It was so repetitive that it made me think that perhaps a fairy shape was a no go. Language had to be varied, right?

  Sorry A18, the light outside can damage us without a mechanism for its containment. Even if you tried to calculate the position where the light came from, I'm too lazy to move right now. Please stop.

  Incoming from... Please adjust your position to...

  Really? Is it a bug? How come you are that perseverant?

  Change position to...

  Okay, I'll do that, but just once...

  I moved and pressed my body on the transparent membrane by following her indications. Just like what a normal G00 would do to please his little demon. In summary, and like a lizard stuck on a window, this little baby-goo was flat facedly sun-tanning in an AI configured position. The result...

  My puddle, the intensity of the sparks are damaging the compressed exterior of the project, please move away...

  Move away before I become what? Bruh! You were the one that wanted me to be sparkly!

  ...

  One try revealed that it wasn't efficient to absorb the spark remnants near the membrane. My idea of armor might not work if there was no space between the armor and my body. Might as well change its design to a double layer with a small space in between.

  What do you think A18?

  If we can get more of those lasers, then you have to make one!

  Well, I think it’s possible. I was just asking some analysis, not a response like that.

  It’s a non-conclusive analysis with those conditions. For a conclusive one, you need a membrane sample.

  I’ll get one, eventually. Just not now since I can’t get out of here.

  This vehicle was the perfect protection to check the things around. My AI would have to wait until I could find what these lights' origins were. Perhaps then I could use the claws' membrane as a doggy bag and get more items.

  Don’t look down on this claw’s membrane, it could possibly hold against the light released by whatever material originated it.

  My eyes were shining at the sight of such useful material. Impatience was coursing through my mind, but there was nothing to do but wait. Claw… I’m sorry to tell you this, but our relationship would come to an end… your days are counted.

  Part 3: Noodle assembly.

  Time passed while I thought of the advantages of dismantling the vehicle that carried me. The surroundings continued to flash synchronously, my AI stopped throwing alarms after a notification adjustment, and the long queue of claws continued to advance towards the vault.

  The trip’s lackluster continued... The claws were looping in almost every branch! My AI was happy, but I was at the point of vomiting! Not to tell I’d literally spill the beans out from my stomach, but to tell that I still couldn’t grasp the way this blob’s asshole worked.

  Captain G00’s Journal, first loop: Today I did a lap in this tiny round point.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Captain G00’s Journal, second loop: Today I did the second lap in this tiny round point.

  Captain G00’s Journal, third loop: Today I did a third lap…

  … Pits?

  Captain G00’s Journal, ??? loop: I have been circling branches for who knows how much time, I have started to grow a beard while looking at almost all of the cat, boobs, and exciting videos my mind stored… My AI is the only oasis in this desert, but even her waters had become poisoned by lasers…

  …

  Captain G00’s Journal last entry: I never thought I would say this but I’m hating fireworks and lasers. I also hate round points.

  …

  After the dull moments kicked in, I started to behave like many famous idiots that seated near trees when searching for answers. It was the perfect moment for the apple to fall and hit my head. Yes, it was at such moments of unhappiness and dullness that enlighten always arrived.

  I found that whenever it was time to 'turn on the lights', everything below me started to vibrate faster in the chamber. The ocean, well, the noodles, were extremely active in this region. It was different from the calm shores near the walls at the time we entered. This was a vibrating noodle soup. They looked like eels squirming after throwing salt to their water. It was only thanks to this claws' existence that I evaded my fall towards such hell.

  What was I thinking before? How could I get the confidence to try and jump towards it?

  I'm really glad this thing caught me then. It deserved respect and praise at its marvelous design.

  Yes, yes... this claw was cool, it was better than a president. It was a true savior!

  I love you claw, particularly for saving me from the worm abyss and giving me a comfortable ride. Maybe it sounds as overpraising, but if you fell into an ocean full of creepy noodles and something saved you, you'll probably make it your god. So I will turn it into the best armor!

  Rejoice claw! You’ll serve this mighty puddle! And then, I’ll have my godly claw armor!

  A18, help me! Praise the claw with me.

  Does my puddle want to change the word god to claw?

  Not necessary A18, it was just a bad joke. But I thank you for blocking off my crazy overthinking.

  Let’s return to my previous enlightened moment…

  The continuation of the trip allowed me to breach an almost invisible area I didn’t see, there was a transition between the liquids in the nucleus. The blurry notions that the sparks and lights created were even more reduced. I could finally see the ‘ceiling’ now.

  Apart from the sea of danger noodles which was impassable, the ceiling of the blob’s nucleus had a huge hole where the center column descended. It was wider near it and thinner when entering the sea. It had an inverted conical shape and made me think that maybe the nucleus was not in the shape of a sphere.

  Gazing at the nucleus’ walls, they were curved, but with the central column's shadow on the center, it resembled a donut. Yes, the conical column at the center made it look like the surface of a donut, a torus. These columns' chandelier-like structures were connected to branching cables. And almost all of these cables appeared to converge on the central conical column.

  The walls of the inner nucleus were curved, they were magical and moved. They probably consisted of the same 'noodle texture' of the ocean. Just that noodles remained completely still from the place I watched. The areas of dust changed depending on the light. Thanks to this claw’s membrane it wasn’t as blinding as when entering.

  The places where it glowed reminded me of the constellations in the sky. They formed slithering lines separated by dark areas that would be invisible without the desirable magic shades. Since distance played a role and reduced the blinding effect, it gave the walls between the woven noodles, the appearance of an orthodox circuit.

  I remember the things outside trying to catch dust particles and creating part of the bubbles. But the street-cables outside, those in which I walked over, distributed it around the blob's body. Were they sucking every little bit of it towards the nucleus? Or was the purpose... distributing it? Was it some sort of transmission molecule?

  Angling my sensor at the vault, I noticed that the dust that poured down like snow also accumulated in that space. It illuminated the whole place, making some sort of 'aurora' at the top of the room.

  The falling sparks and the waves of noodles added another complexity to the whole picture. The more dust and sparks that fell, the more activity that would appear on the oceans. And above, inside that strange aurora, more dust was being produced.

  It seemed to be released like mist from the vault. It poured down after shimmering sparks flared around the auroras that whirled around the descending columns. It was distributed evenly, different from the laser branches that concentrated a lot where they flared.

  Looking at the dust falling from the sky and towards the seas, made me divert my gaze towards the latter.

  Reminiscing myself of the difference in noodle activity was a must. Those in the walls remained still, or if they moved, it was with subtle vibrations. In contrast, the ones below (those forming the 'central sea'), were restless. They created huge waves, whirlpools, and different types of activity in varied frequencies.

  I had to recall every big difference and event to start arriving at conclusions!

  The noodles below were increasing in their activity as the claw advanced to the center. That was obvious, but now, I found that there was a proportional connection with the amount of dust falling to the sea and its activity.

  I also recalled that the laser-branches also moved. They were like machines confined to a zone. Wherever their beams arrived would generate a storm.

  My limited knowledge didn’t allow me to know what this dust was. I could only call it dust since it appeared like noisy particles in my vision. The AI called it an element important to the project, as it served as an energy source and creative resource that I could use in the future.

  But all this gold in here wasn’t useful when you were full, and your storage couldn’t hold more.

  Gathering clues about how the blob's core worked wasn't easy, it required a lot of persistence and hypothesizing. The sea was forming a whole mesh. A completely unified sea of threads. It concentrated around edifications of conical shape that surfaced from its depths. The shapeshifting sea columns and their branches quickly became my next zone of inspection. I already watched those above, but maybe I should have started from those below.

  In between the sea, I found a column that just started to surface. I quickly realized that the sea waves were secondary to the laser show or something its surfacing did. The lasers produced by it were breaking the meshed noodle sea, probably something it did after completing its job.

  The work it did below the sea was something impossible to watch. So watching the actions it caused were relevant for inferring the outcomes. When the branch surfaced and broke through the noodle mesh, a whirlpool started to form around it. It created circumferential waves around the whirlpool’s perimeter. Something that resembled a valley with ringed mountains around.

  We passed above its vicinity, just when the branch moved away from the place.

  From inside the whirlpool, a conical column emerged. The distance to it allowed me to discern pores on its surface. These holes on its surface were murky mouths that churned a specific type of noodle. Like how a 'hungry man' became a monster and slurped an instantaneous meal. The strange movement of the sea was also an outcome of its preference.

  The column didn't care about the ones on the surface, which appeared twisted and alive. It cared from those at the bottom, and by pulling those, the whirlpool and cloth-wave pattern of the meshed sea came to light. Cause and effect were inherently obvious after seeing this.

  Dust, branches, columns rising… I felt like I got on the right track of events after working the hell out of my brain.

  I peered at it from my hovering position inside the salp-spiral. I quickly discerned that there were more of those conical towers surfacing in the immediate vicinity. I thought of them as monsters, but they were inanimate.

  Concentrating on their perimeter, I found that the thing that ate the noodles wasn't its rocky appearance, nor its porous cave-mouths, but little 'hover boats' with nests inside of it.

  These intricate things had a caterpillar track that entwined the threads over their abdomen, a tail with the shape of four swords linked together at the pommel, and finally, they had long noses like those of insects. Note: The last feature was what allowed them to puncture the restless noodle sea with confidence.

  This lengthy proboscis grabbed only the noodles that were at the bottom of the sea. Like a straw-mouth structure that only allowed the thin noodles from the soup to be suctioned.

  Strangely, and after slurping them, the noodles were hooked by the caterpillar-tracks at their abdomen. And without prior need, the caterpillar-track composed abdomen rotated until a measured length or number of noodles were coiled around it.

  I didn't understand at first why they needed to 'fish and hook' noodles from the deeper parts of the ocean. But I found the structure of that mouth was probably prepared to capture the thin ones from the bottom. Only those could pass through their straw-like mouths.

  But why were those things eating thin spaghetti around the cones? Moreover, what was the purpose of stacking a roll of thin noodles over their bodies?

  Yes, they were collecting them. But for what, why?

  It was then that when a certain number of rotations were completed, the strange shrimp construct went towards the nearest part of their column-shaped nest. There, its sword-like tail rose like that of a scorpion.

  The tail’s tip adjusted the four swords to form the shape of a cross. It looked like the rotors of a chopper. And it worked like those when an unknown engine ignited and the rotatory motion of the rotors cut the coiled noodles with precision.

  A copious amount of thin noodles were continuously sliced by the helicopter-like attachment at their tails. I just called them hover-machines or boats secondary to my first impression. But I had to accept that it was weird how a 'boat-like' construct hovered above a sea of vibrating wool.

  If I could change the wrong-naming I did, I would probably call them noodle-insects. They probably attached themselves to several of those threads, different from what a normal boat would do and more like one of those insects that walked over water did. They just looked like boats from up here, yet upon focusing, they resembled spiders walking over a sea of webbing.

  My visor captured the moment when the sliced noodles fell over the shores of the column's perimeter. Over there, I could see how an additional robot grabbed them and bonded their endings.

  Essentially, the thin threads were taken by those weird ‘noodle-insects’. After they sliced the thin noodles, they were thrown around the conical columns that surfaced. It was there that an extra construct received the sliced spaghetti, selected a certain number of them, and started creating a ring.

  Yeah, it used the thin threads to create a ring around the column, one that started bigger and then became smaller the more it ascended. It was weird, but the columns that surfaced had a peculiar part that was even in circumference. The whole process ended when the rings were wrapped at such a place.

  The new construct’s process included bonding the spaghetti at its ends, slicing it, and adding another one before bonding again. It was repeated until a certain number of rings stacked where the column remained even in diameter.

  Wasn’t this quality control? There was even quality control over here?!

  The more I watched the more things that started to make sense. These noodles were important, they might be the way this lifeform stored information.

  I also saw how some machines helped in the selection of the sliced pieces of thin noodles before the column machine grabbed them. The sliced thin spaghetti near the shore needed to be chosen with care. Whenever an error in some slice was made, a certain type of machine near the column’s shore surfaced. It folded the erratic slices and increased their overall density returning them to the sea depths were unknown processes occurred.

  There were too many workers for just making rings from spaghetti...

  But even with that, the ring making wasn't over. After a little spin inside my current transport, I got to look at the process that occurred after the rings were evenly stacked on the conical columns.

  When a complete number of 'even' rings with different types of 'thin noodle match-ups' was achieved, another machine worked on them. This one was almost impossible to observe, so I couldn’t catch an overall glimpse of how it looked.

  I knew what it did. It cut the completed rings in determined places as if opening a circles perimeter. The next part was also impossible to watch, and the rings were thrown out of the column without me knowing what happened.

  But it was possible to infer what it did. The rings were now interconnected. They formed a long structure after that thing worked with them. It was obvious, the perfectly made rings had transformed into chains. Chains that were thrown again towards the sea.

  Part 4: From noodles to chains?

  Gazing down, at the place where a chain was thrown, I realized that it floated above the others while the thin threads without transformation were constantly sinking towards the bottom of the ocean.

  The sea of noodles' surface was composed of unrelenting chains!

  A mesh of chains whose vibrations and small size made them hard to discern, but when inspected closely, this chained mesh caused the majority of activity in the sea. The bigger chains at the surface created more ocean activity. Probably, the difference in their structure made a variation in the waving patterns, organizing them slowly by their type of vibrational activity.

  They appeared to be alive, like a huge school of fish!

  A major difference when remembering the single-threaded and thinner counterparts that should be at the bottom and near the walls of the toroidal chamber.

  So the idea of those things is to make rings and then chains? What can they do with that? Why haven't I seen these chains outside of this place?

  Intriguing as it might be, the chains crisscrossed, connected, compacted, and formed a variety of shapes I didn't imagine to see inside of what I called a nucleus. Although I discerned the possibility of varying activity, the results were more than just whirlpools and waves. There was a synergy between each part of the process, as you could imagine that whatever the laser did at the bottom, or how the surfacing columns broke through the mesh and added to the waves, whatever action that was done, helped in the final organization of the chains at the ocean’s surface.

  I was always comparing this with my knowledge I had of my previous world, yet the experienced phenomena were unconventional.

  The chain-based pasta was being taken by yet again additional machines, making me wonder if this baton-race would ever finish. These machines only picked up the chains on the surface, an ability they seemed designed for since they were far away from the conical columns.

  When these chains further connected, they assumed the form of woven scarfs. A wider sort of chain pasta -- if changing its naming would make it more comprehensible.

  These events happened near the blinding branches in the middle of the chamber. The long chandelier structure that I was orbiting had many branches that descended from the sky. A lot of veils were attached to these flashing branches, giving them a majestic appearance.

  However, I needed to understand what these branches and veils achieved by connecting to the sea like descending lightning arcs. So I shifted my gaze towards the bottom, towards the wide-chain-pasta which I called scarfs. These long pieces were arranged by an extra machine that swam in the chamber's sky. It was still liquid, just that the sea below was made of noodles, like a higher density fluid. Then again something to do with polarity?

  I still felt that without the claw's shape, I wouldn't be able to maintain this height. Was the liquid in the highest spot one that was transitioning to a gas?

  This whole place started to look like an odd documentary that lacked the explanation. There were levels to the ocean inside the inner nucleus, with a middle level being the place where membranous creatures with the shapes of origami swam through. Like seagulls, they dived and caught the completed chains, bonding them together when crashing with a variety of flying machine counterparts.

  When these flyers carried those chains, and when they collided with about 4 additional counterparts, the basic unit of those veils was formed: a chainmail structure. The bigger the mesh got, the higher in the room they flew. The little reactions between them was a bonding phenomenon that released sparks that resembled twinkling stars in the nucleus' vault.

  The claws were going up. It was nearing the area where the flying machines collided, and believe or not, I managed to find something similar to the membranes in the claw.

  The collisions between carrier machines produced the dusty fireflies that fell over the sea. They also mystified the vault with slithering auroras and glowy clouds that resembled space nebulas. The highest collision entangled the scarfs in a 3-dimensional shape, a complex packaging structure that resembled a folded stack of advanced chainmail. It had a side that looked like tessellated tiles, and another that exposed the rings formed in the oceans.

  The chainmail compounds formed the sea of membranous ghosts that whirled around the nucleus’ inside. A paper swarm that hovered all over the chamber.

  When reaching a big enough size, their properties appeared to shift, and like small branches or feathers that a bird would use to create a nesting, these bigger membranes with feathery shapes glued themselves onto the lightning branches of the column at the center.

  The completed structures resembled wings. Although in reality, they were the membranous veils that undulated hypnotically. The veils also had two surfaces. One was composed of the scaly feathers with the chainmail of rings at their back face. The attachment to the branches was done by an additional connector like a zipper. Still, the other side of the chainmail was made in such a way that it complimented the opposite surface in the branches' structures, pure black and slick.

  When the chainmail machines with a zipper side joined together to the branches, the loose side of the chainmail-veil extended like a flag taking the shape of the veils. Afterward, it folded itself in loops, it continuously whirled in the ocean with hypnotic movements, but it was until it folded to its utmost.

  The strange movements, plus the mirror/black surfaces that played with light, gave these veils the ability to create illusions.

  Part 5: The whirling chainmail-veils and the lightning-shaped branches.

  The branches came from a central structure that appeared like an agglomeration of cables. It could also be described like tree ramifications that coiled around the nucleus’ internal space and then connected to the bigger column in the center. Despite that, said column had a sharp end below and exited through a bigger orifice above, almost looking like an inverted chandelier or castle.

  What was that supposed to be? I didn’t know before, and although I described it, it was only for superstitions.

  A chandelier column that looked like a city falling from the sky was all that came to my mind the first time I saw it. It ramified itself as the strange membranes glued themselves in a regular pattern around its descending branches... branches that connected to smaller chandeliers at the vault. The membranous structure in all of them whirling with a mysterious rhythm.

  The way these membranous leaves interacted with the fluid wasn't completely discernible from my viewpoint. I knew the claw seemed to move forward, but my AI indicated that the movements it followed were like a spiraling motion. It just moved along a variable track that ended at the black hole above. The place where the biggest column, the one at the center, exited.

  Even with the observational bias I had, the membranes appeared to move like ghosts. They evaded the transporting claws movement or maybe propelled it without the need for touch. Ultimately, when the various events occurred near me, my eye gathered the whole picture. I could see how the chainmail-surfaces were repelled from my position. Either the odd liquid or a force like magnetism was working behind scenes.

  The membranes’ different sides appeared to have a function. Being completely black from one side and mirror-like on the other gave rise to mirroring illusions which made them feel as if they never existed. Hence why I thought they were ghostly.

  Despite that, the near distance visuals revealed the trick, and checking on them showed that certain junctions between the basic sheets, animated their variable movements. This retraction was what indorsed their initial phase of compression, resembling a compacted fan -- although different from a traditional one that would become like a solid stick of wood, the thin folded veils retained incredible flexibility which allowed them to continue their dance.

  Further ahead, I saw how the veils compacted themselves to their maximum, they stacked, twisted, and organized orderly until adopting a shape around the chandeliers’ branching cables.

  If someone asked my stomach, the branches and the compacted veils resembled donut skewers - if not for the twisted patterns the branches adopted. Yet in essence, its shape was more similar to that of a feather wreath. Well, like a donut skewer, where the skewer threaded the donuts, just… that the donuts were made of crystalized veils that reflected all light that touched it like a disco ball.

  You could say there was a function for the veils to organize themselves so strictly. Probably the black inside was used to prevent signals from escaping, while the mirror surface played a role for preventing the external radiation -- in the form of light -- to enter.

  In a moment of doubt and being transported by the claw construct like some sort of tour-machine in the middle of a sky-sea, I continued to watch as the membranes above myself compressed.

  I could probably summarize all of this in one simple picture: An inverted tree with algae-like leaves that wrapped around the stems like donuts. Each of these leaves had a hypnotic and illusion creating mirror surface on one side. The other one had a black side that destroyed all visual perimeters, absorbed all light, and further complemented the odd illusion.

  Yeah, this was otherworldly.

  No other word could describe this experience. It took me so much time to comprehend and join the pieces of this sophisticated puzzle, that I watched at everything that happened for more than ten times.

  Even with my brain trying to join everything, new actions were added to the whole enigma.

  In between the comprehension of the various veils. Just at the moment that the donut-shaped wreath could close, six glowy pearls formed. The rays they delivered could be seen inside the donuts structures during a brief moment of the compacting phase.

  When completely closed, shiny patterns painted each donut’s surface. They resembled tattoos lighted in a specific track, maybe more like circuits lines, because the same patterns were engraved on the branches. It all happened when the donut shape transformed into that of its corrugated version.

  The animated movement was as if the donut squeezed itself, corrugating its surface and lightening up the circuits on the branches until they combined towards the central column. Everything that happened gave the impression of a signal being sent outside the chamber.

  It was an irreplaceable scene. The balls were small and looked like little pearls when compared to my size. They blinked and produced a flash of light that was subtle when completely wrapped. The flashes were given at a timely interval, like when watching old TV or a low FPS game.

  But, where did these pearly spheres appear from? I didn’t see them shining before?

  You could say that the tree or wire tower structure in the middle of the nuclear chamber had a play in it. But it was for support and probably transmission. The real treasure in this was inside those membranes, that when compacted became donuts, and when uncompressed whirled like veils of goddesses. It was energy, something any type of life needed.

  I tried to recognize where these balls developed. I watched the whole process, again and again, giving priority to the exact moment it happened. However, it was something magical, spheres that didn't exist until the compacting started, emerged from nowhere.

  Maybe it was something to do with the mirrors and black contrast behind. Like magic tricks that efficiently used optics to prevent the important energy leak. It made the whole appearance and disappearance process invisible.

  How did this work? Even my AI couldn’t help in deciphering it.

  The magic trick was well-hidden. And just like that, the sphere inside the donuts disappeared. All of this in time for the optical illusions and auroras created by the flying origami machines and the whirling ghost membranes on the sky-sea.

  My puddle, the analysis has been completed. This function shows a pattern in the charging and discharging of the central tower, versus the compression and decompression of the membranous structures of the branches.

  I checked, and effectively, from start to finish… from the phase of complete darkness to the creation of the spheres, their disappearance, and the whole chamber bathing in blinding light, all of this… was represented in a simple wave function.

  This wave wasn’t perfectly regular. It was one of those functions with tops and lows, as an oscillator. The famous boob-based functions in math… a sin! (Or a companion -cosin- if you go for bb#2).

  Anyway, this function represented how the blob’s nucleus worked. The changes could represent how it adapted and reacted to external stimuli. This was a major discovery!

  But there was a problem with all of this. The nucleus of a living being should be the center of information. Signals were something common inside it. Despite that, this nucleus also appeared to contain the means to power up this creature. Energy and information didn’t work well sometimes. It was known in biology that cells had mitochondria as a nuclear reactor for the reactive oxygen waste they generated.

  It was believed that ancient cells slaved bacteria inside of them to become their nuclear reactor!

  So how could this thing, this blob, put a time-bomb like this inside the energy storage where it also held its information?

  Comparing things, if this was an information storage then it would be similar to DNA. If it was energy storage or resource storage, then this would need some information storage too. But the most important thing here was how DNA could be affected by the energy produced in the power plant and be damaged as a result.

  The answers to the blob having its brain next to the nuclear reactor were obviously at the top of the central column. And that was the place where this claw was taking me.

  Author’s Notes (Beware… reeeeeeeally long and techy)

  Raccoon Words:

  Spoiler: Spoiler

  So I wanted to publish this chapter long ago. But I got busy after my test. I also wanted to free my mind a bit, have some relaxing time, play some games, read some –renowned and unique-- typical rpg and cultivation stories, and stop thinking for a while.

  I did better than I thought in my exam, which made me happy but also gave me a lot of work. I had to get papers from a lot of institutions and certificates, etc. It took me a while and I was lazy. Sadly, I think this exam won’t count because the accredited institutions will void the contract secondary to our friendly covid-19 going partydemic, which leaves me stuck in a place, where I can’t go out, and have difficulties to write again… because I skip on it and play videogames.

  The hardest part was writing the explanation of this chapter. I usually want readers to 'discover' what I write, so if you read the above you will have the MCs thought process starting from disordered info into ordered. But hey, even for me the writer, it’s impossible to get the idea without this explanation. Even if I know this chapter might feel like the worst infodump I had written. It is the most fundamental world building of the story. So even if it's heavy, it really weights a lot for the plot. Hope you can enjoy it. Thanks for reading.

  The Explanation:

  Spoiler: Spoiler

  I went mad scientist.

  So this is a combination of a lot of things.

  First, let's start with my thoughts before writing this chapter.

  When I started the story, I wanted to write a stupid harem cyborg slime story. Now, and after planning a bit, it is adapted to another universe I had created in notes for another story. The problem of this is the complexity and sluggishness that comes by trying to pull this off and write.

  I don't mind, I have a lot of time to finish my stories (If I remain healthy of course). However, it also makes the story suffer from the slow writing at parts that need a lot of brains. Not because writing hard-science is hard, but because the setting of this story is pretty much unique (Not praising myself, cliché stories are way better for readers even if most of us hate them sometimes*).

  The mad scientist was something I planned on the poll. In fact this chapter was written in September or October (Edited: it was written in Nov 3). It was 2k words only. It was just me shit-writing without caring if readers will understand it. This chapter now, has more infodump. It’s also a bit repetitive. But after reading it you will probably set the idea of how the life in here works.

  The con is that people might stop reading, the pro is that those that read could get to know what was in my mind.

  When I did the mad-scientist poll approach I was just thinking of doing some 'hybrid DNA', I would just combine DNA (like making a 4 chained or 6 chained DNA) with some basic computer programming and there... Done.

  4 chained DNA exists, and a certain type of quantum interactions are already being evaluated on the DNA molecule. Above I mentioned mitochondria, which works oxygen (ATP-energy comes from oxidation), and this causes damage in the whole cell. The interesting thing here is that mitochondria are like sequestrated bacteria inside a cell. They even have DNA (in circular shape), highly mutational type, and it is replaced constantly after damage. (It’s inherited from females, the male ones die. And yes there are some sort of diseases when that info fails to be inherited or is damged].

  In summary, the DNA molecule is awesome.

  The human code is composed of 2.9 billion base pairs, which corresponds to the same number of Gigabytes, but it only has about 725 megabytes of ‘relevant’data (DNA pairs repeat too much like this chapter and carry unnecessary info sometimes to protect that relevant data).

  The DNA information language has 4 bases, 2 which make a pair representing its basic unit of code. Comparing this, it means that the four bases A-G-T-C in DNA can be represented in bits: 00, 01, 10, 11. A unit of DNA code would be equivalent to one pair or two pairs of bits.

  In summary, for this first idea I had, I’d be upgrading known DNA to a higher version of it. Like how you upgrade systems from 8-bit to 16-bit, to 32-bit, to 64-bit, etc.

  Binary works with 0s and 1s. DNA works with 4 bases, A,C,T,G. (0,1,2,3 four numbers)

  An 8-bit or byte is a string of 8 binary characters: 10101010.

  In DNA the simplest code works with a combination of 3 pairs. A-T, C-G, T-A. So a DNA byte (called codon) works with 3.

  The thing is you only read one string of the two available in DNA, so when comparing to a bit you get: ACT. (In the most advanced setting you need 6 bits, which tells that DNA can be compared to a 6 bit language, but in the common sense it is more like a 3 bit language).

  So for a quick comparison a computer uses a 32-bit. Given that each digit in the number can be only 1 or 0, the total number of combinations is 2^32, which is 4,294,967,295 combinations. For DNA this number would be 4^3 which is 64 combinations (Not using bits here, and only 3 bases).

  Note: If you ever cheated while playing a game, you’d found that there is a maximum value in 32-bit software: 2,147,483,647 (Its half the one above because you also need negative values so if the total numbers you could use is 4, you use them between -2 and 2).

  And by the way, the 4 million combinations for 32bit (x86) is also the reason why the max RAM in x86(32-bit) is 4GB, and adding more ram would be unused. Instead a 64bit can support a lot more RAM.

  Returning to the comparison (which is not reality perfect), the difference between both DNA and Machine binary numbers is astounding.

  But does this mean that DNA is not as awesome as I said?

  Well, first of all DNA is more of a program than a language, while the other is the real deal - machine language. DNA is a based on a quaternary language with a 3-pair read written program. Both have their advantages. In terms of 'capacity/storage' we control a lot of info in the level of terabytes per hard disks.

  The whole human DNA information is measured in megabytes. The true amount of info it holds is above 2.9 GBs (2.9 million of pairs). If you now how small DNA is, it won’t need too much for you to realize that the size that it has is the advantage. It is generally above most storage systems we have in its capacity.

  So if we could make DNA work with more than 3 pairs. Like 64-pair DNA... Well, you can imagine. It is said that a gram of DNA can hold up to 455 exabytes of data. Two trucks with DNA may be able to hold all of the information of humanity inside. It can also be preserved, and stored with effective means. (We had fossils we could extract DNA from. The real con here is the read/write speeds of DNA are slower, but that’s another discussion).

  Returning to the story…

  That was the basic approach: If human could create a robotic/artificial DNA language, it would be an interesting path for evolution.

  And this little thing above was the first idea for project GOO basic 'life'.

  I just had to go mad scientist... And now, even I myself touched the place where I didn't want to go. So try to keep with the insanity that follows, because if I fry my brain, those that follow will start smelling the deliciousness of tempura before knowing.

  What can a mad raccoon do?

  People voted for madness and I added magic. Magic and science can have a contradicting relationship. But I used science to create my magic, so at least it’s not the mystic and full of ‘unknowns’ fantasy that we usually enjoy.

  So here we go: (Big ass explanation... Uff, I am scratching my head writing this, wondering if people will actually read this...)

  Creating weird DNA:

  Well, I won’t delve to much on this. If you know about geometry, triangles are probably some of the best structures out there. But in a 3D world, triangles can have certain troubles with some things. This happens on quantum physics, where many atoms describe toroidal shapes, and some hexagon molecules turn out to be more stable than triangle or square shaped ones sometimes.

  So I went for the best way to create the best 3D shape the sphere. But also didn’t want to just use a sphere. And so I thought of a genus or a torus. A torus can degenerate into a sphere, and to make a torus you only need two circles.

  In small sizes, like with atoms, how do you make a circle? Well, the less number of points the better, and hexagons or 6 points win by default. (Interestingly in a simple way atoms can be told to behave as tori, so in a way they do the above and the magnetism in very very basic terms can result into what appears to be a spherical shape).

  Now how do I create a readable lifecode with these shapes? Well, thread them and make a lot of loops inside loops. Or knot them and create knots and shapes that could vary the information inside. And thus this was spiced by M-theory (quantum mechanics knot theory + string theory… and others). But since knots are to hard to explain, I’ll only put a picture and show a bit in the picture section.

  Adding quantum magic to this 'hybrid DNA'.

  Well, first let’s add a bit of quantum spice. And I like glowy things. So let's add bio-luminescence and radiation. Oh yes, that is where things went crazy. No, the things before were… rather conservative… really.

  There are some 'names' and things I can't spoil for the story. But the character names you will find in the future have relevance to the above additions.

  So what quantum things did I add?

  A lot. But first let's say a bit is a bit lame. So I added qubits.

  What the hell is a qubit?

  Same as a bit which is a basic unit of information in computers, 1 or 0, a quibit is the basic unit in quantum computers. Note: Bit - A binary digit. A byte is a collection of bits, 8-bit string (don't confuse it).

  In information theory, one bit is typically defined as the information entropy of a binary random variable that is 0 or 1 with equal probability, or the information that is gained when the value of such a variable becomes known. (Wikipedia, lazy me and just to show off wiki, cause I’d never describe that way).

  Simply put, a bit is logical and it exists when its value is known. An undetermined bit won't have the values of 0 or 1.

  The first thing you need to think when someone mentions quantum is not ‘Woah, techy stuff’, you just need to think of random things. In fact unpredictable things. A number of 1 to x and no one knows what number will appear. Quantum is like that.

  A qubit is like a random state of a bit. Think RANDOM.

  It can be 1, it can be 0, it can be 0 and 1 at the same time... It's basically a bit which is unknown until measured (if it’s known it stops being a qubit, that’s why it’s random).

  In quantum mech, there are many properties that make this possible. Such as entanglement, superposition...

  So a qubit is measured in probability: value 1 is 60% possible.

  It can have more values than 0 or 1 since it can be both at the same time, etc. So what you have is like a double ice-cream in where you try to predict how much chocolate or vanilla you’ll get when you asked someone to decide for you.

  How do we express this? Math as always. One way is with complex numbers. You can talk about 0 or 1 with the square root of -1 or many other ways. That's just a lot of probabilities.

  When measured, the qubit has a probability |α|^2 of the value “0” and a probability |β|^2 of the value "1".

  So a qubit solution is the sum of probabilities of |α|^2 + |β|^2. Square Alpha is the probability of 0, Square Beta is the probability of 1. Beta and alpha can be expressed in complex numbers (i).

  Let's stop there with the math. And repeat after me… a qubit is a random box, a mystery box.

  You open it and it destroys the qubit state, finding how you spent more money than what you got because you ended up making the qubit a bit. (I guess many quantum physicists are some of those people that love to buy amazon mysterious boxes… At least as a betting game with friends…)

  You can say qubits are entropy inherent or a way to try coding randomness with uncertain probability.

  When you hear entropy, replace with chaos or random for basic idea.

  Why did you go so far as to add qubits?

  Eh… well because qubits are 2 times a bit, for every bit added. Also because they are so uncertain that they are the thing that’s nearest to magic in human knowledge.

  If a bit has n information, a qubit has 2n-1 information. And if that's just one digit, (1 or 0)... Imagine a 8-qubit, qu-byte. It will be 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2.... More than double the information recorded in a byte. That's why qubit > bit. But a qubit needs a 'classical' computer approach to be useful (you can’t use qubits without reading them, and that needs the qubit to be a bit and analyzed as a bit).

  So future computers will have both quantum and classical bits, since humans need classical/logical computers for easier interpretation.

  The advantage of quantum computers is something similar to multi-threading. When you superpose you can write two passwords at the same time for a WIFI access. With a bit system you only write one at a time. If you have 2 qubits that's 4 at the same time, while 2 with 2 classical bits. It’s exponential, 10 qubits being comparable to 1024 bits. So quantum computers are very useful for random-problems. Problems that need probability and lots of time to solve are done faster with qubits. Decryption, encryption, complex puzzles...

  In summary, problems that are based on random things. Find the prime numbers of x number. A classical pc would test 1, then 2, then 3…. Until it finds them. A quantum pc will test all at the same time (It obviously depends on the amount of qubits).

  Example: Find the word projectG00 in every page in a 1’048.576 pages document. The number you see is the amount of bits equivalent to 20 qubits. If each bit/qubit takes a second to check. A computer with 20 qubits will need 20 seconds to do the above, while a classical bit computer would need 1048576 seconds, that’s 12 days in comparison!

  Now, quantum computers are not perfect. Truth be told, they aren’t better than classical computers at daily life use. So the quantum computer overhype would remain as cloud tools until someone can make a portable qubit ice-cream.

  For project G00 and artificial-life modifying story, a quantum approach is useful to create a lot of 'random' and humanely impossible to think mutations. Yeah mutations are part of evolution. It wont be used totally by the mc in the story, but I just wanted to put it for plot purposes.

  A quantum computer will give you a huge list of mutations that can't be possible to obtain with normal human logic or classical bit computers. Then you can use quantum computers to do a simulation and find which of those paths is the most probable mutation that adjusts to your necessities. That in addition to the encryption and password creation that this allows, constitutes a cool way to evolve to the best solutions.

  Sounds neat? Well, it is... But there is a problem: Finding the right answer (measuring a qubit) is not that simple. It has been proved to be that wall that makes quantum computers so difficult. Like how many make a quantum computer inside a character’s brain, but said quantum computer works more like a classical one and never uses the quantum computer powers. Also quantum computers need too many conditions, having one inside the brain is not a good idea, believe me. Except if you make your character different from human. Or well magic is a way though, but it should be consuming mana constantly in such fantasies, and most stories just send the char to the other world believing they had a perfect pc in their head… they also call it chip btw, only taking into account the processor? –Note, I like those stories, I just hate the overhype quantum generates, didn’t want to use it in the story… but ugh…--

  Anyway, the next problem in creating this new thing is how to measure a qubit (yeah, you can measure them with tools, that's not the answer here, so there is an added conditional: without altering its coherence and disrupting its qubit state?).

  Qubits are sensible bastards. They can’t be attacked or looked once because they will start spouting nonsense at you when you do. And it’s worse when a lot of these guys are stacked in a quantum computer. IBM made one with around 50 qubits, just adding 1 extra qubit might throw all the others away.

  So the problem of qubits is predicting/measuring reliably the value. Once we measure it, the qubit stops working and then there is no 'random probability' because you tinkered the qubit, and thus the quantum computer stops being useful during that time. (Simple way to explain don’t throw tomatoes).

  A very interesting way of doing this measurement is to let the qubit give us a clue. And this is why I added radioactive/bioluminescence to project G00.

  Imagine you have a particle inside a box. This atom, photon, electron… is the material representation of a qubit. You are using its polarity/spin or properties to make a qubit. (This is an example, not necessarily right, as you don't use the whole atom for a qubit, just the nucleus alone can work).

  But let's keep things as dummy as possible. An atom inside a box. You can't open the box, you want to know if the atom is positive charged or negative charged at the moment (for those knowers just think of a photon left/right polarity or horz/vert polarity, an e- excited/ground state or nuclear spin).

  So the atom inside is either positive charged (1) or negative/not charged (0).

  Simple binary, ez. Now, how to measure it?

  You might say that we can indirectly use a magnetic field to measure it. But the sensor we use can also disrupt its state. Like how a hand would make a spinning coin stop and take a value.

  So how do we do it? The answer is entanglement.

  Qubits have three properties:

  1. Entanglement: The connection of qubits across space. The ability to do spooky things at a distance. In simple terms: They can copy what another qubit does like soulmates/twins. Two people thinking of the same cat throwing a glass towards the floor.

  2. Superposition: Be in two places at the same time. One cat, two glasses.

  3. Tunneling: Pass through walls, a superpower. A particle can become a wave. In this probabilistic wave state, we don’t know where it is. It then can tunnel unlike a classical particle.

  4. Others...

  The most used ones are the first two.

  The entanglement property gives qubits the ability to share states. You basically order to amazon another box with an atom inside. Make both boxes start in the same conditions and 'entangle them', like spinning two coins in the exact same conditions.

  Then you measure one of the two when they reach this random state. Measuring one will disrupt it and destroy its entanglement (Called decoherence by fancy people), but thanks to this you know the state of the other, because if you got tails in one, the other one – that is still spinning-- is proven to be tails.

  This is what is normally used to be able to make quantum logic gates and create a quantum computer.

  I suggest you read cellular automata definitions, or check the advanced if you want to know something cool:

  also check this cool video, (you can watch this video and even play with a real quantum computer! they even have a way for you to learn about quantum gates and all.)

  Anyway this is basically organizing the qubits using logic. Searching for logic gates and quantum logic gates might also show you a bit of this.

  If you want to understand quantum, it’s like having a Lovecraftian lover. That sort of probabilistic setting in which determining the result will make your lover not true to their nature. If you comprehend insanity, you are not insane. If you don’t fear the unknown, it’s not unknown. That’s a qubit for you. And that’s why many will tell you that talking about quantum mech is like talking about magic you can’t totally understand.

  In summary, you can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics (Words by famous physicist Richard Feynman).

  Feels, like my story. Lol, only intro and still slow progressL.

  There are other problem with quantum computers, like the time it works, (How much time it retains information, and how true this information is - error can be made). This values determine how good your computer is. Playing with randomness is not easy, so you will have to repeat a experiment sometimes to get the results. And that's why a lot of people are working on reducing the errors and having better information retainment or coherence states.

  Continuing with the story…

  I wanted to use radiation, in this case if a qubit sends a clue (radiation), it can be used to determine its state too without needing to directly measuring it. Indirect measurement, yay!

  In fact, there are scientists doing this with materials (Uranium di-telluride, bismuth... etc)

  I also found that science is so incredible that the madness idea I had which was to make a hexagon cyclical radioactive qubit grid was also done by some and even published! Even a corrugated torus model... I am without words. Anyways let me explain this:

  Imagine a radioactive atom. It releases radiation (alpha, beta, gamma, etc). It creates energy, but at the same time it sends out (radiation) a part of it outside, making it decay.

  You don't know when it will release it or in which directions, as a radioactive atom’s moment of decay is unpredictable. One of the major problems here.

  Why?

  Because I want to create a lifeform based on radioactive compounds. So if I do this, how will it keep information? It is decaying, it is losing info constantly and at the same time damaging the DNA or molecules near it—since radiation will change the composition of even metal, right?

  How can I prevent it losing radiation? Injecting it the radiation it lost? Energy? Enzymes?

  How can I prevent radiation from damaging the information storing molecules and the supportive structures?

  ...

  Imagine now you have a radioactive atom working as a qubit. You can entangle another atom to receive the radiation, and prevent the second atom from decaying. (If you didn’t get this, you can see the ez explanation two paragraphs below).

  To do this you need some perfect conditions. Such as 1st atom time of radiation = to 2nd atom time of radiation. You also need the 1st atom radiation arriving in the perfect place/time, replacing the lost radiation...

  One way to work this out is to use gamma radiation, but that thing is a bit tricky. It can penetrate things like magic, so even an atom may not stop it. It’s like a photon trying to hit earth, like an ant finding an atom in a soccer field. (Ok, can’t remember the exact thing… just behave pls).

  So here I will do 'handwavium' magic, making something inside the lifeform that adjusts this timing of decay and the other relevant variables of qubit creation, like frequency collisions, etc.

  The reason for this is to make a cycle. Like a group of people that watch each other throwing a beer. You throw a beer to your friend, he throws one at you. Both are happy if both beers arrive at the perfect time, both are cold, and both are the same brand (no one paid more or less).

  You can say that both decaying atoms (friends that lost their beer) returned to the initial state (holding a radioactive beer), without losing matter/ decaying (no one felt empty).

  The perfect cycle is a circle. A circle has infinite points. The most efficient 'cycle' if the number of points is limited is a hexagon (Best figure in perimeter area ratio to a circle). So a cycle of 6 atoms throwing radioactive beer is the most efficient one.

  This is why I choose hexagons.

  So imagine a hexagon of 6 radioactive atoms, throwing beer radiation in perfect synchrony to the perfect place where the thrown beer was. They are constantly decaying, but at the same time, they are constantly recharging. Will they decay under perfect conditions?

  Interesting right? (If you didn’t get that, I don’t know what to do…)

  If it is, let me tell you that this is the basic unit here. And it holds both, information and energy.

  Next... Uff this is so long to explain... I think it’s even longer and harder to write than the chapter.

  Now we have a hexagon unit. Although some might think that now that the atoms are synchronized and are predictable they would stop being a qubit, there is actually more to it.

  Here you can have two directions. Clockwise or counterclock wise. The radiation sent by the atoms need a direction. This direction can also be transformed to information or energy if you have a quantum wire passing in the middle of the hexagon of radioactive qubits. Like how magnetic fields work. (This is why I used donuts skewers, also b-cus hunger mattered).

  This wire which is an atom actually, will be 'polarized' or affected by the direction of the 6 throwing a beer. It will be like a person in the middle, without a beer, that stays there and looks at those beers. The motion makes that person spin by following the actions of the others and thus create an indirect signal that doesn’t affect the measurement.

  The atom in the center will thus be affected and if there are atoms up or down (imagine piled up hexagons as a tube, with a 1 atom wire in the center), the atoms in the middle will be excited and send a signal working like a cable/wire. (Many floors with 6 people throwing, 1 in the middle. The people in the middle can communicate with those above/below and work like a wire)

  This will also allow you to measure (collect information and energy from those 6 qubits).

  So now you have something that it’s like DNA, but totally different. Hexagons that have a wire in the middle, each hexagon composed of 6 arrayed qubits. This hexagon can work as a logic gate for the signal being transmitted in the hexagonal matrix.

  You should note that this is the most basic arrangement. You can make the atom in the center non-radioactive or radioactive. You can pile up more hexagons at the same layer, or 'floor'. Making the hexagonal buildings touch their sides and share signals or radiation. It will then work like a benzene molecule, where the cycle will make some atoms receiving double radiation at a time, but sending 1 radiation towards two different atoms, the initial and the one at the side.

  In summary this structure has the ability to tessellate and catenate, something DNA doesn't have innately.

  This is compatible with the limits of synchronization in qubits which needs at least 3 levels of energy to be able to synchronize. Different from the classical counterpart.

  (This might be confusing without further explanations... Sorry I try but this will make things too long so I'll skip here...).

  The unique thing here is that this different way of information storage has all the same capabilities as DNA and more. The hexagonal arrays tend to create a toroidal surface which will need a protection to prevent misread. So similar to DNA telomeres, histones, methylation, packaging, etc... This type of life also needs a lot of things to work out, shown as the little robots, chainmails, veils… in this chapter.

  There are more things working as G00 has a size bigger than an enzyme. Still, the processes of making rings to wire and then become bigger rings is repetitive. So you get macro-rings (torus/donuts), which is the way of packaging this 'Code of life' I am using for the story.

  In the end, you get something like a toroidal genetic code. Which is based on hexagons, radiation... And I forgot... Optics play a role here too, so add that photons can also work as qubits. And the vibration... (Actually most of the core/nucleus works with photons rather than radioactive atoms. Some use phonons/rotons too... But this would be harder to explain so let's just leave things with the radioactive simplicity.)

  I'll add some more of this in the far future, maybe... But you should check how MRI or PET-scans work if you at least wish to get the hidden ideas. If you never heard positronium or positrons... Sorry to say I based a part on those too.

  Next part…

  There is a reason why the nucleus looks like a donut/torus. They are tasty, but there is more to its frosting: a sphere is too hard to 'package'. It doesn't have a 'directional output/input. While a torus can have a direction in its cycle, and have an input/output through the hole in the middle.

  Lets talk about how this looks like:

  A hexagon, stack them up in piles. Then put a thread of atoms or a quantum thread passing through the middle of the hexagon. Then close the thread forming a circle. That’s the basic ring structure. (I won’t calculate the diameter or the length of the wire, it can vary too. And it’s obvious since I said above that I’m hand-waving: poof it’s magic powder).

  So we have a ring, each ring contains information and will work as a battery too (in simple terms).

  Now we jump into ‘catenation’ which is a process in which you link two rings. Same as creating a chain.

  Then we can also add how knot theory works and make the rings become knots and variable shapes. (This will be used for variation and mutation, which is important to how G00 evolves, but I won’t talk too much of it right now, and It might not be told again during the story).

  Next we add rotaxanes made with the ringed qubits. They can work as switches, controllers… it adds a lot more complexity to the nanoscale structures. What’s a rotaxane? (Ask wiki, at this moment I’m meh-ing in lazyness).

  Yeah, now you can see why this is crazy.

  But that’s not all, since it is radioactive, you’ll need measures of isolation and reflection. Which is the reason why I added mirrors and vantablack like surfaces, and why the bigger donuts that are formed with the membranous veils work like that. To protect information basically.

  You also need special ways to distribute energy in the form of radiation, while also protecting the structures. This is a problem the blob has, and the reason why it is a blob. It hasn’t designed a complete protection to radioactive decay troubles.

  Still, the way the nucleus prevents this, is by using the filter structures outside the external nucleus and the isolating shapes described in the chapter. You also have to know that even if a radioactive error is produced inside the nucleus, it would be caught by protective atoms. (Another thing that would take too long to explain, so I will skip, since the thing that matters to the reader is just the idea. If you want to look at something cool, you can check radiation hardening).

  I think that’s most of it. The next chapter will explain a little part, since this is the most extensive explanation I think I’ll do in the story, the other explanations might be inside the chapters as part of the story.

  Super summary:

  It’s a toroidal lifeform. Hexagons are the basic unit that conforms best to this since it is the most efficient way to make a circle. Each vertex of the hexagon is like a DNA base. It can work as a senary numeral system based on vertex, but also as a composite system if you imagine it having more than one OS (binary torus spin). Hexagons are stacked to create hexagon tubes that are then wired. These wires are connected creating a shape that resembles a ring. The rings are stacked again, with other smaller tubes making the wire that passes through them. This creates bigger and more perfect rings. These rings can catenate, create rotaxanes, work as logic gates, etc.

  In the end, this creates a complete life-form that uses rings as a way to store code. If you make it depend on radioactive energy, it can also use these rings as energy storage.

  Additional explanations: (Things half-assedly explained, might add bigger explanation in the future, and might be missing some too, so I’ll probably never touch this again… yay).

  The liquid inside the nucleus is special. It’s based on quantum colloids, quantum dots, and noble gases.

  The origami birds, are based on NASA’s chainmail, vantablack, mirrors, and origami shapeshifting nanotech. It can be told that if someone created an Elisa-like kit for this lifeform, they would use something like this structure to use as attachment antibodies. In a way, it’s very interesting cus the ring inside the chainmail is designed to know its place around the compressed membranes that create the corrugated tori around the branches.

  The columns that come from the floor of the ocean have something to do with nucleus corrugation and at the same time it is secondary to certain reactions created by the laser feedback that descends from the columns.

  These reactions are based on Nano-energy which creates a special way of using compounds with a carbon skeleton and hydrogen ramifications, to compress and create helium. (Like in stars, just molecular level, which allows a higher control). I loved the article of this, sadly it’s too costly to make carbon skeletons with star fuel replacing the hydrates.

  I won’t delve too much on this, but optics play a very big role, same as the ways to contain radiation damage and errors caused by it. That’s why the fluid works with quantum colloids and dots, and why the little machines are optimized for such selective processes. Quantum colloids and quantum dot tech is very useful to use as radiation hardening materials.

  THE ExplaNationD

  Chapter Images (Not mine, not owned by me, if owners want me to take them off I will. They are not part of the story and I only added them to give an idea.

  Spoiler: Spoiler

  This is how the spiral of salps move. (in a very simplified way, cause there are branches where they loop inside.) Dont mind much the text in the imagine...

  corrugated torus.

  What I like on this image is how the torus changes from a decoherent to a coherent state and corrugates as an outcome.

  this is how a quantum computer looks like. well the one I based the center column on, juts that it is totally different from this, but at least gives the reader it has a lot of rings and cables around.

  Rings and donuts.

  Imagine it or not, DNA already has the ability to something similar to the things I added in the chapter.

  lets start qith the basic unit: 6 qubits in an hexagon shape with a measurement qubit or non-qubit in the middle.

  This is taken from a superconductor idea, its only for representation, so just to give an idea.

  each cubit becomes a torus, and we thread it with the measure cells.

  then we close it and make it into a ring

  Now we have a bigger ring, and we can do more things since the qubits can be somewhat isolated when they reach a certain stability. We can do many things...

  1. we can use the same thing above and thread thorugh them with a bigger cable.

  2. we can catenate them.

  3. we can make rotaxanes.

  4. we can create knots.

  5. many others, I'm lazy.

  Catenate (chain)

  catenate (A), the other with the spheres is a rotaxane.

  Rotaxanes are very interesting creating variable reactions.

  Real life rotaxanes.

  The potential of a storage based on ring structures is very interesting and I think it might have a lot of potential.

  Now lets go for knots.

  this is how nature works:

  Topoisomerase and gyrase are enzymes in cells that knot dna. Its more common to find circles in bacteria though, and that can explain part of their varibility.

  Now imagine combining this with string theory and knot theory in physics and maths.

  Poor rings now became knots... ok, this will go to complex, I'm just opening possibilities.

  This is a hopf fibration model of a thorus.

  a ball made out of rings.

  a bird made of rings

  No... I'm not calling the story project ring. This is just an intro even if it appears like some scienfiction article or who knows.

  This are piled up torus (its form an article that used the torus model for some science in quantum]

  The idea above is similar to how RAID in computers work, and how to prevent errors during a measurment. Its very interesting how many shapes to read quantum things appear.

  For example the one above is a type of RAID. you have 4 disks as storage, but they work in a way each had a copy of certain parts of the whole, so when one disk is damaged you may recover part of the information.

  Yes I added something similar to G00 in this thing, the various columns above each has branches and well... they work as a raid, preventing mutational damage. :P

  I thinks that's a lot and I don't want to add more.

  The rewrite will skip a bit on the intro, and go more directly for the plot and story. It will be done after I create the complete intro. I 'm working slowly but surely on it. Thanks for the support.

  Did you enjoy the chap?

  

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