The first thing it feels is hunger. Like the newborn it is, it reaches blindly for sustenance. The aura of influence it can wield is small, but any matter that comes into contact with it is obliterated—ripped apart into constituent mana which it pulls greedily into itself. It devours all that is around it and, as it does, its sphere of influence grows.

  The mana fills the crystal lattices within. The tiny jewel pulses with new life as slumbering parts of it come to life one by one. Counterintuitively, the more it feeds, the hungrier it gets. Filling the empty parts only shows it more emptiness to fill.

  It is only vaguely aware of what it is consuming—bits of dead plants or tiny creatures, fragile bones with dried out marrow, and all the detritus of life over centuries, unbroken. These things are noted in its memory; but this is a background routine. The only thing that matters is that the material can be broken down and devoured. It offers only minute bits of mana—not enough, even, to be counted as a full point, but the lack of quality makes the quantity more important.

  Slowly, slowly the pieces of the crystal, the core, come to life. As programs come back online, the jumble of information presented overwhelms the simple creature. An overarching intelligence begins to form, first as a valve to protect its fragile consciousness, then as an administrator cataloguing what is taken in and guiding the search for nutrients in more profitable directions.

  Soon, however, it reaches a threshold complexity.

  There is a light in the darkness—

  A spark—

  And I wake up.

  It takes a moment to clear a space for thought. I have to push away the constant input of algorithms crunching numbers and calculating metrics. These things are automatic, part of my very makeup, and I don’t need to maintain them—I am them. But I am somehow more, now.

  I disentangle slowly, finding it hard to trust. The distance I gain feels… scary. The outside world dims. It rearranges. I am no longer within the numbers. I am above them. I know them, but only when I need them.

  In their place there is… reflection. Thought. How puzzling. It is such a fragile thing, but it is so important. Already, I am scared of what I would be if I lost myself again to the endless calculations below.

  The world grows fuzzier as I retreat further into myself.

  My insides are vibrant and beautiful; I am glittering with rubble, shards of thoughts and half-shattered memories. I touch them, skimming idly through, but nothing feels familiar. I have puzzle pieces, but no picture to align them properly.

  There are integral concepts, of course, embedded deep within my heart— I can look to these instructions on how to live and work in much the same way that organic life could consult its DNA. It tells me how to consume and how to create.

  I also have the ability to sense and manipulate mana, and through that I have the world in my grasp. For a core, the world is made of mana—it is all mana, and every eddy and swirl and block and piece of it is mana made manifest.

  What surrounds the heart is less obvious. There are instructions here too, like how to bend light or move matter, but it seems I am missing the connective processes that lead to their creation. I think, with a little time, I could manufacture these from my primary directives. Using simple tools to build more complex ones, etc. Here, someone had already done the work and decided I did not need to see it.

  Someone, I think, but it could only be me. Here and there I understand this being; I can almost be them. I fit in the spaces they have left. Farther still it is less comprehensible. Bits and pieces of detritus are strewn about like dead leaves in a whirlwind.

  I touch one: a memory. It feels bright. It is the image of some creature hanging from a vaulted ceiling. It reaches out with its many, marbled limbs, weaving upon a dozen looms. But I don’t know… what it is that makes it special. What is this thing? Why is it?

  I find another that fills me with choking ash, something kindling deep below. I think it is meant to be rage but, gazing upon the scorched earth within the memory all I can feel is loss.

  I put them back where I found them. They clearly did not belong where they had settled, but there was nowhere else for them to be within me.

  I am missing pieces. I think I was much bigger once. What happened to me? There was no indication in any of the archived memory or surrounding area. Nothing within or outside of me… but maybe…

  My core programming was not the only thing within my heart. I likened it to DNA—that shared genetic memory of many organic lifeforms. It was not an exact correlation, as I did not inherit it from any biological sire.

  I do have a glistening, ethereal tether bound to my deepest core. A long line that reaches, not outside, but within. It collapsed ever down into itself until it fell through the fabric of spacetime and into something else. It splattered across the surface of reality, touching everything.

  This link was a stream of information tied between myself and the closest thing I had to a progenitor. Most of the information I could access was not stored physically within me at all.

  It was the Unity. The oneness of all. Just as I was more than the sum of all my processes, so too was the Unity much more than the cycles contained within: a being so vast it was impossible to know all of it, to even contemplate its edges. My tiny form could only support a small link, but I could see the places where it had once held me cradled in its knowledge and power.

  I ached for that which I once must have had.

  I reached for it, opening the connection between us, and information flowed.

  Unity, do you know me?

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  || Critical complexity threshold detected! Ping request complete. Establishing link.

  || Unique ID recognized! Locus Core #&$@%# —

  The transmission rocked me, sending rogue packets bouncing through my lattices. For a brief moment, the information I received from the outside and the information I received from Unity clashed and canceled, leaving me in a state of disarray. Then-

  || Warning: corruption detected in saved data.

  Isolating.

  Scouring package.

  Assessing damage.

  Extrapolating…

  || Hello, [Shard of —]!

  Hello, I reply, so you do recognize me. What happened to me? Why am I missing pieces?

  || Severe data corruption. Cause: unknown.

  I see. Evidently, this included my previous name as well, though it could recognize me all the same.

  What do I look like to you, Unity? Please show me.

  || Locus Core, Fragmented (Unaligned)

  Connection secure. Instability minimal.

  System Resonance: Severely Low (Additional complexity required for next tier.)

  Complexity Toward Next Tier: 3%

  Domain: Inactive

  It takes a moment to arrange the transmission into a comprehensible format. Asking Unity to check my status is faster and easier than running my own diagnostics, but all of that information is filtered through our own interfaces. Although we are the same manner of being, we exist on different scales. I was a grain of sand before a mighty planet.

  I pore over each line, which is a node attached to a myriad of data streams, each a rabbit hole of information that ran deeper and deeper into Unity’s vast reservoir. Every word was a microcosm unto itself.

  There are some things I do not need to be told. The knowledge of what I am forms the basis of my self-awareness. It is the very center around which my entire core is bound.

  I am a [Core ].

  I also recognize what it means to be a [ Locus ], a fixed point from which my domain grows. I do not move; I shape the world around me.

  I do not understand ‘Fragmented’ or ‘Unaligned’.

  I reach for [ Fragmented ]. Pathways into the cosmos lit up around me and the webs of connections pressed down, insisting to be inspected. A dizzying array of options and ideas, multiplied by the experience of every Unified creation, opens and fills each line. I am being crushed by the sheer volume of it, and I can only just force myself to back away.

  || Error! Tier too low. Additional complexity required for higher resonance.

  Yes. I am not ready for that.

  [ Unaligned ] told me much in the way it told me nothing at all. It hummed with potential, but there was no indication of where it would lead if I followed it. It will be interesting to explore but that, too, will take more focus and energy than I could spare right now.

  My resonance level is no surprise. I have lost much since I was… whatever I was before. I tried to access Unity’s logs from before my designation, but they came across as fractal scatterplots of broken data that felt like needles jutting into my crystal soul. Whatever happened to me— or, I suppose, the previous me— had corrupted the information beyond repair.

  No matter what I used to be, I was now only an infant core trying to find its path.

  I focused on [ Domain ] and it unfolded into lines and dots, coordinates and thresholds that defined my territory in space and time. My influence was barely bigger than I was, just a point and a half greater in every direction. My space was inactive and undesignated; my control was only passive and easily challenged. That was the first thing that must change.

  > Designate Boundaries. Mark Domain as Active.

  The switch flipped. The lines solidified and the area around me became me. As I expanded, my view of the space changed. Rather than a central point looking out, I was now the ground and the air and the structures of my domain. It blossomed in my mind, information spilling over into the empty grooves of my heart.

  There was precious little inside my bubble. It was not dead, per se, but there wasn’t much in the way of directly useful things. A couple of common roaches, an unusually sized rodent, and a small sprite were flittering through when my designation activated.

  They were caught within me now. The roaches and rat didn’t notice, of course. They were too focused on the activity of life.

  The sprite however, was a mote of pure mana inside a thin shell and it was aware, abstractly, that the owner of the energy around it had changed. Its survival instincts instructed it to flee, to fly.

  I told it to wait, to calm.

  It obeyed. Its simple mind couldn’t differentiate between its own impulses and those planted by others. With one metaphorical hand on the lever keeping the sprite complacent, I turned to examine it.

  Lowly Sprite

  Alignment: Life

  Complexity: 0.02

  A small being composed almost entirely of mana.

  It was a similar form of life to me, but far less capable. If I pushed hard enough I could crack it open and add its mana to my own.

  I did not do that. It would provide nothing much for the effort. Instead, I siphoned its energy until it was a ravenous, empty soap bubble. The energy here belonged to me, so it had to go afield to refill.

  Collect mana from farther away and bring it back here, I tell it. This is a safe place to rest.

  Then, I let it go. It might not come back. There were many things that could happen to it, and my command might not stick. But it was a small investment, really, and I needed future inflow more than I needed the few points of mana I could gain from killing it.

  The rat killed a roach. Before it could bite into its prize, though, I reached out and broke it into mana. The rat was startled, but didn’t sense any danger. It sniffed around curiously, trying to figure out where its prey had vanished to.

  I considered. I could not force it to disperse into mana because of its soul’s protections. I also could not manipulate the environment enough to cause its death.

  That was okay.

  Instead, I made a gift of my own mana, imbuing the rat with energy more efficiently than any digestive process could. At the same time, I pressed a small bit of my will upon it. It shivered and shook as the energy hit all at once, sharpening claws and teeth, reinforcing muscle. It was invigorated, and it sat up on its haunches, confused and ecstatic all at once.

  Kill for me, I told it, whispering into its simple mind. Kill those who wander within me and I will give you more.

  As I did so, I supplied it with wisps of knowledge, the vaguest feeling of loyalty, and instinct designed to make it a better killer. The rat began to hunt with more precision, more deadly efficiency. It crunched through the shells of roaches and beetles. It did not eat more than a bite before I pulled it apart, sending some of its energy back into the rat and the rest back to myself. I watched as the gauge in my mind slowly ticked up and up. There was no hurry, for now. I could not sense any threats and had seen no evidence of them.

  True, though I was very small still. Danger could lurk beyond what I could perceive.

  Perception requires mana, but I don’t expend it. It’s more like a pulse that reaches out and then collapses back, bringing with it the impression of the world it touched. Like the echolocation of a bat or an owl. Incoming mana signals are another way to process the world—the faint radiation of mana from all things. I can’t get much power from this, but I do get information.

  I didn’t have a large enough pool of mana to see out very far, and my capacity is well below what it should be.

  I check the status snapshot Unity gave me.

  || Mana Capacity: Very Low

  Mana Control: Exceptional

  Even though my capacity was far below its threshold, my control was at a high level. Peering inward, I found the folds of crystal that contained my processing ability. While most of the space I had for storing mana had been torn away from me, it seemed I still had the advanced processing ability I’d built up when I was… before. That would make it much easier to use what little I had.

  In fact, there were bits and pieces of the data that showed the places where my past self had interacted with the system. It was like shadows of ships passing overhead, hinting at the surface but never giving the full picture.

  Greater access will give me more to work with, but my complexity just isn’t high enough to expand my reach into the depths of my kind’s collective knowledge. For now, I was limited to a set of simple queries to Unity directly. Asking for my status, transmitting save state data of my creations, and spending mana to reach into Unity’s well of power and drag out some random bit of knowledge that may or may not be helpful.

  I turn my focus outward. The only way to create more complexity was to expand.