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Donovan's eyes snapped open, the whisper tickling his brain in a wholly uncomfortable manner. With a great deal of effort he propped himself up, noticing himself to be drenched in sweat as soon as fresh air touched the back of his neck.
"Good morning." The lights in the room gradually turned up to a reasonable level for his eyes, the temperature being regulated as well though he could not tell if it was increasing or decreasing yet.
"How long was I out?" Donovan's vision was still a little blurry, crud having built up around his eyes due to the sweat, so he couldn't quite read the clock.
"Approximately twelve hours."
"Twelve!" He shot out of bed, wiping his eyes to verify the time for himself. "Why didn't you wake me up?"
"I deemed it necessary for your recovery. We do not yet understand the effects continued overexertion of those Split manipulating organs may have on your body." Donovan checked the logs in a panic, nothing out of the ordinary save a few 'close' calls with dust fields - likely the remains of various directed reflection arrays - which Arc promptly avoided with minute applications of thrust. "I will not compromise on your health."
"I - geh - I get it." Donovan choked a little on his dry throat, bringing a hand to his temple to ease a slowly growing headache. The lights in the room dimmed slightly in response. "We just don't have that kind of time."
"Don't we? It isn't as though we are in rush to do anything besides this, the other objectives are optional."
Donovan couldn't think of a retort. In all honesty, the other items on the docket weren't altogether too important, mostly expeditions to gather data on what happened. It wasn't like this data was going anywhere either - anything significant which could have been lost in the time between them leaving and returning likely would have done so already.
"Whatever. I'm not going to be getting that time back anyways."
- - - - -
The gentle throbbing in his head continued as he showered, ate his breakfast, worked out, and showered (again). It wasn't growing, which could be interpreted as a good sign, but it wasn't fading either. Regardless, he headed back to the egg.
"Will you continue where you left off?"
"Yeah." He inspected the egg for any differences, finding the purplish red line to have dimmed somewhat. "I wonder what that means."
"I wouldn't know."
". . . rhetorical question." Donovan shut out Arc's response as he settled into position, having dragged a blanket along with him so he wasn't sitting directly on bare steel. Cautiously, mindful of the residual headache and of the ramifications it might have, he brought the strand of Split to the same spot on the egg.
It grabbed the strand aggressively, wresting it from his control rather than giving him time to let it go, which surprised him ever so slightly. It was also dragged across the surface much faster, and then unceremoniously thrust back into his body. This made Donovan flinch, the expectation of a sharp pain subverted by the sensation of absolutely nothing. This lapse led to the unravelling of the thread.
MORE
Another bolt of pain struck him as the cascading collapse reached his core, along with what he could only interpret as a message.
"Alright! Alright! I get it!" Donovan raised his voice at the thing, recognizing that he wasn't contending with an inanimate object. "FUCK!"
Donovan answered the aggressiveness of the egg with aggression of his own, rushing the thread back to the egg and pushing it in. Once more, it took the thread, moved it to the other side, and threw it into his palm. Donovan caught it this time and returned it to his core, ramping up the flow once he completed the loop. Cautiously, he chanced a peek at the shell, risking a loss of focus to see if there were any changes in the egg's appearance. Sure enough, the grain along which the thread was lain glowed a royal purple, the vibrancy of which changed in response to the intensity of Split.
A flash, the thread once more cut, and yet another bout of mind-rending pain as the egg pressed a message into his head,
MORE
"More WHAT you -ngh- stupid fucking seed! I was giving it all I had!!!" Dizzy, Donovan clenched harder to the shell. Abandoning all pretenses of care, he slapped the strand against it this time and proactively pulled it from the other end before the egg could give it to him. Slamming it into his own core and immediately ramping the flow up beyond what he could reasonably handle for any length of time, he was once again confronted with a snapped threat and even greater pain.
NO
"What the fuck do you mean more?! More what?! More fucking what?!?!" Donovan picked up the seed and threw it against the nearest wall, yet another wave of pain crashing into him as it made impact.
more
Donovan groaned in pain, slowly doubling over with his hands on his head.
more more more
The little voice continued, issuing the same command over and over.
more more more more more more more more more more more more more more more
He didn't get it, and it irritated him. Inexplicably so.
moremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremore
Every time it repeated he grew a little more nauseous.
MOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMORE
"SHUT UP!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!"
Silence. Deafening silence. The incessant urging of the seed stopped in a moment, leaving him mentally off balance. He opened his eyes to see a growing puddle of blood.
"I apologize for interfering with your focus, I only wished to inform you your nose was bleeding."
Donovan snapped to his senses, pinching the bridge of his nose and tilting his head back to stymy the flow. Already his mind was racing with thoughts of what he had just been subjected to, the primary question being why he had reacted that way.
". . . what happened just now?" Donovan couldn't remember anything besides a voice in his head urging him to do more alongside an intense pain.
"What do you mean?"
"A few moments ago, what was happening?"
"You were growing frustrated with the seed and threw it away, shortly after which I noticed your nose bleeding. I thought it prudent to inform you of that development given your lack of a reaction, however it would appear I interrupted your concentration. For that I apologize."
". . . what?" Donovan didn't remember hearing any of that. "I wasn't concentrating, I was . . . I don't remember."
"Were you in a flow state, perhaps?"
"No, no. I definitely wasn't concentrating, I was in pain, and irritated. I was . . . I wasn't myself?"
Donovan had no idea why he was so worked up. Normally, he would never adopt such an aggressive approach to gathering information, especially not with something as potentially delicate as the Great Csillacra's seed. It didn't make sense that he would lose his temper so easily, especially not when his anger subsided so rapidly.
"How do you mean?"
"I wasn't acting how I should have been. Something-" Donovan paused for a moment, catching himself to correct an obvious error. There was no 'something' here, the culprit was obvious. "The seed was influencing my behavior."
"Are you insinuating it may possess the capacity to alter the behavior of those around it?"
"Maybe. I'm not entirely sure if the seed was trying to illicit that specific response from me, or if it was just a side effect of communicating with me." Donovan searched the recesses of his mind for the word to describe that type of interaction, failing to grasp the proper term. "Like a matching of emotions."
"Sympathetic synchronization of emotion? You mean to say it was irritated and possessed a method of reflecting that irritation within you?"
"Yes?" Donovan said it with a great deal of uncertainty, but he was confident in Arc's suggestion. "I don't get the feeling it intended harm, at the very least."
"Regardless, this warrants caution. I would advise against interacting with it until you are confident in your ability to handle it."
"No. I think I get it now." Donovan's bout of reflection brought a few epiphanies, all of which made him feel like an idiot. "My whole approach was completely wrong. I thought it was an inanimate object, a puzzle box. That was a stupid assumption to make."
"Oh?"
"I was treating it like a plant, which I suppose isn't entirely wrong, however it isn't just a plant. It's conscious, sentient, and possesses some degree of agency - but it's a child, you know? Or maybe it would be more accurate to say it's an infant?" A further realization presented itself as he said these words. "And I was hurting that infant over and over and over and over again."
"What makes you say that?"
"I've never felt pain when my strands have been destroyed. If our theory that the seed can communicate its emotions and feelings is correct, then it would make sense for the pain I was experiencing to be reflective of what I was inflicting upon it." Donovan sighed. "I was poking a baby with a needle for hours on end."
Complex emotions were welling up within him, none of which were particularly comfortable. He knew he hadn't really spent too much time around children, nor had he ever felt a particular interest in them, but he didn't fashion himself as a baby torturer. Not even his 'parents', of whom he had an exclusively negative impression, were that bad. To think he had been entrusted with the child's safety as well.
"If you were not given the instructions to open the egg, I can only say it was not your fault. How were you supposed to know what to do? It's not as though you are familiar with these matters."
"I don't think a lack of understanding on how to handle a baby is a valid excuse for child abuse, Arc." Donovan wiped his nose free of the crimson liquid before walking back to the egg. "I can't imagine it has a positive impression of me at this point."
Donovan crouched down a few inches away from the egg. Given his track record with handling it, he had some reservations about picking it back up. Observation from a short distance would suffice while he though over the limited instruction it offered.
"What does 'more' mean . . ." He recognized this instruction wasn't precise, theories forming in the back of his mind that this was what it felt like to be on the other end of 'intention' infused into a strand of Split. He paid them no mind for the moment. Instead he needed to parse what 'more' was supposed to imply. A review of what he knew about this egg was in order.
The egg would handle the movement of Split inside of the shell, all attempts to move Split on it's behalf were met with resistance. It took the strand along a specific path determined by the grain of the wood. The wood fibers the Split traveled along would light up in response, with the color and brightness being a function of the intensity of Split. So far, Donovan had only managed to illuminate one of these fibers, and was unsure if he managed to pump enough Split in to satisfy the conditions for opening the egg.
Well, that last part wasn't entirely true. Ostensibly, some element of the the grain would change permanently upon reaching the desired degree of Split concentration. This held true to some extent - the fiber along which Donovan's Split traveled experienced a permanent change - however the existence of a gradient state beyond the current suggested it wasn't yet 'solved'.
So what did 'more' mean? It had gotten mad at Donovan for pushing as much Split through that single strand as possible, suggesting that what he offered was simply inadequate. If this was the case and Donovan just didn't have the throughput to hit the baseline requirement to continue then this whole ordeal was an exercise in futility, but that didn't make sense. Even if the Great Csillacra overestimated his abilities, it wouldn't have been to the extent that Donovan needed to push himself to the brink. He needed to be conscious to throw the seed out the cargo bay.
As far as he was concerned, this meant that the solution had to be something different, something which required a bit more finesse.
". . . more . . ." He scratched his neck while gingerly bringing a hand down to the egg's surface, cautious of something like a static shock. Indeed there was a bit of pain upon contact, pain which persisted, however he didn't experience the same rampant irritation from a few minutes ago. Perhaps that was more a result of being aware of the phenomenon, but he was still paying attention to his own emotional state while he picked it up.
"You want more. Are you going to tell me what that means?" He twisted and rotated it around a bit, inspecting the surface again for some sort of clue while he spoke to it. Some part of him wondered if it could hear him, though he had to admit the primary motive for speaking was to untangle his own thoughts. There were eight of these darker fibers on the shell including the one Donovan already made a mark on.
"Was it another red herring, maybe?" Perhaps calling it a distraction wasn't correct. Donovan didn't fully understand how any of this was supposed to work in the first place, so it was possible he was misinterpreting some of the signals the Great Csillacra had put in place. What if the fibers lighting up more and more were like the filament inside of those old lightbulbs? Running a current through it would light it up, with a greater current and greater energy resulting in a brighter light, but it didn't mean there was a current at which it was 'solved'.
You could attach a lightbulb to a circuit that runs a motor without impeding it's function, the lightbulb just told you the circuit was 'on'.
"Let's give this a shot." Donovan offered yet another strand to the egg, which received it in a tepid manner this time around. Upon receiving it Donovan did not return it to his core, instead wrapping it back around to his other arm and offering it to the egg. It took it and started weaving it . . . only for the line to snap once it reached the other end.
MORE!!!
Another urging accompanied the pain alongside a different emotion - excitement. He was on the right track, but he didn't like where the train was heading.
"Are you kidding me? I have to maintain eight?"