Chapter sixteen: Internal structure
The afternoon sun hung high in the sky as Caelum made his way back home.
A few pedestrians passed him by, their presence this time were more than just blur figures, Caelum glanced at them with the corner of his vision.
He wasn't paying attention to the world around him, at least not in the conventional sense. He was seeing a different world entirely.
With a thought, he activated his willpower. When he did, the veil of normalcy was lifted.
"This is amazing." The people walking past him… the ordinary men and women engaged in mundane conversations… were no longer just figures in the background.
"It's like a perfect machine of flesh and blood!" Caelum marveled in a barely audible voice.
Infront of him were intricate, living structures, webs of blood vessels, networks of muscles beneath their skin, pulsating organs hidden within their bodies. The rhythm of their breathing, the beats of their hearts, it was all there, exposed in terrifying clarity before his eyes.
Caelum kept walking, he wasn't just seeing humans. A bird swooped down from a nearby rooftop, landing on a lamppost, and out of pure curiosity, he focused on it.
'It's a bit different?'
The faint but unmistakable pulse of life beneath its feathers. He could see the delicate structure of its hollow bones, the thin strands of sinew that connected its wings, the rapid contractions of its small heart as it rested.
Further ahead, a stray dog lazily stretched in the shade of a tree, its ribs were visible through its fur. Caelum turned his willpower toward it and just like with the bird, the dog's inner workings came into view. The rise and fall of its lungs, the smooth flow of blood circulating through its body.
Caelum's pulse quickened out of control.
"How is this even possible? Every creature has a different structure but..." with his eyes gleaming, his thoughts escaped out loud.
"It's like they were constructed with proper care."
The internal structure of the creatures around him, that he was seeing, was not in a normal way. He could see all of it clearly, so much so that no technology could achieve that feat.
Caelum, despite having a degree in biology, was flabbergasted by the sheer load of information.
Calming down his excited heart, he thought of the implications of his willpower. 'I never could have guessed, that willpower could be used for something different, instead of just being a tool for fueling the quill!'
Caelum's mind raced with all the possibilities willpower could possibly had.
"If It does have another use..." The excitement bubbled in his chest, mixed with a sharp sense of disbelief. He never thought his willpower could extend beyond his ability to create, but right now, he was navigating through the internal structures of living beings with nothing but his mind's intent.
As he walked, the world around him seemed more alive than ever before.
The people, the animals, even the smallest insects that fluttered past, he had been given a key to understanding the very essence of life itself.
His thoughts spiraled even furutre. 'I can use this to replicate life without a single difference.'
'If i can learn the way life functioned from the inside, would there be a way to influence it with the quill?' His ideas sent a shiver down his spine.
Before he knew it, he was standing at the entrance of his apartment building. His fingers absentmindedly reached for the keys in his pocket.
He unlocked the door and stepped inside, shutting it behind him with a click.
He leaned against the door. "I'm tired already." He pushed himself off the doorframe and headed further inside.
His mind was buzzing, the implications of what he could do were staggering.
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After Caelum stepped into his apartment, he wasted little to no time.
First, he changed into more comfortable clothes, tossing his previous outfit into the laundry basket. Then, he washed his face, the cool water jolting him fully awake.
"Water!" His throat felt dry after the long walk.
Walking over to the kitchen, he grabbed a glass from the shelf and poured himself cold water, drinking it down in gulps. "Haaa! There is nothing better than a glass of plain water."
'Now, for lunch.' He reached for the quill, twirling it between his fingers before setting it down.
Cooking was something he still enjoyed doing manually sometimes. It was one of the few habits he hadn't let go of and did once in a while.
Even if the cooking ingredients were obtained through the quill.
With a simple stroke of the quill, long noodles with pork belly manifested out of thin air. "Well, it isn't a complicated dish, but I i still feel a craving for pork noodles."
Hee boiled the noodles, fried the pork belly to a crisp golden brown, and let the rich aroma fill the air. Once everything was plated, he sat down and ate in silence.
After finishing his meal, he quickly washed the dishes, and made his way to his room.
---
"Time to work i guess~ ummm."
Standing before the painting of the vast cosmos on his wall, Caelum poured his willpower into it.
A familiar sensation tugged at him; the gentle but inevitable pull, like his very existence was being swallowed into the endless void. His vision blurred for a second, and then He was there.
Standing in the pure white room.
An infinite expanse of cosmos stretched endlessly around the white room, it floated in the starrt sky, stars were burning in the distance like sentinels of creation. The void was too vast for a human mind to witness, but within this space, Caelum felt no fear, feeling a deep encompassing calm.
"No matter how many times i come here, it feels so surreal." His gaze wandered around the room. "It's like I'm floating outside constraints of time."
To Caelum, there was something profoundly peaceful about being here, detached from the real world, the feeling of being connected to something greater than himself.
He approached the bronze table at the center of the room and settled into the chair.
"First, I should observe the difference."
Pouring his willpower into the quill, he moved his hand in a fluid stroke.
In an instant, a small creature manifested before him, a small bird with shimmering blue feathers tinged with specks of silver, as if stars had been dusted across its wings. It was the species know as the Celestine Finch
The bird landed on the table, its tiny claws clicking against the bronze surface.
It looked at Caelum with curious, beady eyes, tilting its head, trying to make sense of its own existence.
"Alright little one." Caelum wasted no time.
Activating his willpower, he focused his vision, directing it toward the finch.
At once, its biology was laid bare before him. The delicate structure of its bones, the expansion of its tiny lungs, the soft pulse of its heartbeat, it was all there, totally perfect and complete.
He watched as the bird hopped around on the table, ruffling its feathers.
Minutes went by. "Nothing? There is no difference at all?"
He frowned. "It's no different from a real bird."
'That's kind of unexpected.' He had thought there would be something unnatural about it. Some mark that distinguished it from a real-world creature. But there was none. It was an exact biological replica, down to the most minute detail of it's cells.
As he mulled over this, the Celestine Finch flapped its wings, took flight, and then vanished.
Faded away like mist in the wind. Caelum leaned back in his chair, watching the empty space where it had been.
"Well, I did define it to exist for a few minutes at best."
Turning his attention to the scattered books on the table, he picked up one along with a pen and began noting down his thoughts.
"So because I wanted to create a bird without any specifics at all, it manifested as a normal bird."
He tapped the pen against the page before writing the next point.
"In that sense, does everything I make without any alterations manifest as an identical copy of its real-world counterpart?"
He scratched his chin and wrote again.
"So if I define the bird in an illogical way, it should have a different biology."
His eyes lingered on that last sentence, a thoughtful expression formed on his devilish face.
He shut the book with a decisively. Then, clapping his hands together, he leaned forward.
"Alright, let's try."
-------
Caelum stared at the empty space before him, deep in thought.
Then after a minute, he poured his willpower into the quill. His hand moved with precision, tracing invisible lines in the air.
The space before him twisted, faint translucent strokes shimmered like ripples on the surface of a lake. Then, as he lifted the quill, those ripples solidified, giving form to a creature.
It was a Celestine Finch, just like before.
"Hmmm. It does look a bit different." But this time a small, blue flame hovered just above its head.
The flame wasn't separate from the bird as it belonged to it, as though it were an extension of its body. It swayed gently, casting a soft glow over the finch's shimmering feathers.
Caelum leaned forward, studing the bird. "Would it be different this time?"
Activating his willpower, he focused his vision, peering into the bird's biology.
After a minute passed, his body slid back against the chair, his arms dropped to his sides as if drained.
"It still looks the same," he mumbled.
'Aside from the faint, blurry blue~ish glow surrounding the parietal lobe, the part of the brain responsible for sensory perception and spatial awareness, there aren't any major changes.' caelum looked up at the ceiling lost in his thoughts, even the ceiling was pure white just like the entire room.
'If I ignore the blurry glow, the bird's internal structure is otherwise identical to the last one I have created.'
His doubts were slowly fading, the conclusion was becoming clearer. Even after tweaking the bird's external characteristics, like adding a illogical blue flame, its internal biology remained largely unchanged.
Reaching for the book, Caelum picked up the pen and wrote:
"As long as I actively don't define the internal structure to be different, I think it will stay the same, even if I alter its existence a little."
He paused for a second, then added another line: "Maybe it will change if the definition is far too absurd and illogical?"
He set the pen down. "Alright then."
He straightened up, there was only one way to find out.
With a face full of excitement , he picked up the quill again. "Let's change the biological definition all together."
With that, he dove back into his experiments, completely and utterly lost in them.