"It's interesting, to say the least." Donovan stared at the model of himself from the comfort of the cockpit, occasionally gncing at the report to the side. "I wonder why it's happening."

  "Indeed. Under normal circumstances I would suggest that maniputed or recently generated Split possesses some property that induces floccution in ambient Split that surrounds it, however I do not know if Split can possess such properties in the first pce."

  The model focused in on the space between his fingers to provide a better visual. The center of the area in question contained the thread, shining brightly despite the apparent instability, and was surrounded by an aura simir to that which formed when inside of his body. The biggest difference was, as discussed, the greater degree of concentration.

  "I'm not a betting man, but I would put a significant sum of money on this phenomena being what actuates changes to the environment." Donovan's mind had immediately locked on to the process by which they could communicate, the strange auto-transte function. He had always figured there must be something more to it, and this might be it. "I keep being told that in order for Split to do anything, I must 'attach intent' to it, and I still don't think I've figured out what that means."

  "Intent was described to me as a combination of a command and what the result of that command should be, as well as a vision of how it is accomplished." Arc brought up a picture of a document, a diagram the Arboreal Maiden had also made use of while teaching him. In fact, it was more of an instruction manual and test for him, a goal to achieve while she could not offer tutege directly. "Obviously I don't know how that is done, but it should come to you with time."

  "Time . . . yeah." Donovan wasn't expecting to have the skill mastered overnight, but he would like to at least reach the starting line just about everyone else described - the manipution of Split being second nature. "I wish I had some more of that."

  "I fear you'd want even more if I gave to you." Donovan smiled in response to Arc's sarcastic remark. "In all seriousness, I don't believe this is something you should rush, regardless of whether or not that option is avaible. We know so little about how it functions I fear you might cause damage to your person I am not equipped to fix."

  "I don't think you'll have to worry about that quite yet. I've been following the Great Csilcra's instructions to the letter when it comes to strengthening my core, stripping away and discarding impurities before pushing it back in."

  "Impurities?"

  "Yeah, anything that doesn't feel, uh . . . I don't know how to expin it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't know how to describe an impurity." Donovan realized he was coming up on another point of disconnection with Arc. "Can your sensors derive any sort of qualitative data from its readings, or is it only quantity and concentration?"

  "Would 'it's complicated' suffice as an answer?"

  "That would depend on what makes it complicated." He wanted to know exactly what information Arc was getting. "How do those sensors work on a mechanical level?"

  "They are simir to cameras in that they are passive receptors focused on an area of space. They take an 'image' based upon some form of radiation that Split exudes. To my knowledge, this radiation is not blocked by any material or phenomenon, even those which inhibit the movement of Split, however it does not travel an infinite distance. It has it's own decay curve, reducing in intensity radially from its source the same way one might expect light or sound to as well as 'bleeding' strength as it moves through space. In order to get a complete picture, two sensors are required to determine the three dimensional location of a given reading, with a third needed to verify intensity based on retive decay. In order to provide a degree of redundancy and refine the date the Noah was equipped with six."

  Donovan thought about this expnation for minute, attempting to cognize the system mentally and rete it to something he knew more about. It didn't take long though, because it was eerily simir to a new sense he had been learning to use.

  "That's . . . that's just a lower order version of 'Split Sense', isn't it?" The name Donovan had come up with wasn't exactly creative, but there weren't any greco-tin pceholders that could adequately describe it. "When I, uh, 'see' Split, it doesn't look like a two dimensional projection of a three dimensional space like with my eyes. Instead, it's more like a three dimensional projection of a four dimensional space . . . or maybe it captures all four dimensions."

  "You aren't sure of this?"

  "I'm going to be honest, I don't know what a projection of four dimensions is supposed to look like in three dimensional space. The best I can equate it to is a heat map in three dimensions, sort of like what the sensors look at, but there's . . . more?"

  Arc wasn't responded, either incredibly confused by Donovan's 'expnation' or disappointed in his inability to expin something he should have a good grasp of. It was most likely a combination of both.

  "Okay, it's like I can see more information about a given . . . do we have a unitary term for Split?"

  "We do not."

  "Shit, um, it's sort of like I can tell more information from looking at Split than just 'it is there' and 'there is this much of it'. It has qualities beyond that, along the lines of color but not, you know, colors?"

  "I take it this is how you identify impurities?"

  "More than just that, but yeah." Donovan had given up. He cked the proper vocabury to expin what it was he experienced, and Arc cked the proper receptors to piece together what gibberish fell out of his mouth. He was basically trying to expin the concept of colors to a blind man. "Things just sort of look different."

  "I see . . . one more item on the list of experiments."

  "Oh, I should say that the fidelity with this sight is disturbingly good. If I really focus on it, deliberately reading what I'm 'seeing', I can tell what's going on through objects that would normally obscure vision, though I should say that only really applies to objects that have a, um, either lots of Split or specific qualities in the Split that occupies them. For example, it is incredibly easy to see people, or really any living creature with lots of Split."

  Donovan remembered how he made use of his unwitting subordinates to practice this skill of his, first working on his ability to detect and discern individuals based on the characteristics of their Split before trying to figure out how to 'image' them. Titanyana, by way of being the strongest and therefore clearest for him to see, was his 'model' for this skill. He took extra care not to 'undress' her with this sense, limiting the extent of his probing to the head and extremities until he felt confident he wouldn't 'see' anything he wasn't supposed to, something he had done on accident pretty early on.

  "Everybody seems to leak a bit of Split naturally, enough to 'stain' their clothing so I can see it, but I've noticed that metals are a lot harder to detect."

  "Is there a reason for that?"

  "Sanna was telling me that metals act as a natural diffuser of Split, and that the most effective method of disrupting Split Sorcery is a metal of some variety. If I remember correctly, Nickel is supposedly the most cost and weight efficient, being able to interrupt from a much greater distance, though it isn't the best at protecting from physical damage and have detrimental effects on your internal Split if worn for too long. Enough of it in an area can mess with the local flow or whatever, and it becomes impossible to weave something effective at eliminating masses of infantry."

  "Metals are diffusers of Split? As in, Split will not flow through metals?"

  "That's what I've been told."

  "That information is in complete contradiction to my understanding of the mechanics." A schematic appeared on screen, one Donovan had never seen before. "Much like with electricity, most metals are excellent conductors of Split, though the specifics are not fully known. The issue I suspect they have with metals is that their conductivity is not reguted or easily anticipated, like water flowing downhill or electricity following the path of least electrical resistance. It generally follows it's initial path through the metal, though testing suggested there is some degree of scattering, possibly as a result of impurities in the testing material or abnormalities in it's crystal matrix but there was not enough time to make a conclusion."

  "So what is this then?"

  "The Recursive Split Generator."

  "Our power supply?" It certainly looked like a reactor, not that he knew much about reactor design. His studies were more concerned with fitting a reactor with a known geometry and power output into the design of his vessels, not maximizing the efficiency of said reactor. "How does it work?"

  "Electricity is generated by a fluctuating magnetic field realized by the flow of Split through alternating yers of pure iridium and lithium iridate in a stasis state of superconductivity. An insignificant amount of Split is lost through this process."

  The diagram on screen zoomed in to dispy the component in question, the 'fiment' of yered iridium and lithium iridate was about a millimeter in diameter and almost ten meters in length, each yer being in the ballpark of tens of nanometers. Donovan didn't even want to imagine the number of yers, the time and energy needed to pressure weld those yers together, and how much of a pain it must have been to install them perfectly straight with minimal abnormalities. The fact there were almost a thousand of these fiments made him dizzy.

  A graph of the magnetic intensity and pority along the fiment showed a sinusoidal progression, but it was inconsistent. This problem seemed to have been solved by way of a multitude of coils wrapping the fiment rather than a single rge one, localizing the inconsistency of magnetic flux and stabilizing the overall amperage.

  "So how is Split generated and moved around?"

  "Referencing the nature of Split to pass straight through metals, millimeter thick wires of gold serve as pipelines. These wires are wrapped in a thick mesh of Split-saturated carbon fiber then fed through an iron pipe coated with zinc and cadmium, which is then filled with liquid mercury when the circuit is completed. The carbon fiber mesh is to protect the golden wire from reacting with the mercury to form an amalgam and dey the leaking of Split from the wire as Split tends not to travel into materials that are already saturated, carbon being the most workable of the Split retaining elements, followed closely by silicon. The mercury, zinc, and cadmium are there as a retardant and insutor, the group 12 metals impeding the movement rather than accelerating it. A simir external coating surrounds the fiments."

  From the diagram, Donovan could see that quite a bit of Split was being lost, an esoteric equation Donovan could not decipher suggested up to twenty percent bleed over the course of one p. Arc's 'real' loss statistics were a fair bit lower than that at four percent, likely a result of these wires being bundled together such that Split leaking from one conduit simply fed into another, but it was still a concerning amount.

  "Movement and generation are handled by the same component. The golden wire feeds into a quartz crystal lens with a cadmium iris aperture to regute output. This lens is compressed and an electric field is maintained across it, adding 'velocity' to the Split and focusing it at an inverted lens at the other end of a chamber holding hydrogen gas under extremely high pressure. For whatever reason, this environment causes Split to duplicate."

  "Well, we've already had to throw out energy and mass not being able to be created or destroyed, so . . ."

  "Which makes me that much more interested in how this is occurring! That being said, I don't think we will figure it out any time soon. As demonstrated, I clearly ck the ability to see everything going on with Split, and we are not even sure if you do either."

  "True, true . . ." Donovan looked over the machine in front of him, wondering how exactly any of this got figured out. He knew that the Captain and the Schor had a hand in it, describing some functions and fundamental concepts to Dr Helmsguard, but that didn't expin the incredibly rge step from 'we know absolutely nothing about this thing and it is actively trying to kill us' to 'we built a contraption that can create infinite energy' in less then a decade. "How did we even come up with this shit?"

  "I can recount the development history and research logs if you would like. It is rather interesting, from a progress point of view. I imagine it could help you understand Split at a theoretical level, even if it is of little use in the way you might use it."

  "Of course, yeah. Let's do that."