LA: Well, now I understand all the mysterious things you said in your first message. I've met Pnimm very thoroughly, I'm a decent hand at Source, and I've been studying the navigation of the Furthest Ring as much as I could given how little information there is on it.
LA: I'm very curious what it is you wanted to talk about.
CV: That was refreshingly quick.
LA: Well, I've been sitting on this mystery for three years, so let's hear it.
CV: Thank you for your patience. Am I right in thinking that at this point in time you've already sent Kuviu the primer for editing URWORLD's source code?
LA: As a point of clarification, Source is the foundation of the universe in general, not just the game we're playing.
CV: I struggle to understand how that's possible. Wouldn't you notice if your lives were filled with game abstractions? What would it be running on?
LA: What did you think Source interpreters did?
CV: Honestly, I thought it was just another of your bizarre alternate terms for mundane things like computers and electricity.
LA: No, the function of the interpretation assembly is to translate between Amdaian languages and Source--the words that were written to create the universe, or its true name if you like. They don't run anywhere, and they don't have any physical form other than, you know, the entire universe, but you can get angels to read parts of it to you. My specialty, when I was at home, was looking for physical evidence corresponding to fortuitous "values" of the Source clock that are helpful in agriculture.
LA: We even discovered that things like gravity and the movement of caloric are governed by equations through examining the Source, which is kind of crazy.
LA: But yes, I did send CC a short manual for how to read and write it.
CV: Are you telling me your civilization has always possessed the means to directly alter the fabric of reality?
LA: "Always" is a stretch, but yeah, we've had talismans since before we left Adma Cadma. It's only been easy for the last thirty years or so, though. Some scholars in Alez Aharoe discovered you could mechanize the translation, which made asking questions and receiving answers a lot faster.
LA: That's not what you wanted to talk about, though.
CV: It's not, though I'd like to hear more about it at some point. What I wanted to ask was how it's possible to navigate through the Furthest Ring.
LA: The question you should be asking first is how it's possible to move through the Furthest Ring.
LA: As far as Apoc and I have been able to ascertain, it's a place--if you can call it a place--where neither time nor distance has any meaning. It barely has any structure, and you can travel for aeons without actually getting anywhere or even moving at all.
CV: You're suggesting that we should make an alternate plan for escape?
LA: Not at all. The interesting thing is that an Empty hero should be able to interpret Kaos, to see it as it exists and judge what paths to take--but only a Stone hero can stabilize any part of it enough to travel through. Apoc referred to that as trailbreaking, because it requires shattering the substance of Kaos.
CV: I don't actually think my nebulously-defined Stone powers include "shattering the substance of Kaos."
LA: The substance of Kaos is uncertainty.
CV: That's not exactly substantial.
LA: Exactly.
CV: You seem to be having fun being cryptic and unhelpful.
LA: It's so unbelievably fun, as I'm sure you know, but let me take another stab at explaining. Your Aspect is substance and certainty. The Furthest Ring is the exact opposite, which is why Pnimm is well-suited to charting it but you're well-suited to destroying it to make a specific path. Small parts of it, anyway.
CV: All right. Do you happen to know where Pnimm is now? Ze disappeared some hours ago and I'm starting to worry that we won't find either zir or Ajact in time to bring them with us.
LA: Ajact's timeline ended just before they went to fight that super-shade thing, and Pnimm's ended when they finished their translation project. We can't see them any more, so it's up to you to find them for now.
CV: Fine. I'll seek an alternate source of information. If my Denizen is aligned with certainty as well, they may be able to help.
LA: I hope so. One more thing, since Kuviu's talked about it in your future.
LA: There's a way to travel without trailbreaking, which it seems like you're going to need--the catch is that it can only take you to one place. The very center of the Furthest Ring, where everything but everything winds up eventually, the Omphalos. Kuviu's power can speed that up.
CV: Why would we want to go there, if we could instead travel directly to your session?
LA: I don't know. Maybe it isn't actually possible to travel without going through there. But it seems like, for whatever reason, you didn't. But we found a good way to break a trail from the Omphalos, so just focus on figuring out how to do that for now.
CV: All right. Thank you for your help.
LA: No problem. It's pretty interesting, talking to you.
CV: Likewise.