When Arnold’s eight-legged body started blurring, Ves and Ranya knew they were about to witness something special.
The sensors pointed at Arnold couldn’t really make sense of what was happening. They registered the blur and detected a number of odd fluctuations in numbers that weren’t supposed to wobble in the first place.
Unlike Ranya, Ves had no fancy lab equipment to help him measure and record the details that he wished to examine. He had to rely on himself to perceive what Arnold attempted to accomplish.
Just before the arganid’s body started to blur, Ves already perceived the small exobeast exciting something from his head. This pretty much proved that his latest acquisition was definitely performing some sort of spiritual trick as opposed to activating a purely racial ability that every arganid clisenta possessed!
Ves perceived a lot of new sensory input that he had never come in touch before. His curiosity spiked even higher as he became incredibly eager to see what Arnold could accomplish that other spiritual entities could only dream of. As the spiritual activity from the blurring body rose to a crescendo, it seemed as if something drastic was about to take place!
Both humans held their breaths, only for Arnold’s body to stop blurring and come into plain view again.
The arganid innocently blinked at Ves as his body came to a complete rest.
“…”
“…That’s it?” Ranya whispered.
Ves scratched his head.
Ranya shuffled her posture.
Several deflating seconds went by. Ves kept his spiritual senses active, yet he detected no lingering spiritual activity. Arnold’s spirituality had grown a little weaker. This was a clear indicator that the little exobeast expended his energy somewhere, but right now it wasn’t clear what had happened.
“This.. is this a joke?” Ranya asked in confusion.
“No. I don’t believe so. Something has definitely happened, but not all applications are straightforward. We can’t make any conclusions unless we carefully study the data. I suggest we comb over the sensor and scanning data and mark out any parameter that has spiked.”
Ves and Ranya proceeded to do so. They did not bother with calling up projections but directly fed the data feeds into their implants in order to process them faster.
Even though the incident only lasted for a dozen seconds or so, scores of different sensors had made very detailed observations of every single moment. This amounted to entire libraries worth of raw data!
The normal way to process this excess data was to have an AI or algorithm look for abnormal patterns or to pin down a time interval where the most notable event took place.
This was not quite possible because neither Ves nor Ranya knew what they should be looking for. When Arnold’s body blurred, the sensors already recorded a heap of abnormal data, but much of it only explained the most superficial phenomenon.
What the pair of observers wanted to know was the root cause as well as the ultimate effect of Arnold’s confounding ability.
Ves was unused to parsing through the types of data that Ranya’s lab had recorded. They measured all kinds of biological parameters that he wasn’t familiar with. He didn’t know what was normal, what was abnormal and what kind of measuring stick he should use.
It didn’t help that the arganid physiology diverged substantially from the human norm! Mech designers like Ves weren’t trained to take all of the changing variables into account.
Fortunately, Ranya was a trained exobiologist. Accounting for the unique properties of highly unusual alien creatures was as easy as breathing to someone of her profession.
After analyzing all of the data, she eventually collected some unusual observations that might give them a clue of what took place.
She tapped Ves on his shoulder. “While I cannot say for certain whether Arnold’s extraordinary nature is responsible for these unusual readings, I think they are highly suspect.”
Ves took a look at the snippets of sensor readings that she marked out for him. They pointed out something very odd.
When Arnold’s body blurred, his body actually stayed completely normal. His blood circulation, his body heat, his neural activity and countless other parameters remained normal.
The only signs of elevated activity was a slight increase in heat radiating from Arnold’s head.
Yet why did Arnold’s body blur in the first place?
The explanation was simple. The optical sensors detected multiple instances of Arnold superimposing over his original body!
It was as if someone attempted to project multiple images of someone at the same coordinates as the original!
This was generally seen as an amusing trick that didn’t do anything. The projected images that overlapped in the same coordinates only jumbled together without doing anything except confusing someone’s vision.
Ves couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. Was that it? After all this anticipation, was Arnold capable of doing nothing more than conjuring up an optical illusion of himself?
“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Ranya voiced her opinion. “I believe that Arnold here is constrained by the cage that is keeping him in place. Let’s give him some more room before trying again. Maybe there is more to these illusions than we thought.”
“That’s a reasonable suspicion.” Ves slowly nodded as he accepted her logic. “Arnold is a little tired, though. I think he can only pull off his ability a single more time before he needs to rest.”
“Squeak squeak.”
“Yeah, I thought so. I know you are tired but please show your worth properly this time. Don’t hold anything back. I can give you a brand new life where you don’t need to starve anymore. We will be bringing food to you. Doesn’t that sound great?”
“Squeak!”
He knew this offer would attract the simple exobeast. Arnold lived most of his life running away from bigger arganids and other potential predators while waiting for days and weeks for prey to run in his section of the cave network.
The prospect of having food delivered to his doorstep whenever he felt hungry was too irresistible to a creature that had never lived a complex life.
Ves found it odd that Arnold did not even show any doubt or skepticism. The exobeast was far more naive than anticipated.
It would be just like raising Goldie!
Of course, Ves wasn’t willing to go through all of this trouble for any spiritual entity. If all Arnold could do amounted to summoning a couple of weak optical illusions that could easily be replicated by a projection device, then Ves was more inclined to butcher the arganid so that he could use the harvested spirituality as an ingredient.
As Ves contemplated whether he should butcher or raise Arnold, Ranya soon completed her adjustments.
Arnold was no longer pressed into place. He was able to move a couple of meters in every direction. For a while, the easily-distracted arganid reveled in his ability to waddle his six functioning limbs!
“Ahem!” Ves coughed. “Don’t forget what I asked you to do. Please demonstrate your ability again. Impress me. The more powerful it is, the more food you get. You don’t want to starve to death, right?”
“Squeak squeak squeak!”
Arnold became so motivated that he began to activate his ability straight away. Ves could see that the exobeast was putting in a lot more effort than before.
“Look! His body is blurring again!”
As Arnold’s body blurred, Ves could perceive more clearly that the alien’s original body remained in place. What actually showed up were more than a dozen different intangible images that only existed for a fraction for a second before disappearing.
“They’re moving!”
The different images no longer disappeared once they stepped outside Arnold’s body. Fifteen different copies of the exobeast started to waddle in different directions. They moved to the sides of the expanded cage before stopping.
“Give him more space! Quick!”
Even though it wasn’t entirely safe to do so, Ranya grew curious as well. She quickly activated the command that caused the energy screen to expand further. Once that happened, the images proceeded to take advantage of the freed space and spread out even further.
Something was obviously suspicious about these illusionary bodies. They walked in a jerked and accelerated fashion as if someone was watching a recording at 1.5x speed. While that made the fake Arnolds look wrong at first glance, they were able to traverse faster than the original.
“The extra bodies are fake.” Ranya spoke with certainty. “They don’t displace any air, they don’t emit any heat or other signals and they don’t exert any weight on the floor. What’s strange is that they can’t pass through the energy screen for some reason.”
That did not sound good. If this was the extent of what Arnold could do, then he wasn’t worth investing in. Ves was already starting to think about what he would do with the ingredient he could harvest from Arnold’s body.
Should he use it as an ingredient for a new spiritual product or should he use it as an augment of one of his existing ones? Even though Arnold’s ability was a little lackl.u.s.ter, it could produce a remarkable result when combined with other abilities.
After 40 seconds, the phantom bodies began to destabilize. Arnold was no longer able to maintain them. As they all faded out of existence, only a single Arnold was left.
“What?”
“Huh?”
For a small period of time, there were 16 versions of the arganid in the testing area. Ves expected 15 of the fake bodies to disappear while the original stayed in place.
What actually happened was that the original disappeared at the same time as 14 phantom bodies.
That left only 1 phantom body in place. Yet was it really a fake?
Ranya gasped as she double-checked the data. “He’s real! The Arnold that is left is the actual one!”
“What?!” Ves rubbed his eyes as if there was something wrong with his vision. “How? I thought for sure the Arnolds that had spread out were fake.”
“According to all of our sensor readings, that is true. I’m pretty certain that if someone were to attack the Arnold in the center, he would get wounded for real. It’s just that upon the moment where all of the fake Arnolds disappeared, the real one seemed to have taken one of its places!”
“..What happened to the original Arnold, then?”
“I’m not sure. This is too new for me. I have to study the data a bit further.”
Ves looked at Arnold in a brand new light after this little demonstration. The arganid looked awfully tired and hungry. Fortunately, Wexal Park already supplied the Larkinson Clan with a shipment of food that was tailored to the arganid clisenta species.
After Ves called for a bot to bring in a meal for the exobeast, Ranya revealed even more befuddling information.
“I did not detect any rapid movements from the original Arnold or his false bodies. The real body just seemed to… take the place of a copy.”
“Did you detect any tangible signs of teleportation?” Ves inquired. “I would have expected some air to be displaced at least.”
“That’s the thing.. that didn’t happen. It was.. it was as if the false Arnold in the corner was the real one all along while the Arnold in the center had always been fake.”
???
Ves looked perplexed at Ranya.
“Don’t ask me. I’m trying to interpret the data as best as possible, but there are some contradictory elements in it that really don’t make sense when put together.”
What did all of this mean? What was Arnold’s actual ability? Which of his bodies were real and which ones were fake?
Ves had no idea!
He was practically tearing his hair out as he studied the same portions of inconsistent data that Ranya had just pointed out. The contradictory readings just made him even more confused.
He turned around and looked at Lucky. “Do you know what’s going on, buddy?”
“Meow.”
