After the... incident with the box, I decided to focus my attention on a different piece of technology:

The Staff of Life.

In game, you could only use 42 of them, and that seemed to hold out here, too. Guess Steve was a fan of Douglas Adams.

I made a rule right then to not use any of the staves until I figured out how to make more of them, otherwise I might never succeed in replicating in them.

My first attempts at this were, well, embarrassing: whenever I tried to analyze the system, even with a scanner, it didn't work. The scanner seemed to recognize it for a moment, then it just fizzed out. It was like something was actively interfering with my efforts to understand it.

This led me to try and examine the staves to see if they emitted any signals when I tried to scan them. Odds are, they were the things interfering with my scanning ability.

It turned out that I was right: when I tried to scan it after the other sensors were activated, I detected a counter signal, which cause my analysis signal to dissipate. Looks like the guys who made these didn't want to let their tech fall into the wrong hands.

Well, if at first you don't succeed, try again.

Now, normally, that would be a stupid idea if something is actively opposing your actions, but I wanted to see just how the counter signal worked. My own scanner had, for lack of a better term, a 'tuner' that let me change how the object was being scanned. Maybe if I tuned it differently, it could examine the staves.

Unfortunately, it turns out the staves adapted to the signal used against them, and quite fast at that, because ever time I changed the signal, they would change the countersignal.

The last time I tried scanning, I randomly shifted signals mid-scan to try and beat the counter signal. It responded by adapting just as fast.

Alright, fine. You win this one, staff.

I decided to drop trying to replicate the Staff of Life for now. I had a feeling I was just wasting my time and that whoever made the staff probably didn't want it abused.

That didn't stop me from trying to examine the staff in less invasive ways. While my attempt to scan in for replication had failed miserably, perhaps just examining it to see what kind of signals it emitted would yield fruit.

I started with thermal scans. Aside from the fact that it emitted a fair amount of heat, nothing.

Alright, switching to radio.

Just white noise.

Gamma?

Nothing. Good.

UV: just a hint.

Microwaves: nothing.

Alright, time to go to electrical and then call it a day.

Good thing I decided to finish with electrical: it lead to some interesting revelations.

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When the scan came back, I found out that there were five major areas of electrical charge within the staff of light. Further scans confirmed they were present in all of the staves. Apparently, they were sending pulses between each other, and very fast. Like, speed-of-thought fast.

They were sure sending a lot of impulses between each other...

And then they stopped transmitting.

They were still online and emitting readings, it was just that they had stopped sending pulses between each other.

Hmm...

Well, that was something to think about.

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Unlike my efforts to understand the staves, my efforts to examine the rest of the spore tech was easy. Pitifully so. I was really looking forward to having to work to understand them.

Which left me with nothing else to do, besides get ready for the next universe and maybe put some colonies for my creations in my hub universe.

The colonies really weren't a hassle, so I decided to prepare for travelling to the next universe.

As I began charging up the portal, though, I suddenly found myself receiving a new message.

It read as follows:

The road ahead is long, and has many hurdles. Alone, you will never reach its end.

So take this and use it to grow stronger.

-?

Confused, I checked to see where it came from, and was stunned by the results: it had originated from the object in the box.

Looks like something important had happened.

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While I did invest a considerable amount of thought to both the object and the electrical anomalies in the staves, I really think I should have focused more on the object. It ended up being way more important than I expected it to be.

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AN: Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!