[A week after the servant summon.]
It had been a week since Alexander had summoned a version of Arthur Pendragon thanks to modifying the summoning ritual to a massive extent.
Alexander had made it a point to dump all kinds of information and knowledge on Artorius' head. He was having Rogers give the young man a lot of lessons on the modern world.
Alexander personally was focusing on programming his first AI that would be used to sort and parameterise information that he could use his [Read] spell on.
[Read/Write] were spells that he developed thanks to his origin. The first spell is [Digitize] or the conversion of matter or energy into data at the cost of magical energy. The second spell he had developed after attempting to convert data into matter or energy was [Digistruct]- a spell that fulfilled its intended function at the cost of prana. The only problem was that any object that was not a part of the world would act like a phantasm that gaia would erode making the copies weaker than the originals.
Alexander had already developed a way around the erosion but it would take the creation of both artificial prana generators and a functioning fusion reactor to make his plan work.
[Read] was his ability to read information that he perceived from a computer. It allowed him to learn large amounts of material in seconds while [Write] allowed him to add, manipulate and erase data from a computer almost freely.
[Read/ Write] effectively made Alexander a technopath while [Digitize/Digistruct] effectively allowed him free reign over matter and all conventional states of energy like heat, light, etc.
The greatest hurdle however at the moment was the lack of processing power and memory storage that limited his extraordinary capabilities in the software department.
Alexander already had his current hardware boosted through the use of runes and was looking seriously at the idea of playing around with Alteration, Runes, and Imaginary Number Elements to create something for it.
[1989]- [Two months later.]
In roughly six months after Alexander first found out about the existence of ORT in this world's South America.
When he had found out about the being's presence, Alexander had at first started cursing whatever being that had reincarnated him before he had decided to shift his plans.
Knowing how much of a monster the Types could be, he had thought of ways to stop the being from being awoken from its slumber. The easiest idea for Alexander had been to stop the coming of the promised time any way he could, but after taking human nature into consideration, he had realised that it would be impossible to stop the fight between Earth and humanity. And Earth would probably almost always decide to spite them in its death.
Alexander found himself on a part of his private island away from the mansion under some of the strongest bounded fields he could create using the mana in the world without the help of a leyline.
Alexander was currently looking at five small cuboidal pillars, all of which were firing small bursts of blue plasma at each other at varying intervals.
This was a functioning prototype for the World Engine Alexander had created. It was a computer that was completely removed from any modern technology.
They were arranged in a pentagonal way and the one at the top was the only one with a screen and a small keyboard on it. Even that was unnecessary seeing as Alexander did not need a visual output to receive information just he did not need a keyboard to input data.
The whole area around these pillars was covered with solar panels which themselves were layered with the Sowilo rune on top of them.
In the past two months, Alexander had done nothing but create the prototype's hardware followed with the assembly language to make use of said hardware.
And today, after sixty-three days of working around the clock neglecting his magecraft studies, Alexander had finished the most basic prototype of the world engine.
Alexander began the first test of many as "Activate world simulation program, Lucifael."
LucifaelV0.1 was simply a bare-bones AI that could execute instructions given by Alexander while also being the one that sorted and parameterised all data in the world engine so that Alexander could access information faster when he used the Write command.
'The Stein's World is running. Processor at 45% usage. Temperature steadily rising. Activating Maxwellian Coolers to reduce CPU temperatures.'-- As Lucifael sent this information through their technopathic link, the beams of plasma that carried information between the pillars increased in number and frequency while Alexander could see ice start to gather around the base of the pillars thanks to the coolers.
Alexander's circuits hummed even as he rapidly used read and write to communicate freely with the world engine's operating AI giving it simple test commands and receiving responses in return.
The world engine made use of runes , small mystic codes he had crafted and highly altered pieces of modern technology to emulate the functioning of a modern computer conceptually as closely as he could.
The machine used both mana from the world and electricity from solar panels to run itself, and the consumption was high enough that Alexander had to stop using it after thirty minutes of use so that the mana around the island did not drop to too low a level.
"So, is it working?"
Alexander jolted a little before he replied, "Yes it its working. Lucifael is actively sorting all sorts of data ranging from system analysis to even time flow in this new world of mine."
"So, you have succeeded in creating a world?" Artorius looked down right impressed and Alexander couldn't help but feel a bit of pride at that.
"A very limited and basic world that I can't make true use of as of this moment but once I have worked out the kinks within it, I should be able to do a lot of things. I don't think living things will be able to dive in until a year or two. And recreating mysteries will probably take longer."
'Waiting for Gaia Class Object Inputs for the reality dataset.'
"Its time for the digitization tests to begin. Wanna watch?"
Artorius nodded at his question, eager to see his master's spells in use.
Alexander picked up a small knife that he had bought up before performing a structural analysis on the object. He immediately followed the analysis with a write spell where he sent all the feedback of the spell to the Stein World for Lucifael.
'Data received. Waiting for gaia class object digitization to compare data and object.'
Alexander looked at the knife before using the digitize spell on it. The knife immediately broke down in blue motes of light that Alexander had to write into the Stein world's memory using a write spell.
'Gaia class object received. Matching data with object. Object designation created: Gaia-Matter-Knife01-NonPhantasmal. Waiting for atleast three hundred more gaia class object inputs for better gaia emulation.'
Alexander sighed before saying, "Damn, I hate repetitive work."
Artorius however smiled before saying, "All the hard work has paid of Alexander. Now you only need patience before you are successful. Be glad, according to the Kaleidoscope, you will be the first human being to recreate something close to a real world."
"Really? I know for a fact that even humanity is trying its hand at a virtual reality and I also know that they will probably succeed."
"That is what he said."
"Well, the man probably means how my world can actually influence the real world and the universe at large unlike the other cyberspaces."
".…still have trouble believing that humanity can create worlds now," Artorius shook his head with a smile.
'The world will always move on, huh.' Artorius never doubted it but the realisation still was always as bitter as the first time.
[Six months later.]- [1990]
It had been six months since Alexander had created the first prototype of the Stein World. The world engine had only gotten smaller and more energy-efficient.
While the AI that regulates it only got more 'alive' in the past six months.
Alexander had fed a lot of information and objects into Stein's world so that Lucifael could start to replicate how real world objects work.
Alexander had also started to make the AI smarter. It still followed several guidelines and rules but Alexander was slowly starting to reduce the number of chains he had wrapped around the artificial being. Though he also made sure that he could very much subvert any attempts of rebellion from his own creation.
Although Alexander would also be the first person to admit that the growth of Lucifael had helped him a lot. Projects that involved 3d printing, fusion reactors and nano-technology had already been finished with the help of the Stein World and Lucifael.
One would wonder how an AI could help with things that required actual mechanical, electrical and nuclear engineering but the problem had actually been solved by his ability to materialise data into the real world.
Lucifael had changed everything when it started sorting and assimilating all kinds of data that Alexander provided to him. Things like engineering, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, etc had become easy for the AI to work with.
The Stein's world was still only a library of non-mystical technology and knowledge based accessories that would grow until Alexander believed it could actually work as a reliable world for living and non-living beings.
Alexander and Artorius both found themselves in another empty corner of the island. They were here to test another of Alexander's ideas that Lucifael had brought to life.
Alexander and Artorius stood at the beach. Artorius was wearing a white vest and white pants while Alexander was wearing a white shirt and black plants.
Alexander pictured himself hitting the surface of a pool headfirst in a dive and his circuits jumped to life even as he said, "Encode. Read."
Immediately, he felt himself connecting to the world engine's storage drive, the supercomputer that he had miniaturised into a bracelet. The world engine required a lot of energy to run but Alexander had already found a solution to that problem three months ago.
As he connected to the storage drive, he immediately perused the section of the drive partition that he had already allocated for the acting as the library of objects he could materialise into the real world as phantasms.
The main processing unit of the bracelet was still switched off and both Lucifael and the Stein's World were frozen in time whenever the processor was turned off. The drive, however, was active anytime Alexander circulated his prana through the device so that both the mystic codes and runes could be powered to run the drive while also recharging the battery by converting any extra prana into electrical charge that could be used to operate processor without connecting to an external power source.
He brought up a single file that he knew to be a copy of the original before he said, "Digistruct."
The drain that took place was about twenty units of prana out of his thousand. Alexander had actually been surprised by the low prana cost but with time had come to realise that gaia seemed to deal with phantasms of mystery and non-mystical phantasms quite differently making Alexander more glad that he dealt in tech.
"This is brilliant," Alexander heard Artorius mutter as his friend/servant looked at the item he had summoned from Stein's world.