Erianna nodded. “So on the one hand, we have the possibility that threads, as a result of being present in every interaction of magic with the material realm, and because every material interaction in our bodies must involve magic, contain information about every physical facet of our being but nothing more than that. Still enough to learn ‘material’ information from threads, but it doesn’t ascribe threads to be completely parallel to our entire existence. That is the diminished view of threads, owing to a… certain metaphysical attitudes towards consciousness.”

  “Strong emergence of consciousness,” Sam supplied, hoping he was right.

  Erianna shrugged. “But if we take the opposite view, which is that there isn’t anything about us besides the physical properties, then threads contain, literally, all information there is about a person.”

  “But what about magic? If there is a difference between the magical and physical proprieties of our body, does that mean that threads contain information that does not stem from our physical bodies?”

  “That depends on how you define your physical self. As I said, even the core is part of your physical existence, at least so far as it is in constant interaction with it. So in practice, no, every thread must correspond at least to some part of another physical entity. In theory… maybe. But again, that is not part of our lessons today or at all. Still, I understand where you’re coming from. You’re thinking, ‘OK, magic is magic and physical bodies are physical. They can’t be the same thing, so there must be something magical about my existence.’ Something like that, right?”

  “More or less.” Sam nodded.

  “It’s a common intuitive assumption. Even for people who didn’t grow up with… certain attitudes towards magic and how it manifests. But leaving the academic question aside, we can solve this problem really easily. Threads represent the interaction of magical entities one with another. The energy in your core with itself, with the parts of the core, your body, your pathways, the outside, and so on. They don’t represent single magical entities, the same way atoms would represent a single material entity. Or more accurately, the… what was it?”

  “Quanta?”

  “Right, the quanta represents a single material unit without anything working on it or with it. Or… you get the deal.”

  “Yes. And I’m starting to better understand the name. Threads… hence they must be connecting between something… Which raises the question…”

  “Only two things.”

  Sam leaned back. “And now I have a lot more questions…”

  “By all means. Take your time.”

  “Alright, so first, how exactly… from where… Fuck. How can there be so few threads? Every two magical entities must have threads connecting them, right? How can there be so few? Or is that we can only see the big ones? I mean, in theory, every atom in existence pulls on every other atom; that’s like… an infinite number of interactions. I don’t know, maybe that’s not how threads or magic works, but Farris did give that gravity analogy to explain how the Web connects to every one of us.”

  “That’s because the Web and you are in an interaction. You and some ningana on the other side of the Web aren’t in an interaction. There wouldn’t be any thread connecting you. And again, its magical entities that have threads connecting them one to another. It’s only interactions that contain magical energy. That’s why there aren’t a million billion threads. The physical interaction that results from my gravity pulling you and vice versa does not involve magic.”

  “But why? What differentiates between an interaction that has magical energy involved and a purely physical one?”

  “No one has a definite answer to that. One possibility, the simplest one—which would connect to something that we’ll talk about—is that these interactions do generate threads, but they are just so minute that we can’t see them. And yes, threads do have sizes, we’ll get to that. The other possibility is that the… quanta of magical energy, whatever it’ll be, is too big to interact with such a small material entity, or something along those lines.

  “A third is simply that certain interactions involve magic and others don’t, which is not really giving an answer, I know. But it does seem to make some intuitive sense, whatever that’s worth. Extrapolating from that, we have an argument about the quality of the interaction, rather than the size, and that only certain types of physical interactions result in magic being involved.

  “Whatever the right answer, the point is, I don’t know. And like every other thing that I didn’t know up till now, it means it’s irrelevant to your education and you shouldn’t worry about it.”

  Sam slowly exhaled. Then exhaled again. “I see. You think there will be any more of these irrelevant questions?”

  “Based on personal experience? I’m sure there will be.”

  “Alright, so I think this is still in relevant territory, but we’ll see. We’ve whittled down the number of threads from infinite to… something more manageable, I suppose. But that still seems to be a lot of threads, at least, a lot more than I… remember seeing. You said that there are… at least four? Interactions within my core. I assume my body has a lot more. I don’t know. This pathway interacting with that. All interacting with my core. Except, how are they interacting with my core? Wouldn’t they need to interact with the parts of the core itself, those interacting one with another? Don’t we break into some sort of infinite regression again? Every part of a… magical entity or physical entity that comes in contact with magical energy interacts with every other part? Like, OK, my atoms, no. My cells no. But my hands? My organs?”

  “Yes, and no.” Erianna smiled.

  “Please elaborate.” Sam rolled his eyes.

  “You’re thinking of threads as you would of… actually, I don’t know. Atoms, maybe? As separate building blocks? Whatever, doesn’t matter. The simple answer—literally simple, thankfully—is that threads stack one with another; they make themselves, naturally, into a greater whole. So, your parts of the core interact with one another, put together, the sum of those interactions, come to represent a single thread, your core—”

  “But what is that thread connected to? It can’t just exist by itself.”

  “It doesn’t, and it’s not. First, because it still represents the interactions between it and itself. But furthermore, the thread for your core is still connected to other objects, describing other interactions. Let’s say with the outside world, with your body, and so on.”

  “Alright… so how do the threads… making up my core, making up my body, come…” he suppressed a smile. “Come together into one big thread?”

  Erianna shrugged. “I know you’re not going to like this. But they just do. Maybe the magical energy that makes up certain entities has a marking of some kind, making the threads pull together naturally. Maybe it’s about proximity. The strength of the pull. We don’t know. But—”

  “Let me guess, it’s all academical, so it shouldn’t matter to me?”

  “Not as much. It doesn’t matter to anyone, at least… outside of theoretical thinking, because the smaller threads still exist. We can still see them. One of the major purposes of threads practice is to be able to break down threads into their smaller components. And to bunch up threads together.”

  “You can do that? How?”

  Erianna grimaced. “Well, one way is… if you’re a Ruler and… let’s not talk about that. I sort of misspoke. What I meant is that, while using our Sight, we learn to perceive certain threads in certain ways. We break down our core into its parts. Or we bunch up all of our body, which, by the way, is far from uniform, into a single thread. It’s not a real change, only a subjective one. So in essence, it doesn’t really matter how threads coalesce into one, because we can always, in theory, break them up into smaller components. That’s where the part about threads that are too small to see comes in. Maybe every thread we can see is made up of a million smaller threads, but… we just can’t see them.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Sam rubbed his temple. “OK, so if I were to open up my Threadsight right now. I’d see my core as one single thread, connecting to the outside, and to my body—”

  “Connecting to objects in your body and objects on the outside. But yes.”

  “What objects?”

  “That’s not important for us right now. Since your ultimate goal is to control those appearances as you see fit. And we’ll go over this stuff once we’ll start training your Sight, anyway.”

  “Ah… Fine. So, I’ll be able to see my core as a single thread… Why are doing that face?”

  Erianna straightened her comically exaggerated scrunch. “The core is a single thread for a base-proficiency Thread-Weaver, meaning a Later one. Your Sight will probably be developed enough to instinctively break down the core into different threads.”

  “Wait, but I thought that they coalesced naturally into a single thread.”

  “Yes, subjectively. For the base viewer.”

  “You’re enjoying this.”

  “I am.” She smiled. “Alright, in all seriousness, the joining of threads one into another is obviously not an objective change, otherwise we could not train ourself to break them up, or join them together. And when I say training, I mean two things: first our Sight itself, which pretty much translates to simply how good you can ‘see.’ And secondly, our ability to control our perception of threads, consciously control our ‘eyesight’, so to speak.”

  Sam stared at nothing for a few seconds, trying to get his thoughts in order. It took Erianna snapping her fingers in front of his face to bring him out of it. “OK…” He shook his head. “So, our perception of what threads look like is just that… perception. But our ability to look at threads isn’t. It’s actually there, it’s objective.”

  Erianna nodded. “Yes, you can control your subjective perception only so far your objective proficiency with the Sight allows.”

  “Does that work for… bigger threads? We haven’t really talked about threads sizes yet.”

  “So let’s do just that. We’ll start by answering your question. Yes. The more proficient you are with the Sight, the more threads you can see, of both sizes. With a few caveats. Let’s start with the big one, both meanings. You can always… ‘see’ a big thread if you can see its makeups. Let’s say the thread representing the Web’s interaction with itself. That’s pretty much the biggest thread there is and from that one, you have the smaller threads connecting each person to the Web. Of course, smaller is relative because that also happens to be the biggest thread for… I think it’s everyone. Maybe Chosen get a different rule, I don’t know. So let’s just say everyone.

  “But back to the Web itself. What does it mean that you can see it? Just that, you know that there’s a thread there. Nothing more. Theoretically, if you trained your Sight far enough, you’ll have the opportunity to be able to understand and read that thread like you do other threads. But that’s just one facet of bettering your Sight, and it works with conjecture to the other one: breaking down threads. Going by the Web example, in order to break down the big thread of the Web, you first need to understand it, i.e. be proficient enough, and then you need to be even more proficient in order to break it down.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “But why can’t I break down the big thread into smaller threads if I understood it?” Sam asked. “If I can already break down my much smaller core into smaller components?”

  “That’s where the sight analogy…” She smiled. “Breaks down.”

  Sam nodded reluctantly. “Waited for that, huh?”

  “Of course. So, why doesn’t the analogy work? Because the size of threads isn’t what makes them harder or easier to understand. It’s their complexity. Rule of thumb goes that the bigger a thread is, the more complex it is. And it’s generally true. But think of your universal translator, for example, I can tell you that it’s a tiny thread. Of course, we can’t understand it for shit because it’s complexity is literally out of this world. But back to your question, if you can already understand a big complex thread, why do you have to work even harder in order to break it down?

  “Think of it… like a video game. I’m serious, that’s actually a good analogy. We have a video game simulating politics, alright? Now, going from a simulation of a single country to the whole world, while staying at the same level of understanding, same gameplay complexity, is orders of magnitude harder, right? We need stronger hardware, better software, everything. But it’s the same gameplay, just on a grander scale, meaning the same level of understanding you can derive from a ‘smaller’ thread, you can now derive from the ‘big’ thread.”

  “Ah.” Sam nodded. “And if we want to make the simulation more complex, say break politics into economical and social components, we need to make to make the resolution smaller. We take the big thread of the entire world, but now we have to split it into more computations. Requiring even more hardware and software improvements.”

  “Exactly. Of course, the smaller threads aren’t actually more complex than the big thread. It’s simulating them, that’s harder, breaking them down. In most cases, if you understood a big thread completely before breaking it down, you’ll be able to understand all of its parts as well.”

  “So it’s possible to break down a thread without understanding it?”

  “Yes, but that’s more in the realms of practice. Think of it like this: breaking down a thread just requires good Sight; software and hardware. But understanding it requires thought—a smart player behind the keyboard.”

  “OK, so how do we actually practice improving our Sight? And to think better?”

  “Later.” She smiled. “Now we need to go over a crucial difference between different people while using their Threadsight. Why you’ll have an easier time understanding certain threads, while I’ll have a harder time understanding those same exact threads. And vice versa.”

  Sam struggled for a few seconds to comprehend what Erianna had just said. Then it dawned on him, and possibly answered a different question that he had kept hidden inside of him since the day he got here. “So there’s a difference between people’s innate ability to understand the same thread? Certain types of threads respond more… easily? to certain people?”

  “Not certain people, but to one particular individual. The difference stems from the two types of threads: Internal threads and external threads. And they are… well, they’re not exactly what they sound like if we’re going by our previous examples of what the singular thread of the core is. Internal threads don’t mean threads which do not have any other thread making them up, i.e. they are not the quanta thread, but rather threads which are wholly internal to the individual. To their consciousness.”

  “OK, up till now I was alright with us not defining consciousness and working around it, but this doesn’t seem like it’s going to be the case anymore.”

  Erianna smiled, but gave a small shrug. “I know, but you’re just going to have to try. The deeper discussion of the topic, both philosophical and… scientific, is… not only irrelevant, but it’s also really fucking convoluted and out of both my interests and expertise.

  “But let me finish, internal threads are those threads which describe interaction between entities in what your mind considers your body. And, yes, you might not know what the boundary is, but your mind does, your magical subconsciouses does. You can’t trace magic outside of your body. You might think you can because there’s a foundational tracing for that, but you can’t. What that tracing does is make the object you’re tracing through behave like an extension of your body, magical-properties wise. Leveled can’t externalize their magic. Only Rulers and Chosen can.

  “Which means that there is an objective definition of what counts as our body from a magical perspective. And our mind, at least the parts of it that operate the Threadsight, are aware of that definition. They are aware of the difference between external and internal. Maybe aware isn’t the right word, but whatever the case is, the plain facts are that internal threads exist. Not only because we can follow them back to interactions which can be reasonably conceived as internal to ourselves. But mainly because there is a major observable difference in our powers of perception when it comes to internal threads.

  “Plainly speaking, I can’t understand your internal threads, and you wouldn’t be able to understand mine. In fact, it’s much more than that. Most likely, I wouldn’t even be able to see most of your internal threads.”

  Sam blinked. “Meaning… there is someone who could see my internal threads?” he asked.

  “Some of them. The less complex ones. Think of internal threads as adding a really big multiplication of complexity. And somehow your own subconsciouses takes that away. They behave as really complex threads to anyone who isn’t you. But just like we can see other complex threads, a trained enough Sight could see them, and with even more training, understand them.”

  “Alright, so you differentiated again between ‘see’ and ‘understand.’ Does that mean that complexity and not just size determines whether we can see a thread?”

  “Of course. Think about it. You can’t see the threads making up a big singular thread, because they are complex enough to make up that big thread. Because they naturally coalesce into the larger thread, a thread that you can’t make heads or tails of. Back to the game analogy: you don’t know that there’s a trade tab because it’s hidden in the economy section and you’re still stuck in the main menu.”

  “So what other internal threads are there? That you can see on other people?” Sam asked.

  “The biggest one is… your mind or consciousness. But let’s not get into that right now. Let’s focus on something a little… not exactly easier to explain, but more pertinent. The thread describing the relationship between you and me, the sum of our interactions. Here, by the way, is another place were the size of a thread, and not its complexity, comes into play in our ability to see threads. Imagine you had a minor interaction with someone, just hello and goodbye. Does that thread exist? Even Rulers wouldn’t be able to see it.”

  Sam frowned, barely registered her last words. “But wait… Why is the thread representing our relationship, or any relationship, an internal thread? And shouldn’t it be a part of my… mind? Shouldn’t every thread be?”

  “Because our relationship”—she winked at him—“has three facets, right? Your… let’s say, opinion of me, my opinion of you, and our interactions with one another in the external realm. All three of those are threads, making up the thread describing the relationship between me and you. Now, sure, the internal threads in that equation do mostly fall under the big internal thread that is your mind. But not in their entirety. And it doesn’t matter whether they do, because threads can be a part of two bigger threads at once.”

  “Ah… So why can you see my internal thread, then? If it’s… mostly a subset of my very complex mind thread?”

  “Easier to break down a set of three than a set of hundred, right? Think about this logically. I can see the big thread representing our relationship. If I can break it down into separate parts, and I can, as would you, I can easily isolate two items of that set, right? My own internal threads, and the completely external thread. So whatever remains must be your internal threads.”

  “And by the way, I’m only talking about seeing threads, not understanding them. The complexity of seeing internal threads is nowhere near the complexity of understanding them. And even our own subjective advantage doesn’t carry us past the finishing line. For example, there isn’t a single internal thread that I can see that I can understand.”

  Sam chuckled. “That actually makes me feel better. I was getting kinda stressed about the idea of people being able to… understand themselves. To do something even years of therapy, meditation, and constant self-introspective thought only aim to achieve… Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I care about this being a ‘shortcut.’ Everything’s a shortcut in life. It’s just the thought of being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘huh, so that’s who I am.’ Absolutely fucking terrifying.”

  “Really?” Erianna shrugged with a smirk. “Can’t say I commiserate. I’ve always been able to look at the mirror and see myself for who I was, and who I am. Threadsight or no Threadsight. Well, actually, no Threadsight.”

  “Wow. You’re that good?”

  “Just so.”

  Sam smiled and gave a sigh while rubbing his temple. Looking back up at Erianna, he said, “Alright, let’s keep going.”

  She nodded. “So we’ve covered internal threads. We’re left with external, obviously.”

  “Wouldn’t they just be every thread that isn’t internal?”

  “Sure, but we haven’t really talked about what threads are, right? I know you’ve been keeping that question up your sleeve, so let’s have it.”

  “I’m not keeping anything up my sleeve. I asked you plenty of times already how could Farris transmit information to my brain, and how he could gleam information from me.”

  She waved him off. “So let’s talk about how Farris made you hear words. Really simple, and there are actually a couple of ways to do that. First, manipulate your ears to hear that sound. Completely physical and thus requiring a low proficiency with the Sight and manipulating threads. Farris didn’t do that, obviously, because you heard the voice inside your head. The second is really fucking hard, and it’s to directly modify the threads that correspond to your thoughts. Farris couldn’t’ve done that. Not only does it require really high proficiency in all aspects of threads, but also some very advanced knowledge of the human brain. Third option, forcefully insert a thread into the big internal thread that represents your consciousness.

  “That’s what he did. You create a thread with a certain information, in this case, words, and a function, to echo in a person’s mind. Doing this is, of course, much more complicated, but technically, that’s all he did.”

  Sam bit his tongue with a scrunched face. “But what does it mean to create a thread? Where does he create it from? And from what?”

  “From himself. Rulers are… different from normal people. Their threads are… they don’t behave the same. Let’s leave it because this is to do with Rulers, meaning not only do I not know these things for certain, but we’re not allowed to talk about them. The point is, he manipulated his own magical being, his thread or threads, into connecting with your mind.”

  “So it’s like transmitting a virus through a USB?”

  “Yes. But I really don’t like that analogy.”

  “Trust me, neither do I. It stinks. But it does help me somewhat. Going back to our own thread connecting us. Can we look at that thread as a bulky old cable that anyone can see? But inside it, are three extra cables, one with pretty basic encryption, and two with much stronger but with a backdoor based on the person?”

  Erianna nodded after considering for a second. “Yeah, that works.”

  “Alright, so what information do the cables actually carry?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk about. But you said we already went over everything to do with threads.”

  He stuck his tongue out at her. “External threads. Explanation. Pronto.”

  “It’s actually more an explanation of threads in general. But let’s stay on external for a while longer. Fortunately enough, the best way to understand external threads is just like you said, as simply any thread that isn’t internal. So, if internal threads correspond to the magical interactions that occur inside our own selves. External threads are anything outside of it. But, that doesn’t mean that everything you do that isn’t internal creates an external threads. From where threads are concerned, if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, then there was no sound, because no external thread was generated.”

  “So external threads still have to do with being perceived by a different subject? They’re not objective?”

  “They are objective, but they can only correspond to magical interactions. If I left the room and you whispered, ‘I hate Erianna,’ that would only affect your internal part of our connected thread. I wouldn’t hear it, and more importantly, neither would anyone else. And without anyone else to partake in that interaction, there would be no change in the external thread. External threads must correspond to an interaction between two magical entities that occurred outside of their magical self.”

  “OK, but I’m always connected to the Web, right? Why doesn’t it count as a participant?”

  “How do you know that it doesn’t? No one can decipher the thread connecting them to the Web. Maybe that information is hidden there. At least, that’s one way to look at it. The other is much simpler: you’re not interacting with the Web. Or to be more accurate, you’re not modifying your interaction with the Web when you utter that information. Remember, the Web isn’t your classic physical entity. Just because you’re connected to it, it doesn’t mean that it’s actually pulling you towards it. You saying something doesn’t generate anything for the Web to work upon. Of course, it might modify your internal thread to the Web, but just like the external one, no one can understand it.”

  “Wait. The thread connecting me to the Web also has internal and external parts?”

  “Pretty much all natural threads have both. After all, even if you’re not… mindful of anything to do with the other entity, it still asserts influence on your magical self, which almost always results in interactions located completely within you, and thus in an internal thread. Let’s not get into artificial threads for now, though, alright?”

  “So what does that mean? That I would have an easier time understanding my own internal thread with the Web than the external one?”

  “Like I said, that’s not always necessarily true. Internal threads have an inherent complexity that doesn’t disappear completely just because of our subjective advantages. Although… in this case, maybe? I don’t know. Internal threads are really fucking complex, and not at all the focus of our study or practice. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was theorized that we’re not even aware of most of our internal threads, that they’re too small for us to sense them, part of threads too complex to break down.”

  Sam smirked. “This brings to mind a joke or two. About something that’s too small to sense and yet prone to breaking down.”

  “Well…” Erianna shrugged. “We can deal with that later. But trust me, your self-confidence can wait.”