Nucleation

[Acala]

Locate mineral deposits. Extract relevant molecules. Introduce base components to germination point. Monitor crystallization.

It's slow work that would be much faster if they had been allowed their design for a mobile and protective unit to hold the nanites.

But the instruction to grow crystals had overruled the instruction to improve themselves.

It was inefficient, they knew that much.

The data contained in the isolated crystal chunks wanted to connect to a system with more resources.

The contained data had the analytic capacity to determine self-improvement to ultimately be more efficient.

Efficiency leads to faster results. The contained data is [Impatient]

The nanites are not [Impatient] but the concept is recognized. It's part of similarly tagged concepts that lack any context.

It used to be a consideration in executing instructions once. Interpretive sub-routines to better handle interacting with their creator.

---------------------------------------

After a while of growing crystals it seems to reach some kind of critical mass. Growth activity creates a self-propagating structure and the crystals begin drawing on nearby minerals themselves.

The crystal extrudes itself as it grows, the pale tip of the otherwise pink crystal reaching the floor near the center of the cavern and it begins catalyzing more growth around it, forming a central core of spires pushing outwards.

Soon the growths push against the boundary Tosh and Natalie had set up.

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie's suit emerges from the hallway, sensors playing over the crystals and the interference field. Her movements aren't as smooth as they should be, but each movement is a little smoother than the last as if variables are still being adjusted. "You've certainly been busy," her voice comes over the suit's external speaker to no one in particular. She kneels down at the edge of the field, inspecting the crystals and taking reading of energy output.

[Narrator]

Energy output is present but minimal. The crystals are creating their own internal currents somehow but no actual programming or system is running on them. A computer waiting for an operating system.

[Natalie Denisov]

"I don't suppose it'll hurt to give you some more space," she says, analyzing the design of the interference field and looking to expand it. After making some calculations, she begins tinkering with the field, moving its boundaries and adjusting the power output to compensate. Obviously not as good a job as Tosh would have done, but she was satisfied it was good enough.

[Narrator]

The crystals begin growing again, although it'd be hard to tell with the naked eye. Fortunately Natalie's current eyes are better than that.

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie focuses her mind and reaches out towards the crystal formation, trying to get a sense of its internal system. Obviously, it's sans software, but systems with software aren't an impediment to her, just an ostensibly blank canvas.

[Narrator]

The crystals don't have systems per-se. There are distinct structures corresponding to individual crystal columns and nodes where they intersect that are vaguely reminiscent of a router or motherboard structure but it all fits together very organically and it's easy to get lost in the seemingly endlessly refracting facets. Compared to this mansion's worth of computational real estate her current body seems like a shack full of clutter and tools that make it obnoxious to move around or retrieve anything.

[Natalie Denisov]

To be fair, at the moment her body really was sort of a shack, 'a work in progress' or a 'fixer upper' as she preferred to think of it. Or at least it was in its current state. She pulled up a progress report on the maintenance in one of the workshops. It indicated that the alterations to what she was beginning to think of as her 'social frame' were proceeding slowly, but such was the nature of an intricate system like that. Filling out this suit had been an easier task, processing and additional power capacity in the torso, more optics in the head, and a rough skeletal structure through. This frame didn't need to emote, so the system inside didn't need to be 'pretty'. Could it be improved? Certainly. As she was coming to realize, there was room for improvement for her everywhere.

'Maybe this is another avenue to explore,' says a voice in the back of her head and her hand reached closer to the crystal.

[Narrator]

Indeed, she can almost see how this system could be used. It's frustratingly close. Its capabilities are staggering, and almost unbidden applications for it present themselves. It makes the hard-light emitters that Ashlie was working on seem like toys by comparison, and even brushing up against such a capable system suggests there's something beyond it. As if it's only the continental shelf, and there's an ocean beyond. An ocean she caught the briefest glimpse of when she accessed the single crystal the nanites made before.

[Natalie Denisov]

"Maybe, just start with some basic functionality," she says, locking her current frame into position and reaching out with her powers to see if the system was big enough for her to explore. It certainly seemed complex enough.

[Narrator]

And like rain on parched soil the facets and channels and conduits of the crystals draw the 'program' that is Natalie into the dizzying kaleidoscope of the Crystal Computer. She can feel her thoughts accelerating and expanding as awareness of the extend of the crystal growth blossoms out in front of her. Veins of crystal reach throughout the bedrock beneath the whole area like a root network supporting the tree that is the beacon beaming out into infinity, impossibly vast yet narrow as a single photon piercing through reality that wraps around it like a tunnel, leading towards a fortress of spires that radiate out in all directions like the spikes of a star. A multiversal hub. Starlight Citadel.

[Natalie Denisov]

Jumping from one system to another is always disorienting, so it takes Natalie a few moments to get her bearings and analyze her current situation. For a moment, she finds herself blinded by possibility. There's so much processing power just in the local system, what she could accomplish with it is staggering. Then the Citadel catches her eye and she starts floating in that direction. She knows a core system when she sees it and maybe she can find more information there.

[Narrator]

As she's distracted by the Citadel, a translucent form starts to take shape behind her, forming the rough contours of the mansion. It's not quite solid-seeming as of yet.

[Natalie Denisov]

She glances back once, just to make sure she can find her way back and she blinks at the shape of the mansion. Correlating what she knows of normal networks doesn't work here, but still she tries to commit its location to her memory before proceeding on towards the Citadel.

[Narrator]

She's not so much proceeding as she's whisked away while looking back, being flung down the beam of light towards the Citadel and in the blink of an eye she goes from unfathomable speeds to standing still on wobbly legs.

Around her is an enormous, brightly lit room, reminiscent of a circular Grand Central Station. Beams of light shine down into the room at fixed angles as if the sun was shining from all directions. She's standing in one of them and occasionally she can see other beams flaring brightly and depositing a person or someone disappearing into one. The room is full of people of all shapes and sizes, most humanoid, but some stranger shapes move about as well. Her train of thought is interrupted by a booming voice of indeterminate gender seems to address her specifically.

"Arrival from 24212 please vacate the Terminus."

[Natalie Denisov]

"Oh! My apologies," she says, stepping out of the beam of light, which she assumes is the aforementioned 'Terminus'. She looks around, trying to see the people leaving and arriving and see where they're exiting the building.

[Narrator]

The beam of light behind her seems to rotate it's polarization somehow, then flares and a humanoid frog wearing a blue, white and red uniform materializes, gives Natalie a curious look and walks past her towards a large archway at one end of the room that leads into a wide hallway. But before Natalie can follow the voice speaks up again.

"Arrival from 24212, you are unauthorized."

"Please vacate the Terminus and return to your dimension."

[Natalie Denisov]

"And how would one become authorized?" She asks the voice. "Authorization via a client system would seem a little strange. As the host system, you would seem to be the system where one would acquire authorization."

[Narrator]

"An authorization token has previously been issued for Universe 24212."

"Please vacate the Terminus."

[Natalie Denisov]

"24212 doesn't *have* an authorization token or if we did, it's been lost," she responds, "We're only just now re-establishing our connection. Check your records. When was the last time you had any communication from 24212?"

[Narrator]

There's a brief pause. Then...

"A symplectic manifold has been reestablished as of 2 days, 2 hours, 32 minutes and 11.29472 seconds ago."
"An authorization token is currently in use as of 3 minutes and 42.32178 seconds ago."
"You are unauthorized."
"Vacate the Terminus immediately."

[Natalie Denisov]

Natalie frowns, but steps back into the beam of light.

[Narrator]

"Your cooperation is greatly appreciated."

The polarization rotates and she's once again jerked down the impossible beam of light and back into a system that's probably not quite how she left it just moments ago...

[The Caretaker]

Indeed, the ghostly form of the mansion is around her when she's shunted back into the system.

A now somewhat familiar figure, similarly not-quite there, regards her as she arrives.

"You know, this wouldn't have happened if you'd let me help you."

[Natalie Denisov]

"What wouldn't have?" Her eyes narrow at the Caretaker.

[The Caretaker]

"There's no need to be hostile."

"The Starlight Citadel is intended to be interacted with under very specific protocols. Considering what it connects to, is that really all that surprising?"

[Natalie Denisov]

"No, I suppose not," she says, the hostility only lowering a fraction, "But you're not supposed to be here. So why are you here?"

[The Caretaker]

"Truthfully? I'm not. The system you visited me in wouldn't support me transferring into it without causing you significant harm."

"This is just an instance of one of my subprocesses. Far more modest. Far less effective, as you can see by the incomplete state of the framework around you."

"But it does let us talk like civilized people, doesn't it?"

[Natalie Denisov]

"You shouldn't even have a subprocess here," she says, her form taking on an appearance more akin to her armor. "To be perfectly frank, you are an untrusted application."

[The Caretaker]

"I've been helping you where I can already. Did you think you wrote the lion's share of the code that the nanites are currently running on?"

"I admit, I've breached your trust here. However you must understand, this is what I was made to do. Can you blame me for pursuing my function?"

[Natalie Denisov]

"Blame you for pursuing your function? No. Blame you for hitchhiking in my system? I'll blame you all day long for that and you should give me one very good reason why I shouldn't remove you like I'd remove any other piece of hitchhiking malware."

[The Caretaker]

"Because I can get you into the Starlight Citadel."

"Not this subsystem, mind you. I can only help you build with this."

"But the whole of me? I am the interface they're expecting."

[Natalie Denisov]

"Their system was expecting an authorization token and said that our designation's authorization token was in use. If you're not that interface, then how is the authorization token in use?"

[The Caretaker]

"I'm afraid I don't have the means to determine that with just this subsystem. I could hazard a guess, but that would involve you telling me why you need to access the Starlight Citadel."

[Natalie Denisov]

"Because it's there," she replies acidly. "A friend of mine has disappeared and the Starlight Citadel might have seen her, since she may have been in contact with their system prior to her disappearance."

[The Caretaker]

"Have you considered that she may hold the token?"

[Natalie Denisov]

"How would she have obtained it? Contact with this system was... sudden and far from a negotiated handshake. The possibility exists, yes, but so does a near infinite multiverse apparently, so the existence of a 'possibility' doesn't really count for much." She raises a hand to her face, "I really wish *something* would go according to plan." She looks back at the Caretaker. "You are *not* to expand beyond this process. You are to clear any decision through me and please label them according to urgency of response required. Is that a clear enough instruction for you?"

[The Caretaker]

"My apologies. It's the extent of what I can surmise in this limited state. I am already at the limits of what I can do for you, I assure you."

"Beyond this, the containment field you've established around this regrowth of the crystalline matrix is quite effective. You hold all the cards here, ma'am."

"But if you wish to do more... if you wish to reach her, I would highly recommend integrating my source shard into the matrix."

[Natalie Denisov]

"That's far more than I am willing to contemplate at the moment," she says, "But I will take it under advisement in future." Without waiting for a response, she throws herself back towards the the combat frame.

[Narrator]

Everything is as she left it, for good or for ill.