“Nothing noticeable, but some subtle recoding was done. Far less than your current trend.”
“This all began with me taking a break, so maybe it is linked to resting rather than training.”
“I’m worried too,” Cal-com admitted. “Perhaps you should let it play out before you attempt to harness whatever changes have been made.”
“I’m sorer than before. The same way I was the first vision. It’s like a power drain.”
“A mental hallucination would not affect the body.”
“True. I think we’re dealing with something new.”
“That is obvious.”
“No, I mean something beyond our current senses, and beyond Essence, because I can’t detect anything.”
“Nor can I. Do you have any new insights?”
Paul sighed, searching his mind and ‘looking’ with his newfound clarity to see what had been uncovered that was previously foggy.
“More of the same. My purpose is right here, though I can’t articulate it. I’m on the path. I can feel that. I just can’t identify it. But these changes are part of it.”
“A necessary part or an optional upgrade?”
“It feels like I was lost, but this transformation is a choke point on the path and I was drawn back to it because of it. I have to figure it out before I lose the scent of it again, but for the moment I’m where I need to be.”
“No combat. No lives to be saved. No universe to carry on your shoulders,” Cal-com ticked off from previous conversations. “What about now fits your path?”
Paul looked at the ground oddly, as if his mind suddenly took a journey to somewhere unseen. “The path is within.”
“Your personal advancement?”
“No…not totally. It’s…” he said, looking up at Cal-com suddenly. “I have a piece of it.”
“Explain, if you can.”
“The circle of life,” Paul said, standing up and cringing with each muscle movement. “Birth, youth, adulthood, reproduction, then downward cycle into death as the next generation rises to replace you. It was called the circle of life in a movie…not an important one, but one from long ago. It was stated that it was meant to be that way. Continuous cycling. My path is to break free of it. Break the circle.”
“You’ve obtained self-sufficiency. Is that not breaking the cycle?”
Paul huffed. “You’re right. I said that wrong. I broke free of it long ago, but the point is the answers…the path…cannot exist on the circle. It’s the training wheels that keep everything functioning on a base level. To find the path you have to rise above it. Break free of it. Then you have a path that doesn’t boomerang back to the beginning and start all over again.”
“The first vision spoke of this, did it not?”
“Yeah…” Paul said, nodding and immediately regretting it as he rubbed his jaw. “How does my face hurt? This makes no sense.”
“Does anything not hurt?”
“It is kind of body-wide, but spiking in odd places with movement. Don’t get me off topic. I need to nail this before it leaves me.”
“Continue.”
“Growth…must occur away from the newbs. The more you grow the further distant you get. Circling back around to train them pulls you away from the path, unless there is a cross connection that leads you to something new. New. The path will always be new, Cal-com. I sensed this before but I didn’t understand. New things aren’t a luxury. They’re a sign that you’re on your path. If everything is familiar then you’ve stopped moving or circled back. We can use automated training like bread crumbs for others following similar paths, that way we can help them without hindering ourselves.”
“That has already been implemented in Star Force,” Cal-com pointed out.
Paul waved him off with a hand. “I know, I know. I just didn’t see the reasons for it. We’ve been doing stuff accidentally right for other reasons. I can see it better now.”
“And your path?”
“Is not in naval combat on a regular basis,” he said with finality as that bit of his search ended. “From time to time, when there is a need. But sitting in a ship is not moving me along the path. I must pursue it where it goes, which means I have to be untethered,” he said, huffing a bit of a laugh that Cal-com could see was also painful. “A Jedi must have no attachments.”
“Something else accidentally right?”
“It seems so.”
“Are you going back outside?”
Paul looked down at his feet and where he was standing. “No. You’re right. I do need to let this play out, then train to master it latter. So how do I rest without going completely nuts?”
“Sleep as much as you can. The balance you need to explore.”
“I just woke up, so let’s go exploring.”
“The storm is nearly here.”
Paul then noticed the tent quivering slightly, something he should have picked up on as soon as he woke if he hadn’t been distracted. He walked past Cal-com to the door and poked his head out, seeing squalls of sand in the distance.
“That looks bigger.”
“It is. I was in the process of digging us some terrain to hide behind when you woke.”
Paul looked around and saw the trenches to his left that were feeding a large mound behind their tent on the opposite side of the approaching storm. “What’s the plan?”
“A ring around the perimeter to force the air up and over us, and a trench beyond to catch the blowing sands so they don’t pile on top and bury us. If our tent could handle that I would do so myself, but it cannot handle the weight no matter how I augment it. We’ve been getting an automated recall warning from the nearest beacon.”
“They want
