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caliginovsCvre · 03-20-2018, 02:23 PM

Quote:>Start with something in the water. Something that turns the sun into stored energy as it floats in the waves. Chemicals arranged in such a way that function as blueprints for it to create more of itself. Thousands could live in the pool of water because of how small they are

Quote:>Start making a tiny robot out of basic materials; like Intrusive Igneous rocks or clay. Then give it some mechanism out of shells you find underwater, finally make a hidden solar panel so no one will find it's weakness. For protection, make it shoot an electric beam out of it's eyes when it's under attack.

Quote:>Make a different one too, in case the other fails. It's also for diversity.
>Make something in the water, that's surrounded in a thin film that protects the inside from the outside and keeps substances it need inside and substances it doesn't need outside. It gathers energy from substances floating in the water. It has a small threadlike structure that allows them to move. And blueprints that tell how it should act and build more of itself.
>Hey, maybe these stuff're small enough, your brother does not notice them and leave them alone.

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My first thought is to build something with moving parts out of stone, which is by far the most abundant material around here. I dig up the top few layers of the ground around me, including clay and some shards of igneous rock from the lava flow that created this island. I’m not sure what to do with it at first, but a potential answer comes to me as I absently spin my building materials. Working with the clay because it’s softer, I carve it into a roughly spherical shape, with a rounded bottom that should allow it to roll over the ground. I put my clay ball on a gentle slope, and it rolls down it without any prompting. So far, so good. But how do I make it move on its own, without the help of gravity? The thing would need a source of energy from somewhere. The obvious first choice would be the sun, but all that happens to clay when the sun hits it is that it dries out and becomes too hard to shape anymore. It’s already cracking and stiffening just from me playing with it for a few hours!

I skim over to my little pond and dip the clay ball in the water to moisten it. The clay softens again, but as I’m turning to leave I notice that something about the water in the pond seems different now. I look at it more closely, and find tiny combinations of things stuck together that weren’t bonded that way before. How long has it been like this? I checked the water shortly before Brother destroyed the covering over it, but it looked the same as normal rainwater then. Maybe, when his lightning struck the pond, it did more than just boil the water away.

It’s daytime again now, and the clouds are beginning to thin out. Dropping the ball into the water again in my haste, I use the stone I dug up earlier to create a new impromptu shelter around my pond just in case the harsh sunlight would interrupt whatever’s going on here. Then I spread myself thin over the water and look at it closer than I’ve ever looked at anything before. I think entire days are passing, up there in the normal-sized world, but every time my mind wanders I yank it back to studying the water. It looks like there are at least four different types of new chemicals that weren’t there before the lightning; two small ring-like structures and two that are a bit larger. When they’re just by themselves, they just bounce off each other, but some of them have extra bits tacked onto them that give them the structure and energy to stick together.

I encourage them a little, tacking on the extra bits to those that don’t have them, and then nudging them close together. I manage to string some of these particles together, getting up to a couple dozen before they start to vibrate and fall apart. I try again, and get a few more stuck together. Again, and it’s closer to a hundred. This time, the strand shakes again, but instead of falling apart it twists into an elegant twirl that hides the most delicate parts of itself from the water around it. I watch, fascinated, as it persists for hours before falling apart again. I make more of these little molecular spirals, slowly getting more of a knack for which conformations are more stable than others. It reminds me of building sculptures and domes out of rocks, but on a much smaller and more finicky level. There are rules here I don’t fully understand; like what makes some of them last longer than others? Why did that one just fold in double on itself, then split in half down the middle?

After a while longer, I notice that these molecules can associate with each other in one of two different ways. They can go lengthwise, forming a stronger bond that lasts a while before breaking. Or they can get wider, one facing another but only loosely interacting before going their own ways again. Some of them are better friends than others, preferring to spend time with one other type and not the other two that are unlike themselves. I feel silly for not realizing this earlier, but in my defense I was distracted looking around at all the other, even tinier, things floating in the chemical soup of simple pond water. Why haven’t I ever looked, really looked at water before?

I build a strand from scratch, then another, but this time I make sure that the two of them are an ideal match for each other. Upon introduction, they’re unsure at first, but then the first two complementary molecules scent each other, and the whole thing clicks into place. With two strands now, the whole thing twists into a double-helical conformation. It still doesn’t last long, but it’s much better than the last version. And, even better, when it finally does split in half, each of those halves start attracting their matches from the individual molecules still floating around. It’s slow, but one strand grows into two, turns into four, becomes eight… The building blocks and energy molecules are few and far between, but if I just watch long enough, they manage to find each other. Before I know it, they’re doing a decent job copying themselves, and everything seems fine until the roof crashes down around me.

I look up for the first time in ages, managing to catch and suspend the pieces of roof before they fall into the water, and realize with horror that my hastily-erected rock shield has already been worn to shreds by the wind and the rain. How did this happen? Surely it’s only been a few days since I settled down to watch the water. But why does the sun keep flickering like that? Why have the clouds turned into a single writhing mass with no beginning or end?

I compress my energy into a pinprick, as compact as I can make it, and huddle close to myself as I try to focus on each passing moment. I track the sun as it arcs across the sky, watch the fate of each individual cloud, and slowly, slowly, everything comes back into focus around me. I’m still feeling a little shaky, but at least time is passing at a normal pace now. What just happened to me? Have I sped up, or are my molecules really just that slow? What can I do to make them faster, or should I take a break from playing with them for now?

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