Tangent

"It's around here."

Kant, now in the form of an old man, stayed floating in the air with Phi as Robert descended into the forest below. From their vantage point, they could clearly see the gaping holes that looked like some giant had dragged his hand across the land, completely removing the first several layers of land and even cutting into the bedrock. The complete lack of greenery coupled with the smoothness of the cavern walls made these formations appear blatantly artificial.

Kant turned to Phi.

"Was this really necessary?"

"The trees all looked the same, so I couldn't find my way back," Phi shrugged, "I was just trying to mark some places to get my bearings, is all."

"One cannot be lost in a forest if there is no forest," Kant sighed.

Seeing Robert beckoning to them from below, Kant and Phi descended.

"Nothing too substantial," Robert said as they landed, "Granted, this is a tutorial world, so it wouldn't really matter even if you had destroyed everything."

"Haha-" Phi's premature celebration was cut short by a stern look from Kant.

"How will this be handled?" Kant asked Robert.

"Well, there are quite a number of mortals that will need to have their memories tweaked..." he scratched his chin, "Hmm… okay… this will probably jump us to a different world line… Still within permissible limits though."

"Are we not considering restoration?"

"No can do. Enforcer mode requests are not being answered. You could try your luck, although, without access to the archive, you're probably not going to get it right. Besides, even if you did manage to get it done, we've already shifted to a new world line. We can't fix that since this world follows the transient state model, you know."

"I see."

"Anyway," Robert stretched, "I'll just get Tania to take care of this real quick..."

"Hey, can I help?" Phi jumped in excitedly.

Robert looked questioningly at Kant, who Phi also turned to with pleading eyes.

"Sure, I suppose."

"Yay!"

"Now hold on," Robert interrupted Phi's celebration, "do you even know the proper procedure for this sort of thing?"

"Hmm? It's just erasing memories, right? How hard can it be?"

Robert turned to Kant, "I have no idea, but isn't it supposed to be really hard to erase memories?"

"From what I know, attempting to remove any specific non-tangible attribute requires a high degree of control..."

The two of them looked at Phi, who grinned and gave them a thumbs up.

"I have my doubts," Kant finished.

"Let's just have Tania demonstrate it first..." Robert suggested tentatively.

Soon enough, the space beside Phi split and out stepped the waitress from Robert's cafe.

"Good good," Robert clapped his hands, "let's get on it."

There was a flash of red and Tania was crouched down at the bottom of one of the larger craters, with her hands feeling the ground.

"No need to do a scan! I can find all the targets with the archive's local storage!" Robert shouted down to her.

Roberts form blurred and flickered for a while before returning to a more humanoid shape.

"As expected, everyone associated with the king of the land felt this one," Robert said, turning back towards Kant and Phi, "there are also a few humans at the village who would remember this area differently, we'll use that as a demonstration."

"So, who do I get to do?" Phi asked excitedly.

"Hmm… How about you go after the king himself?" Robert offered, "You think you can handle it?"

"You bet!" Phi cheered, "A king! That'll be fun!"

"Calm yourself," Kant placed a hand on Phi's head, "Go and join Tania in gathering details. You need to do a proper job to make up for your mistake."

"Of course. I'll surprise you with how proper of a job I'll do," Phi grinned before running down to join Tania at the bottom of the crater.

"Say..." Robert started, watching Tania try to show Phi how it's done, "You sure it's fine to let Tau associate so long with the mortals? Won't it be bad if she grows attached?"

"It is fine."

"I don't know… I mean, those humans have no future. Not in this timeline, anyway."

"I often think that one must live as a mortal at least once to understand the significance of living as a god," Kant then turned to Robert with a smile, "Besides, whether or not those humans have a future is still undetermined."

"Huh? What do you… wait… you don't mean..."

"One way or another, she will have the motivation to practice."

"I guess… but that's..."

"It is fine, is it not?"

"It's fine. It's fine," Robert laughed, shaking his head, "I guess I better prepare for an interesting show!"

-

[No good. He's too fast.]

{Then, get faster.}

[You make it sound so simple...]

As she attempted to block the attack, Tau was knocked to the ground once more.

"That'll be all for today. Rebecca, patch her up and then come get me for that house visit. I'll be in my study."

The girl who was watching nearby nodded and approached Tau with a jar of ointment.

{No improvement at all huh...}

Tau sighed.

[Well, it's just the second day, after all.]

Apparently, the small-statured man was the village priest and doctor. Since he was a priest, most people just called him Father Dawson. It was his assistant, Rebecca, who got the door when Tau and Mrs. Bentley, the old woman, visited. Dawson wasted no time breaking Tau into the craft of swordplay and immediately started that afternoon, leaving Tau an exhausted mess by evening.

In the morning, Kant declared that he needed to make a trip to fix some of Phi's mistakes, so he transferred control over the floating sword to Tau, who promptly dumped the task onto Neu.

Before leaving, Kant also taught her how to vaguely understand mortal language by using her domain to feel the concepts mortals formulate. This allowed Tau to mostly understand what is being communicated, but she still can't speak much of the language herself.

"Gosh, he could have gone a little easier," Rebecca said while applying the ointment to the places Tau was bleeding mildly from scraping against the ground, "You are a girl, after all, what if it leaves a scar..."

"No. mind."

"Yeah, yeah. You're a strong one."

Rebecca finished applying the ointment and closed the lid on the jar.

"Alright, done. You can rest here for a while. I'll be out with Dr. Dawson for the afternoon, so we'll continue your language lessons tomorrow. Don't take too long though, Mrs. Bentley is expecting you back for lunch."

Tau nodded in understanding. Rebecca smiled and then hurried into the house to prepare the medicine box and get Father Dawson.

Sitting in the grass, waiting for her breathing to steady, Tau took the time to practice working with Neu to control the blade Kant left them.

[I don't know… maybe the manipulation framework I'm using just isn't good enough.]

{Well, let's hear it.}

[So, first, the natural state of the blade is to orient its angle and position relative to our body. I thought I would just modify the angle and relative position and everything would be fine.]

{That sounds like it should work...}

[Yeah, but the issue is with time. I'm not sure about the details, but this world has some limitations when it comes to objects moving through time. The gist of it is that in addition to setting a relative position and angle, I need to set a certain time for this blade to move there.]

{I see, so… your control over the sword is really just a series of orders.}

[Yes.]

{Then, the issues would be the frequency of these orders… and maybe relative is bad too if I'm in motion as you're adjusting…}

[Correct and correct.]

{Hmm… it's easy to understand, but it's too mechanical. Can't we use something more organic? Like how we control this body?}

[I can't do it if I don't understand how it works! For our body, we can do it because the world handles the processing for how it moves, but if we are to build something on our own, there needs to be a mechanism I know how to manipulate.]

Tau sighed. This wasn't going to be a problem that they would be able to resolve right away. At this point, she had caught her breath, so she picked herself up and started her walk through the village, back to Mrs. Bentley's house for lunch. The sword returned to its resting place, floating just behind Tau's back.

It was midday, so most of the villagers were out of the village; the men worked on the fields and the women were bringing them lunch. Only old women stayed home to weave while the kids played in the streets. For Tau, the nearly empty streets were a relief; the sight of an entire crowd of people, stopping and staring wherever she went, made her extremely uncomfortable. Especially since their staring faces, side-by-side, reminded her how different she was physically from them: they had tanned skin and toned muscles from regular work under the sun while her skin was ghostly pale and her figure thin.

"I return," Tau called out as she stepped through the door of the Bentley house. There was no response. Mrs. Bentley was out at the moment.

[She's probably delivering food to her son in the fields...]

There was a bowl of chicken soup and half a loaf of bread left on the table. Tau sampled a spoonful of the soup. It was cold.

"I must have rested longer than I expected..." Tau mumbled to herself as she dug in.

After eating, Tau washed the bowl and utensils, imitating what she remembered from watching what Mrs. Bentley did a day ago. Of course, since she doesn't understand how things work, she could only go through the motions; the "washed" bowl still had scraps of food in it when Tau was done.

With the rest of the afternoon free, Tau decided to practice using her domain some more. Since there was no one around, conjuring wind blades was no problem.

[It's a shame that this sword Kant left us isn't so simple...]

With the wind blades, all Tau had to do was select a sheet of air and increase their velocity in a certain direction and then let go: the world takes care of the rest. But with the sword, Tau can't let go; if she doesn't consciously move it, it just stops and stays in that place in her domain. In reality, this means that it stays in that location relative to her position and orientation.

{Now that I think of it, how do we normally perceive orientation and position? Us moving our body is really just the same as adjusting our orientation or position relative to the world, and we seem to do that pretty well. It shouldn't be too different with the sword, right…?}

[I don't know... first off, what exactly does it mean when you say "relative to the world"? The sword moves relative to us because of how we've conceived its motion within our domain, which is naturally oriented relative to our sense of self, which inhabits this body.]

{Huh... so what I'm hearing is that its a problem with our conception of motion...? That sounds difficult...}

Either way, Tau was quickly getting the hang of using wind blades. The more she practiced, the less time and effort it took to perform. At times, it was like all she had to do was visualize the desired effect and it would happen; she didn't have to specifically select the sheet of air and specifically set its velocity. It had become instinctive to the point where she was no longer completely conscious of the details involved in performing the task.

As she practiced this, Tau realized that she was now capable of creating ever-larger wind blades, and she was able to continue making them for a longer period of time than before. She took this as a sign that her domain stamina was improving.

Tau was still in the middle of her practice when Kant and Phi dropped out of the sky, landing on the straw roof of the Bentley house.

"Hey! We're back!" Phi called down to Tau, waving, "Did you miss us?"