Elder Cultivator

“Velvet says to greet you,” Bear Hug commented to Anton. “So… greet?”

By mutual agreement, part of Bear Hug was nearly permanently stationed with Anton. If he truly wanted solitude he could have it, but most of the time he quite enjoyed having a companion. If Anton had to rush somewhere Bear Hug might get left behind- if he didn’t think he could afford the reduction in speed to bring them along.

“Greetings are things like ‘hello’ and ‘hi’.”

“Of course,” Bear Hug nodded. “There are a lot of people who want to say that to you.”

“Indeed. I am quite glad to be remembered so strongly,” Anton smiled. “It would be nice if I could feel them and hear their voices, but their words are comfort enough.”

If everyone who wanted to speak to Anton could actually do so through Bear Hug, perhaps he might be flooded with words. However, just like his communicator, messages were restricted. In general, only a small number of individuals were authorized to pass a message through Bear Hug. The friendly individual never minded talking to others as long as they were polite, but there were certain priorities that had to be considered.

“It’s a good thing there are so many of me,” Bear Hug said. “Otherwise I’d only ever be doing messages.”

“I’m sorry if you feel we’re only using you for that,” Anton apologized.

“Interacting with people is something I like to do,” Bear Hug insisted. “There are just so many more than I thought there were. But I also get to do lots of things. I’m cultivating all throughout Klar, and all over Second Gift. That planet… I wonder if it will ever take over its own energy propagation.”

Anton frowned. “Do you think it can?”

“Maybe. If all the things living on it develop in a way that will reject upper energy… nicely. Because people still have to use that stuff.” Bear Hug drew themself up to full ‘human’ height. “I am pleased to report that resources are being faithfully managed. Second Gift will provide for our allies for a very long time.”

“Not forever?” Anton raised an eyebrow.

“They’ll run out of rocks eventually,” Bear Hug said. “Or air and dirt. Or water.”

“Perhaps those things could be replenished and re-infused.”

“Maybe. But before we have to find out, it will probably be one of those… long periods of time.”

“A millennium?” Anton suggested.

“Could be,” Bear Hug agreed. “I heard that some people tore apart whole planets faster than that though.”

Anton nodded as he thought about the Imbued Fragments and Broad-Eyed Harvesters. “Yes. They were quite irresponsible and wasteful. Hopefully they are gone for good.”

“I have so many things I want to tell you. Should I?”

“Aside from messages… you can say whatever you want, if you feel like it or think it’s important. Assuming I’m not busy with something else, obviously.”

Bear Hug nodded seriously. “I know how conversation works. Even if there are only like five and a half people in Klar that bother with much conversation.”

There were probably far more than that. Bear Hug was more biased towards their earlier friends. That said, the number of sapient individuals in the system was still quite small. They had been able to observe a few instances of new individuals, but there was no clear and reliable method yet. Seeds produced by the various inhabitants didn’t inherently make another person. More reliable was intentionally caring for a particular seed for a long time, though that might just be because it would be imbued with more of the local energy.

Plants weren’t the only sapient individuals in Klar. There were some animals and a few spacefaring individuals that might vaguely fall in the same category, but they were similarly rare.

The system was quite unique and would probably be full of people if not for various restrictions in place. It was no longer limited to just Anton and a couple others, but it was practically nothing compared to the number of people that might wish to go there. But if humans moved in and completely took over, they would doubtless cause a complete transformation of the system- especially the eradication of certain dangers. But at the moment at least, those were an important part of the balanced ecosystem.

-----

Durff was looking at a plant in front of him. “So. You’re a plant and you can speak.”

“Nope!”

Durff frowned. “That sure sounded like talking.”

“It’s just sounds. I can’t speak. Also I’m not a plant, if you ask people who apparently know things about plants.”

“But you’re green.”

“That’s what I said! But it was only fake sounds.”

Durff nodded sagely. “But the sounds are real.”

“Yeah, but normally I just speak like-” Bear Hug demonstrated the energy language.

“Like this and this?” Durff gestured broadly. He might have said something about his armor, his waist, or his hammer.

“Kind of,” Bear Hug said. “Anyway, I’m Bear Hug!”

Durff looked the mass of green technically-not-plant where eyes should go. “Your energy is wobbling weirdly.”

“Well, some people get afraid when I wrap myself around them.”

“You could just ask,” Durff pointed out.

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“... Can I do that?”

“You can ask and you can do it,” Durff held his arms out wide. Bear Hug leapt forward. “Aha, I get it. Bear Hug. You didn’t look like a large animal. It is nice to meet you. Why are you visiting?”

“I think I live here now. I want to meet people and also I have… secret stuff.”

Durff just nodded. “I understand the secret stuff.”

“The funny thing is, even with the secret stuff, I’m not supposed to know secret stuff.”

“Same here,” Durff agreed. “But it’s nice when people just tell us instead of only hiding things. At first, I thought people didn’t trust me, but it’s more than they don’t trust others. And…” Durff knocked on his helmet. “Even though I have this, it doesn’t protect everything in there.”

“Maybe get a bigger helmet?”

“People can read my brain. Maybe. Same with others, but some people have better defenses, are more mobile, or are less prone to freely talking about things.”

“Maybe it’s good I don’t have a brain,” Bear Hug commented.

“Hmm. How does that work?”

“I don’t really know. Is that bad?”

“I don’t know how having a brain works,” Durff admitted. “Except vaguely. So it’s probably fine to not know how not having one works.”

Bear Hug nodded in agreement. “The most important thing is just that we do work. Otherwise we wouldn’t be… well, we wouldn’t be. At all. Words are weird.”

“Maybe you can teach me that energy twisting thing,” Durff said. “Does that make words less weird?”

“It’s so much better!” Bear Hug bounced up and down. “It’s all about getting in tune with yourself and the people around you. And also just making obvious shapes and movements.”

-----

“So…” a weird man walked up to Bear Hug. “Do you want to go on a ship where nobody has ever been before?”

Bear Hug hadn’t even been introduced to this weird man. But he was here. Oh, he had a name tag. Alin Kato. “Nobody has been there?”

“That’s right. There could be all sorts of amazing thing to see.”

“But no people.”

“Even better.”

“No thanks, weird guy.”

“But your abilities would be of great use-”

Someone cleared their throat. His nametag read Assistant to… blah blah blah. There were too many letters and reading was hard. “I believe this individual is in the compound for a different reason, not to be recruited for our expedition.”

“But they would be perfect!”

“Changing our plans now would waste years of effort.”

“It’s fine as long as we end up better.”

“Why don’t you go along?” the assistant waved. “I’ll convince him eventually.”

Bear Hug did. Being called an individual wasn’t a bad thing, but it was strange when they were on their way to be studied for being a multividual. Or any number of other names for things.

There were so many tests, mostly just Bear Hug doing something in multiple places like before. Then there were scans, questions about how things had changed.

The most interesting one was if their cultivation was linked between upper and lower realms.

“I’m linked, and my cultivation is me,” Bear Hug explained. The research group wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. “If I get better at controlling upper energy, how can I not get better with natural energy?”

Some people asked about Bear Hug’s naming of the energy types, but it only made sense to use the local name for the energies. And currently, they were local to places that had those names for the dominant energy. No, it wasn’t some sort of deeper insight. It was just convenient. Lower energy sounded bad, and ascension energy felt a bit more limited in scope.

Asked if it was possible to draw upper energy into the lower realms, Bear Hug considered for a while. “Not like Anton. I can pass it through, but I don’t… steal it? I think he said something about it coming from one of him that never existed, but this one comes from a me that does exist. And it doesn’t work well. It’s easier to transmit energy that belongs between parts of me.”

They asked if all of Bear Hug shared one source of energy, then.

“Not exactly. Without energy I die, or maybe if I die my energy goes away. It’s no fun. But my energy isn’t connected to other places.”

Asked to demonstrate, Bear Hug had one body drain some energy and try to draw from another body. Distance didn’t matter, it was slower unless the energy was directly handed off. Also much more difficult.

“If I prepare ahead of time I can kind of do it. Like storing sunlight. But then it goes somewhere else instead of being used by me naturally.”

There was a lot of confusion about Bear Hug not having a dantian to store energy, but they had only ever been one way. In short, it would have been weirder to function like a human.

Just like before, they didn’t immediately find the answers they wanted. They threw around a lot of fancy words for how they thought that maybe they could make messages faster- that was the main point, right? Humans had a lot more complicated messages than just ‘hello friend’, so it made sense that they’d want that. Even the things they were saying now were hard.

But when they were speaking directly to Bear Hug, they did use the energy language. At least, a few of them knew how to speak it and did all of the communication that needed to be more clear.

For example, if they told Bear Hug to sit somewhere, they could tell Bear Hug to sit in an exact spot instead of ‘on top of a round thing’. They could shape the bounding dimensions, which was very useful when it turned into a laser cylinder. It would have been quite painful to be in the way of some of the things.

Elsewhere, Bear Hug was also being studied by Juli. She wasn’t using a lab, or rather she had a lab that came with her as Bear Hug hung out near a lake. There were a wider variety of fish there now, and Bear Hug’s job was to make sure that they didn’t become unbalanced by eating all of one kind. That would be awful.

“Do you feel that one?” Juli asked.

“Nope. Should I?”

“I don’t know yet,” Juli admitted. “Just tell me if anything feels bad. Next one.”

“Do I say no every time?”

“That would be convenient, to get an affirmative answer. Next one.”

“Oh, I felt that!” Bear Hug gestured.

“Hmm. That’s just the machine powering up, I think. Not some connection to entangled particles. Ugh, it’s so hard to maintain connections on any proper scale. Yet here you are.”

“Here I am,” Bear Hug agreed. “Why do you keep scanning my body?”

“Because you’re connected?”

“But my body isn’t.”

Juli blinked. Humans blinked all the time, but sometimes they did it more, generally while not doing anything else. “You’re right. I should be filtering that out.”

“Filtering is good as long as you don’t need any of the things being filtered,” Bear Hug said.

“Yep,” Juli said. “Okay, this one?”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“Hmm. I’ll be back later.”