NEVRASWe arrived in Phoenix, and explained the situation to Father and Mother. Although Mother was the power behind the throne, King Charis was the public leader and made all the speeches. To the average citizen and to the Council, it was widely believed (except to those who really knew what was going on) that my dad ran the country. Mother did little to disillusion anyone of this. She came from royalty, she held all the purse-strings, and she knew how to govern a country wisely and fairly, so that the people were neither dependent nor neglected, but did their work and were law-abiding. But she was an introvert, and hated to talk to people. Father was actually a prince consort, meaning he had no real power despite being married to the queen, but she had decided to call him King Charis for appearance sake because Prince Consort Charis did not have the same ring to it. She talked to her husband, and he basically told the citizens her speech, but with more charisma. Awhile ago, he gave like the best State of the Union speech ever.

    When many countries were torn apart by the loss of the Council, and Kushiyama''s push toward RFID currency, King Charis talked about uniting the various factions and how “Phoenix will never be a socialist country.” He proposed a system where workers would be better rewarded for good work, and allowed temples to care for those without means to work without intervention from the State. When other countries were reinstating income taxes and property taxes, he made it possible for families to inherit property in its full value. He prohibited the original sellers of land from evicting families, so long as they worked the land or used their business to help the kingdom. In this way, he kept his promise while keeping the commoners productive and safe. In the absence of taxes, small businesses and restaurants grew, while others pursued artistic or scientific goals. This in turn created real prosperity. After all, money that doesn’t circulate runs out.

    And so, when we came with our loads of fish, King Charis inspired everyone to get involved. Loggers chopped trees to help architects make wooden storage bins. Alchemists and wonder-workers worked with artists to draft models of possible approaches to solving the problem of preserving food. Everyone who worked got a share of our food, which was good, because we probably could only handle about 10% of it. They tested with a clear chicken broth, ate some of it, banished most of this food to a dimension without time, and helped us turn some of the fish into fish sauce. Of course, having food outside our realm wasn''t a solution, because we couldn''t access it.

    The first idea was simply heating the fish. Not to cook it, but rather to kill all bacteria. Then they let it sit for awhile. The original person who tried this idea, perhaps you''ve heard of him. He named his process after himself. These guys just called it thermalization. Unlike the first, they tested a both uncooked and cooked broth against open air in addition to a closed test. The original test initially seemed like the thermalized food did last longer than the uncooked, but when allowed to be exposed to real bacteria in the open air, strangely the cooked one didn''t last as long. Confused, the researchers decided to do a chemical analysis. Their findings were that in general, thermalization killed all “germs”, that is to say most bacteria was killed, and so the broth was shelf stable in a hermetically sterilized container, since it had little to ferment. On closer analysis, the thermalized broth lacked all probiotics (and a great deal of vitamins and minerals were stripped in the process), which meant whatever new bacteria entered repopulated the broth unopposed while the other broth remained healthy. For this reason, and since the tested product was nutritionally depleted, they refused to test on the fish. Sёar?h the N?vel(F)ire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    The next test was devised by the wonder-workers. Using genetic engineering, the people of Phoenix tried to “teach” bacteria to use magic (specifically the Preserve effect). Normally, this was believed impossible, because bacteria individually have almost no mystic power. However, as a group, they could in theory solve the problem of finding enough casters. After repeated attempts, the experiment was a success. The only problem was they bred out of control, there was no real way to get them to use specific spells, and they tended to consume and/or ferment any food they came into contact with. Frustrated with their lack of dependability, the researchers released them out into nature. There was no way this action could go wrong. They were doing this in the name of science!

    Then they tried to make an alchemical device to extract salt from seawater using turgor pressure and taking it to a reverse-osmosis filter within the ship. It of course worked, and would probably be suitable for sea travel and preserving things except for one thing. We already had salt, and we didn''t want everything tasting salty. We kept this technology as it had the added bonus of helping us get fresh water during our trip. We got this installed on our boat, now gaining a seawater extractor for distilling our water. Riding Bahamut was faster, but we could carry more food and supplies with this boat. But our main problem wasn''t solved. We still needed a way to preserve fresh food without getting stuff like fresh fruit to be salty.

    The people of Phoenix next latched on the idea of developing a Paradox Engine. A Paradox Engine worked on principles that reversed the normal connections of cause and effect. For example, slicing a knife across your face would heal any cut that existed there, and trying to heat water was instead likely to create ice. It was difficult to heat the water in the first place, except that there were gaps in the mechanism that allowed the initial cause to remain the same. The idea was good, as without magic one could transform water into ice, and from there attempts to melt the ice would fail since melting would be reversed by the Paradox Engine. Ultimately, though, they gave up at the attempt. Only someone brilliant and insane could understand the logic needed to produce such a device.

    Lastly, they used alchemy to produce a time suspension box that they called a Retemporizer?. Or Preserver for short (yeah, I know, different word entirely). When the box was open, the device would shut off instantly, preventing any drawbacks like having your hand frozen in place while reaching for lettuce. Despite possible complications of this alchemy, like crumbling the universe as we know it if it were to malfunction, they decided that this was the safest method. I kinda wondered how it worked though.

    YAZIM JIANNE

    Having literally nothing better to do but wait for Ambrosia to choose whether or not she would invite me into her party, I worked feverishly on a project. The base assumptions of reality are that given M = matter, AM = antimatter, E = energy, EA = energy antimatter, DM = dark matter, and DE = dark energy, then this implies that the universe would operate (M x AM)/DM → (E x EA)/DE. Before we go any further, I shall explain my equation. Without complicated decimal math, matter and energy are matter and energy. Sometimes energy is translated as mystic power, which means magic is also energy. All of this is irrelevant, however, since dark matter does not have a value, zero or otherwise, since it cannot be proven to exist. Regardless, my formula is balanced. What''s that? Nonsense, you say?!? How dare you! Take that back!!!

    Realizing that if one accepted ∞/0 = (√-Ω), I quickly set to work building a system that would alter any notions those “sensible” people had about math and science, as I worked to build a working Paradox Engine. After testing it on heat and cold, creating ice that wouldn''t melt and fire that wouldn''t go out and wouldn''t consume its fuel, I ran into a problem. Trying to kill something that was already dead didn''t work. After my initial frustration, I attempted to fill a water container that had already been emptied. I realized what was happening, as my attempts to pour only cause the water level to lower once poured. Just as the Paradox engine only allowed someone to fill something by emptying it, something had left the body of these corpses and couldn''t be replaced. Goodness, had I managed to prove that souls really do exist? Further tests would be needed.

    GOD

    Explaining how time works to laymen will be difficult, but I shall try. In the beginning, many people ask what created me. But this question is simple, when one understands the self-collapsing universe. In the very beginning there was me, and there was the Void. The Void is not me, but also not not me either. I said, “Let there be light,” and matter existed as light, expanding with a rapid bang to make the universe as we know of it. And at the end of all time, matter will crunch back into myself and the Void.

    Think of time as a helix, a beginning and an end in constant alternation. In every moment, there are two timelines in equal and opposite direction. For instance, in one version of time there would be a war that was won, while in another version this same war was lost. In some cases, this means history is completely different. These events would reconcile by merging at certain points, called a nexus. There was a nexus for days, weeks, months, years, decades, and so on, creating a nearly infinite number of parallel timelines. In places where multiple nexus points collided, the universe would change. And those born on these nexus points would have a great effect on history.

    While the universe expands and contracts, this system allows me to mine immortal souls from the physical world. Outside of time, I now had friends like myself to talk to. This was my goal when I kept recycling the universe. Further, depending on the different souls within time, events would play out differently. This is why, despite all claims to the contrary, I am only omniscient insofar as I know how patterns play out. Every universe has some surprises, after all. For example, Universe 4B had nothing but lemmings.

    When someone stops time, it selectively delays a point on the helix as though freezing the frame on a video. There was a slight displacement, but any effects of time would proceed normally upon exiting the stopped time. This creates three timelines whenever time is stopped: the timeline around the caster (and possibly his friends) that continued as normal, the frozen time, and the time outside the effect. This meant that if you stopped time for five minutes, the caster and those outside the effect would experience time normally, while those within the field would be five minutes behind, and would gradually work to catch up over the next 24 hours.

    Travel through time presented even more problems. The problem of time effects was that each helix set could potentially cross into another one at one of these nexus points, resulting in people occasionally traveling to parallel timelines. This is why trying to change time was difficult. I could see all timelines, so often I chose the best one already.

    Now, stopping time with magic would preserve food but had the drawbacks of other magic. Alchemy on the other hand, was able to do so this without side effects, but in order to do this involved risk of merging timelines together and destroying history if anything went wrong. I''m sure this device was safe to use though.