Fun times

The world was Distorted and with it Sawyer.

The sensation could be called somewhat relaxing. Like Sawyer was the dough and the Universe was kneading him to make cookies.

He felt like in an instant that lasted an eternity

one million years passed and somehow didn't simultaneously . Time seemed like it had lost all relevance. Yet somehow it felt comfortable to Sawyer like a massage from all of reality itself.

However little did he know that what would come next would be less pleasant.

And so it happened. The universe went from a massage to pulling to stretching and finally to ripping.

Sawyer wanted to scream yet he could not. Memories of his time on earth slowly left him, being eaten away by space and time or whatever was doing this to him.First it was only that he could only vaguely recall. Then it was the TV shows he sometimes enjoyed watching. Then came the books he liked to read, the food he liked to eat and the clothes he liked to wear.

Sawyer however was not someone who liked having things taken away from him, few people were.

Thus he struggled to remember to recall.

Quickly he activated his soul perception in the hope of maybe finding a remedy for his current predicament. And then he saw it. One by one the strings were pulled apart by an unknown force. Segments being broken off and falling into the void beyond his soul perception , which seemingly not satisfied with its meal continued swallowing more and more memories like a starving lion.

Sawyer desperate to not die a true death pulled the pieces closer to himself.

[11 years after death]

And so, a 11 year long tug of war had come about.

While at first Sawyer struggled to persist against the suction force the void provided, with time he only grew better and better at resisting. While at when he first came to this place he was using 100% of his mental resources, he could now barely get away with using 96% of them.

A small increase for sure but an increase nevertheless, enough to finally after eleven years he was finally able to form a thought not related to better resisting against the void, as he called it.

~Such pain... want... to stop... no... void stupid~

Well 4% of his mind or soul was not enough to keep proper structure to his sentence, at the very least he was able to do something else other than pulling.

[25 years after death]

just Like this 25 years had passed by.

87% Of him were now enough to achieve victory against the hunger of the void

~The void... fitting name... will it never be full... I gotta find a way out... need to do more research on soul~

~Else I eventually... turn to dust... ~

Sawyer halted for a moment

And then the epiphany came.

~Dust yes DUST soul is like DNA... I can change it... improve it. ~

With this thought in his free 13% of his mind he got to work.

However the DUST (DNA Unified Syntax Theorem) Formula, which he had deduced and firmly ingrained into his very being was only suited for as the name implied DNA as such many alterations would need to be made, would Sawyer ever want to achieve what he set out to.

Each of these alterations were quite time intensive especially with his intellect mainly occupied with not being ripped to shreds. It was like solving difficult mathematical problems while simultaneously doing a high intensity work out.

However Sawyer was a genius among geniuses a true monster when considering his researching ability. Aware of that he knew that somehow he would manage, like he always had.

[50 years after death]

50 years 50 grueling years since he came to this place.

He was sure, had he not thrown all the thoughts of giving up his life and to finally break loose from this seemingly eternal suffering into the void, he was sure, that by now he would be no more.

He had made it this far through sheer power of will. Throwing all useless thoughts that might inhibit him or waste his strength into the void.

This way he could increase his free processing power to 89%. Coupled with being separate from a body, his current intellect already surpassed his old one by a bit. Yet The altered DUST or rather SST(Soul Syntax Theorem)with which he could truly figure out his soul still eluded him. A soul String, was only slightly similar to a Strand of DNA, since the soul string was in a constant state of change and ,Saw,Ceacel or whatever his name used to be, he had long discarded his name since there was no one to use it anyway, had no chance to test his hypotheses anyway except on himself.

He was not just about to throw away his 50 years of effort away only because an experiment had one wrong result. He had made that mistake once when he was still in possession of a human body, and look where that ended him up at?

[63 years after death]

He was in a bad mood. One so bad he had not experienced anything akin to it since the death of his family. A mixture of rage and frustration blended until nether could be distinguished from the other anymore. He had been here for a long time he knew it had been 63 years thanks to fluctuations in the void that would happen approximate every two days. Yet only today had he noticed something while he was suddenly feeling nostalgic.

The void had been varying in strength every two days weak,strong,weak,strong and on and on.

However when compared to average void pull in the weak phases, the void pull in the weak phases now had increased by a factor of 1.005 . Any normal person had scoffed at such a minor increase especially since nowadays only 0.014% of his mind was needed to fight of the pull of the void to a standstill even in a strong phase. He was still in constant pain but that had stopped bothering him long ago.

He however was quite aware of what that small increase meant. It seemed to be a combination of him forming new strands because he made new memories in the void by ceaselessly researching and the voids pull increasing. Someday the void would be strong enough to completely swallow him. For now he could still get better at pulling against the void. He had to try harder or die trying.

[1325 years after death]

The void was getting to him slowly but surely. His growth had finally stagnated 115 years ago.Even if he could still grow stronger in theory without creating a better hardware for himself which would require Mastery of the Soul Syntax Theorem. He already needed 0.014005% of his mind to fight the loss once more. He truly was half a step away from death. All he could do now was hope that would find a solution soon.

[many years after death]

~I am done, finally~ Even if he had needed to basically reinvent mathematics from the ground up twice already it was all worth it. Not being able to divide by zero had bothered him for the longest time anyway. He now could perfectly predict every change a soul would experience when changing the properties of the data storing fragments that made up the strings, or what would happen to him should he unwind the soul-string or whatever he may plan to do to himself. Now it was time to get to work.

Since the extend of the movement he could perform as a soul was pulling his strings closer together and toughening them up slightly he had to carefully have the void pull him apart and then with the perfect timing pull it towards himself again. He was anxious but wasting anymore time would only worsen his situation.

Quickly he lessened the pull of one strand of his soul. The void responded by pulling the strand away. But just as the strand separated he pulled it back,like a magnet would metal,and let it go again. constantly repeating of said action would after some time result in the part being positioned perfectly until the part finally reached a perfect position to settle in. It would take some time but the myriads of years had made him become extremely patient anyway.

[(many + 7) years after death]

He watched himself with soul vision like he was used to. Yet different from before, unlike the unorganized bundle of strings he once was, he was now composed of a dense sphere of neatly layered strings compressed to an impossible degree, flashing like a disco ball and unaccountably many little tendrils made of two to twenty different intertwined strands shot out from this dense ball. Through this reorganization he had after oh so long finally regained a few limbs even if they weren't arms or legs they would still fulfill their task like one.

This was achieved by pulling each strand separately like a muscle to bend the tendril in a direction.

As for the disco-ball, this was where he stored all of his important information like research. Even if every strand was composed entirely of memories, did not mean all strands were of equal value. He had just too many strands of him gazing into the void with his soul-vision for them to be of any value to him. And the further away from the void the memories were located, the safer they were. This also had the added benefit of increasing his research speed almost tenfold by connecting the memories as one big whole.

Even if the general idea sounded simple, it certainly was not so.

Because one thing he had found out after his meticulous studies of the soul was, that not all thoughts were compatible. Would the pattern of any one thought not correctly overlap with the next, it would result in a disharmony which would slow the thought process in that region.

Just as certain thoughts would restrain one another others would enhance each other. So achieving the perfect mixture required copious amounts of calculations.

The end result was worth it however.

He could now think and memorize, at a speed approaching that of earths fastest super computers, with ease. However unlike a super computer that was unable to truly think or come up with ideas, he was able to do so.

In a way he combined the advantage of consciousness with the advantage of computers. It was something inconceivable to anyone of his time that anyone could achieve such levels of thinking. Was it anyone but himself that had tried achieving such a feat, they would have quickly realized that altering the self by ones self was paramount to impossible. Yet miraculously or rather as he had planned nothing had gone wrong. The decades of calculation had shown appropriate results.

~I have won some more time for myself. But it would be foolish to assume that the voids pull would not strengthen more than it already has. It would be best to find a way out of here for now. ~

Just as before he faced the problem of the voids pull ever growing. Though now with his new form the void could not do anything to him anymore even if he stopped resisting, given a few 10000 years he would once again have to grow stronger. Without research material or inspiration, his research speed, which was to slow to resist the pull of the void for eternity(at least given its growth never halts)

~Now with this new form of mine, maybe I can try getting out of this horrid place.~