Spin me around

The old man and the girl sat in the old library. The old man wasn't expecting to go back in so soon but he didn't mind it. For some reason his emotions - good and bad - had become so faint. He stood next to a chalkboard and watched as a young girl sluggishly picked up books on the shelfs, only to put them back in right after.

The girl hadn't learned to walk. She just appeared next to where she wanted to be. Sometimes she appeared mid-air and just floated there. The old man had no idea how she did it. He was bound by what he thought was how the world worked and those beliefs still existed in his imagination. In the grand understanding of how the world truly worked, he was still naïve. To the old man's arrogant perspective, the child showed a new one. One that was completely free from the assumptions of how the world worked. An entirely unfiltered imagination. He couldn't wait to be one again so he could understand.

The girl watched all the pictures on the walls of which she recognized none. She didn't know where they were from and what they were portraying in them.

'Where did you come from?' words appeared on a paper the old man was holding.

'From the outside would be the easiest way to put it. From another world, inside of which this world exists. I came from outside this world and still exist in mine.' He answered on the chalkboard next to him. She read it with a glance. This exchange of written words was the way they had communicated for some time now.

'Where did I come from?'

'I am not sure. I believe you are the original mind of the body I possessed but I don't remember at which point you came to be. I was here and suddenly - so were you. I became aware of you when we woke up.'

The girl appeared in front of the mirror. She watched herself. Even though she was still just laying on the ground, she always appeared in a way that allowed her head to look in the direction she wanted. She watched her body and compared it to the old mans. She was tiny, had a tail, and a gem on her forehead. The old man had none of those.

'What am I?' The girl asked.

'The same as me. Just a perspective.'

'No. What is this body? Why is it different from you?'

The old man looks down at his feet. He is aware that he is standing, but can't make out what his feet look like. A hand mirror appears. He turns to look at his reflection but he can't find it.

'What you look like is a representation of what you think you are. We look different because we are different.' The old man writes.

The girl watches the old man fiddle with the mirror. He tries to look at it from this angle and that angle but that confused expression of his doesn't disappear. Maybe he thinks he looks weird too, she thinks.

All the books she has read in this library don't make sense to her. She knows what is written in them now that she can read but for now they are just stories to her. Just like a picture can't be made without different colors, she can't understand the stories without having something to base them on.

What lies before her is a vast amount of knowledge that is completely useless for her. So it was no surprise that she got bored of it and ventured outside again.

'I want to go out.' Words appear on the paper as the old man looks for the vanishing child. When he finally finds her laying in front of the broken mirror, he notices that it isn't a broken mirror anymore. It's a real window now. Or maybe a screen would be more accurate. On the screen is a static. The old man picks up the child from the floor and sits her in the corner of a sofa that appeared behind them. Then he takes a seat at the opposite end.

They both stare into the static. The pattern becomes less and less random as it pulls the viewers more and more into it.

A pale girl opens her eyes.

I open my eyes. My mind is empty as it usually is after just waking up from sleep. As I slowly wake up my mind goes to the strange dream I saw. It was a dream of two figures. I remember them going around in an endless white space. I remember a mirror, a library, lots of books, a lizard and a child, and then another lizard and an old man. I knew what they thought and what they felt.

Those were "me", huh.

I can feel a sense of catharsis. I feel like a balance has been made. It's like I finally managed to get the charger into the plug after an hour. Haaah, I feel good.

I crawl out from the fetal position and stretch my limbs as far away from each other as I can. I lay there, basking in the sunlight a little longer. Then I sneeze.

It's getting cold here. I need food. Where is that sheep girl?

I sense a surge of emotion. Irritation, impatience. Whatever! I'll just get the food myself then. I flip myself over only to remind my sleepy mind that, indeed, I am still stuck on the pedestal. Could I jump? No that's too far, I'll just hurt myself. Right, magic! I have the idea of how to use it, now I just have to get some info! Eyes will be no use here, same for my nose, ears, and touch. It must be the gem then!

I sense the space around me with the black gem on my forehead. I can feel the volume and geometry of this space. And the space within that space. Time and some small buzz that is probably the other dimensions but that is too faint for me to listen. It's like trying to listen to an ant's footsteps. By all logic they too should have footsteps but good luck trying to hear it.

Ah well, I don't need them.

I wonder if I could make a surface like in the dream? A surface of what? Surface of something. Something that can hold my weight. I made a mirror. Mirror reflects light. Could I reflect my weight back towards me? The forces would cancel each other and I should be able to walk on it!

I try to imagine a mirror appearing into a slide shape before the pedestal but I can feel something missing. Unlike in the dream where I could shape my imagination, trying to shape physical space feels wrong. It feels impossible and not just logically. I can sense that it is wrong.

I could shape space in my imagination. I could even shape the canvas in whatever space that existed in. What is the difference here?

Physical space isn't a part of me.

Could I shape the physical space within me? That doesn't seem like a good idea though. Even if space warps, matter doesn't necessarily warp. Even humans could live in a warped space - in gravity.

But hey now hold on. Why am I thinking like this is the old world from those memories. This world exists within that yes, but no such rules necessarily apply in this experienced reality. After all this is virtual. Digital. It's all zeros and ones. This world is only trying to simulate the old world's physics. I understand that physics is applied in code. I must have a transform: A position and a rotation, perhaps even scale.

I try to sense within me using the gem on my forehead. With this sense, I can sense everything from the outside but I can't see within myself. However, I can still sense the outlines of my body. And I only need that to figure out my transform, in theory. I look for the data but can't find any numbers.

Damn. I really thought this would work. And I still do. I must be missing something. The sense is all messy, I don't know what I am looking for. Continuing to think about it like a programmer, perhaps I need to define what I am looking for? The canvas!

I pull my focus inward into the canvas. I work on my ideas of thinking about space through programming. That is, using numbers and just pure logic. I managed to whip out a working model that can give a definition for a position and a rotation. Couldn't figure out how to add scale though. There is something missing there. Anyway, It's not like the masterpieces from before but for now it will do.

I bring my attention back to the outside world and focus on the gem again. Now I look for the transform and lo and behold, there it is. Depending on how hard I focus, the numbers get more accurate. If I squint with my gem I can see make out a three number accuracy. Out of five numbers. That is not helpful at all.

Luckily that is only for the position. Rotation is in degrees, so it can't go over 3 numbers, therefore it is more than accurate enough. Alright. Let's try it out.

There are three possible directions I can rotate in. I can roll around the axis my legs point towards - roll, the axis my stomach points towards - yaw, and the axis my side points towards - pitch.

What is the least dangerous direction I can rotate in without hurting myself? Gonna go with a roll. I lay on my stomach, still looking down at the floor. I want to turn so that I am looking at the ceiling. Here goes nothing.

I focus on my body. I imagine the pose I have. The stiff straight-as-a-stick-pose. I can feel my consciousness spread around my body. Deeper in, I can feel the flow of nothing go inward in to the core of the canvas. I can feel it come out of the canvas space and move through my entire body with my awareness. This is it!

Then I imagine myself rotating 180 degrees. I imagine myself slowly moving around. I feel myself shake a little.

Then I notice that I am still looking at the floor. It didn't work. My theory is foolproof so the mistake must have been in the implementation. Yes. That's how it is. I'm not wrong.

I imagine myself again, laying down. I again sense the flow of nothing move through my body. Then next to that image, I imagine myself in the final position I want to be in. Then I imagine, in my mind, that feeling of nothingness going from the original position to the one I want to be in. I can feel my body shake. I open my eyes.

I see the ceiling and start wildly kicking with each limb in triumph!

Yes! It worked! Trust in gaslighting yourself, girlboss! Never doubted for a second! My road to magic starts here!

A cold passing in-building breeze reminds me of my goal. Indeed. I must escape this pedestal of starvation in order to find nourishment for this skinny ass body.

How to go about it then? I carefully experiment with different rotations. I kept my eyes open when I rotated and noticed that the rotation is instant. I also noticed that I can change the point which I rotate around. It only needs to be on my body

It's no wonder that the first method didn't work. Since when I rotate, the rotation is based on my imagination. Therefore, because of humane error I don't rotate perfectly according to one axis. So rotating slowly wouldn't work, since the rotation point in my body wouldn't stay in the same position through the entire rotation. After the rotation point changes, the imagined goal rotation becomes irrelevant, impossible to achieve. And so the magic fails. Interesting.

I am starting to get a handle on rotating myself. Turns out I can choose an entirely new position as long as it can be achieved through rotations around a point that exists within the space inhabited by my body. I even managed to rotate myself up to my feet. I slumped right back down though. I have only been laying down so far so rising to my feet felt like a huge height difference. Made me dizzy but it was also kinda thrilling. Tried it again a few times right after.

Another passing wind interrupts my training. Right! I need to get down. Well, I am confident now. I can handle it now.

I push my legs over the edge. I slowly lower myself more and more over the edge. My body starts to slip off, pulling the cushion down with me. Oops.

I rotate myself around my hand that is still on the cushion. I land my stomach back on the cushion as it settles on the pedestal again.

Whew. Almost ended this life early. Thrilling!

I try to lower myself over the edge of the cushion again. Once my lower body is as far over the edge as I dare to go I hold on to the cushion like my life depends on it. My tail worms as close to the ground as it can get. Now, the risky part!

I start to lower myself again. Slowly I go lower and lower until the cushion starts to slip again. As it starts to slip, I rotate myself around the end of my tail. I turn pitch so that my back now points to the ground. I roll over so now my stomach is pointing towards the floor. I teleport to this new rotation and my fall continues to a new direction. Yet I didn't expect the old velocity to still affect.

I used to fall towards my tail but now I fall towards my stomach. So while I do start to fall towards the floor, the velocity I had before I rotated remains the same. So now I fall down in an angle towards the pedestal.

This falling angle causes me to rotate mid-air. I am falling head first to the floor. So I rotate again. This time I panicked and rotated around my legs so that I would fall down first which caused me to gain height. After the rotation, my momentum towards the pedestal ends after my back hits it. This causes me to jolt and hit the back of my head into the pedestal.

Then my feet hit the floor.

For a moment I just stood there, leaning on the pedestal while holding my hands on the back of my head. Dazed, I start to lean forward. My legs automatically try to stop my fall. Except they don't. Instead I start a clumsy run that looks like someone trying to go down stairs after a leg day and it finally stops when I fall to the ground on my stomach.

Bewildered by the sudden chain of events, I just lay there while taking hurried breaths. I turn to look at the pedestal.

I escaped! Ha-ha! I quickly forget the absolute shitshow that the coming down was and instead do a passionate victory spasm on the floor.

Yet again a cold indoors wind breaks me out of my bubble. Right, food. I rotate myself so that the top of my head points towards the door. I again take the shape of a stiff stick. This time my arms and legs are also helping me gain maximum length. Then I put a point on the tip of my fingers and rotate so that now my legs are pointing towards the door. I repeat this process and I alarmingly quickly get over to the door.

I use the wall to help me support my legs. Here at the door I can feel the inside wind very strongly. Is there an open wind tunnel going through here, what the hell? Giggling between laboured breaths I raise my head to look at the terrified sheep girl watching me eyes wide on the other side of the doorway. The wind causes her hair to pretty much go sideways behind face. Somehow her hair setup stops her hair from making her completely blind. As I make eye contact with her, the empty food tray in her hands hits the floor.

"Haa! Hi-hi-hi-hii!" I try to give a friendly greeting to her by nodding but can't stop giggling at her expression.

She just looks at me frozen in fear. I hear a loud rumble down from the left of the doorway. I watch the girl as she turns away from me to look to her right, towards the sound. She takes a step back and then she turns toward me.

She tries to take a running step towards me but she gets interrupted by a violent burst of wind. I can see the girl get thrown out of view by the wind before I too get thrown backwards.

I fall down again. Luckily the fall wasn't bad but it still dazed me. When I manage to lift my head towards the doorway again, a horned, winged woman is standing there. Her dark green hair swings crazily in the wind that seems to be emitting out of her with such force that even light seems to vibrate. Under the glowing white horns that create a beautiful crown, two violently shining green slit eyes stare at me. Then I noticed something interesting. Her left hand is buried in the wall.