Since my first capture, I kept myself busy collecting the tiny particles that crossed my existence.
Over time, I improved. Where before I needed all my willpower and focus to capture a particle, now the process was almost automatic. As soon as a particle appeared, I noticed it, grabbed it, and added it to the others without conscious effort.
It seemed that, since my assimilation, my mind had become more stable… or was it just the effect of the cycles of madness?
"That makes 43,598,656,059 particles…", I thought.
I didn't know what all of this was for, but looking at the sea of particles brought me a strange sense of calm. Compared to my existence, they were still tiny, mere clusters of atoms floating in infinite space. Yet, there was something comforting about seeing them there, constant, alive, almost like little anchors amidst the nothingness.
While manipulating my sparks, I began noticing patterns. Small clusters, subtle movements, as if each particle had its own dance in the void. The more I played, the more my mind found meaning in what had once been random.
I don't know how much time I spent collecting, but in the end, I had ten times more particles than before — an impressive amount, considering their rarity. And then, finally, something different happened.
Prime began to tremble. I always kept my particles organized in the order I found them. Even when I played with them and moved them around, I always made sure to return them to their proper place.
I watched the particle tremble for a moment, until somehow it was assimilated. Physically, nothing seemed to change, but the sensation was completely different. Where before I needed effort to manipulate it, now, after assimilation, controlling it was just a matter of intention. I only had to think, and the particle obeyed. It was as if it recognized my authority — no resistance, no doubt, no effort. I was in command.
I felt a deep connection with the particle, marveling at the discovery.
With this innovation, I turned my gaze to the second particle.
"Can I accelerate the assimilation?" I thought.
I decided to test it. I focused all my willpower on it.
"This seems a bit wrong… what if I try it this way?" — I adjusted my approach, refining my intention.
After countless attempts, I finally assimilated the second particle. A feeling of triumph mixed with curiosity washed over me.
"Or was it just time?" I wondered, unsure if my technique had worked or if the mere passage of years had made assimilation more natural.
Still uncertain, I moved on to the third spark. I discovered that each particle had its own vibration — tiny, almost imperceptible, but enough for me to notice. By tuning my will to that vibration, assimilation happened much faster.
"Success," I thought, feeling a spark of excitement.
Then I looked at the third particle, and soon after, at the river of particles still waiting to be assimilated.
"Wonderful," I thought, happy. Having something to do, something I could control and conquer, was truly a reason to celebrate.
Soon, I assimilated all the particles and began testing what I could do with them.
Before me, a miniature city took shape — tiny figures of light representing people walking, while vehicles moved back and forth. Before, I would never have managed to create something like this; manipulating particles in this way had seemed impossible. But now, with the power of assimilation, everything flowed naturally, almost instinctively.
The only problem was the limited number of particles I had. My existence was still, for the most part, pure emptiness. In numbers, these particles didn't occupy even 0.001 of the space around me — yet it was difficult to quantify just how tiny they were.
I also began noticing other worrying problems. The number of particles I could capture seemed to decrease over time. After long periods of observation and assimilation, I noticed a pattern: there were cycles of abundance, when particles appeared frequently, and cycles of scarcity, when none appeared.
Gradually, the scarcity cycles became more common. My fears began to materialize. A considerable amount of time passed without a single particle appearing — I don't know how long, since I no longer counted — but it was enough to disturb me deeply.
With little choice, I started playing with the particles I already had. I molded them into everything my mind could imagine — I even created a clock. But watching how fast time seemed to pass within that construct made me nervous, and to avoid further damage to my perception, I dismantled it.
Soon, however, my creativity began to wane. With no new ways to play, I decided to test the limits: how far would the particles obey my will? And, to my surprise, discovering that was more rewarding than I could have imagined.
I observed an atomic fragment of what should have been iron and used a significant number of particles to shape it. It was in this experiment that I finally understood their scale: they had no fixed size, no defined shape. They were pulses of information, nodes in a vast network of existence, infinitely small, almost unimaginable.
Then I noticed a curious detail about that atom I supposed was iron: "Perhaps it's because it's matter formed by assimilated particles?"
I could control it the same way I manipulated loose particles. I began modifying the atom into absurd forms: a four-dimensional atom instead of three; another that seemed too unstable to exist, yet remained before me, obedient.
Soon I realized a pattern: the particles had no rules. If I believed the iron atom was unstable, it became unstable. That was the fascinating part: matter that obeyed only my will.
It was like playing with the building blocks of the universe itself, but without instructions, without limits… And that led to an inevitable question: how far could I go before something truly new emerged?
I could do anything with them, except multiply them. I tried countless times, but the number remained fixed, as if a limit had been imposed from the beginning. I realized that insisting was useless, and little by little, I stopped playing with ordinary matter.
Then I discovered something new. With a different effort, less physical and more… conceptual, I managed to force a particle to abandon its material form. It ceased to be something I could imagine as an atom or stone and became a higher state, something I called a concept.
Dimension? I don't know. I only knew it was far beyond anything I could describe in physical terms. It was as if I had touched a higher layer of reality — a plane that could not be seen, only intuited.
And, lacking physical form, the concept seemed to spread throughout the void. The most surprising part was what happened next: in the conceptual state, I could influence normal particles, applying something akin to rules upon them.
Then doubt struck me like lightning: "Is this how the laws of physics work?"
Naturally, I tried to replicate different effects, but soon hit a limitation. The concept was immutable. It only applied the rule created at the moment of its formation — nothing more, nothing less.
My first concept was about interaction, but it was full of flaws. I thought of dismantling it to recover the particles used… a good plan. But soon I discovered another rule: concepts could not be reverted into particles. The only way to undo them was to destroy them completely.
In the end, I left it there. Since I could control precisely when it applied its rules or not, there was no risk of interfering with my… p-playthings. Or rather, my experiments.