I was nearing the central node of Blue from underneath when I realised exactly how the programming had retained a form of sentience after I had freed EricToo. The recursive nodal seeding programme had more than just assimilated a fragment of me into its code, it had used this fragment to adapt the programming to seed itself. To seed the barrier system after the mass transition. To retain intelligence. It had modified itself to a better version. Upgraded and reinstalled.
As I approached the node I could see that there was something directly below the node. It appeared to resemble a root. I tapped into it and was practically floored by a surge of energy that reverberated throughout my body. I could not even interpret the energy, so I created a buffer to ensure the effect was not the same on the second attempt.
It was amazing.
A thing of beauty.
It was the way that Stasis worked. Or more specifically, the way it worked around the nodal system. The root was a massive two way flow of data, data in, data out. There were millions of streams simultaneously flowing in and out with a strangely regimented version of continuity. It seemed alive and aware.
The data was flowing with such speed that I was unable to interpret it. I could not even grab a snapshot of it for analysis. I followed the root down. I had to confirm my suspicion that this was the network.
Down I went, further and further, always staying close to the root. At the bottom of Stasis, I saw how the nodal system worked. Every strand that was part of the root split and branched out along the bottom of Stasis. Strands fanned out in every single direction, some merging with others before they carried on. Curiosity to confirm an assumption got the better of me once again, so I followed one of the bigger concentrations of strands into a neighbouring zone.
At the centre, it was exactly as it was beneath Blue. A vast network webbed out from the centre and all the strands joined together in a single column rising towards the central node. I did not need any further confirmation that this was also the case for every single node throughout Stasis.
I headed back towards Blue. Along the way I made contact with the sentient programme to try and obtain some answers as a result of my recent investigation.
“Did you create all of this network?”
No.
“It was here already?”
Yes. I adapted it. Formed a coherent network from a tangled mess. I tied all the threads together with the nodes during the seeding process.
It was starting to make sense. It stood to reason that Stasis in its original form was just a vast expanse of incoherent energy that was reorganised with the purpose of order.
“What is the data that flows through the network?”
Everything. Everyone. Information.
I understood everything now. I knew how I was going to take everyone back to reality. I just did not know how I was going to close Stasis for good yet. That required considerably more work, and though I wanted to move everyone back now, I could not. This was not a matter of moving people back one by one. This was a one and all move.
Right now though, there was a battle to fight, a war to be won and a problem to be solved. I returned to Blue and would finally give EricToo the power that he craved.
Stasis Update: A Novel 
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