Helpfulness And Handshakes...

Hey Everyone!! :-)

Here's a little bit more of the third installment in the Petri Dish Chronicles! As always, the disclaimer is that this is a draft and, as such, it's unedited and likely full of errors and is subject to revision, revamping, and being completely scrapped and rewritten. But, with that in mind, I'm reasonably satisfied with the basics of it, at least at the moment, or I wouldn't have bothered posting it. Enjoy! :-)

Excerpt from the third Petri Dish book:
You act as if there’s no doubt I can do this. But it’s not for certain it’s even possible.”

“There is no doubt in my mind. As I said, I believe this is what your mind instinctively tried to do, at first. Are you familiar with the term ‘handshake’ with regard to computer networks?”

“A what? What?” The seemingly random change of subject was too much for Petri to keep up with, when her mind was already spinning trying to figure out a way to protect her friends.

“A ‘handshake’ is an exchange of data between two networks, during which they sync their protocols so that they can communicate. Think of it like a negotiation on how to send messages to a friend, so that you both know what to expect and how the messages will be coming to you. I believe you underwent such a process when you learned how to connect to the Arcanum Collective. Your mind adapted the patterns it uses so that they would be compatible with the patterns the Arcanum use. But it took some time and effort for you to be able to learn how to make that adaptation.”

Thinking back over what it felt like to learn to link to the Collective, Petri tried to figure out if what Vlad had just described was what had happened. “Um… Maybe? I’m not sure. But even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean I can do it with a computer. It’s totally different.”

“The patterns are different, but the concept is the same. It’s like learning a different language. The Arcanum have spoken only their own language all their lives. They’ve only heard their own language spoken. Their minds have been rigidly trained in the patterns required for their language. Within their patterns, they are adept and nimble, but the patterns are so deeply ingrained they have difficulty escaping them to establish a new pattern. You are not nearly so practiced in the patterns the Arcanum use. You mentor has informed me that you’ve only connected with their Collective a handful of times, and the connections were of short duration and not of any great depth.

The only exception to that was when you shattered the internal patterns within the larger pattern of their Collective. The patterns that shield the individual minds and cloak private communications within the network. But you weren’t able to do that by adhering to the protocols they had established. You had to override those protocols and superimpose your own pattern. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have penetrated their Collective, you would have simply destroyed the connection entirely.”

“I’m…not sure. I don’t really understand what you’re talking about.”

Vlad shrugged. “It doesn't matter. You don't need to understand, at this point. When you enter the rainbow, we will work together to find the right pattern that will allow you to connect to a digital network. All you need to know now is that there are two circumstances I am aware of under which your mind exhibited the capacity to use different patterns to establish connections. The first is when you were first trying to learn to use the rainbow, and the second is when you overpowered the shields used by the Arcanum in their Collective. These combined indicate that your mind not only has the flexibility to establish a communication protocol with a digital network, you also have the necessary power to amplify the signal of your individual mind so that it does not attenuate into non-existence.

“And we will help with that, child. If you agree to aid us with this, we will channel the combined energy of the Collective into sustaining your and your pets' bodies to give you the time you need to master this skill. And we will boost all of your mental patterns within the machine, so that you do not fade or get lost. This much we have learned we can do from experiments with other lesser beings.”