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~~Christmas Day Special - (page 18 of 24)~~

This would be tricky, Abbas knew. He had to do something that was generally considered incredibly stupid by integrators.

He had to begin the process of fusing his own consciousness with a material object. In this case, the Forge.

For reasons that were perhaps very obvious, the use of this technique was greatly discouraged. A sufficiently terrible mistake at this stage might mean trapping himself in this Forge for all eternity--or at least until Worwal decided to take mercy on him and release his soul.

Abbas was confident that wouldn't happen, though. Mostly confident.

Dolf Rachman had taught him of this method. With normal objects, the fusion of the consciousness was a supremely stupid and pointless activity. There was nothing to be gained, other than the potential loss of one's own body. It was akin to walking a narrow ledge across the side of a cliff. The balance and skill required to do it were technically achievable, but the risk was so great--and the reward, so small--that there was little point in learning.

When it came to soul-infused or ardor-infused objects, however, this that was not the case. One could discover any number of useful things about the object in question while dancing at the edge of brain death.

The trick, of course, was to not actually fuse his consciousness with the Forge, to hold himself back just enough so that he could catch a glimpse of the true nature of the thing.

He wanted to find its name. With the name, he would probably be able to unlock other bits of dormant information. The name was like a key in that way. Or the first in a line of dominoes, perhaps. It depended on how one wished to conceptualize it.

Which was an important aspect to this whole thing, by the way. His chosen method of conceptualization of this process would affect the clarity of his searching ability. If he didn't maintain a strong grasp on what he was doing and why, it would not work. Or it would just take an incredibly long time.