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But it still begged the question. How much knowledge had been lost over the many long years? And how much of it might yet be rediscovered?

He supposed that the Amir-10 was now an example of this.

Abbas was able to use the Forge to help him examine the Shifting Spear of Logante, and as a result, he discovered the key factor to its voice-activated transformation commands.

That being, a pseudo-consciousness.

The Spear held within it a kind of semi-aware cluster of soul power. On its own, it could do nothing, but when it connected with a living body, it gained a reactive property. In a sense, the soul of the wielder was like a switch that completed the circuit of the Spear's soul power.

Abbas had never seen a pseudo-consciousness quite like this one before, able to recognize and react to auditory stimuli. It was quite advanced. The tricky part was that the voice commands had to be stored somewhere in order for the Spear to recognize them in the first place.

But where would that be? The Spear didn't have a computer built into it like his powered armor did. It was just metal.

And that, perhaps, was the greatest revelation of all.

The information was being stored within the Spear's soul. Or its "half-soul," such as it was. It wasn't alive. The pseudo-consciousness had a memory structure built into it for the purpose of holding the commands.

Abbas had no idea that such a thing was even possible. The ability to store data within a constructed pocket of soul power?

The implications were mind-boggling. With that alone, he could completely redesign his powered armor. And countless other inventions from over the years.

It was an overwhelming realization. Like he'd been overlooking something that should've been painfully obvious for the past fifty years. Or perhaps longer.