October 19, 2022

  Day 0

  Within 15 minutes, everyone was ready.

  Everyone but Daniel, who was still working on the task given to him by the impromptu council. A council that had assembled 41,000 ft in the sky.

  Daniel had experimented a lot with using thoughts for movement, and at this point, he had started equating these thoughts to commands in a programming language. While a computer could be insanely powerful, it still needed precise and well-defined instructions. The same was true of movement using the aura that filled this bubble that surrounded him.

  However, as opposed to computers, this aura understood context.

  For example, when Daniel thought of moving left by 10 feet, he moved left by 10 feet in addition to all the movement which resulted from rocketing through the sky. That happened without explicit instructions. When he thought about moving slowly to the left, and then thought ‘stop’, only his motion relative to the existing rocketing motion stopped, not his motion in its entirety.

  After all, the earth itself was revolving around the sun, would just saying stop get me flung out into space?

  It was all very confusing, but at the same time, intuitive. Commands did what Daniel naturally expected them to. They would do the most obvious and reasonable thing. If he wanted to do something more specific, say to instantly stop his entire momentum, he would have to explicitly put those words in the command.

  Of course, such abrupt deceleration would turn him into mush, so it was a good thing the power understood context.

  Going from 900 km/h to 0 in an instant is definitely not a good idea.

  Daniel thought, before coming to the task at hand. He considered various commands like “I want to lose my speed at 10km/h every minute” or “I want to constantly decelerate so that I come to a stop after 100km”, etc.

  The more Daniel thought, the more he realized how complicated it'd be to express his exact desire in a foolproof and safe way, especially without knowing the exact distance and location of the island.

  I could still manage it if it were just me, but it’ll be a nightmare to coordinate it perfectly with 160 people.

  While only a few were outwardly panicking and shaking now, no one would cope well with getting left behind and stranded alone. Going back to rescue those people would make this whole exercise even more complex.

  Moreover, I want the flexibility to change my commands on the fly and correct any mistakes. Something that isn't possible in a distributed design.

  No, he will need to think of a better way, teaching everyone how to control their movement when he himself understood so little was not practical.

  Expecting everyone to follow instructions precisely, with no room for error, no retries?

  Too much could go wrong.

  Daniel started approaching the problem from a completely different direction. The issues with his current line of thinking were that it did not allow for retries, couldn't handle changes on the fly, and relied on the entire group to execute things perfectly.

  I have seen this problem before, in system design. The solution is to come up with a centralized approach, with a single point of control.

  He thought, aware that such a strategy would have the drawback of having a single point of failure as well.

  If I mess up, I might take the whole group to their graves with me...

  It took some time, and everyone patiently waited for Daniel even as they flew further and further from the island.

  Eventually, an idea occurred to him. He spent another minute weighing that idea and couldn't find any obvious flaws. That done, he immediately went back to the war room and explained it to everyone.

  “Here's the plan. I will start our deceleration at a very safe rate, ensuring it doesn’t cause any sudden lurches and nausea, and depending on how well everyone handles it, I'll adjust things on the fly. Coordinating such adaptive maneuvers with so many people will be impossible. So, I need to be the one in control of everyone's movement. I have found a way to do that."

  After a pause, he continued.

  "As long as everyone recites the following command - 'I want to move in a way that my position relative to Daniel Walter remains the same' - it should work. This will tether everyone to me. Better yet, we don't need to say the commands all at once, and can take our time to ensure that no one is having any difficulties. Once everyone is done, I will move slightly to the left to confirm that no one is left behind, and only then I will start decelerating”.

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  After some time mulling over the idea, everyone in the war room agreed. The idea was solid.

  This could work.

  Daniel first went around and made sure everyone knew him, particularly his name, as these commands were not omniscient and relied on each individual's knowledge. He also explained what he was doing and how it will work, since he wasn't sure if the exact words themselves mattered or if each person's interpretation of what should happen was the thing that dictated their movement.

  Better safe than sorry.

  He thought, as he went on to hover a few feet above everyone, to get an uninterrupted line of sight. Finally, he stood still and gave the go-ahead to everyone with a thumbs up. Within a minute everyone had said their commands.

  Then, Daniel moved left, and almost everyone moved with him.

  To no one’s surprise, a few remained stationary.

  They were each given a refresher, and a few minutes later, Daniel tried again.

  Things went without a hitch this time, and half an hour of comfortable deceleration later, the group finally eroded all the momentum they had inherited from the flight and came to a stop.

  The leadership had already planned what to do, and without wasting any time, everyone raised their hands to indicate they were feeling fine and ready to go again. Daniel looked at the pilot, pointed his finger back in the direction where they came from, and after receiving a nod, started acceleration that way. Close to an hour passed with nothing of note happening.

  Then, Rahul spotted the island. He waved his hand to get Daniel's attention, and pointed with a relieved smile.

  Daniel reflected the smile with his own, and started decelerating again. Once they had slowed down, he issued new commands and the group began moving toward the island.

  10 minutes later, all the passengers set their feet on the ground after what were undoubtedly the longest hours of their lives.

  The instant they were safe, the aura bubbles around them disappeared.

  Everyone felt the effects of that long journey all at once and just crashed to the ground. The effect wasn’t physical, but rather a mental exhaustion of surviving when they should have by all means fallen to their deaths, and the soul’s exhaustion after coming in contact with a force well outside its scope.

  Without any opportunity to rest, they were all greeted with prompts. Rahul read the message.

  Rahul checked with his teammates and found out they too had got the two titles. However, the few whose only interaction with intent was to tether to Daniel by reciting the commands he gave, got only the PURE TOUCH OF INTENT title. Daniel got a better version of the wielder of the pure intent title, as well as a third title.

  There was a lot to cover with these titles, and Rahul had a feeling that it would be a long time before they would prove to be of any use. His attention, however, was immediately captured by a small glowing pillar emerging from the ground not far from where they were all lying down, exhausted. A strange pull emanating from it made it hard to miss, something primal in his brain told him to go close to it.

  At that moment two things became clear. The system omitted information about the bastion because it really was quite impossible to miss.

  And wildlife on earth would not cease to exist.