Chapter 322 The Brownian Motion of Sentient Life
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A few weeks prior.
As Aron fell from the sky with no parachute, the plane that had dropped him entered a wide holding pattern, as if it was observing his actions.
He continued falling, and despite not having any breathing apparatus to help him breathe in the thin air at 15,000 Meters, he had no trouble breathing. Once he reached 12,000 Meters above the ground, he began casting a floating rune on himself and his falling speed decreased further and further until he came to a full stop at about 10,000 Meters. It was the average altitude at which international commercial airplanes flew, but he wasn't worried about being spotted since the entire airspace was restricted, meaning that any commercial airplane that entered would be shot down.
He then cast a wide shield with a radius of about a kilometer with him at the center, then just waited for a notification.
[The satellites are ready,] Nova announced in his ear. All of the satellites above him, whether they be in geosynchronous orbit, semi-geosynchronous orbit, low earth orbit, or even higher that were in a position that could see him had turned and focused on him. All of their sensors were pointed directly at him, but they saw nothing through the shield despite being plainly visible to Aron himself.
"Begin the calibration," he said and started releasing a huge amount of mana from his body. The mana would normally disperse into the atmosphere, but the shield Aron had cast around himself wouldn't allow it to do so, so it began accumulating as he continued releasing more and more of it. He was pushing as much mana through his body as he could, condensing it around him more and more, to the point that, for those that could see it, it would appear like an almost entirely solid lump of gold.
At the same time, the satellites that were focusing on him began cycling through different universal frequencies, with each satellite assigned a different range of frequencies to explore. The pattern would eventually cover every frequency the researchers in Lab City had discovered to date.
After more than half an hour of the satellites following the quantum server's instructions, the search ended as a frequency had finally been discovered that showed the golden lump where Aron was.
[The calibration was a success, sir,] Nova informed Aron, who had sweat pouring from his forehead. Although he could channel mana through his body in an unlimited amount, his mind hadn't yet reached a level of advancement that would allow him to maintain his maximum flow rate without limit. Currently, an hour was the best he could manage.
He released a sigh of relief as he stopped channeling mana through his body and immediately canceled the shield he had been keeping active in order to trap the mana in a confined space. It swiftly dispersed through the atmosphere, the high concentration having served its purpose of discovering and calibrating the frequency his satellite network could use to detect it.
"Come pick me up," he said in a tired voice. He continued hovering in place, and a moment later, the plane that was in a holding pattern approached him. But as it was on its way to collect him, it was met with a massive turbulence wave that had been caused by the outflow of dispersing mana from around his body.
The turbulence gave the pilot and copilot of the plane quite a shock, and had the plane been made of usual materials, such as aircraft aluminum and other lightweight alloys, it would have broken into pieces and crashed. Thankfully, however, it had been made of tougher stuff and powered its way through the turbulence to rendezvous with Aron—who had already begun making his way toward the plane—midway.
He reboarded the plane through the open cargo ramp and retook his seat, watching the cargo ramp slowly close and block out the sun that had been hitting his eyes. The room darkened, but was swiftly lit by the strip lighting in the cargo bay.
After finding a frequency at which the satellites could detect mana, Nova and Aron got to work mapping the universe, which had a few differences from the universal simulation. Due to the number of variables in the real universe being a bit higher than in the universal simulation, it couldn't be 100% accurate. After all, life existed and Nova didn't have nearly enough processing power to model the random, almost Brownian motion of sentient life.
(Ed note: Brownian motion is the random pattern of particles suspended in a liquid or gas, even without external stimulus being applied. It is truly random, not pseudorandom like a computer picking a "random" number via an algorithm that relies on some kind of seed to generate.)
It was yet to be discovered if Nova ever would wield the power to simulate everything with 100% accuracy, even though it was theoretically within the realm of possibility; all it would require was sufficient computing resources. Resources that quantum computing was too primitive to be able to gather, at least without replacing the entire planet with one giant ecumenopolis consisting of nothing but clusters of quantum computer servers that stretched out beyond the Karman Line and reached the cold, unfeeling reaches of space.
The discovery of mana's frequency had resulted from the scientists working in Lab City delving deeper into research on Henry's evolved eyes. Their ongoing research had allowed them to discover many things the deeper they went, almost like the young boy's eyes were a treasure that kept on giving.
Now, all the satellites that Aron had launched into space had been updated with a new frequency scanning program that allowed the researchers to see mana in its bare and neutral form. It would take a few more simulations before they could differentiate the energy in its different forms, but a few satellites had already been tasked with mapping earth once again. This time, they would be mapping the planet's mana profile; although it exists everywhere in the universe, the concentration wasn't equally distributed.
The rest of the satellites that were currently mostly idle turned their "eyes" back toward the universe, their new primary task to develop a mana map of the few light years around the solar system that Earth called home.novE(1b(In
