Chapter 499 Hypotheses and Tests
'So she doesn't remember what I made her do at all,' Rick thought as he opened his eyes, returning to his purple world. He had tested many things on Katrina and she seemed to have no recollection of anything she'd done under his control, despite all the things he'd made her do to herself.
The only test that had failed was the one where he attempted to take control of a single body part, but he wasn't sure why. Taking over her entire body had been simple, like putting on new clothes, so why would he be incapable of taking over individual body parts? He wasn't sure, but he felt it was likely because he lacked the fine control necessary to do so. Thus, more training and experimentation was in order.
§Gaaathheeeeeeeerrrrr ffffaaaaaaiiiiiithhhh,§ the voice in the back of his mind chanted, but Rick only had the vaguest idea of how to go about that.
When he'd looked down at his body and noticed that the thread connecting him to Katrina had slightly dimmed, and the pulses of light had decreased in frequency and intensity, he'd thought it odd. But with the voice's subtle guidance, he learned that what connected him to Katrina was "belief", and the pulses of light was "faith".
'How do I gather faith?' he thought as hard as he could.
After another ten minutes of rest, he began relaxing and preparing to return to the purple world for another test. This time, he chose the darkest thread, which should be enough to support or disprove his earlier thought about belief and faith being what linked him to others. He also wanted to discover if there was a reason for the differences between threads, and if he was correct in assuming that Katrina's belief in him was the strongest and her faith the most fervent.
Another unknown amount of time passed and he finally returned to the purple world, then opened his eyes again and began searching through the thousands of threads attached to him. Quite a few of them were still vantablack, with no light traveling through them at all, and he felt a certain sense of imminent doom when he considered using them to test his new blessing. Thus, he discarded them and continued searching until he found a dim, almost ephemeral gossamer thread, through which light with the intensity of a firefly seemed to casually, and very occasionally, saunter through at a sedate pace in fits and starts.
'That's the perfect one to test with,' he thought and dove into the thread, traveling along it as fast as he could.
But unlike his testing with Katrina earlier, this transfer wasn't immediate, nor was it smooth. On the contrary, he continued hitting pockets of turbulence, causing him to fear for his life. Or worse, having his consciousness trapped outside his body to wander the world as an incorporeal ghost while his physical body was left behind in a vegetative state.
Still, he persisted, holding on and taking mental note of the process. His newest theory was that it had something to do with distance as well; the thread he was currently traveling along just "felt" like the destination was further away than simply down the hall and into another room.
When he finally arrived at the end of the thread, he opened his eyes and looked at a nearby clock. Though he didn't know where he was, exactly, or who he was inhabiting, the clock indicated that ten minutes had passed during his trip down the thread of belief. It seemed that time was somewhat subjective in the purple world, as it had felt like he'd been traveling for hours thanks to all the turbulence. Or perhaps he had crossed time zones, which was a far simpler-and thus likelier-explanation.
After noting the time difference, he looked around and noticed a pair of AR glasses on a table next to "him". He momentarily fell into a quandary before remembering that the body he was in wasn't his, then began listening to the conversation in his surroundings.