I’ve had some pretty great teachers in my day. I remembered one professor in particular, a guy who taught an introductory Electrical Engineering course that actually sparked my true love of staring at a circuit board for hours and wanting to cry. It became clear to me that, of all the teachers I’d ever had, he was the best for a simple reason: he knew exactly what the fuck he was talking about. Apparently, he’d written books and developed lesson plans followed by universities around the country, but not every professor who knew their stuff could teach well. This guy was on another level. The way he understood those concepts was to such an elementary degree that even us poor, clueless saps could get a handle on the concepts through his explanations. Was it just his knowledge that made him able to teach well? No. Was it experience? Maybe. But to me, it always felt like it was just because he truly understood two things. First, the subject matter. And two, how people understand that subject matter.

“You’re daydreaming again, aren’t you? Is she daydreaming again?” I heard Feltan say. Don’t get me wrong, Feltan knew his stuff. In fact, it wasn’t a stretch to say he was quite a talent. But he definitely wasn’t a grand expert; I doubted someone at the highest level would lose to Beatrice in a straight up fight.

Feltan was an okay teacher, at best. He knew stuff about Mind for sure, but I didn’t get that sense of infinite knowledge from him. Even more vexing, he partially understood how to explain the concepts. But it was almost more harmful for that understanding to only be halfway, to be honest.

“It’s all a matter of focus. Mind is a self-explanatory power, and it all stems from focus. That’s why humans, so paradoxically, can reach such high highs and extremely low lows; their minds, their thoughts, are too variable. Non-humans are different. Consistent. Humans won’t be able to raise you to your true potential because their inconsistency breeds disparity.”

Like I was saying, Feltan is an okay enough teacher, but he has his quirks. One of which being his constant need to bash humans. Like, I myself was the one who approached him for help because the humans I had Linked weren’t able to fulfill my needs. But jeez, man. Can we talk about Mind a bit?

“That’s great and all, but can you go back to talking about how to prevent my psychic power from giving you a tummy ache?” I asked with a sigh. Yelah’s body was currently sitting in a meditating pose, which wasn’t wholly necessary, but it did feel right. Feltan sat across from Yelah’s body, leaning on his excessively long fernen arms, and he shifted when I pointed out the distraction.

“Right. Sorry. Where were we?”

“You were mentioning something about focusing, but focusing on not focusing.”

“Of course. I’ve not heard if the humans have a name for it, but my people call it ‘tree trunk that is swayed by the wind yet remains sturdy.’ A beautiful term, I’m sure you agree. The core is understanding that focusing Mind is something that requires control, but once you become an expert at this control, the focus should come naturally. Of course, you have not developed this skill, likely because you never knew about it. Eventually, with your power, you may have developed this skill, but it would have taken a very, very long time.”

Feltan’s explanation touched on something I didn’t consider. Mind could be automatic? From the moment I arrived, it was practically instinct to use my psychic powers with a bit of focus. And it just made sense that I had to focus to do crazy stuff like move things with my thoughts, right? I never even considered the possibility of moving huge boulders or metal shafts without thinking about doing it. If anything, I had developed extremely roundabout methods of doing things without technically thinking of it.

“So, using Mind without really thinking about it. Or focusing on it, whatever. But how exactly does that prevent my Mind from spilling all over the place and stressing people out?”

“Because,” he said, sitting up, “your Mind isn’t actually the thing stressing us out. Mind itself is a means. If I push against you with my Mind, what would happen is my effort, my focus, using this means to achieve a goal. Focus is the source of discomfort, because it is your focus that pushes against the world. So, with your puppet here, your Mind is present, but it would do nothing without your focus. The effort you put into making tiny movements with its body, of making it speak your thoughts, of sticking its finger up its nose, that pushing creates a presence that everyone can feel. And in your case, this can reach extremes. A more powerful Mind can be used for more powerful feats, and more powerful feats require increasingly intense focus. You are constantly focusing so hard that it becomes an oppressive blanket over anything near you.”

I let the lecture stew for a moment. What Feltan was saying made so much sense it hurt. It even related to Mind Collapse, where more severe focus was required to use more and more Mind, which could cause a shutdown of the mind and body. Even so, the separation was hard to think about. Couldn’t it just be correlation, rather than causation? I’ve heard of that saying before. I couldn’t necessarily argue with him; in fact, I was inclined to agree with his interpretation. But at the same time, I noticed Queen’s inner head tilt. To me, whatever Feltan was saying was as close to correct as I could imagine, but I could feel Queen’s hesitation. He was close. Close, but not completely correct.

“Alright, that makes sense to me. So how exactly do I do it?”

“There are a few ways. But considering your power and how much I want to feel safe for the first time in months, there’s a particular method I’d like you to try. It’s one of the more difficult ones, unfortunately. It requires a significant amount of multitasking and deeply understanding multiple things at the same time. Wow, that is creepy.”

Yelah’s mouth was twisted into a horrid grin, and I didn’t even really try to do it. Hearing Feltan talk about this super-hard training method but it being exactly designed to be trivial for me was the peak of irony. And it was finally working in my favor!

“Let’s get started right away, mister teacher, sir!”

_________

I have made a mistake. A terrible, horrible mistake.

Multitasking is easy. The easiest thing I could possibly do. Hell, I was laying worker eggs while Feltan was lecturing me at the same time as observing Ben’s antics in the north while simultaneously keeping an eye on Bob, Beatrice, Beelzebub, and whatever else. But this exercise was just impossible.

“Explain the thought process behind this sculpture,” Feltan said.

“I don’t know, man, I wanted to make a giraffe, and I made a damn giraffe,” responded Yelah’s mouth, the same Yelah who was doing a single-handed handstand. Various tiny dirt sculptures of giraffes were strewn around the edge of the forest, the fruits of my labor. I was even making some stones float in the air, as true psychic training must be undertaken. Now, I was having no issues actually doing all the tasks Feltan set out for me. I was even challenging myself by continuing to lay eggs back in the hive. The issue came with focus, as the whole lesson implied.

At first, I had tried just using B-boxes to complete the tasks, and that was fine. But then I realized that B-boxes had a fatal flaw: they used focus I couldn’t control. It was somewhat strange to think about, but I thought about it in terms of clones. If I told a B-box to, for example, make a sculpture of a giraffe out of mud and sticks, that clone would go ahead and do it. But, I realized, that clone focused on the task as much as I would focus on it. It was me, after all. And that wasn’t something I could actually control. It was weird enough to think of a copy of my brain performing a task like a robot, but it was even weirder to consider that I was technically thinking of doing that thing without consciously thinking of it.

‘But Enno…’

…

Queen sighed. “But Enno, wouldn’t focus without actually focusing be the same as focusing unconsciously?”

That’s what I’m saying! But no. Instead, it just introduced a whole new element of complexity that didn’t mesh with the training, and only made things more difficult. So at some point, I had to try doing things without my precious B-boxes, and that shit was just hard. If I focused hard enough, the various tasks were manageable, but the understanding of each task faded into the background. It had taken hours just to make the giraffe manually, but in the end I didn’t understand the minutiae of the task.

“Again.”

“Actually, I think I’m gonna take a break until tomorrow. Sleep can be pretty nice.”

“I thought,” Feltan said, “you were intent on making this progress. Fernen children become capable of this exercise by the time they are only a few years old.”

“First of all, that’s cheating. Because fernen clearly mature at an earlier age. Second of all, I’m technically nowhere near a few years old.”

“You say that, but you speak with knowledge and wisdom beyond the age of a newborn.”

Yeah, whatever moss-man. I let Yelah’s body collapse and let it lay there, ignoring my new teacher shaking his head. I’m the boss here, aren’t I? Couldn’t I just have a bit of time after recovering from Mind Collapse? Third excuse?

Bringing my attention back to the hive, I happily observed the nursery through Belle’s eyes. With the Mind Collapse situation over and done with, I had wanted to get back to egg-laying as quickly as possible, especially considering the results of the Linker experiments. Most of them had hatched, below a certain threshold of Mind I’d used, and there were practically no noticeable differences compared to base Linkers. However, some were taking a long time, and those were the ones I had high hopes for. Hope for what, exactly? Unsure. But maybe they’d have great returns for their investment. But at this point, my priority had shifted to workers. These would be the first regular workers I’d hatched in a while, and we felt that with the influx of food from Yiwi, we could risk more intensive bees like workers.

The clincher was my desire to hatch queens. Leveling up the Egg Laying Ability wasn’t something I could do easily without more information, but so far, creating exceptional bees seemed like the way to go. However, after training with Feltan for a while, I began to think of Mind in a different way, and by extension, that Ability.

Intent matters much more than I expected. Maybe it had worked previously to just create bees with a lot of Mind and get levels, but was that enough moving forward? I doubted it would be possible to just create queen bees because I really want to, but I could maybe create bees with specific specializations instead of leaving things to chance. Or otherwise, maybe it could ensure bees would be born with certain qualities.

Queen’s preferred theory, on the other hand, was that by using intent, I could instead build on the future. So, my intent wouldn’t affect the eggs themselves, but would change how my Ability works overall.

I had no idea what she was talking about. Now that was a situation where the teacher is very talented and smart but has no clue what the fuck they’re trying to say.