Chapter 236 – Complexity

After the marriage, Dream and his wives didn't have a honeymoon or anything of the like. For them, there was simply nowhere else to explore, nothing new to see. They had traveled beyond even Earth to see and explore other planets, so for them, there was nothing in the entire solar system that was worthy of a long vacation. 

So they went back to their normal lives. Luna returned to her empire and continued to make it prosper. Alice roamed around like a ghost, often helping Luna with things she needed or sometimes just disappearing for a while, doing who knows what. As for Iris, she eventually went back to sleep, not waking for a very long time. 

Finally, there was Dream. He flung himself back into the infinite void, carrying out a plethora of projects. Now though, he had a few specific topics he wished to crack in the near future. 

Not long before the wedding, Dream had been studying the most fundamental particles and forces. He broke open subatomic particles, sifting through their deepest secrets and building up a system of rules and mathematics for it. Because of that, he had been able to build nanites that could assemble even elements. This was his greatest scientific achievement so far, but he was never satisfied. 

Now, he was shifting his sights. Besides the fundamental particles, there was also light and gravity. These two concepts were usually elusive and unable to be directly tapped into. However, Dream was now able to with the knowledge gained from the lower dimension. 

However, this came with some interesting insights and many more questions. Dream was able to determine the nature of gravity and light, but actually interacting with them proved exceedingly difficult. Light moved too fast and wasn't able to be contained and isolated easily, while gravity was... well, gravity. Gravity wasn't exactly a particle to manipulate, or at least that's the conclusion he came to. Such determinations were shallow at best and subject to change. 

Either way, he had hit a roadblock. In order to study these concepts, he needed to be able to isolate and control them first. He could take a roundabout way to control them, but that would take a long time. He didn't have decades to slowly innovate and test theories. 

So, he tried some things. In space, Dream stood among the black void. He looked at his hand that held a glob of aether. 

"...Let's try isolating some."

Dream moved his hands. Aether was a spatial type energy. Dream had used this energy to isolate particles in portions of space, making them easy to observe and study. With this, he could see inside a particle without actually breaking it open. This was made possible by being able to manipulate 3 dimensional space, viewing it from an almost omniscient perspective. 

Not only that, but Dream had ideas as to how it could be used in other, more dynamic ways. He had gotten used to isolating a portion of space with aether and folding it. This was the logic behind his teleportation. Now, he wanted to do the same thing with some particles. 

He wanted to trap some photons, containing them in the truest sense. Hopefully he could then study them despite their speed. 

With that, he formed the glob of aether into a hollow sphere, a spatial cage. There was a hole in this cage, and Dream angled it toward the sun. The light from the sun flooded in, and he slowly closed up the hole. 

Once it was closed, he looked within. He then frowned. For some reason, he could see photons, but they were still flying through space as if the aether bubble didn't even exist. The isolation did nothing to contain them. 

But there was something peculiar happening at the edges of the bubble. The photons would actually slow ever so slightly. This was due to the folding of space, forcing them to travel a greater distance to cross the edge. 

Seeing this, Dream was enlightened. The aether bubble didn't actually separate space. In truth, it was still connected to space, even if there were folds or bends. To truly separate space, there had to be a break, a section where no space actually existed. This was the truest form of spatial separation. 

But there was only one problem with that. Whenever Dream broke or cut apart space, he would always expose the chaotic void. This void would exert force on its surroundings, and like water down a funnel, everything would collapse into the void. This included space, matter, and mana. Nothing was spared. 

And while he had learned to reinforce space, holding back the natural forces of the void, this wasn't a viable way to study or research particles. Forming an enclosed ball of void would be extremely difficult, let alone trying to study something within it. 

So Dream had another idea. Through all of his years of research, he had learned more and more about the fabric of reality. He had discovered that three dimensional reality consisted of more than just space. There was a more fundamental fabric that supported even space. In truth, there were already theories about this concept. Ordinary humans called it aether, just like the spatial type energy Dream wielded. This aether was supposedly the fabric that space existed on top of. Space could flow and expand across aether. Light could also travel across it. 

So, because there was a more fundamental fabric, that meant that space could both exist and not exist in a certain area while maintaining the integrity of the dimension. Dream could make an area void of space without actually poking through to the chaotic void. This was true spatial separation. 

Unfortunately, Dream wasn't exactly sure how to go about separating space. Right now, he had only achieved bending it and folding it. He could squeeze it together, pulling himself across vast distances. He could also pull it apart, expanding the area a portion of space took up. These were his most frequent applications of spatial manipulation. 

But although he wasn't sure how to separate space, that didn't mean he couldn't slow down a photon. For the sake of more immediate results, he decided to make do with bending space. He thought for several hours before coming up with an idea. 

"A spatial loop!"

He shouted, and the chunk of aether he wielded exerted its force on space. Suddenly, a strip of space was isolated and bent, forming in on itself to form a wide ring. 

This spatial ring was bent so that when something traveled across it, it would turn along the bend of space. From its perspective, it would be going straight. But from Dream's, it would be traveling in a loop. Unless he gave it an exit, it would remain in the loop forever. 

As he observed this loop, he could see photons race along its surface, bending over the shape of the loop before continuing on their regular path. Suddenly, Dream created an entrance into the loop. Countless photons were caught in the entrance and inserted themselves into the loop, forming a ring of light that never escaped. Dream was quick to close it off, isolating the ring of space. 

"Haha, success! Now the only problem is their speed. It's too difficult to concentrate on one. Let's see if I can't fix that."

With those words, more aether was activated. It flooded into the ring of space. Suddenly, the speed of the photons halved. Then they halved again. 

What Dream was doing was making space denser. Aether was a spatial type energy, like how mana was a material type energy and flux was a force type energy. These energies existed in the higher dimension, being able to exert supernatural effects onto their lower dimensional counterparts. Naturally, aether had many different uses. The only requisite to use aether was the ability to manipulate it, the knowledge as to how to manipulate it, and having enough to garner the desired effects. 

The Heart of a class 6 being that Dream owned could produce aether from thin air. Aegis was the soul that resided within the heart, and Dream often had Aegis constantly producing aether. He would draw it out and store it somewhere while the Heart restocked. It only needed energy, which Aegis could provide plenty of. With that, Dream had enough aether for anything he wished to do. He stored tons of aether within his own soul as well, waiting to be drawn upon. 

What he did here was consume aether in order to create 'more space'. He doubled the space of the spatial loop, then doubled it again. By shoving aether into that loop he could make space denser. And if the amount of space within that loop was doubled, then the photons within would have to travel double the distance to cover the same area. 

At least, that was from Dream's perspective. From within the loop, the photons weren't actually any slower. 

Dream kept filling the loop with aether. Not only did this create more space, but it made the space stronger, almost reinforcing it. The light kept getting slower until finally, Dream was capable of locking in on a photon. However, it still required him to accelerate his perception. 

He disregarded the strain on his mind space though as he studied the photon. The photon was effectively pure energy, and according to scientific experiments, also matter. If it were truly slowed down, then it would become a subatomic particle. One could create matter from energy in this way. 

Naturally, this meant that the two shared a common ground. And as Dream viewed the photon, he confirmed this. Like subatomic particles, this photon was comprised of dots. However, what was amazing was that the dots within the photon changed. 

It was like...

"Photons aren't actually a thing."

Dream was baffled as he came to this conclusion. Suddenly, he let loose all his power, concentrating on the spatial loop and poking into the lower dimension. He concentrated on the photons and the dots comprising them. 

And what he saw amazed him. 

"Light isn't material. It's not actually a particle. It's... information! Light is the transfer of information!"

He spoke with glee, several ideas popping into his mind and many questions being solved. His knowledge of physics was deepening by the second. 

"In the lower dimension, light is like sound moving through air. One dot holds energy, and it bumps into another, transferring that energy. This propagates for eternity. The speed of light is merely the rate at which the energy can be moved from one dot to another. It's the processing speed of the universe."

Dream spoke with wonder. Meanwhile, Sophia was discovering this alongside him, integrating the new information into their current theories. 

However, she suddenly came across a roadblock and asked. 

[But then why does light become material when it slows? If light is merely energy traveling across dots, then it shouldn't be able to become material.]

"There's two ways light, or this energy, can become material."

Dream held up two fingers.

"The first is if it colliders with a receptor, something like another existing piece of matter, such as an electron. The electron readily absorbs this energy through the collision of dots, becoming more energetic itself. Thus, the light has become material. The second way is if it slows. If it slows, then the energy will solidify. It will no longer be able to transfer from one dot to another, because the only way to do so is to travel at the speed of light. Thus, it sticks with that single dot, or cluster of dots, forming something material. Only a slowed chunk of energy can become material. And if material speeds up to the speed of light, it can no longer hold its form. This is because the dots that comprised the material now transfer their energy across dots instead of traveling through dots as a whole. This is also why I called it information."

[Yes, why was that exactly?]

Sophia asked. That was her second inquiry. 

Dream smiled.

"I call it information because, in the case of light, when one dot collides with another, it transfers its information state. If a dot with an information state of 1 bumps into a dot with an information state of 0, then it will transfer that information, giving the second dot an information state of 1 and reverting itself back to 0. Of course, there are more information states than just 1 and 0. Either way, it's like sound traveling through air. The air particles don't actually move themselves. They merely transfer the sound, the information, across each other. Light is merely a wave of information, exchanging a mode of being from one dot to another. This isn't simply energy. On this level, you can't call it energy. It's a more fundamental form of existence. This is information, true information! What we're seeing here is the transfer of states of existence! In the physical universe, there may not be a more fundamental form of being than this! Animals that don't have a soul are comprised of countless dots, all with their own information states. These countless constructions of varied information states form the building blocks for that animal. This infinitely complex construction is what makes the animal somewhat intelligent. However, the animal is limited in the 3rd dimension, unable to perceive time, so it will never become sapient."

Dream stopped there, a faint sense of sorrow exuding from him. Sophia was a bit shocked by this. Was he feeling sorry for animals?

She couldn't help but understand though. Dream was discovering the deepest functions of the universe. These functions were unfathomably complex, and every material system was born from this complexity. Something like an animal, while seemingly simple on the outside, was comprised of this infinite complexity. Dream couldn't help but feel sorry for animals. Despite being born from this complexity, they were still limited beings constrained by the insurmountable barrier that was dimensions. They would never know how amazing they were. 

"Well anyway, we've discovered a lot just from observing this. Now I know that quantum field theory has some validity. These dots are both a particle and a field. They can transfer information across to another dot without actually displacing themselves. We can start differentiating the different types of dots, and how they attain different functions on a larger scale. We also need to look at gravity. We have a good grasp on how that works, but of course there can never be enough study. Sophia, we have lots of work to do."

[Always ready.]

With that, Dream broke out into a frenzy of research. Sophia was right there alongside him. To her, processing knowledge was the most enjoyable pastime. Only when working with Dream would she utilize her abilities to their fullest. 

Like this, days and months flew by. During this time, Luna continued to bring unbridled prosperity to the world, while Alice worked alongside her. Iris never woke up a single time, and in her unconscious state, time flew by even faster than it did for the others. 

For three more years, Dream unceasingly worked, bringing him to the 8th year since he returned to Earth. At this time, he had finally reached a limit in physics and decided to move on to his final topic to crack. 

All this time, Dream had saved this single skill, this single concept, for when he felt he was ready. 

Arcane Transmutation. It was the key to understanding the connection between mana and matter. Science and magic. This single skill surpassed his others in profundity, and he felt it would also allow him to crack the secrets of the demon portal. Even after all this time, he had yet to totally understand it and couldn't utilize its full power. 

Now, he was devoting his full attention and power to understanding arcane transmutation and finally opening the portal. He wouldn't stop until he opened the gate to the inner universe. He figured it was about time he brought his wives somewhere where they could utilize their greatest strengths and live up to their limitless potential. Even he was itching to see greater heights and more mystical concepts.