"This—"
The technical consul had realized it too.
And that only made it harder for him to understand.
Because it defied logic.
It violated the fundamental laws of how life evolved.
He had been trying to work out how such a being could have come into existence.
Had he absorbed energy from the dawn of the universe at the edge of some higher-dimensional fragment?
Or had some immeasurably ancient quantum civilization used technology to merge the consciousness of its entire species into one ultimate being?
But he never could have imagined that the answer would be so brutally simple.
A human.
A member of a carbon-based species born under gravity, struggling against it, with a lifespan as brief as a mayfly's, had ascended directly into the Light Quantum Lifeform before him.
It was like watching an ant burst through its shell under your gaze and turn into a blue whale.
No, it was more absurd than that.
The ant had become the ocean itself.
Different kinds of life had entirely different sensory systems, forms of existence, and ways of interacting with physical laws.
A human was used to seeing with his eyes, hearing with his ears, and measuring the earth with his feet.
If he suddenly grew a tail, or even another hand, he would need months or years to learn how to use it to keep his balance.
If he suddenly lost his sight, his entire model of the world would have to be rebuilt.
But going from carbon-based life to light quantum life meant rewriting life at its most fundamental level.
How could the other party have mastered that power so completely in so little time?
How could he even use, with casual ease, abilities that defied imagination and directly altered physical constants?
In the end, the technical