The method of filling was a confirmation issued from "I," with no format, no encoding, no template to follow.
In total immersion, he held the colorless Prism in his gaze.
The Prism's surface reflected nothing. From the direction of his perception, it possessed only absolute transparency, like staring straight at a windowpane yet seeing nothing beyond it.
Its transparent texture showed that it had not yet been given any identity, waiting for him to bestow a definition upon it.
Every face of the Prism resembled polished ice. It reflected nothing within his perception and retained no trace of his gaze. He withdrew his eyes and gradually exited the state of total immersion.
External perception returned layer by layer over several breaths. The dark-gold sheen of the side hall's walls first returned to his awareness. Then the flow-rate data of the distant Law Channels came back to the edge of his perception as complete waveforms. After that, the dark-gold pulse of the All-Domain Network reconnected from the topology map to the center of his perception. The recovery was smooth, without the slightest hitch. Every piece of information arranged itself within his consciousness at the speed of light, and the hierarchy of external perception remained identical to what it had been before his exit.
Peripheral information remained at the periphery, central information at the center. Nothing was misplaced, and nothing lagged behind.
After exiting total immersion, he sensed that the pressure exerted by his Existence Thickness upon the foundation of the Turbid Source Land had become slightly heavier than before.
The density of the contact surface had completed its final compaction after the old patterns' transformation.
The degree of compaction was minuscule, roughly one percent of a hair's diameter, yet his perceptive resolution could catch that threadlike difference. Upon the compacted contact