Nine years later.
Yesterday the nanny came in for the first time in a very long time.
If not for one fact, I would have gone insane for sure: I was conscious for about one hour a day. The rest of the time—blackout.
Yes. I perfected it.
At first it brought a strange kind of pleasure. Then nostalgia. Then nothing. Now it's just routine. Like brushing your teeth.
Tolerance happened ages ago. No euphoria. No sweet darkness. Just—shut off, wake up, continue.
Honestly, I'm not even completely sure this really speeds up my mana growth. I couldn't be bothered to do strict measurements. But the hypothesis sounds plausible, which means it's good enough.
Six years ago, there was a breakthrough.
I created liquid mana for the first time.
Not mist. Not an outline. Not a dense clump. An actual drop.
It was… unbelievable. I almost laughed out loud. After years of theories, water analogies, and fear that I'd need "a thousand times more energy," there was a drop hanging above my hand.
Tiny. Almost symbolic.
But real.
I started experimenting.
I learned three things.
First: liquid mana dissipates much more slowly than mist. It's more stable. It lasts longer. That's a huge plus. For building a "processor," it's basically mandatory.
Second: controlling it is significantly harder. Which makes sense—higher density, higher concentration. Every movement demands precision. One mistake and the shape loses stability.
Third: I can handle exactly one drop.
After that—blackout.
And the most important part: the drop is either there, or it isn't.
And where there is "is / isn't," one word immediately pops into my head:
digital logic.
Of course, you won't get far on a single liquid state.
I needed walls. Channels. A frame.
I needed solid mana.
That's when I understood one unpleasant thing:
in this world, you can't just "know."
You also have to _live long enough_ for that knowledge to become usable.
---
Four years ago, I reached solid mana too.
And honestly, my first thought wasn't joy.
My first thought was:
"I could've done this earlier."
The density of solid mana turned out to be only about twice that of liquid.
I'd spent years bracing for "a thousand times harder."
And instead… "twice."
Very on brand for my life.
But I didn't have time to sulk.
I started experimenting with solid mana the same way I had with liquid. The results were basically the same: solid shapes are even harder to control, but they're far more durable and stable. Ideal material for structures.
Later I learned to make thin frames—rigid skeletal outlines that don't smear out instantly.
And that's when everything clicked.
Solid mana is walls and channels.
Liquid mana is the "signals" running inside.
I couldn't make copper wires.
But I could make a tunnel.
I couldn't run electric current.
But I could make drops move in one direction—like on a conveyor belt.
The funniest part? I didn't even need to "push" each drop individually.
It was enough to set a general pull—one movement vector.
Like I'd pinned an invisible arrow to the whole system:
"Forward."
---
Where does any calculator begin?
Not with multiplication.
Not with division.
Not with a pretty interface.
It begins with being able to do "1 + 1."
And doing it correctly—every time.
I started with the smallest unit: a bit.
A bit is one tiny question:
"Is there a drop? Or not?"
If there is—call it a one.
If not—a zero.
Then I did what any engineer does when he needs to build a system out of chaos:
I invented standards.
Same drop size.
Same movement speed.
Same place where the drop counts as "input."
Same place where the drop counts as "output."
Until you standardize, everything works "kind of."
And "kind of" is the word that gets me rendered down for potions.
No thanks.
Once the "bit" became stable, I assembled my first arithmetic link.
A half adder.
Two inputs.
Two outputs: sum and carry.
I tested all four cases.
Because yes, I'm a genius—but a genius who lives in a windowless room and re-checks things until he's sure reality isn't messing with him.
And when I saw the carry on "1 + 1" for the first time, I smiled.
Wide.
For real.
I hadn't smiled like that in a very long time.
Because this wasn't another block problem.
This was _mine._
A half adder is a good start.
But I never stop at "a good start."
The moment you learn to add one bit, someone will force you to add two.
Then four.
Then numbers that make even an adult want to cry.
And I'm not here for tears, by the way.
For real addition, you need a full adder.
The difference is simple: it has three inputs.
Two bits (A and B)—and a carry from the previous bit.
Meaning it answers the question:
"What happens if I add A, B, and also _whatever they dragged up from below_?"
Again, I didn't go digging through lectures.
I did what I do best:
broke the task into steps.
Step 1: add A and B with a half adder.
Get an intermediate sum and an intermediate carry.
Step 2: add the intermediate sum to the carry-in.
Get the final sum.
Step 3: the carry-out is "carry from Step 1" OR "carry from Step 2."
If a carry happened anywhere, it _must_ rise up.
Sounds simple.
In practice it meant one thing:
I had to hold multiple channels, forks, and junctions so that drops didn't get confused, didn't arrive late, and didn't start improvising.
But compared to spending years learning to hold ten mist-figures at once, it was… almost pleasant.
It felt like assembling a construction set.
A construction set that could kill me.
When one full adder worked, I made a second.
Connected the first carry-out to the second carry-in.
Then a third.
Then a fourth.
Multi-bit addition isn't magic.
It's a chain of carries.
Boring, reliable, efficient.
And of course, I very quickly hit a limitation:
mana lifespan.
My structures weren't permanent.
They held—then they spread.
So "scale it to infinity" wasn't happening.
Meaning I needed another path.
Miniaturization.
If you cut a node's size in half, its volume drops by roughly eight times.
Classic geometry—the thing I hate, but respect.
And yes—this was yet another moment where math ruined my life.
And right then I remembered the main pain of this world.
And my past.
Everything here is in base ten.
And I'm building a binary calculator.
So I need a translator.
Input: a decimal number.
Then: divide by 2 over and over and remember the remainders.
Those remainders are bits, from least significant to most.
Not elegant.
But workable.
And I'm not building art.
I'm building survival.
Once addition became stable, I added subtraction.
And here my old world helped me.
You can turn subtraction into addition if you use two's complement.
Invert the bits.
Add 1.
Add.
I needed an inverter.
0 → 1
1 → 0
And yes, it was almost funny: the scariest word here is "potions," and the most difficult element is a "switch."
It took me a month.
Not because it was hard.
Because in my life, "fast" is always suspicious.
And when everything finally worked, I caught myself thinking:
I can handle integers.
But fractions…
Fractions are going to make my life very entertaining.