Mechanicum

'By the looks of this molecular formula, it achieves its function by enhancing synaptic transmission,' said Dalia, her eyes darting rapidly over the drawings. 'This wave generator vastly improves the ability of two neurons, one presynaptic and the other postsynaptic, to communicate with one another across a synapse.'

Dalia's fingers spiralled over the drawing, her eyes flitting back and forth across the paper and her own notations, oblivious to the looks she was receiving from her fellows as she spoke, the words sounding as though they came from the deepest recesses of her brain.

'Neurotransmitter molecules are received by receptors on the surface of the postsynaptic cell. When it's active, the device improves the postsynaptic cell's sensitivity to neurotransmitters by increasing the activity of existing receptors and vastly increasing the number of receptors on the postsynaptic cell surface.'

'Yes, but what does that actually meant?' asked Caxton.

'Isn't it obvious?' asked Dalia, looking up from the plan.

The silence of her fellows told her it was not. She tapped the plans with her fingertips and said. 'The device is designed to enormously enhance a person's ability to tap into areas of the brain that we almost never use, increasing their ability to learn and store information at a rate way beyond anything human beings have ever been able to achieve before.'

'But it doesn't work,' pointed out Caxton.

'Not yet,' agreed Dalia. 'But I think I know how we can make it work.'

'Do you think she is right?' asked Ipluvien Maximal, watching Dalia explaining the function of Ulterimus's device on a flickering holo-screen. 'Can she get it to work? No one else has succeeded in a thousand years and you think she can do it in seven rotations?'

Koriel Zeth didn't answer her fellow adept for a moment, letting the chilled gusts of air that wafted from his permanently cooled data frame tease the few organic portions of her flesh that still faced the world.

Maximal's words were artificially rendered, but Adept Lundquist had crafted his vox-unit and the sound of his voice was virtually indistinguishable from an organically created one. Such an affectation seemed ridiculous to Zeth, given the artificiality of the rest of Ipluvien Maximal, but every adept had his own particular idiosyncrasies, and she supposed hers might seem no less ridiculous to others.

'I believe she can,' said Zeth. Her voice was still created by human vocal chords, but rendered hollow and metallic by the studded face mask she wore. She wasn't used to employing her flesh-voice, but indulged Maximal's peccadillo without complaint. 'You saw the schema of the device she altered on Terra. How could she have done that without some unconscious connection to the Akasha?'

'Blind luck?' suggested Maximal. 'A million servitors working on a million plans might eventually hit upon something that works by accident.'

'That old truism?' smiled Zeth. 'You know that's impossible.'

'Is it? I've seen a few of my servitors perform tasks that weren't included in their doctrina wafers. Though, admittedly, my servitors do not function as ably as I would prefer.'

'Only because Lukas Chrom outbid you for the services of Adept Ravachol, but that's beside the point,' said Zeth, irritated by Maximal's digression. 'Dalia Cythera made intuitive leaps of logic, and where she found gaps in the technology, she filled them with working substitutes.'

'And you believe that is because the organic architecture of her brain is attuned to the Akasha?'

'Given that I have eliminated various other factors that might account for her innate understanding of technology, it is the only explanation that fits,' replied Zeth. 'Though she does not know it, she unconsciously accesses the wellspring of all knowledge and experience contained within the Akasha, encoded in the substance of the aether.'

'By aether, you mean the warp?'

'Yes.'

'So why not call it that?'

'You know why not,' cautioned Zeth. 'There is danger in such association, and I do not want prying eyes misunderstanding the concept of what we are trying to do here, not before we fully understand the processes by which we can access the Akashic records and learn that which our ancient forebears understood without the need for dogma and superstition.'

'The source of all knowledge,' sighed Maximal, and Zeth smiled beneath her mask. Appealing to Maximal's obsessive hunger for knowledge was a surefire means of quashing any concerns he had regarding their work.

'Indeed,' said Zeth, baiting the hook some more. 'The history of the cosmos and every morsel of information that has ever existed or ever will exist.'

'If she can build this device then we will be able to unlock the full potential of the Great Reader.'