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Chapter 499 Hypotheses and Tests

§Gaaathheeeeeeeerrrrr ffffaaaaaaiiiiiithhhh,§ the voice in the back of his mind chanted, but Rick only had the vaguest idea of how to go about that.

When he\'d looked down at his body and noticed that the thread connecting him to Katrina had slightly dimmed, and the pulses of light had decreased in frequency and intensity, he\'d thought it odd. But with the voice\'s subtle guidance, he learned that what connected him to Katrina was "belief", and the pulses of light was "faith".

\'How do I gather faith?\' he thought as hard as he could.

§Aaaaannnnsssswerrrrrr theeeeeemmmmmm,§ the voice unhelpfully replied, then fell silent.

\'Answer what?\' Rick screamed in his mind, but garnered no response from the mysterious, echoing voice in his mind.

He looked at the thread connecting him to his secretary again and noticed that it had recovered some of its luster, and the pulses were once again increasing in frequency and intensity. It seemed that whenever he used the faith of his believers, it would soon recover. Thinking about it, Rick found it very similar to the information he had read earlier regarding the absorption and use of the mysterious particles permeating the planet. Perhaps he had been overthinking things when he noted the differences between his experience and the information he\'d been given; after all, his secretary had the brightest thread of belief and the most intense pulses of faith in him, so she was unlikely to have fed him misinformation.

He felt the beginnings of a headache forming between his eyes and, with a long, drawn-out exhalation, came back to reality. Color permeated his world again when he opened his physical eyes and massaged his temples with his fingertips.

"I need a new test subject," he muttered under his breath, unwilling to experiment on his most fervent believer and source of faith until he learned more about his blessing.

With his consciousness returned to his physical body, though, he discovered a somewhat odd side effect of his newfound power. He felt out of place in his own body. Looking down, he still expected to see breasts, and he was inundated with foreign emotions and intrusive thoughts for a while. Most of the thoughts aligned with the things Katrina had been thinking in her shower. He also still felt uncomfortably aroused, echoes of the actions he had forced Katrina to perform in the shower playing out across his own skin, with the accompanying difference and, dare he say, increase in sensitivity to them.

Rick fought against the sensations and thoughts, coming back to his normal self after about an hour. In the future, he would most definitely need to take the aftereffects into consideration when physically possessing people through their threads of belief. It also implied a certain cooldown period, during which he would likely be ill advised to "body hop" between his followers. If he couldn\'t bring himself back to normal between each possession, he instinctively felt that the risk of losing himself in the thoughts and sensations of others would be too high. It was a consequence that a narcissistic control freak like him could simply not tolerate.

Thus, as with everything in his life, he needed to keep a ruthless hold on himself no matter what he was doing. He would treat his power usage like he treated his drug habit and strictly ration himself on both fronts. After all, the highs and consequences of both were quite similar.

After another ten minutes of rest, he began relaxing and preparing to return to the purple world for another test. This time, he chose the darkest thread, which should be enough to support or disprove his earlier thought about belief and faith being what linked him to others. He also wanted to discover if there was a reason for the differences between threads, and if he was correct in assuming that Katrina\'s belief in him was the strongest and her faith the most fervent.

Another unknown amount of time passed and he finally returned to the purple world, then opened his eyes again and began searching through the thousands of threads attached to him. Quite a few of them were still vantablack, with no light traveling through them at all, and he felt a certain sense of imminent doom when he considered using them to test his new blessing. Thus, he discarded them and continued searching until he found a dim, almost ephemeral gossamer thread, through which light with the intensity of a firefly seemed to casually, and very occasionally, saunter through at a sedate pace in fits and starts.

\'That\'s the perfect one to test with,\' he thought and dove into the thread, traveling along it as fast as he could.

But unlike his testing with Katrina earlier, this transfer wasn\'t immediate, nor was it smooth. On the contrary, he continued hitting pockets of turbulence, causing him to fear for his life. Or worse, having his consciousness trapped outside his body to wander the world as an incorporeal ghost while his physical body was left behind in a vegetative state.

Still, he persisted, holding on and taking mental note of the process. His newest theory was that it had something to do with distance as well; the thread he was currently traveling along just "felt" like the destination was further away than simply down the hall and into another room.

When he finally arrived at the end of the thread, he opened his eyes and looked at a nearby clock. Though he didn\'t know where he was, exactly, or who he was inhabiting, the clock indicated that ten minutes had passed during his trip down the thread of belief. It seemed that time was somewhat subjective in the purple world, as it had felt like he\'d been traveling for hours thanks to all the turbulence. Or perhaps he had crossed time zones, which was a far simpler-and thus likelier-explanation.

After noting the time difference, he looked around and noticed a pair of AR glasses on a table next to "him". He momentarily fell into a quandary before remembering that the body he was in wasn\'t his, then began listening to the conversation in his surroundings.