:Possibly not, I have been reading a great deal about Earth's history in computing. That makes sense - the brain is functional during a morph but is not operating in isolation, just receiving signals from elsewhere: It's such an absurdly complicated kind of technology, it's incredible that it not only works, but works with any body template, and with a usable morph on the first try. 

<Graphs trained on lots of data are a good way to do simple computing tasks, and brains are surprisingly like graphs trained on lots of data. Both the connections and the weights are important; if you have your graph with perfectly even weights it will be very bad at whatever task you are trying to train it for, even if all the right connections are present.>

:Right - humans have some simple computer-learning systems that use that. There is an analog of it possible with magic, although not one I pursued very far because it has the problem of being extremely illegible to humans, which is not what I wanted for the god project. I suppose brains are also fairly illegible to humans, except that Mindhealing Sight abstracts it somehow?: And he nonetheless found it very incomprehensible until Nayoki had spent a lot of time in rapport with him pointing out features. 

<Your magic is really impressive that way! I am not sure that abstractions that good can be designed without magic.>

:You know, we have very little idea how Gift-Sight works. It is certainly useful though. Mindhealing Sight is probably the weirdest although Thoughtsensing being as comprehensible as it is also odd and surprising, there is - processing happening there, and I am not sure where it is happening: 

<I am very confused about Velgarth on many levels. But - grateful.>

Leareth nods, smiling slightly. :I am glad. And - I am grateful also to have found out about Earth and your world, and to now have access to resources beyond the reach of the Velgarth gods. Maybe someday I can use that to solve Velgarth's problems without having to do anything horrifying at all. Right now these worlds have more pressing problems, though: 

<Do you think that the - same persons thing - suggests anything about it being possible to negotiate with your enemies in your world?>

Leareth goes still. :Yes, I had wondered that. It seems worth considering, though it depends if I consider the Andalites in this case more analogous to the gods or to Urtho's people. Also it - does not give me much to go on, in terms of how to start a conversation without being murdered again: 

<Maybe if Cayaldwin ever cracks the thing our father had proposed that lets people survive the death of a morph construct-body and grab another one elsewhere to demorph from.>

:If he ever does, I want to try to replace my immortality setup with something that makes use of that. Or at least set it up as the default first layer, I suppose it would usually require dying while in morph, which I could not count on: 

<It would be really useful. I wish my father had lived to figure it out.>

Nod. Leareth is thinking that he had better get to his other work, but just as he's about to say so, he stops. 

:- Mhalir's immortality setup. I assume it no longer works since he lacks morph now, but - he described it as something a little like that, landing in a different construct-body. I...wonder if he knows some pieces of what Cayaldwin needs, here: 

< - that would be interesting. If he had it working then he's well ahead of where we were.>

:Next time it makes sense for me to speak with him alone, I will ask him about it. Anyway, I had better get back to the morph research: He ducks his head. :Thank you for talking: 

<Of course.> Hug?

Hug! 

And then he can get back to work on training his people to handle Gift-morphs and then on training Nerefir's people to do this. It makes a very good peace offering with Nerefir's people, though having to be human to have magic is a pretty big downside and everyone is excited about progress on researching Gifted Andalite morphs.

And Leareth goes back to what's mostly a lot of very boring and repetitive magic work, reviewing the specs for the morph tech and popping into the Void occasionally to refresh himself looking at morphed rabbits and then replicating the function of the link, bit by bit, into a spell design. He can place a chunk of it at a time into an artifact and then cast it (blank, without actually linking it to anything on either end yet) to compare how it looks in the Void. 

Conveniently, magic and morphing, while both tiring, use almost non-overlapping kinds of energy, and either feels like a pleasant rest when he's been doing a lot of the other in a row. Also his morph stamina is getting very good at this point since he keeps doing two dozen of them a day. 

He actually tries Andalite-with-Gifts backward, the first time - morphing Andalite normally, then starting to demorph and trying to bring back just his Gifts before changing anything else, the exact opposite of when he would demorph out of Nayoki's body and try to get everything except Gifts. 

It takes a bit of practice but he can make it work, getting his Gifts back first.

Amazing!!!!

Andalite-Leareth runs over across the base delightedly to find Matirin, tail waving. <I did it!> :I did it: he adds separately in Mindspeech. 

That's adorable. <Oh excellent!!>

Happy proud tail-wave (that part seems to be kind of instinctive). <You should morph and get Sight to see where the Gifts went! I did it the partially-demorphing way, tried to have the Gifts come back before I changed anything else, but with practice I think I can get directly to this form. And it ought to be even easier Andalite-to-Andalite once you know where the Gift connections need to go.>

He morphs human to squint at him. Other Andalites gather around to do the same.

He can demonstrate his Gifts! When he does so the relevant areas on his bread-metaphor-mind light up and the energy-flow is faintly visible to Healing-Sight.

He just has the usual Leareth set, right now, mage-gift and Mindspeech, but in human minds they all go kind of in a row, in a standard order, so he thinks once he can do the direct morph to Andalite, he'll be able to slot in the other Gifts he has from the composite morph easily enough, and probably the Andalites can do so as well.