The chilling question hung in the cool night air: Is it mapping… me? William stared intently at the pulsing, translucent sky-blue heat map hovering before him, his own small, golden Light spell clutched almost forgotten in his other hand. He deliberately focused his thoughts, pushing aside the vertigo, querying the strange display with a specific memory. His frustrating, repeated attempts over the past week to cast this very Light spell. Request: Visualize user activity related to 'Light' spell execution attempts, time-indexed.
The blue heat map flickered, dissolved into shimmering motes, and instantly reformed into a different visualization. It was still glowing, still translucent blue, but now arranged horizontally. A timeline. Data visualization confirmed: Temporal log. On the far left, near the implied start point, a few scattered, dim blue dots marked his first, fumbling tries after Julia's initial lesson. Then, a denser cluster appeared, shifting through cyan to brighter whites and back again, the days of concentrated, failing effort. He could almost feel the phantom frustration associated with those bright clusters. Intensity likely correlates with frequency or mana expenditure per attempt? Needs calibration. Further along, a sparser section, perhaps yesterday, when exhaustion made him practice less? And finally, on the far right, representing the immediate past, glowed a single, brilliant point of golden-white light, stark against the blues, his breakthrough success moments ago.
It was a visual record, a data-driven graph of his own magical learning curve, rendered in ethereal light. Remarkable. His old world of quantifiable data and his new world of inexplicable magic weren't just colliding. They were merging, interfacing through him. "Well," he thought with a thrill that momentarily overshadowed his earlier chill, "at least my struggles make for an interesting chart. Points for data integrity, I suppose."
He had to test this further. He needed more data points, needed to confirm the interface responded to deliberate queries. He shifted his mental focus away from the internal, abstract concept of spellcasting attempts. New query: Visualize comparative travel metrics since leaving Sharwood. Subjects: William, Julia, Edward. Parameter: Estimated steps taken. Desired output format: Bar chart. Basic data viz, something concrete, easily quantifiable. "If this thing can't render a simple bar chart from basic data," he reasoned, "then its utility score drops significantly. Time to test the API."
The timeline dissolved instantly, replaced by three distinct, glowing sky-blue vertical bars. A perfect bar chart. Impeccable rendering. As William focused his thought on 'Edward', the shortest bar pulsed slightly brighter. Focusing on 'Julia' highlighted the tallest bar. And focusing on himself highlighted the middle bar, which was significantly taller than Edward's but only slightly shorter than Julia's. Intuitive data labelling confirmed. Interpretation: Edward, uninjured with the longest stride, took the fewest steps covering the distance. Julia, naturally shorter, took the most. William grimaced slightly as he interpreted his own data. My step count... much higher than expected, closer to Julia's than Edward's despite having a similar stride length. The data reflected the uncomfortable truth. His injured leg, despite feeling better, was forcing him into a shorter, more protective gait, drastically reducing his effective stride length and increasing his step count compared to Edward's efficient, unimpeded pace. "So much for height being the primary determinant of stride efficiency," he thought wryly. "Current injury impact modifier on locomotion output: Approximately -35%. The raw data doesn't lie."
William stared, stunned by the implications. This wasn't just a passive display; it was an interactive, thought-controlled data visualization interface. Embedded not in silicon, but… in reality? In him? It was like having direct neural access to a supercomputer's graphics card, bypassing keyboards, mice, monitors, software limitations entirely. No more wrestling with buggy visualization libraries, no more cursing the spinning wheel of death on resource-intensive queries, no more waiting for data to load. Pure, instantaneous, thought-driven data manipulation and display. This changes everything.
He instinctively mimicked a pinch-to-zoom gesture in the air, a reflex ingrained from years of smartphone and tablet use. The bar chart before him expanded smoothly, the glowing bars widening, revealing finer granularity within the data. He could now see faint horizontal lines segmenting the bars, likely representing daily totals, showing subtle variations in their pace day-by-day. Zoom functionality confirmed. Input method: Gesture mimicry linked to mental intent? Or just intent?"It's like having Google Analytics embedded in reality," he thought, a giddy, almost manic energy bubbling up inside him. "Can it track mana consumption? Biometric data? Hostile entity proximity warnings?" The possibilities were staggering. Forget 10,000 steps a day; could he get achievements? 'Survived Goblin Encounter: +10XP'? 'First Successful Spell Cast: +50XP'?
Exhilaration surged through him, potent and intoxicating. This wasn't just any magic; this was his kind of magic. Data magic. A fusion of his analytical past and his inexplicable present. This was a tool, a power, that could give him a genuine, unique edge in this world governed by sword and sorcery. He felt a flash of absurd comparison, Tony Stark conjuring holographic blueprints with a wave of his hand. "Except," his internal critic immediately supplied, "probably less charismatic in the delivery, significantly lower net worth, and definitely lacking the integrated weapons systems and flight capability. But hey," he countered, looking at the glowing chart, then at the small, light-emitting stone still in his hand, "I have a functional diagnostic interface and a magic glowing rock. It's a start, right?" This instant access to visualized data… it was almost as good as an iron suit. Almost.
But the peak of the exhilaration curve was immediately followed by a sharp, unexpected downturn. A wave of profound fatigue crashed over him, heavy and sudden, like a system running out of power. He felt abruptly light-headed, dizzy, the edges of his vision starting to grey out. The glowing bar chart before him flickered erratically, dimming, its blue light losing intensity. Even the golden light from the stone in his hand sputtered, weakening. System warning: Power levels critical. Emergency shutdown imminent.
He realized, with a jolt of dawning comprehension that felt suspiciously like panic, that this incredible interface, this 'Data System Magic' – "Seriously, that name needs work, it sounds like a dusty database from the 80s", had a significant energy cost. User mana reserves depleted. His internal naming committee was clearly also suffering from mana deprivation. "Data View? Info-Weave? The Analyzer? Project Insight? Algorithm… no, definitely not Algorithm." He briefly considered mythological names, Zeus? Thor? but rejected them. "Pinching to zoom Zeus just feels wrong." He even thought back to his old project naming convention, V0.1128, V1.6372, V2.8268… "Clearly, I am a master of evocative nomenclature."
He'd been so engrossed in the wonder, the sheer, unadulterated coolness of manipulating data with a thought, that he'd completely failed to monitor the resource drain. He was like a rookie coder running an infinite loop on the main production server. System overload confirmed."Blue screen of death incoming…" he thought weakly, "or I guess, in this context, black screen of unconsciousness…"
The dizziness intensified. The bar chart vanished entirely. His vision tunnelled. His legs, suddenly feeling like overcooked noodles, gave out beneath him. He collapsed onto his bedroll with a soft thud, the glowing stone tumbling from his limp grasp. Its golden light flickered once, twice, a tiny spark of defiant magic against the overwhelming darkness… and then it too was extinguished.
William was out. System offline. Completely and utterly.