Lab C: Chapter 16 - The precision of intentional thinking...

Rice Pudding. The monk thought of this one thing as he runs through the forest. His memory is faint, but its there. He catches a whiff of it and pulls back a large frond and sees a… bugish king of shape thing resting on the frond’s underside. He gobbles it up, and spits it out. Suppressing his anger, he continues his search.

Other vaguely familiar shapes with smells similar to rice pudding appear before him, revealed by his movement and searching. He eats each and every one, and spits out each and every one.

He sits down, crosses his legs, pops and holds up a mudra. Our monk does his absolute BEST to remember what rice pudding smelled, tasted, looked like. Summoning ever memory he can muster he tries to create rice pudding in his mind. He thinks of the place he last ate it. He thinks of how it was made. He thinks of the last time he ate it before relinquishing earthly pleasures. First, strongest, and wholly consuming is the smell of rice pudding and he isolates it, building a vision around that.

When he’s recreated the memory well enough that his mouth waters to chin dribbles, he opens his eyes and finds that the scent he had imagined was in the air.

He moves more cautiously through the forest until the hint of twinkles of lit torches sneaks from behind bushes and leaves. Suddenly before him, rice paddies at twilight ascending in tiers gloriously up a hill to thatch houses, sparsely laid at first, and then a dense collection of larger structures above them. Above all of this is a small, homely domed building with smoke rising from its center.

Our monk smiles and runs along the road leading to the dome.

At first, it’s quiet aside from the sound of his rock feet smashing into the ground. However, one person notices him and yells something in a language our monk has never heard. More people come out of their homes and yell louder and louder.

His entire mind is consumed by holding onto the smell of rice pudding, fearing if he loses it he may lose the guidance. He ignores the people as they try to stop him, yell and scream at him, trying to stop him, to understand what he is and what he is doing.

A rock hits him. He doesn’t react. A pitch fork flies through the air, then a torch, a creature closely resembling a dog lands squarely into the side of his head. Nothing.

A guy gets in front of him to stop him but our monk is undeterred. A group of 10 dudes try to stop him, but he just moves them aside keeps moving.

The people back off and strategize as our monk makes his way to the temple on the top of the mountain. As he arrives, the village below fills with the fervor only torch wielding mobs can muster.

Our monk enters and sees it, steaming, a dusting of cinnamon on top of the bulging mound of thick, syrupy grains sitting on a corner in the back of the dome. He moves for it as 6 odd monks try to get his attention. They speak to him in the language he can’t understand but his focus is singular.

As he approaches the bowl, a small young girl appears, innocently reaching up to claim her bowl and he stiff arms her so hard she flies to the floor and her head splatters like watermelon on the ground.

Our monk takes bowl almost as a holy relic. He smells the rice pudding deeply, savoring every little molecule of sensation that it brings to him. He relishes the warmth as it pierces his stony hands. The scrape of the wood sends shivers through his body which explode with each inhale of the cinnamon, creaminess of the rice pudding.

The only thing in the world which could feel better might be the taste. The feel of the gooey, sweet, cinnamony grains and slick, buttery fats around them. Expectations from memories consume him completely and he opens his mouth, tipping the bowl slowly above his head. As the first few blobby grains drip towards the rim, the bowl explodes in his hand.

It takes him a few moments to process what has happened. He blinks, staring at the ceiling then immense fury consumes him and he slowly looks to the group of odd monks. The one who had thrown the rock which blew up the bowl points at him and yells. The other monks break furniture, creating makeshift weapons. They move in.

Forgetting himself, our monk screams like a wild animal. Seeing the odd monks faces, he pauses for a second realizing only now that they don’t seem quite human.

The odd monks pause, raising eyebrows. The invitation summons absolute malice and amplifies the anger inside of them. They charge our monk.

With bestial precision, he brawls them into mush, squishing the last one just as the town arrives. They immediately throw oil onto him, followed by fire.

Ablaze, he runs out. Spears held by the villages strongest men guide him to a cliff. Stone hands smash against stone body ineffectually smothering the flames. All his mind is consumed by preferences. He kicks a rock that plummets off the cliff, the sound of it landing never reaching him.

Our monk catches a flicker of the setting sun in his flailing and freezes. Now a contorted statue, the spears and men can do nothing to move him. In his mind, the setting sun is an eye, and around it, the body of a squid. He smiles.

A spear pokes him, in a flash he’s broken it. The strong men all attack at once and our monk merely moves through them, allowing them to break upon his body. This time, with joy and fun in his heart, our monk does to them what he did by instinct to the other monks. He cackles, sending town screaming, running.

Peace and silence fill the bloodied cliff side. He summons the smell again in his mind and goes to the dome to find if there is more. Tearing the place apart, he finds nothing, only giving time for the town to recruit their neighbors.

Before he realizes it, he is captured by a net that he can not break and is carried off into a walled city on a massive plateau. He thinks of how fun it will be to punch through his latest torturers.