Jacob adjusted his seat, leaning back as he tried to get comfortable on his first plane ride.
Unfortunately, the friendly woman in black had been unable to act as his escort to the university, leaving the job to the straight-laced man.
So he was now on a flight headed to England, his new university that he knew nothing about, and a dorm room with his name on it.
Literally.
According to the man beside him, there were only a dozen clanless dreamers who came to the university every semester. Since there were so few of them they tended to get some special treatment from the staff while they adjusted to their new lives.
From what he was told that included pretty decent accommodations.
But that was of little import compared to what was occupying Jacob's mind as of the current moment.
He had a superpower.
Well, it was actually called an ability, but still.
'Analysis?'
[Analysis active]
Confirming that both his ability was real and that his chaperone hadn't reacted, Jacob decided to get more information.
'Well, shot in the dark here, but I might as well try. Analysis, how you work?'
[Function 1: Analysis – store and display data as per request]
[Function 2: Processing – utilise data in storage to perform calculations & answer queries]
'… that's it? Ok, well, what does data in storage refer to?'
[Upon installation all data storage was expunged due to a lack of memory space]
[Current data retrieved from uncorrupted data from the user's pre-existing memory]
It took Jacob a few seconds to guess the more intricate parts of what his ability was telling him.
'So basically, when I got the analysis ability, my brain couldn't store all the information it came with, so it was deleted, meaning the only data available is my memories.'
[Affirmative]
'And by uncorrupted data, I'm guessing the only data that was stored properly is the stuff I can remember easily. Whereas things I've forgotten or didn't pay attention to would be corrupt because I only briefly glanced at it and forgot it quickly.'
[Affirmative]
'So that's why you couldn't tell me anything about escape routes from my apartment this morning, it wasn't like I'd memorised the map of the area so you had no real data to go on…'
'Wait, so in order to use you properly I need to have perfect recall? Doesn't that make you pretty much useless since my memory is pretty average? Hell, you even said yourself that my data storage was insufficient.'
[Negative. User memories will now be sorted and stored for use]
'So, I have an eidetic memory now, not bad… not exactly fireballs or teleporting but it's something.'
[Negative. User memories will be sorted and stored by analysis from this point onwards. Data storage to memory assimilation would overburden the user's mental capabilities. This has been resolved by having data being unavailable to the user unless accessed via analysis]
'So I have normal memory, but you'll remember everything for me.'
[Affirmative]
'Ok, so what about the stuff displayed when I analyse someone? Why did I get results about her gender, weight, and all that?'
[Data displayed is summarised results based on memory. Height and weight were calculated using existing formulas from data]
A few seconds after reading this response, Jacob had an idea.
'Can I customise the type of results I get and how they are displayed?'
[Affirmative]
Jacob grinned as he realised what the rest of his flight would be like. He couldn't wait to get started.
***
A few hours later, the plane was landing, and Jacob had finished his basic experiments and gained some vital information about his ability while he did so.
1st, he could use the ability in two main ways, to analyse things he could see, hear, or touch. Pretty much anything that was within the reach of his 5 senses.
Unfortunately, there were pretty tight restrictions on the actual information he could get. The only 'data' that analysis had access to was what he could gather or had already collected.
So, if he tried to analyse the plane, the ability would show him the flight number and the number of seats and other relevant information that he had observed in one way or another.
Unfortunately that was it.
Since he didn't know how the mechanics of a plane worked in the slightest, the ability couldn't use or adapt formulas from his memory to tell him information about the engine or how to fly the aircraft.
On the bright side he discovered that he could use it to get helpful information from his senses that he otherwise couldn't. One of the better applications he had found was lip reading.
Analysis could cross reference his memories of how a person's lip's moved when they talked to accurately guess their words when they spoke. It pretty much let him add subtitles to real conversations.
The ability did have some minor flaws. First was the fact that he had to make sure to keep his target's mouth in view. The second was that, although his 'data' was plenty, his ability didn't have 100% accuracy.
It couldn't be helped since lip reading is never quite perfect, 95% accuracy was the best his ability could do.
Despite that Jacob was still excited since he could use the ability from a distance to get an idea of what people were saying without being able to hear them at all.
The ability of 'processing' had other applications as well.
An example would be using it to instantly count the number of people in a crowd from a bird's eye view. Or to check the ratio of blue to other colours in a rainbow.
Moving on, next was the customisation. He had spent a large portion of his time specifying the parameters of what was displayed when he used his ability.
He had decided that for people, what was most important was their gender, name, and if they had a positive or negative impression of him.
He had tried to get a wider variety of terms regarding people's impression of him from his ability, but he lacked the data for the ability to accurately gauge anything other than if the person had a surface-level favourable impression of him.
His anti-social tendencies were biting him in the ass yet again.
For objects, he had decided that apart from the object name, the only thing he needed to know was if there was anything unusual. Hence, he had specified his ability to showcase the name and if anything about the object was outside the typical features based on his 'data.'
The last thing he had determined was its consumption.
Sadly, his ability wasn't unlimited.
Well, it was partly unlimited.
It seemed that the first function, storing data and retrieving that data, took nothing for him to do. But the second function of processing was somehow draining. From what he could tell the more complicated the query he asked the more it drained him.
For example, a simple task like calculating the shortest route for him to get to the bathroom would barely even register. But something like calculating the ideal time to go to the bathroom based on the patterns of movement of the flight attendants, other passengers, turbulence, and his own bladder capacity would drain him more.
He wasn't certain exactly what his limits were, but he decided to leave that for later, all he knew was that after testing the limits a bit he felt… off.
It was a very odd feeling for Jacob. Like he was lacking something he was used to having.
Imagine wanting to go for a walk, you have the energy to do it, the physical ability, and the motivation, but for some reason, you can't bring yourself to start walking.
That was the closest approximation Jacob could make to his current condition.
Nevertheless, he had things to do.
Both he and his dark-clothed companion were about to disembark from the plane.
He had arrived in England.