Solisia Landing

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[00:00:11]
That's it! We're out of the Dimmr Plains! Hey, look—what... what is that?

[00:00:27]
That might be the Solvein Heartwood. I've heard the Roya speculate about where Soliskin really go when they return to the Solistrees. They say they slowly lose their physical form, turning into warm sunlight that flows down along the "root system"...

[00:00:55]
Lose their form? So... does it hurt? When they return to the Solistrees?

[00:01:00]
I don't know. But I reckon it shouldn't.

[00:01:05]
How can you be sure?

[00:01:07]
It's just a guess. If a Soliskin's natural instinct is to return to the Solistrees, then from the logic of the Exostrider's existence and the perspective of natural evolution, it wouldn't make sense for them to feel pain. It's an inevitable part of their life cycle. Once the process starts, they should get some kind of positive feedback, something that drives them to complete it.

[00:02:13]
Makes sense, but... I still feel like there's more to it than that.

[00:02:25]
That's okay. Tell me what you're thinking, Annika.

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[00:02:32]
I think... based on my research on Soliskin, I'm more inclined to believe that this was their choice from the very beginning. Not "a Soliskin chose to do this," but rather "the Soliskin collectively decided to do it." Do you remember that paper, the one that proposed that the individual intelligence of the Exoswarm is just nodes, but the network formed by those nodes contains feedback loops and servers? The author used biological material as an analogy to explain their hypothesis about how the Exoswarm evolved.

[00:04:13]
I remember. The hypothesis was remarkably bold, yet the data fitting was actually reproducible. It still stands out in my mind.

[00:04:29]
Exactly. So here's what I've been thinking. Soliskin are different from ordinary animals and different from the Exoswarm, but they still have intelligence and the ability to perceive emotion. An individual Soliskin carries only a faint trace of the Exostrider's energy. Even if it burns itself up, it can only release a limited amount of light and heat. But that's enough to briefly disperse Voidmatter, or to power an Exostrider component. And in doing so, it can help its companions, or the Exoswarm, get through a crisis, giving them more chances to fulfill the mission their creator gave them.

So when countless nodes across the network all kindle the same flame, that behavior gets recorded on the server. That's how the feedback logic of the Soliskin network is formed.

Maybe the Soliskin returning to the Solistrees was never a single node choosing its own end. Maybe it doesn't come from a life instruction set by the creator either. Instead, it's the result of something more complex, an operational logic we still don't fully understand, working in unison.

[00:06:04]
I see what you mean. You're saying that the Soliskin have also developed "altruism" through evolutionary change?

[00:06:19]
Yes, and this "altruism" ultimately manifests itself as the Solvein Heartwood at the heart of the Dimmr Plains.

[00:06:29]
Which means, this sunset we see before us... is the Soliskin's...

[00:06:37]
A thousand flames burning as one.