Yumi Jumpstarted the Child Machine

[Lightspine]

This is a minor theory without any real implications, but I'm pretty sure that Yumi accidentally gave the small machine (which I'll call the Child, since it's established the larger one is the "Father") the boost it needed to start.

TL;DR: the Child machine would have consumed one of the scholar's souls to get itself going, but instead Yumi, highly invested being that she is, gives it this energy.

This line of enquiry began because of this quote later in the book:

Quote

“I’m sorry this took us so long to do,” the creature in front of Painter said. “The delay makes it more cruel, I understand. Regrettably, this machine needed to charge up—our power source didn’t work. And beyond that, some rogue spirits had to be captured. How they escaped is…distressing. Thank you for helping us return them to their prison.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 34. 

Huh. Going back to the scene where the Child machine is being primed, it's actually quite clear what this means. Just like the Father, the Child machine needed an energy boost to start before it could perpetuate itself by stacking stones to attract spirits.

(A bit of a side note: if I'm understanding it correctly, rather than keeping the spirits it attracted bound to it like the Father, the Child machine stole some energy from the spirits it attracted to keep itself going before binding the spirit to some other task. This is why it was able to make spirit devices for the villagers, but also why they were less effective—some of their energy was stolen to keep the machine going)

From the text:

Quote

“We should try the vacuum pumps again,” the scholar was saying as he paced.
“It’s not the vacuum pumps,” said a scholar who sat on the floor beside the machine, tinkering with it. “It’s the power source, Gyundok-nimi.”
“We never had a problem with the power source for the father machine,” the lead scholar snapped.
“Pardon, Gyundok-nimi,” another scholar said, lounging in pillows with a half-eaten fruit, “but we absolutely have had problems with the father machine’s power.”
“The Incident?” Gyundok said—and Yumi could sense the capital letter there. “Hasn’t been an issue for years.”
The three other scholars shared a glance.
“Fine,” Gyundok said, his hands going to his hips. “If it’s the power source, you prime it, Sunjun. This machine is small. It will be safe.”
Sunjun—the scholar working on the machine—raised his hands and backed away from it. “Not a chance.”
“We need a spirit,” said the man lounging in the pillows.
“Is that all, Honam?” the leader said, spinning toward him. “Our machine that draws spirits needs a spirit to start, you say. What a useful observation.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 23. 

Knowing what we know after Hoid's explanations towards the end of the book, "The Incident" refers to the Father machine consuming the souls of Torio in order to get itself running. This explains the general reluctance of any of the scholars when it comes to priming the Child: In this case, "priming" means feeding their soul to the Child to give it the energy it needed.

Now, I'm not entirely sure if this is necessary to the explanation but I do believe that this could only have been done by one of the scholars, and not any of the poor souls drifting formlessly in the Shroud. This is because the scholars were "held in reserve":

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“So the machine called upon its most dedicated servants, the scholars: its creators. They had been kept apart from the soup of the shroud and held in reserve, their wills dominated but their minds left partially free, for just such a situation.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 40. 

My interpretation of this is that the scholars' souls weren't yet "consumed" by the Father and therefore could still have been "eaten" by the Child for power. (You could probably convince me that a particularly stable nightmare like Liyun might also have been able to do it)

Anyway, let's finally get to the meat of my theory.

Quote

“So she leaned forward farther, inches from the man, to make certain she was seeing what she thought she was. Yes, those were hion lines. She couldn’t mistake the distinctive colors. They connected the scholar’s hand to the—
Another pair formed from her face, leading to the plate.
She yelped, jerking back. Lights went up along the machine’s sides, and the scholar who had been kneeling relaxed visibly, pulling his hand away and wiping it on his trousers. The lead scholar and the lounging one cheered in excitement.”

...

“I saw a second set of lines,” Sunjun said, pointing to where Yumi had been standing. “A spirit.” He turned to fumble with some equipment, then pulled out a box with a trailing wire that he plugged into the larger machine. Yumi felt a coldness come over her. An actual physical coldness, not just a fear. The machine had stolen warmth from her.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “Yumi and the Nightmare Painter.” Chapter 23. 

Yup, that's pretty much all the evidence I have. But from the inferences I made above and the reactions of the scholars themselves to the prospect of "priming" I'm quite confident that they expected the scholar doing it to be sacrificed. Instead, however, the Child machine draws enough investiture from Yumi to get started. (Notice how the lights that go up in the machine do so immediately after the hion lines connecting Yumi to the machine form) This is why Yumi feels the "coldness"—and remember, she's in "ghost" form during this so it's not like the machine stole physical warmth from her, it definitely took investiture.

Now, the reason I don't think this theory is particularly impactful is that I don't think Yumi was necessary. If our protagonists hadn't decided to go snooping at that moment, the only difference would have been that the Child would have consumed one of the scholar's souls to get going, and nothing else would have changed.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Lightspine

[+robardin he/him]

I'm pretty sure The Incident that the one scholar is obliquely referring to is the foreshadowing of what would ultimately happen when the larger "father" machine absorbed the Investiture of most of the human souls around it to "prime" itself.

Remember, these scholars are shadows generated of the shroud, but actually not just re-living their "one single day" per the direction of the machine, but granted their own memories and limited will as its service crew. So they do know, even if they don't talk about it much, what "really happened", and how, and why (and are the ones who tell Yumi that later).

At the same time, I don't think that conversation they were having in Ch. 23, which they thought was in private until they realized Yumi-as-spirit was in the tent with them, referred to that shroud-creating event as The Incident.

They were arguing about why their smaller "child" machine wasn't functioning as they'd hoped - that was probably something that DID happen 1700 years ago, and they are replaying now.

Their child machine wasn't primed with enough Investiture to start to run, ... and therefore The Incident was probably when an earlier run of the child machine absorbed the soul (or part of it) from another scholar/researcher, given the implied suggestion and reaction of Sunjun.

Quote

"We should try the vacuum pumps again," the scholar was saying as he paced.

"It's not the vacuum pumps," said a scholar who sat on the floor beside the machine, tinkering with it. "It's the power source, Gyundok-nimi."

"We never had a problem with the power source for the father machine," the lead scholar snapped.

"Pardon, Gyundok-nimi," another scholar sid, lounging in pillows with a half-eaten fruit, "but we absolutely have had problems with the father machine's power."

"The Incident?" Gyundok said - and Yumi could sense the capital letter there. "Hasn't been an issue for years."

The three other scholars shared a glance.

"Fine," Gyundok said, his hands going to his hips. "If it's the power source, you prime it, Sunjun. This machine is small. It will be safe."

Sunjun - the scholar working on the machine - raised his hands and backed away from it. "Not a chance."

"We need a spirit," said the man lounging in the pillows.

"Is that all, Honam?" the leader said, spinning toward him. "Our machine that draws spirits needs a spirit to start, you say. What a useful observation."

Gyundok is implying that while priming the FATHER machine with a person or persons would be/was bad (to say the least), priming the smaller "child" machine might even be "safe" for Sunjun to do voluntarily. Might. (Sunjun certainly didn't want to go there.)

Later in Ch. 38 when Yumi attempts to destroy the machine, the shadow-scholars explain to her that it's far too late for that:

Quote

"It's in Torio City, isn't it?" Yumi asked. "The festival. Did you turn it on during the festival?"

Another of the scholars spoke up, tentatively. "One thousand seven hundred and sixty-three years. Yes... festival day. The day we would create power for our people from the spirits themselves."

The way I read it, the scholars only ever activated the "father machine" that one time, at which point it ran away from them in a variant of the "Paperclip AI" thought experiment.

The earlier "child machine" versions had been created to be a mechanical yoki-hijo that would attract spirits and then allow them to be bound into human service, somewhat badly and less efficiently than a "true" yoki-hijo would do, but at far greater scale.

And it ran on hion - but a very small amount of hion - inside of it, which needed "priming" to produce energy. Or perhaps, needed some Investiture to "prime" as hion to get the machine moving.

The larger scale "father machine", however, had been created to create hion lines from spirits, enough to power everything for all the people (which is what Nikaro's people have been experiencing). It needed a lot of "priming" to do begin this.

And just as the smaller machine would have accepted Sunjun's "sacrifice" to start functioning, the Father Machine needed everybody's souls to start functioning.

The question is, how could it just reach out and "absorb" and "render" all the Torians' souls for Investiture that way? It must be a combination of the "Commands" it was given versus the smaller child machine, which was only tasked with attracting spirits to be bound in the usual fashion, plus some actual initial energy.

I'm guessing the scholars, implicitly or explictly, assented to "priming" the Father Machine enough to enable it to absorb everyone else's souls. Implicitly assenting, in the form of turning it on and "really wanting it to work", might have been enough.

And the "Commands" they programmed into their machine were:

1 - Build stone stacks to attract the hijo (interpreted as: "all the hijo", or it wouldn't have needed such as massive amount of "primer")

2 - Bind hijo into hion lines.

3 - Use spiritual investiture for power (=from hijo, but turns out, people can provide this too)

The irony is, the machine has worked very well for 1700 years. Nikaro's entire civilization is built on drawing "free" power from hion lines, even unto powering spacecraft to reach another planet.

The only problem is, to do so it nearly killed the entire small population of the planet to run at such a level as to attract/bind all the hijo, and also did it in such a way as to "enshroud" the planet.