While physical Jack was trying on the fat-suit, soul space Jack created a new Subatomic level snapshot with a radius of 50 meters, just enough to cover his house. It was time to explore the detail limits of a snapshot.
When the snapshot sphere appeared, he moved his wood chair next to it and sat. Then he placed his hands on the sphere and began zooming in. he explored the navigation features and found that he could not only move the view around but he could also peer inside of objects and peel back layers.
He could examine the wiring and plumbing inside the walls of his house, look inside the engine of his car, even look underground and locate the water and sewer pipes. Though he wished he had not looked inside the sewer pipes.
Next, he picked a random plant in his backyard and zoomed in on a single leaf. He kept zooming in until he could see individual cells, then kept zooming in on a single cell. As his view approached the cell wall, he could see the shadow of the nucleus inside. When he zoomed in further and peeled back layers of the cell, he found he didn't recognize or understand most of what he saw. The only structures that seemed recognizable were the green chloroplasts, the reddish-brown mitochondria, and the dense clump of the nucleus.
He zoomed in on the contents of the nucleus and kept zooming in, and kept zooming in. At first it was just a jumbled mess, but eventually he could make out what he thought were strands of DNA. He zoomed in further and found that he could finally see individual atoms!
As far as he knew, individual atoms didn't have color because their outer electrons re-emitted photons as the same frequency as when they were absorbed. This was why some substances like nitrogen were transparent under normal conditions. But what he was seeing were individual atoms, each with a different color. Though, when he focused, he realized the color was registering not in his eyes, but in his mind. The color of the atoms was conceptual, not physical.
When he zoomed in on a single atom, he found that each individual electron shell was represented with a faint fuzzy outline with a bright spot. Thinking that the bright spot represented the current position of the electron, he zoomed in, wanting to be the first person to ever directly see an subatomic particle. But the closer he got, the more confused he became. No matter how he tried, he just could not understand what he was perceiving.
The best he could figure was that he was looking at pure math. Not math formulas or a graph, but some kind of pure mathematical construct. It wasn't something he could see with his eyes, or perceive as a solid object. He'd read about the concept of particle wave duality for photons, but this went beyond that. It was like what he was perceiving was just to complex for his mind to comprehend and the best his brain could manage was "Umm, math?"
He also tried zooming in on the nucleus of the atom and encountered the same problem, but worse. He could actually feel a headache forming just trying to understand it. Still, despite not being able to "see" subatomic particles, he could at least identify individual atomic particles and more importantly, he could see atoms, their electron shells, and the valence bonds they formed in molecules.
Scientists needed massive particle accelerators, building sized detectors, and immense amounts of compute power to slowly work out statistical models that showed what an atom probably looked like. And here he was, gazing at one directly.
He zoomed out and started exploring, looking at the individual proteins that made up a DNA strand, the various structures inside a chloroplast, and other unidentified bits of the cell. He was looking at what he thought might be an RNA transcription mid-progress, when a thought struck him. Not only could he theoretically watch CRISPR in action, and figure out how to improve it. He could go well beyond CRISPR. He could achieve the holy grail of biotech and engineering, nanotech. Nanotech had the potential to revolutionize medicine, manufacturing, and so much more. He could go beyond just curing cancer to curing all disease. Imagine a supplemental immune system that could adaptively identify and eradicate any virus, or bacteria. Or perfect birth control, without any side effects, available for both sexes. Or true 3D printing that could produce complex custom on-off electronics. Raw materials in, new smart phone out. The possibilities were endless. Nanotech would revolutionize the world and could quite possibly push humanity into a post-scarcity era, like as portrayed in Star Trek.
Advancements in biotech and by extension anything at nano-scale were hampered by problems of visibility. It was a bit like trying to build a jet engine while blindfolded and wearing oven mitts. It was theoretically possible, but it would take an immense amount of time. With his ability to see individual atoms, he was like the first person to remove the blind fold. He might still be hampered with proverbial oven mitts, but being able to actually see the atoms in a molecule was huge.
His attention was drawn back to what he thought was RNA transctiption. He wanted to watch it live, to see the reaction progress, so he created a simulation that included just the plant cell he was examining. When the simulation sphere appeared in an empty cubby hold on his white room wall, he grabbed it and began mentally examining the controls for it. He found that he could peer into the simulation from outside it, which was good because there was no way he could fit inside something the size of a single cell. He also mentally probed the observer controls and found that if he mentally pushed he could change the speed at which the simulation advanced through time. There was an option to step the simulation forward by some amount of time and when he kept pushing the time step smaller and smaller, he eventually reached a limit. He wasn't sure but it felt like the size of the time step was on the order of 10 to the negative fortieth power.
He navigated his view of the simulation until he located what he thought might be the same RNA DNA interaction, or something similar. Then is mentally pushed the simulation a single time step forward. Nothing changed. Or at least he couldn't perceive any change. He kept adjusting the time step size until he saw something change with each step.
Convinced he was indeed watching RNA transcription, he felt a shiver of excitement run down his spine as he zoomed in to watch various aspects of the transcription. Watching the dance of amino acids was more mesmerizing than any ASMR video on WebTube. His almost Zen like focus was eventually interrupted by Madison.
"Do you know how late it is? Are you sure you want to go through with our lottery plan as a zombie?"
He pulled away from the simulation and realized that his physical self had been just as focused on his exploration as he was. His physical self checked the time, then groaned. It was 3am. He'd been engrossed in his exploration of the simulation for nearly eight hours! As soon as both of him realized how long they had been at it, they both felt exhausted. He realized he was thirsty and needed to use the bathroom. He wasn't set up to deal with eating, drinking, or excreting in his soul space, so he disabled his parallel self, delt with his pressing biological needs, then went to sleep, amino acids dancing in his dreams.