To overcome the plateue he stopped forcing it, closed his eyes, and thought.
The circuit works. The lightning flows through the blade instead of fighting it. But it still destabilizes. Why? What breaks the loop?
He replayed his attempts in his mind, searching for the pattern in the failures.
Every time it collapses, it's at the same point. When the current completes the loop and comes back to where it started. There's a discontinuity there, that's where the lightning escapes.
And then the insight struck, deeper than the first.
Maybe it's because I'm treating the circuit like a closed loop with a beginning and an end. But lightning doesn't have a beginning or an end. It's not a line bent into a circle, it's a field, seeking every path at once.
His understanding cracked open a new thread for him to hold on to.
