The foxy girl had been worried about what the “falling forward” lesson would be; the idea of letting herself fall flat on her face didn’t appeal to her, even on soft ground. Luckily for her, the gym had everything they needed to train safely, except for a coach. Mobility and acrobatics weren’t popular hobbies in the dot, but the trio wasn’t going at a high enough level for it to be a problem.

SG caught more attention than usual too. All the gym rats would naturally be curious about an advanced mutant’s athletics; even if their mutation was not obviously related to physical prowess.

They were quickly disappointed. For better or worse, her anatomy wouldn’t work with standard equipment. It was frustrating, as she could technically use some, but she was still unable to. Her wide talons couldn’t fit equipment made for feet; and when she didn’t need to actually grasp something, her large wings bumped into the surrounding machines and gym-goers. A downside of the dot’s needs for spacial efficiency; everything was close to something.

Fortunately, Zax was a regular, and his subscription included a discount on the fancier features of the sport’s centre, including the use of a private, fully customisable room.

“Do you really need the discount?” Aran queried as they set the various mattresses they would need.

“Even before the Core thing, I could probably afford the full price, especially if I don’t do it often. It’s just too expensive for a hobby. Those rooms were made for workouts requiring specialised equipment and exercises. Which usually means more weight, speed or space than the common package can handle. The base price is high, but only serious and dedicated sportsmen would need it-”

“And they already have a subscription anyway.”

“- or mutants with relevant mutations.”

“Who can naturally afford it.” The tailed girl completed as they put the last foam cushion down.

“Or already have one. Relevant mutations should mean relevant experiences and goals. AKA lots of practice. A better discount too. I only have the basic stuff for coming regularly, for a long time, but not that often.”

“Once a week is not that often?”

“Not to them. Some come every day. That is worth a more expensive subscription.”

“Is it… alright to be here?” SG timidly asked from the side, dragging a giant staircase of foam in place.

“Hm? What do you mean? I paid for it.”

“… Too expensive for a hobby.”

“The full price, yes. With the reduction – since I already have it – it’s largely worth three hobbies at once.” Both girls eyed him, confused at the number. “Free running, coaching and nanites.” They nodded at his count. “Enough dawdling now. Run around.”

They started their warmup with the usual laps, and the lesson was on.

It proved particularly difficult for Aran. She simply couldn’t get used to the sight of the ground getting closer without reacting. Zax wanted to dull her instinct by repetition, but SG had a different approach.

The key was to channel her gut reaction into appropriate reflexes. Have her mind focus on her surroundings and let her body work itself out. Easier said than done, and it would require more than a few repetitions, but it led to great results. It even gave her a headstart on future lessons, those requiring falling from higher.

The gamer girl was learning, maybe not as fast as he had planned, but in a direction Zax would’ve never seen on his own. He was looking forward to see the result.

In that regard, it wasn’t that different from trying to orient an activation, he pondered. Same starting point, same environment and exercises, different process and result, heavily related to goal, worldview and personality.

Voicing that thought at the end of their session earned him two glares, as amused as they were exasperated.

On the nanite side of things, Zax made great progress in analysing neural signals and patterns. Turned out, reading the whole body at once greatly helped to sort the myriad of pulses the human brain constantly fired.

It sounded obvious when spelled out in such a way, but it had taken many repetitions of Aran trying and failing to hold back her unvoluntary reactions before it dawned on him. Both her and SG having strong instincts had probably helped too.

Which might be a problem if someone with basically no instinct like him tried to use a skill book made from theirs, but it would be a concern for far into the future.

Furthermore, the not-so-chaotic-anymore patterns inspired him for a new experiment.

The brain sorted the memories of the day and assimilated the events, including skills, during the dreams. He had studied the question as it was an obvious venue of exploration, but he didn’t have a way of using it so far.

He explained his idea on the way back; to make the nanites reproduce the relevant part of the day’s pattern during paradoxical sleep, or stimulate it if it occurred naturally. It would have to be an automated process, as it was too complex to follow and the timing too precise for a human mind.

To his great bewilderment, both girls readily agreed.

“Really? Just like that?” His head moved back and forth between them.

“Er, yes? Is there a problem?” Aran frowned.

“No, no problem. It’s just… I thought there’d be some resistance. We’re talking about doing something with your brains, in your sleep.” His face didn’t know what expression to settle on.

“Meh.” The tailed girl shrugged. “You’re fiddling with it when we’re awake anyways.”

“I’m not fiddling.” He defended.

“Yet.”

He looked away.

“Anyway, I trust you not to do anything bad. At this point, it doesn’t matter if I’m awake for it or not.”

“I trust you.” SG nodded when questioned. Her voice was soft, but her eyes and tone firm.

“I see…” His expression finally settled on an awkward smile.

It felt warm. The handyman hadn’t known their trust meant so much until that point.

“Ah. I still want to know what you’re doing and the results too.” Aran amended.

“Haha, of course.” Zax laughed it off.

He had already found what patterns he wanted to impress, so the programming was straightforward. He also made some for SG, adapted from his own, for a new clothes alteration skill he had planned to teach her the next day. However, he didn’t include the parts involving his perception or motor functions. He hoped to only impart the ‘what’, not the ‘how’, so that their difference in anatomy wouldn’t be a problem. He would see if her brain filled the blanks itself, and since it wasn’t a particularly physical skill, he didn’t remove that much.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He didn’t explain, only mentioned that he did something, to not pollute the results. It might be wiser to do the same experiment as on Aran, but for now, succeeding once was more important than repeatability. It would be relevant data regardless.

***

When the new day started, SG found herself in the position she always found herself in; curled on herself, wrapped in her own wings, in the centre of her mattress. She had given up on using bedsheets, they always ended up torn up and/or tossed aside.

She and Aran didn’t feel any different. The experiment didn’t seem to have affected their behaviour or their sleep. They didn’t remember dreaming either, which was normal. It could mean something for SG, but her nightmares were already at an all-time low, so “nothing conclusive yet”, according to Zax, and “normal for a single session”.

Nanites put aside, she was still impressed at the state of her life. Her own room. Her own bed, Zax and Aran had insisted she see it as such. Someone she could trust enough to let them put something in her brain, and not lose sleep over it. Sleep without nightmares too. It still felt unreal at times. But it was true. It was her life now.

She nearly smiled on the way to the shop, enjoying the now familiar sights as she was ferried away on the light road.

They tested for changes in her skills at the shop, as part of her normal training. No notable changes, but her mentor expected it. Whatever he had done – was doing? – on her was unrelated.

The rest of the morning went by normally. The number of customers kept steadily rising, but she could handle them now. Sometimes even without stumbling her words!

Around the end of the morning, he taught her how to use a new setting on the main adjusting machine. The goal was to combine the basic operations she knew to add a precise and delicate motif on each piece, with specific variations per piece and on different fabrics.

“It’s… more complex than usual.” She couldn’t help voicing. “Is that really an order for a beginner adjuster?”

“Nope!” Zax beamed. “I didn’t have to touch anything after you for a while now, so it’s time to raise to difficulty level. Congratulations!”

The apprentice blinked, but quickly checked her profile on her bracelet. She hadn’t looked at the “Professional Life” tab since she had first opened her account, but she remembered its depressing message:

[ Nothing yet.

Tap here to see training or certification recourses.

Tap here to seek work opportunities. ]

It had been replaced by two new sections; [Professional Experience] mentioning her apprenticeship, and the one she was looking for:

[ Formations and Diplomas ]

[ Clothes adjuster * (Certified) ]

One star for level one; a beginner who can reliably handle every possible basic alteration on standard fabric. Entry level, in every point.

Tapping the tip of a claw on the certification opened details, including her teacher and his company, dates and duration of her training and even pictures of pieces she had worked on unassisted.

“Taking them is part of the quality check and warranty. Uploading your profile is part of being your teacher.” He shrugged when she wordlessly asked about those.

The certification was dated to this very day.

“I thought it would take months?” The winged girl whispered. She was still processing the news.

“It usually does,” Zax nodded. “but it’s mostly because teachers tend to rely heavily on VR before letting their students touch actual machines. As immersive and realistic as it can be, you can’t be certified until you’ve had enough hours of physical practice and can reliably produce a certain level of quality.”

The apprentice turned back to her holo-screen.

“Most frustrating, I assure you. But necessary; not everyone manages to transition into real life that well. Overspecialisation, and having more students than machines don’t help either. I don’t teach enough to invest in VR training materials, and they wouldn’t know how to handle you anyway, so we bypassed that hassle.” Zax concluded.

The newly certified adjuster softly nodded, her thoughts still frozen.

Zax let her stew a bit more before putting his hand on her shoulder and catching her eyes in his:

“Congratulations SG. You did it.” His smile beamed with pride.

It wasn’t much. Merely a certification for the most basic tasks. Three words on a screen.

A weight she had never realised flew off her shoulders.

Many people would be able to do the same, better and more easily, but still…

From now on, nobody could deny her relevance. Not even herself.

She had a skill that helped the dot function.

She had everything she needed to be a productive member of society.

She had a place in the dot.

She did it.

She had divorced from her past

She was not…

Harpy truly was no more.

She had moved on.

She glomped her friend. Her wings ensnared him in a thigh embrace as she buried her face in his chest, softly sobbing. The square hose that was bracelet fell on the ground. It’s bounce and travel along the counter punctuated the silence of the shop.

Zax let her, patting her back in silence, until she stopped on her own. He hadn’t expected such a strong reaction either, but he could understand it.

Eventually, she pulled back from him, emotionally drained but feeling lighter than before. It must have shown, as Zax proposed to let her rest a bit. As nice and patient as he was as a teacher, he was pretty demanding too. “Work hard, play hard” seemed to be his subconscious motto.

It might be contagious too, because she insisted on continuing where they had left off. Zax was hesitant at first, but after watching her eyes, he respected her wish.

“I already combined alterations on a single piece, what’s the point of that setting?” She queried.

“You did one operation after the other. Sometimes you had to follow a sequence, changing the background colour before adding patterns, but it could be changed and there was no mix. This setting will let you add a coloured pattern, or draw in the background rather than add a thermically-glued picture that will fall off after a few intense washing cycles. It opens more complex operations, higher quality, more cost effective, that kind of thing. A lot more possibilities, and you can charge more for it.”

SG nodded her understanding. She tended to forget her training included the business part of the shop.

“Once you’ve figured all the possible combinations, you’ll be a level two adjuster.”

She… wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She was grateful for his help, and for what this skill meant, but did she want to make it her whole life?... not really, no. Try as she might, she couldn’t see herself do it all day, every day, for years. It was just… too dull.

“Don’t worry about it.” Zax added when she subconsciously frowned. “I’ll keep updating your profile, but you don’t have to specifically aim for it or anything. It’s just the next step of your current qualification. You’ll focus on something else once you’ve figured it out.”

Right, she still had to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. It was daunting, but she couldn’t think about it yet. The lesson continued.

She could barely understand some of his explanations, and he seemed to be doing it on purpose. Did he want her to ask? To think about it on her own? She was still unclear and unsure when he made her try on her own, after a single demonstration. Still, under his watchful eyes, she tried.

She hesitated at first, but when the machine started purring, something clicked in her. Like a switch had been flipped on, she smoothly performed one step after the other, and the detailed butterflies were spread on the fancy jacket before she realised.

“Wow, did I really do that?”

She was impressed at her own talent… right until Zax asked strange questions and gave her the details of the experiment he had done on her.

Any disappointment at her actual lack of talent was overshadowed by awe at his progress. If someone found a way to create a real-life skill book, she didn’t doubt it would be him, but she didn’t think he would be that fast. It was only the second round of tests!

They spent the rest of the work day trying various combination settings and testing any potential effect of his experiment. It was amusing; seeing him so excited over something he could do in his sleep.

When it was time for Zax to focus on his confidential custom commission, he let her free reign of her time. She usually was to follow with him in his expeditions, or keep her training if it wasn’t possible. From talent or nanites, she had gotten enough ahead of his schedule to allow a break. She could even leave, go to the entertainment centre, or a park, or a walk, or home.

She didn’t want to just up and leave Zax, but her head was still heavy with everything that had been crammed in it. Dream learning or not, she had to focus quite a bit, and she didn’t feel like continuing. Following Aran’s model for that kind of situation, she took her place behind the counter, assuming cashier duty for the rest of the day, and playing games between customers to unwind. The stool saw a lot more use than it had in a long time.

When the workday was over, Zax left the backroom with a suspicious grin plastered on his face. The apprentice wondered what it was about, but the NDA blocked him. Not for the first time, she wondered what had happened to make him so… petty when that Resident was involved.

Their meeting hadn’t been that bad, and he already had his fun about it. She was annoying, but also a customer. A well-paying customer even. Schadenfreude wasn’t Zax’s style, and he never treated difficult clients differently. Which tended to annoy them more. He didn’t know her before... Was it something unrelated? Venting on unrelated people wasn’t like him either. She couldn’t figure it out, but she didn’t want to ask him. He and Aran had never asked about her own past, she wouldn’t pry.

As they went to meet with their tailed friend, Zax asked her to not mention her experiment, to avoid affecting their common student’s results. She readily agreed. After seeing the effect on herself, SG couldn’t help being curious about what it would help her tailed friend to do.