It was to the whir of computer fans and the steady trickle of rain that I awoke.
I’d been working until I passed out, and now, pulling my heavy head from my arms, the screens before me were lined with whatever files and random data I’d compiled. The 3D rendering of an adult Cryak slowly spun in place upon one of them, another held the incomplete rendition of my gene scan, and the rest contained an array of different paths, classes, and mods I could potentially pursue.
The searches for information I’d put out had come back empty. Or rather, any tidbits I’d gathered were less than reliable. “High grade artifacts for sale. BUY NOW…! Rebels Arise, soon playing in your solar system…! This new Expansion they’re pushing is a scam. Unite, Star Gazers! We need to…”
Yawning, I reached out to shut them down. A dim morning had already arrived, and I desperately needed to sleep. We’d be stuck in this place for another two weeks no matter what I did. It was too early to burn myself out. Rushing now would only hurt me in the long run.
As I moved to turn off that fourth screen, however, my fingers paused. Upon it, a handful of the mod samples I’d scraped from the public marketplaces were gathered.
Usually, they were just used as a watermark of sorts, there to guarantee that the mod being sold was real – unique and impossible to forge. To me, it’d also proved a way to see if there were any consistencies with that nauseating sixth sense I’d gotten.
The only pattern I’d really found so far, however, was that the more expensive and higher graded a mod was, the less ‘imbalanced’ it tended to feel. I’d skimmed through dozens of data chunks so far, yet none had come even close to being as perfect as the one that now hovered before me upon the screen.
My breath caught in my throat.
Where every other sample I’d seen — F-grade to that single A+ I’d found — had repulsed me to varying degrees, this one attracted me. Its beautiful symmetry held my eye, and it filled my heart with longing.
I leaned in closer, my head pounding from trying to comprehend its entirety. Only a single strand of its genetic code was available for viewing, but it still felt like my skull would split from trying to understand it all at once.
Still, every single piece of it held a unique purpose, and I desperately wanted to see more.
Within seconds, my fingers flew across the keyboard as I traced it back to the ad where I’d found it. By the time I reached it, however, my racing heart turned to lead.
It was vaguely categorized as a mental mod, but beyond its price, barely anything about it was listed. There wasn’t even a date when it’d been put up, nor when it would be taken down. No summaries, no origins, nothing.
It felt like a hoax. Someone had gone through the effort of putting it up for viewing, but had skipped out on the most basic information?
More so, its price was ludicrous.
While 17 943 credits might not have gotten close to that single A+ mod I’d seen, it was still far beyond what even the most deranged gamblers would be willing to pay for it.
I sank back in my chair with a deep sigh.
Even if I’d possessed the money, which I certainly don’t, I could never have justified the purchase over mere curiosity. Even if such curiosity leaned into heart-wrenching desire and longing…
With another, pained glance at that sample, I forced my fingers to close the tab.
Only then did I realize blood was dripping from my nose, and how cracking my headache had gotten. I wiped a few of those drops away before they could fall onto the keyboard.
Damn it, Yamien, get your shit together. I cursed myself. You can’t burn yourself out this early. Go get yourself some sleep and continue this tomorrow. If we want to turn Mikayes into our golden goose, we need to prove ourselves useful and sane. Not to mention tracing down that Artifact and—
“Odd time to be up.” The gentle voice nearly shattered my knees as I flew from my chair, incidentally, smacking them straight into the desk.
It was Celian, having moved around quietly as always. Though, as soon as I became aware of his presence, several lights flickered to life around us.
Although morning had broken outside, the heavy rain pattering against the window still left everything dim and dreary. In other words, now, I was forced to shield my eyes against the bright lamps.
There’d been no noticeable effort on Celian’s part to turn them on, nor was there as the tabs on the screens behind me began shifting on their own. The Luminesari connection to the System was eerie as ever to witness, and although most of these machines were human made, it wouldn’t take him long to know exactly what I’d been doing.
He most likely already knew, and this was just him politely reminding me of the fact.
“Is this the path you foresee for yourself, Young Nyamien?” he asked, and although I knew that the Luminesari didn’t view genetic modification as highly as the ‘lower species’, there was no admonishment to his words.
“It’s part of it,” I cautiously admitted, still grimacing as I rubbed my knees. Any other response would’ve just been a shallow lie.
“And going from your search history—” another few tabs flickered open and shut just as swiftly on the screens behind me, “—I presume your funds are quite limited?”
“They are,” I said, less cautious this time. Yeah, he already knew everything…
“As such, these are the mods you are planning to integrate with?” Celian still politely asked as the two F-graded mods and the Cryak one appeared on the screens.
I wasn’t sure if it was his tone, or if it was that beautiful mod I’d viewed just earlier that’d changed my perspective, but looking at them now, they seemed barely functional.
“I was thinking about it,” I quietly said, feeling a heavy lump form in my stomach. If I do integrate with them, this life won’t be all that different from my previous one, will it? I’ll still be weak and crippled by a broken foundation…
“And any lecture I hold about how being patient will yield better results in the long run will fall to deaf ears. Is that a correct assessment?” Celian asked, leaving me to nod.
Even if they’d cripple me within a few years, these shitty mods alone would’ve made all the difference back at the lake. Time was running against me, and patience was the one luxury I couldn’t afford.
“Then I’ll simply have to recommend that you take one of these, as well,” Celian continued, and the tabs shifted once more – marketplaces were opened, and dozens of searches were put out at once.
In less than a minute, a select few mods occupied the screens. “You humans have always had a strange attitude towards the development and autonomy of the mind,” the looming man said, and a gentle wave of his fingers caused the mods to begin sorting themselves. Certain sections were highlighted, while others were cropped out of frame.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Although you’ve declined my treatment, I can still sense the turmoil of your mind, child. I think one of these will prove quite useful to you.”
In the end, a total of seven mods settled onto the screens, occupying one each. “While I’m not personally a believer in artificial modifications of the self,” Celian continued, “I’ve come to understand it’s an integral part of human culture.
“And, if such is the path you foresee yourself following, it would be sad to have your potential clipped too early. These mods contain the Cex9-19 and CoxA-27 traits respectively, both of which have held a particular prevalence among some of humanity’s greatest leaders and thinkers.”
My eyes were still glued to the screen.
A single glance was all it’d taken for me to know that they were good. Not perfect, perhaps — not like that one had been… — but not far off either.
They were better than anything I’d found on my own, at least. Though, I suspected that was because Celian hadn’t cared about either gradings or pricing as he sorted through them. Some of these ones were costing smaller fortunes.
Still, why is it that they feel so…
“Unbalanced,” I quietly said as I passed by the screens, carefully looking each of them over. They didn’t repulse me like most of them had — even the A+ one — but something was still missing. Something I—
“You’d favor a synthesized mod instead?” Celian curiously asked, my whisper having seemingly not gone unnoticed. “While they are usually unheard of at this grade, there’s no denying that the artificial symmetry of a lower grade mod could be preferable sometimes. There’s a reason so many—”
“You know how to?” I asked, having snapped around towards him with wide eyes. The thought hadn’t even struck me.
In my understanding, synthesizing mods was about as arcane of an art as they came. Even in its most successful iterations, it was just glorified gambling – about as profitable as transmuting rocket fuel into water.
But if there was anyone on this side of the galaxy who might know something about it, it was Celian.
Sure enough, “I’m a student of many fields, master of few,” the Luminesari thoughtfully began. “Though, when it comes to this one, I’m barely that. Synthesizing mods is a very unforgiving mistress to pursue. Trials and experiments are better suited for the less living and more consistent schools, such as grafts or—”
“Can you teach me?” I asked, my racing mind still at a singular place. If I knew how to realign the figurative painting in that Cryak mod, if I knew how to set those discomforts right, what then…?
Celian observed me for a moment.
“You should still your excitement, child. I’m not half the synthesizer as those working for the larger corporations, and even they rely heavily on centuries of gene molds and trial and error to achieve their results. Knowledge that I, unfortunately, do not possess.
“Not to mention unpredictable variations in gene structure, inaccurate instruments, and…” Having seen my continued stare, Celian let out a very human sigh. “Here, let me show you.”
The screens shifted once more, soon containing a single video. “This is an attempt I made long ago, when I was still fancying the art with my attention. Yet even after years of studying this footage, as well as all the data attached to it, I can’t figure out where I went wrong.”
Another three screens turned on to show the gradings of the two mods meant to be fused, their summaries, as well as a full library of their genomes.
Then, a chunk of genetic data was highlighted on that original screen, outlining a certain prominent part on the mod. It was like a tumor, easily distinguishable from the rest of the code.
“Theory states that, as long as the sequence is stable, a series of cuts here—” The border of the highlighted area turned a deeper red, and the code that connected it to the larger segment began to unravel, “—should leave us with an intact piece to use elsewhere.
That tumor like data chunk was now separate, hovering alone on the screen. “In human terms, it’s like a piece we’ve just pulled from one jigsaw puzzle, preparing to replace it for another. But it’s also like a house of cards, and—” the image began blinking a violent red. Something had gone wrong. The code was still unraveling, and now, the data-tumor was starting to swiftly disintegrate, “—pick the wrong piece, clip even a fraction of target, and everything starts to fall apart.
“And that’s just the separation part. Fusing them back together into a usable mod is even harder than taking them apart – finding pieces that fit, that complement each other, and work in unison.
“Especially as, when you change one part, several others begin to shift as well. Their structures become warped, sometimes inversing or completely altering their functions.
“Just one cut and fusion is rarely enough for a complete chain to be created and, without the mold to follow, it’s near impossible to find pieces that match together into a single, stable mod. And, as I mentioned, such molds are rarely shared, and only the theory of them are publicly available.”
The screens shifted one last time, now showing several different models that occupied them all. Some were structured like complex solar systems, where each fused piece was carefully balanced to orbit around its core, or one another by enigmatic strings of code.
Others looked more like the atoms of a molecule chain, with their own minuscule system of electrons and quarks. Strings of code that only worked because they were simultaneously holding one another together, keeping a precarious balance.
There were endless variations of the models as well, all of them still being researched, categorized, or tested. If they had fully worked, they wouldn’t have been available like that.
The day the blueprint for mass-producing super soldiers became publicly available would be a grim day for the galaxy.
“It’s an excellent way to burn credits into dust,” Celian finished as he highlighted the last image upon the screens. “This is the highest graded synthetic mod currently in my possession, and despite some serious effort on my part, I’ve yet to find any reliable way to reverse engineer the process which made it. Fascinating as it is to study, I’ve proved unable to discern even a single component which make it up.”
My dry eyes screamed at me to blink, but I couldn’t pull my gaze from the screens. My mind was storming.
I’d glimpsed something just then, during the footage of the attempted splice — a slight imperfection briefly disappearing only to be replaced with another. Something had worked, but something else had broken. It was just…
My brain was working on fumes.
Whenever it felt like an understanding was forming, it would slip away just as quickly. All I knew was that something was still off. Even in this mod Celian was currently showing me, the imperfections were still there, just less noticeable. Someone had roughly tried to patch them over but had only half succeeded.
“This isn’t it either…” I mumbled. Something was missing, but what was that something…
“How so?” Celian asked, pulling me from my daze.
“Sorry.” I shook my head, trying to rub the exhaustion from my eyes. “It’s just this mod I saw earlier which still hasn’t left my mind. They’re good. All the mods you’ve shown me have been way better than anything I found.”
“Was it the A+-graded mod which caught your eye?”
“No, it was—” I went over to keyboard. Despite the buffer of actions Celian had put into the system, it wasn’t hard reopening that one I’d closed myself. It was as if it’d been waiting for me to find it again, “—this one.”
Yeah, it really is pretty, I thought as I stifled a yawn.
Though, as I turned around, it was only to find Celian frozen in place. For a brief instant, the colors had literally drained from his face, leaving those luminescent tattoos no different from his skin.
“Ah,” he quietly said. “Such is the way of the cosmos, is it not? How curious…” His eyes shifted to me, and not a single word was uttered for a nearly a minute. Only the pattering rain, the rumbling storm, and the whir of the computers filled my ears.
“I…I wasn’t planning on buying it?” I hesitantly said, that extended silence having started to become painful. “I, I can’t afford it and…”
Another brief silence as my voice petered out, only for Celian to give a slight nod. “I see now why the celestial plane brought us together,” he said, and an instant later, every computer screen and light within the room had flickered off.
“Go to bed, child,” he continued as he strode over to the window. “Sleep and don’t think about this anymore. Don’t look into this further, and don’t look at any mental mods either. She won’t allow it. Yes, yes…” He gazed towards the tumultuous skies just in time for a flash of lightning to outline his silhouette.
“I’ll see to it that you receive a proper gene scan as well. Something better than that botched thing you attempted yourself. I’ll also oversee your integration with whatever mods you ultimately choose to pursue, to ensure nothing goes astray.
“Now go, find rest, and don’t think about that mod anymore. It will only drive you mad.”
I listened without objection. Celian had only made it sound like a suggestion to be polite.
>Information Gathering 6 > 9
> Gene Data 1 > 4
Eyes of the L’Ithari 2 > 5
>Gene Synthesizing > 3
> >Splicing > 3
>
> Gene Incisions > 1
>
> Gene Fusing > 1
>
> Gene Mapping > 1
Mental Fortitude 3 > 8
Achievement(s) Unlocked:
Survived:
> Odds For Instant Death Upon Mental Overload
>
> -20%
Seen:
> +10% Stress Levels
>
> +10% Chance For Restless Sleep
>
> +15% System Attenti…
>
> ¤&/”…
>
> Lj╫ᶚ@...
>
> ̕ȁ÷Ǧ…
>
> +0% System Attention
Good Night, Administrator