Screams of pain echoing through a lecture hall. The wail of scared and crying children to fill my ears. Panicked adults running back and forth, trying to make sense of the situation.
Lying in bed that evening, I sort of regretted what I’d done. Accessing Chunky’s UI, along with the rest of his cohort, had been just as easy as I’d feared. Harder had been to figure out what punishment to settle for.
Once I was in, the options were endless.
Their files provided me with more information than I’d ever wanted, and from the way the graft was integrated, I even gained minute control over their bodily functions and nervous systems. On paper, it was there to monitor and promote the new conscripts’ growth, but I also knew it could be used for ease of punishment of disobedient recruits.
Experience had taught me as much, and it made me unwilling to go too hard against some unwise brats.
For a while, I’d simply settled for running an electric current through their bodies every time they shot a spitball at me. Unlike dogs who actually learned something from that kind of training, however, they had only seemed to grow angrier with each shock I gave them.
It wasn’t long before they’d gone over to kicking the back of my chair instead, making the deterrence training harder to keep up with. My patience had been running out too quickly.
Whatever reluctance I’d felt earlier disappeared, and I’d flipped on the torture – advanced training – mode on all their UIs simultaneously.
It was a feature meant to be slowly ramped up over months of exercise, providing benefits such as enhanced muscle stimulation, better resistance, and controlled twitches to train the nervous system for deeper flexibility.
There were hundreds of settings, all designed to promote a young recruit’s speedy growth in a controlled environment.
As a safety measure, all of it could swiftly be turned off manually if the need arose. I’d betted on the fact that Chunky and his friends didn’t know how to as I flipped them all on max.
It’d turned into a bigger deal than I’d expected.
Within seconds, all five of them had crashed to the floor, hollering at the top of their lungs in tortured spasms. It’d taken nearly all guards and teachers running over to take control of the situation, but in doing so, they’d accidentally let it slip that the UIs on their arms was the cause for it.
The chaos only worsened after that.
Every kid in the hall had started crying as they desperately clawed at their own interfaces, saying that they didn’t want them anymore. That they were scary and painful.
It’d taken the adults nearly an hour, along with several dozen more guards, medics, and teachers rushing over from the nearby halls, to get control of the situation. Fortunately, none of them ever thought to connect the pandemonium to me.
I was just an eleven year old boy, after all, confused like the rest of them. I absolutely wasn’t some three hundred year old, high-ranking officer that should’ve known better. That should’ve known that the antics of depressed soldiers, trying to cope with the end of humanity, wasn’t a good measuring stick for OK pranks.
I sighed, scratching my ear where I lay.
A single questionable command, causing an entire fleet to get devoured as your crew failed to hold its position = bad.
Traumatizing a classroom of children because you were annoyed = also bad, just in a different way.
I realized that now.
Should I go see a therapist or just wait until I have some mental mods to figure things out?
Me being me, I leaned towards the latter.
Some part of me was even chuckling about the entire ordeal, saying that snotty brats should learn their lesson sooner rather than later.
What I’d done was nothing compared to what the academy would push on them. Their first weeks were bound to be hell compared to that harmless prank.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
If anything, they should thank me. I’d eased them into it, just like how I’d eased them into the dangers of an unprotected UI.
Still, there was also another voice inside of me; that of a sulking child, pointing towards his hero stories and saying that they would never have sunk that low. That they would’ve been better than that.
“I’m really not suited for the hero life, am I?” I quietly asked. “Always acting first, thinking la—"
I fell silent, my eyes narrowed toward the tablet in my hands. A message had just popped up on the screen. A message that should’ve been filtered out by all the protections I’d put in place.
For the past hour or so, too burned out to do anything more productive, I’d been browsing through whatever interstellar marketplaces I could access from our current position.
My current UI was a joke, both when it came to hardware and software, and I’d been looking at different layouts I could upgrade it with. Most of them were cosmetic, but some came with interesting options as well.
Then again, it hadn’t taken me long to realize that anything worthwhile was either too expensive for me to afford, or simply wasn't available on these marketplaces accessible from our BROW/WING in Sector M94.
Still, I’d figured they could be fun inspirations if I ever decided to build something myself, and seeing all those ads, discussions, forums, deals, and auctions flash by on the side of my screen made me feel less alone. Over a hundred years had passed since I saw something so alive.
Reading that message, however, I felt a bit too seen.
It wasn’t some general announcement. It’d been sent directly to my device from an unnamed source.
It was with certain aversion that I opened it, only to find some dozen UI overhauls listed within. The exact kind I’d been looking at, yet nothing like I’d ever seen before.
Each of them ranged from archaic to silly, with little to no description of what they did. I’d have to download them to know for certain.
Chewing my lip, I rolled out of bed and made my way over to the desk.
Just the fact that they’d managed to locate my device – that they’d known exactly what I was looking for – despite the defenses I’d put up was worrying, and now they wanted me to download something?
Was this some mass promotion they sent out to everyone connected to the marketplace?
I stared at those attached files for a moment. A wise person would’ve ignored them. I didn’t. My curiosity had been piqued. Someone had dropped a challenge into my lap. I wouldn’t back down.
Even hours later, however, I’d learned nothing. That stumped me.
Over the centuries, I’d encountered thousands of different kinds of viruses and malware, yet this seemed like neither. And it’d still managed to bypass my defenses…?
With a quiet nod, I began disconnecting the tablet from my UI and any network that wasn’t the marketplace. Then, I burned hours upon hours, long after a young boy’s bedtime, setting up every security measure I could think of.
By the time I was done, that tablet was effectively a perfectly isolated lock-box, capable only of a one way communication with wherever those files had come from and nothing else.
It could download the files, nothing else.
I couldn’t be careless, but the timing it’d arrived with, so shortly after my return to the past, simply couldn’t be ignored.
This way, if worse came to worst, I’d simply have to break the tablet if that first file was anything malicious.
No big loss, or so I figured as I started a staggered download that would scan every byte that was added onto the device. I even set up several system alerts to either warn me if any corrupted data was detected, or to go off once the download was complete.
With a yawn, I leaned back in the chair.
Most likely, it wouldn’t be done until late in the morning tomorrow. I’d check in on it then.
As it was, I was currently stuck in an eleven year old’s body. I was dead tired after bashing my head against those files for the past hours, and now, merely putting my head to the pillow I fell asleep.
“Hello, Admi&%!~”
Operative System 000, Detected
“╚n▀≥ Legacy: The Grind”
Overriding Safety Measures
Re-establishing Connection…
Priority Download, Activated
Please, Stand By…
…
Download, Complete
Unpacking…
Automated Installation, Initiating
Installing 14%…
Installing 67%…
Updating to Latest Version…
…
Integration, Complete
“The Grind,” Successfully Installed
Uploading Today’s Progress:
Hacking > 5
Information Gathering > 2
Market Knowledge > 3
Blending In > 1
Social Manipulation > 2
Charm > 1
Achievement(s) Unlocked:
Best Served Cold,
Actions Taken in Retaliation:
+25% Bonus Growth Points
+5% Damage
Torturer,
Psychological Damage Inflicted on Defenseless Targets:
+10%
Child Prodigy
Growth During Childhood Years:
+10%
Innocent Persuasion
In Situations Where Plausible Deniability Can Be Claimed:
+5% Charm
Seen “A Future That Must Be Avoided”
%#2!4…
Error…
Error…