With the clones safely in the Oasis and I back on the Coans farm we grab a late lunch and start talking about what had happened and a possible cover story.
“Looking at this map of the world there are a bunch of small islands to the far west, could I have come from one of those?” Asked Michael.
“Maybe, but then we may need a cover story on how you got all the way here, and only able to speak one language which is local to here. Unless you can pickup another quickly?” said Malter,
“Well you’ve been here for what, seven months by this point, why not try to learn another. In the year and three months you have left?” said Epego.
I am thinking I could but I am planning on leaving early a little, the longer I am here and the more I interact with the others the higher chance the Institute might find me, if they get their hands on me it's probs game over.
“I might be able to manage a passable amount from another language or two in that time, but that still leaves the question of where I am from. Could I be from one of these islands and then as a kid stole away on a passing ship? Landed in the south and made my way up to Farmers Rest and then to Casupan?” I say, pointing to some islands in the south east.
“That might be possible” says Abcier “but if we want to do a convincing job we will need to work on your accents, languages, mannerisms, geology and some history.”
“I think some of that can be stored by backstory” Michael countered, “Think about it, I could be an urchin who lived it rough on some tiny island with only a handful of people, then when I got sick of it and had a chance, snuck onboard a ship.”
“If done convincingly it would explain why the accent and mannerisms are weird, history and geology is not well known etcetera. The only strange thing would be the Creation Powers but that won’t matter once I’m an Adventurer.”
“True i suppose, once you're an Adventurer there are only a handful of things the Institute could try, and if you become more of a public figure and well liked then its likely the Institute would only be able to spy and track you instead of more drastic measures.” replied Malter.
“Ah yes, spying and tracking my every move, I feel so much better now” Michael replied sarcastically. “Sorry, Malter. Abcier, do you think you can set that up for the documents we need?”
“Maybe, the only problem I can foresee is if they make an information request to the islands or their nearest governmental body, they might then be able to see if it's real or not.”
“Yea but that should take a while right?” Asked a confused Michael, “Not really, it's possible they could get an answer in as little as a few hours to several weeks. It just depends on how well managed their record keeping is.”
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
“Hours or weeks huh. Is Knowledge able to find out what would give us our best chances?”
“No unfortunately, now that you’ve asked your Questions you’ll have to earn something to get to ask more questions.”
“Um, but the others said it was OK for me to come back?” “Yes, but you had asked them.”
Huh, well alright then. Epego joins in, “Let's leave it for now, dinner is nearly ready. Are you staying Abcier?”
“No, I'll be back in a few days. I'll see what I can do about official documents and an artefact.”
“When you next see Dr Rath, can you get him to bring some medical textbooks please. I'll need it for my studies.” “Sure.”
And so that was that, it was a close call but we got back in the end and after a short time later, dinner of a fish steak and roasted vegetables and fruits was served.
“Theres another thing we need to think about” said Epego, “Coans fifteenth is coming up, and there will be quite a lot of people there. How should we explain you?”
“Using the same cover story as the one we will come up with, we can say he was hired by us.” replied Malter, “Otherwise if someone comes around asking questions they will get the same story, at least hopefully.”
“We can also tell the cover story to the guys who showed up with Illiard Coan, only the people in the room with the Head know the full story.” I add, if we can spread this a little it might hold enough that by the time the institute arrives it’s what they will most remember.
After some more small talk and helping clean up I excuse myself and take a walk outside, thinking things while looking up at the clouded sky. Maybe there in the clouds are Air Domain residents looking down. Maybe, Earth is up there in the sky as well.
Thinking such sad thoughts I pull out the memory crystal from my Inventory, I had added it earlier today when I had the mana regenerated. That being said it had taken my full mana pool to add it, its quite a complicated device.
Having read its notes I know that all I will need to do is picture what I want and it will draw it from my memory, just like that. It sometimes is a bit trickier but so is everything new we do huh.
I pull from my memory a photo of a few years ago. Well, it’s a mana based photo of a photo that was taken with the whole family, extended as well. The one time both sides of my family were all together.
The photo appears as a hologram above the red crystal, which has started glowing softly, I scan through the photo, taking in every detail that I can and storing it in the Memory Palace. I can call it back up with the crystal but I want to see it whenever I want to.
Man, I should have done this before seeing World. Alpha Team at the Oasis would have loved to see this. Luckily knowing me and so them, they know it was just me not thinking.
With those thoughts done I put myself back into study mode and make four clones, they appear in a poof and turn to me. “Memory Palace”, “Globe”, “Biological”, “Powers” they say one after the other.
They or rather we know our tasks and as they walk off to investigate the different abilities and information we now have I walk back to the house, I have my evening prayers to do and to think about what to get Coan for his 15th.