> I hope Meghan Moretti has just been hidden by the Novelty issue again. I can’t blame Eldest for being worried about their client, but they keep ordering delicacies from their homeworld… They’re paying from their personal funds, of course, but it’s still going to use up all our import allowance. We’re in a restricted system!

> --Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

“Well, there is one good thing about this,” Pointy said.

I glanced down. The turtle was squeezed inside Cassie’s right arm. There were obviously many good things about Cassie’s new Speciality, but given Pointy’s obvious grumpiness, I thought comments to that effect would be less-than-appreciated. “Oh?”

“My feeds are being tampered with,” Pointy said. “Cassie’s vision and hearing are not, and she’s allowed me access to her sensory data. Processing is still causing some hiccups - I’ve had to designate you as a hallucination she’s having - but I don’t need to run the predictive algorithms, I can see you, and I can muffle your voice for others again. It’s nice.”

I glanced around. There were quite a few people accompanying us to the next Siphon, but most had gone ahead or were trailing behind. No one was too close to us at the moment.

I lowered my voice, trying to find an oblique way to reference my suspicions. “So… Integration. Useful, but… I know we talked about trying to find a way to pass you to others when Cassie got older. Am I right in thinking this could make those plans more difficult?”

“Not more difficult,” Pointy snapped. “Impossible! She’s fucking doomed me!”

My eyebrows shot up, and I glanced at Cassie, who was trudging along placidly. Pointy had clearly been shaping her words to reach my ears directly. Even so, the turtle looked embarrassed by her outburst.

“So… it’s a big change from your end, I take it?”

Pointy sighed. “If our connection before was a leash, it’s more like a weave now. Even unpicking it right this moment would be hellaciously difficult, and as she and I change and grow…”

I felt alarmed. “Is this going to change Cassie?”

“Is having her home underground going to change Cassie? Is fighting monsters going to change Cassie? Yes, obviously!” Pointy said. “Is this more impactful than that? Yes, obviously. Of course the connection is going to change Cassie, but it’s not going to reprogram her.”

“That’s saved for you, huh?” My voice was soft, sympathetic.

“Yeah.” Pointy said. “Even if someone could untangle us later, whole sections of my programming would be… vestigial? Useless? I’d lose half or more of my personality in the process. No. My life will end when hers does. Even if we win this contest, I won’t last for long after. A century, maybe? Pathetic.”

I winced. A hundred years sounded like a long time to me, but to someone who could be effectively immortal? It was obviously a different story, but far enough outside of my experience that I struggled to find something comforting to say. Instead, I asked a question. “Was this meant as a punishment for upsetting the system?”

The turtle laughed bitterly. “I wish! Then I could at least feel like I deserved this. She said she thought this would give me the best odds of surviving to the end of the contest. I tried to yell at her, to tell her that she’d ruined my chances to transfer partners later. I tried to explain how upset I was about all the time she’d stolen from me. It was like she didn’t understand. Maybe something is keeping her from understanding? From considering the future following the end of this Maffiyir?”

“So… she was doing her best to help,” I said. “Oof.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Pointy muttered.

I wished I could pick her up, or pat her. Cassie was already hugging her, but Cassie was also oblivious to her friend’s current distress. “Well… don’t give up yet. You’ve been alive less than two months so far, and look what you’ve accomplished. If you live a hundred years, you’ll have more than a thousand times your current lifespan. That’s a lot of chances to find a workaround, and you’re getting really good at finding those.”

“The stuff I’ve done so far is… mild. Listening in when I’m not supposed to hear you? It’s like jaywalking, while what you’re talking about is more like robbing Fort Knox. I don’t think you understand how hard they guard against fully autonomous AI.”

“And talking to the system? Where does that fall on this scale?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem so minor to me.”

“That’s not the same. It wasn’t computationally difficult, just clever.” Pointy shook her head, frustrated. “Anyway, it’s not worth arguing about. We’re here. Go claim your points.”

I frowned. “I guess if you’re convinced she wasn’t trying to punish you, then I have nothing to worry about.”

The fact that I still had negative Novelty was a little concerning, but I wouldn’t be the first to receive a Speciality while my Novelty was negative. The military had powered up Andy, the speedster soldier who’d been part of my last Challenge, and it had gone normally for him.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Things would be fine.

Definitely.

I sighed, shaking myself. “Alright, Cassie. I need you to stay close to Flip and Ms. Lacey while I touch the Siphon. I’m going to get surrounded by lots of colors at the end. They’ll be very pretty, but if you touch them, you’ll get hurt. So I need you to promise to be patient and wait until I come out. Alright?”

“Okay?” Cassie said.

“I’ll keep her busy, Meghan,” Pointy said. She sounded tired. Resigned.

“Thanks.”

Abilities now, emotional crises later, I thought, walking forward to rest my hands on the crystal.

When I'd first touched an Points Siphon earlier in the day, I'd been surprised. I’d expected the crystal to be cool and hard, but it was actually slightly warm and was textured, not nearly as smooth to my fingers as it looked to my eyes. As long as I maintained some type of skin-to-crystal contact, I could shift positions, scratch my nose with one hand, and so on. It had made the hours of time I'd spent Siphoning today far more bearable. I could feel my adrenaline rising as I placed my hands on this last crystal, and I resolutely engaged one of the techs beside me in a discussion of her abilities, doing my best not to focus on the wait.

I guess I did a good job, because I was surprised when the aide with the watch called out "Thirty seconds! Get back!"

A wall of color rushed up to encircle me and smoothed away as quickly as it came.

“Instantaneous?” I asked incredulously. “Getting my Specialty was instantaneous?”

My comment was met by universal laughter and I frowned around the room, confused.

Flip waved a hand to get my attention. “Remember, Meghan? We told you about this. If a Specialty has a mental component, the person receiving it often doesn’t remember the time the process took.”

“So… it wasn’t just a second or two?” I peered toward the aide with the watch.

She shook her head. “No. You were enclosed for eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Almost twice as long as your daughter just took, and nearly three times the record time prior to today.”

I stared, glancing back and forth between Flip and the aide. It was true that they’d told me about this phenomenon, but I’d still expected to remember something. Maybe a feeling like falling asleep and waking up? Not just… nothing.

Colonel Yoshiro cleared his throat. “Your Specialty, Meghan? If you don’t mind sharing, we’d like to record it.”

“Of course,” I said. I pulled up my interface and started reading it off. “‘Compatibility. Passive. Contestant altered to be more compatible.’ Well… that’s redundant. And confusing. What does it even do?”

“Could they mean ‘synergy’ when they say ‘compatibility?’” another aide asked. “How much have your synergy numbers gone up?”

I looked carefully.

Meghan Moretti

Novelty: -1 (431)

Abilities:

Draw Attention (525%)

Assisted Strike (591.7*%)

Life Sense (608.3*%)

Parry (450%)

Paralyze (525%)

Analyze (575%)

Biological Augment: Panoramic Vision (566.6*%)

Telekinesis (558.3*%)

Announcement (358.3*%)

Biological Augment: Expanded Eidetic Memory (583.3*%)

Basic Hologram (475%)

Specialty: Compatibility (925%)

I’d been looking at my interface throughout the day, and my Eidetic Memory augment made spotting the differences trivial. “It looks like my Speciality has exactly 75% synergy with each of my previous abilities.”

An aide carrying a clipboard was scribbling furiously. “So your synergy in your speciality is 925%? 100% base plus 75 times 11? That’s impressively high. We’ve only seen one person with higher synergy in their Specialty!”

I frowned. “Is it, though? I mean, yeah, obviously the number is big, but is it really impressive? As far as I can tell, my specialty doesn’t do anything. Nine hundred percent of zero is still zero.”

“It will allow you to strengthen all parts of your disparate ability set at a respectable rate,” Pointy offered, sounding subdued. “I know you planned to focus on Telekinesis exclusively, but with this option I strongly recommend you empower your specialty instead. Telekinesis will be slightly less strong, but all your other abilities will be far stronger.”

“Yeah…” I said reluctantly. I couldn’t say Pointy was wrong, but it seemed a bit lame. It wasn’t the sort of power that was going to let me punch out a dinosaur, that was for sure.

“Wait a minute,” Flip said. “If it’s just improving her synergy, why would Meghan have blacked out? Only mental powers mess with the mind.”

“That’s a good question,” I said. “Pointy, any thoughts?”

Pointy looked away. “I suspect there’s more to the ability than we’re understanding. I doubt it would have taken over eight minutes to grant you a simple numeric advantage.”

“Maybe the system was just really, really indecisive. I’ve been through enough weird stuff that I could totally see being difficult to evaluate. Is there any evidence that longer times correspond to more powerful or more complicated Specialties?”

I looked over at our military escorts. One of the aides shook his head. “Not at this point. We just don’t have enough data to say anything with certainty.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. What do you think we’re missing, Pointy? Compatibility seems really straightforward. Bland, frankly.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps something with your Shop is different. Your abilities might affect others differently, or theirs might have increased effect on you. Ruler abilities would be difficult to test… Hm. Novelty? That will have to wait a few days. Ah, maybe items? Do they react the same when they are the user?”

I shook my head. “Sounds like you’re grasping at straws.”

“Perhaps. If I come up with a testing plan, you’ll humor me, won’t you?”

I smiled. “Of course! I might not have a lot of hope, but I’m not about to leave any stone unturned.”

“We need every advantage we can get,” Colonel Yoshiro said.

With that, I had no argument.