Personal StatsStrength1.8Agility1.4Vitality1.5Defense1.9Mental Efficiency3.0Neural Card Max/In Use5/30Convertible Biomass40 lbsBreakpoint0/100

Dannel looked through his stats slowly, it was fairly good for a teenager about to graduate high school though his mental efficiency could be considered average for this day and age, though without tutors or expensive lessons on how to properly use your mind you would be hard pressed to get higher than just average especially as part of the middle class. His breakpoint was still at zero which would have been unusual a generation ago but this generation was bioengineered to be have no limit, or as high a limit as theoretically possible for a human.

Breakpoints have nearly become extinct, which was a bit of a shame considering that most breakpoints had unexpected results. Research hasn’t been able to explain why those that go past that point change in such strange ways, or vanish altogether but they have been able to pinpoint the cause, a natural limiter on our cells. Due to the engineering of BEH Corp they created a new cell called the Eden Cell, so it is all a matter of opinion if they are still human or not.

Humanity has gone far past questioning if they were playing God as anyone with the primitive mindsets of yesteryear, and they realized if they can become gods themselves then why not fix god’s mistakes or what the religious types liked to call, “The predesigned flaws in humanity.” Scientists don’t ever like to be flawed, if you talked to any of them they insist that their logic is never flawed and in fact truth beyond a doubt until they are proven wrong which they’ll immediately say that it was purely a hypothesis. So they systematically destroyed each flaw we had until the Eden Cell was created, creating what some people considered a new race of genetically perfect humans.

Any one of the generation would tell you, we are not perfect, far off in fact. The genetic mapping may have made a superior human being in every way, but it was based on an outdated model to keep them within similarities with humanity, it bridged on the Uncanny Valley and they refused to push it further than that. No sane person wants to create a monster, especially one that is genetically, and mentally superior to them, so they made sure that the Eden generation knew that they were daughters and sons of man. Plus if humanity has a main flaw that defines them, it would be pride, how could they create something that proves that humans aren’t the best designed creatures.

Once the nanites were added to the bloodstream at birth it only took seconds for them to bond to the Eden Cells which started creating a better body for a baby than any had seen before, this was the first baby to have a strength score of 0.5 even before it left the womb. The terrified screams of the woman a few days later, and the cries of pain from having such a strong baby within her womb made them rethink having mothers participate in childbirth ever again. With the disconnect from being born from a mother many organizations formed to argue against the further creation of the Eden kids, but considering one of the top companies had paid to have twenty kids made for their executive families the other corporations couldn’t be at a disadvantage, and had to put their full backing behind the project moving it forward to produce babies decades beyond schedule. Creating a baby boom only heard about in the earlier years of humanity around the year 2000 or so. For every normal human, there was one Eden Child, and considering the competition between countries, nearly every child born inside of a superpower country was an Eden child other than accidents of passion, which were later converted to Eden children if the pregnancy was found fast enough. Considering that your phone could notify you at conception, all except the poorest families converted their children not wanting them to be at a disadvantage.

With a sudden spike the values of children started to skyrocket, the average eighteen year old would have a base of 0.8 in strength, where after the average was set at a 1.4. At the peak age of twenty-five many of the newer generations even had 2.0 or higher strength. These numbers came from values conducted a hundred years ago, a 1.0 being the average human male at the peak of power genetically speaking at twenty-five years of age. A man with 2.0 strength would be twice as strong as the average male, it was a simple if not vague number that only the nanites within their bodies could keep up with the exact numbers.

Edens found three ways to vastly increase their values in a short amount of time, and labeled those who focused on increasing their stats ‘Gamers’ as they acted like their bodies were rpg characters from a game. The ways that gamers improved stats was through direct electrical surge, which was dangerous for obvious reason, over consumption of food, and through stealing what people were calling the life force of another living creature. Stealing life force was made illegal almost the same day as it was found out, but the other two were never touched on by law, figuring the survival of the fittest would play itself out eventually.

Dannel was one such gamer, he had a part time job as an electrician to be influenced by static charge in the air, as well as a few sparks from low grade cables but nothing too serious. His stomach overhung his belt, though it wasn’t due to overeating or lack of exercise it was due to having part of the genetic code from his parents and it was where he held his weight. Though diet he could probably get rid of the fat, or through converting it into stats but he liked having a bit more weight on him considering it strength training. He was nearing stats of a twenty five year old in a lot of areas, which was considered actually pretty bad for gamers but he didn’t want to try anything too dangerous.

He wasn’t the normal type of gamer that did it for the thrill, he just wanted a better job and a well rounded amount of stats would give him an advantage over a lot of other people. Only the higher class citizens actually had access to better nanites, so someone like him had to destroy the limiters for a small amount of time on his nanites so they acted on par with a high class citizen. The limiting factors of society were still around even though most people didn’t have to work, those that worked were considered a higher class than the common idiots that didn’t have any useful skill. It was the reason he had gotten the Neural System.

The Neural system was first made for cooking shows, ‘Follow along with the cook as they make an amazing homemade pizza.’ It was later found out that repeated use induced muscle memory, making it more useful for other things. The problem is that higher skilled things required more slots, so pushing out a lot of money he had purchased the best one as you can only ever install one in your life since it was surgically installed directly into the brain.

The three that he had placed where:

ArcheryThe proper pull, stance, and breathing techniques of an archer. Through the years many people have mastered the art of archery, science has perfected that art. Lowers the mastery time for any other ranged weapons as they all use similar breathing methods.

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He was using the current setup as most gun neural mappings were restricted by the government, so the only thing you can get for a ranged weapon at the moment was archery, but the breathing techniques were invaluable to anyone dealing with guns. He had already mastered a few sword neural mappings, they were some of the best for hand to hand combat and didn’t require a sword to actually use. Martial arts were guarded from the general public so he had taken a lot of mappings of free running, and boxing.

He was a generalist, a jack of all trades, with neural mappings you could master three or four things in your lifetime. Being still in the early years of life he had studied into more of a general bit of info to make himself qualified for a lot of different things, once he got a job he would be able to master the skills of the job a lot easier no matter the circumstance.

A slight nod, he popped a small pill into his mouth to make him more conductive as he gripped the bare wire, suddenly becoming unresponsive for a second before the breaker automatically switched off. His breath was heavy as he stared at the contraption before him, and flipped the breaker getting another dose of electricity. After the third time, this was all his body could take and he was gasping on the floor, sweat rolling off his body like bullets.

“Fuck…” laying there his stomach went up and down in deep breaths as he closed his eyes, his nose starting to bleed leaving trails of crimson running across his cheeks. His whole body was sore so he just laid there, spreading out his fingers up at the sun to block it out of his vision. “This shit hurts, but its beneficial.”

He was using a wire hooked up to an outlet behind the gym, very few people came through here regularly and anyone he did see were doing something illegal, or at least immoral enough that they wouldn’t confess they saw his hobby. The school uniform for this high school didn’t show any change, minus the slight static attached to him, his palms really gave him away with black scorch marks along them. A bell rang and his free period was over, the soft flickering of the leaves shadows made this place seem calm and serene.

Grasping his hand as if to grab hold of the sun, he smiled at himself, these were the days he enjoyed the most, where the sun was cool on his skin and people left him alone. A warm feeling settled over his body as the nanites settled down in his body.

“H….” A voice as soft as the wind came to his ear, and he frowned thinking that someone would disrupt this rest. “Help…”

Getting to his feet took a bit of effort and he looked about seeing no one, but before he could dismiss it as a trick of the wind a female’s scream came from somewhere close. “No.. no… save me!”

His hand grasped forward of its own accord and he brought his fingers down, clasping onto something that he couldn’t see, it felt like cloth but he wasn’t sure. It tugged at his grip hard, and he pulled it back the scenery around him shattering like that of a window as a very slim person fell back into him.

“No.. no no… please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry for going into your territory lord.” The person bowed their head to the ground, long black hair draped to the ground before them, they seemed to be injured as blood as stained across their garments..

That wasn’t where Dannel was looking though, he was looking towards the two moons that hung above him, the cracked sandy earth below his feet, the endless amount of sand that was between him and the horizon. His mind immediately shut down before him as a shadow slowly appeared across the ground. “What… just happened?”

Leaning down and gripping the person’s clothes, he brought up the person to face him realizing he was wrong in the first assumption, this was no woman. Her scaled face made it clear to him that she wasn’t even human even though her body resembled as such, as he stared at her he went to speak but found it impossible. A deep unseeded fear came across his body as a deep pressure fell upon his shoulders The shadow behind him made a loud roaring noise at his back that shook up the sands around him, hot air blowing across his skin feeling like sandpaper making small cuts along his body.

It spoke, but the words were not words that he had ever heard prior, it reminded him of a pissed off French man, before turning guttural at the end an obvious warning to him. Turning to face the shadow, he was now face to face with a large lionhead that was on the top of a giant human’s body. Its main seemed to compose of fire as it lapped at the lion’s face tenderly, not even burning the soft fur along its face. The creature had taken a deep breath after its speech, opening its mouth wide I could see a flame manifesting in the back of its throat before the world shattered once more.

He was now standing behind the gym once more, a blank look on his face, “W-was that just a dream?”

The sand around him, and the lingering feel of heat on his skin told him otherwise but he wasn’t willing to believe that the events that just unfolded actually occurred. With his mind in a daze he immediately thought it would be best to head home. Everything felt in pain, and his mind spun, an alert was sounding and flashing letters upon his vision were not helping.

The messages read:

BreakpointBreakpoint Reached: Danger at 200%

BreakpointBreakpoint Reached: Danger at 190%

BreakpointBreakpoint Reached: Danger at 180%

He had reached breakpoint, still being alive was a miracle that would only happen once every thousand years. As the numbers counted down to, his lunch and bile fell to the floor, his body trembling from the experience. “No… one is going to accept this as an excuse for leaving school so early.” Stumbling out from behind the gym, he didn’t take notice that one of the ground where he was standing was a charred blackened color.

The next day the school would find out that one of the electrical boxes inside the school had sent out a large force of power before being shut down by its protective layers, sending a spark of lightning exactly where Dannel was laying in the grass. This fact would never be discovered by him though as school will be the least of his worries in the coming days as the countdown stopped at 100% breakpoint.

Author Notes: If anyone has any suggestions or comments on my writing style please feel free to comment as it will help this story grow as a whole. This is version 1, and I do hope to create three versions once everything is sorted out and we're at least 10 chapters out.