Barry wondered how long this standoff would last. He adjusted his right foot slightly to improve his balance, pushing it deeper into the sand while keeping a close eye for any reaction from the wolf standing in front of him. The beast just continued to watch him silently, its patience unnerving. Every few seconds, there was the soft pat of a drop of blood hitting the sand, trickling down from Barry’s left elbow through a rough tear in his clothes.
The spear felt light as he shifted his grip once again, the grain of the oak haft rough against the palm of his hand. He’d been holding it for a few minutes like this, trying to keep the blade steadily facing towards the wolf, but it would inevitably start swaying. Still not used to his increased strength, the spear felt as light as a reed, like it was entirely hollowed out.
As if it could sense his distraction, the wolf finally moved forward in a sudden lunge. Barry’s body stiffened, bracing for impact, but the lunge had been a feint and the wolf darted quickly to his right flank. He reacted with fast reflexes, intuitively taking a wide step to the left to move away from the threat while pivoting to keep facing the wolf. But swinging his weapon brought him off balance, the head of the spear moving further and higher than where he wanted it to be. The vicious animal easily ducked underneath and was inside of his range then, teeth closing around his right leg. Barry let out a scream of pain and frustration as he grappled with the long spear, failing to find a workable angle to stab the wolf as the beast continued to tear at his leg. A single kick to its side forced it to let go and Barry stumbled back clumsily, now unable to put any weight on his wounded right leg.
He clenched his teeth as he glared at the wolf, releasing a growl of pain with every exhale. Anger and frustration rose in his chest with each stab of pain until it started to take over, his vision narrowing to a tunnel with the wolf at the end. He wanted only to hurt it, to skewer and kick and tear at the damn beast. But when he moved forward, readying for a lunge, the wolf moved carefully backwards, then started to circle him. Barry was forced to ineptly turn around, hopping and twisting, his right foot squelching in his blood soaked shoe with every move. The wolf kept circling, increased its speed, then changed directions with another unexpected feint. Desperately trying to keep up, Barry inevitably made the mistake of putting weight on his right foot. With a cry of pain, he went down, entangled with his spear. He rolled around, desperately trying to get in an upright position again, but the wolf was already on top of him. The last thing he felt before everything went black was a feeling of pain and pressure of jaws closing on his throat.
Barry sat up in the darkness with a shout of panic, grabbing for his throat. It took him only a second to realize where he was and then he opened the VR goggles on the back of his head and pulled them off with a curse.
“That goddamn spear! How do people fight with something so long and clunky?” He said angrily, removing the straps from his body with too much force.
“And those goggles! What a cursed device. I know I agreed to this, but can we at least lower the pain settings?”
Pokka was floating in front of him, arms crossed, raising his eyebrows.
“So that your failures will have no consequences? Don’t you think you deserve punishment for that pathetic-” Pokka broke off with a sigh. “This psych module is the real curse.” He muttered under his breath, then continued in a cheerful voice. “Dear Barry, that was a good attempt, but there are some things you can still improve on. Try working on your grip and footwork for better results next time.”
Barry looked at him through narrowed eyes. He wasn’t yet sure what to make of the recent changes in Pokka’s attitude. “Thanks for the feedback, oh, most considerate mentor.”
Tearing the last strap off his leg, Barry got up to do some stretches. It helped him to deal with the frustration. Pokka had started him off on a basic training regime and so far, it was not going well. Weapons training was particularly problematic. They’d been trying out different weapons to see where there might be some affinity, but it turned out Barry was the opposite of a fighting talent. He’d chosen bow and arrow first and had managed to fumble one of his shots so badly that he nearly took out his own eye and stabbed himself in the leg. Unwilling to try weapons for short range fighting, he’d then had to handle a flail and a spear, with equally poor results.
“Why don’t you just give me a laser rifle already? You obviously have the technology required to make them.” He called out to Pokka as he bent down to put his palms on the floor.
“I’ll explain this to you once you manage to kill that wolf.” Pokka said.
Barry had started to notice that while Pokka easily shared any information about the workings of the new Earth, he would avoid nearly any question that would give away information about the wider universe. When pressed, the AI would say the information was classified, or that he anyway wouldn’t understand, or simply that more things would be revealed in due course. Sometimes he’d do as he did now and promise to reveal the information once Barry achieved some training related milestone.
With a sigh, he moved to loosening his neck muscles, slowly turning his head from side to side. His cave was starting to look unexpectedly homely, though it was also getting cluttered with the various items he’d bought. The warm orange glow from the MAFT was the main source of light, pairing well with the reddish brown of the sandstone surroundings to create a cozy environment. A green LED light was visible next to his sleeping area, indicating that the heating and air purification unit was doing its job. The luscious carpet next to his sleeping area had been an impulse buy, but it really did tie the room together.
Purchasing a mattress was one of the first things he’d done, after having passed out on the rough sandstone floor and woken up with a stiff neck and a splitting headache. That had happened right after getting hyped up for training. Pokka had not been pleased.
According to the Fixer Upper, he’d been suffering from a severe concussion, two broken and three bruised ribs, a sprained ankle and a number of other bruises across his body. Those had all been magically fixed after a single night’s rest while being hooked up to the device. It was a truly awesome piece of technology. The aliens had at least brought some good things along, not that it offset the rest of their actions.
“It’s time to start your energy manipulation training.” Pokka announced. “I hope you haven’t forgotten what I shared? Have you settled on a category to start with?”
Barry nodded. There was a slight flutter of excitement in his belly as he went to sit down cross-legged on his carpet, facing towards Pokka. He’d been genuinely curious to know how Abilities worked and had peppered Pokka with questions.
“You haven’t told me what the training will be, but I understood that it’s important to get the most out of the PE node. If I don’t learn how to talk to my node and use it to freely manipulate the energy, I’ll be stuck using only the pre-set Abilities, which lack flexibility.”
“Correct. It’s necessary for advanced usage of the PE node, though potentially dangerous, which is why it usually only gets unlocked much later. You will need it sooner than most, and you’ve already got clearance for unlocking two categories, so we should start to make use of that.”
“Right. I’ve thought about it, and I think Waves makes the most sense. It’s the only category that I’ve seen that offers the ability to stop vibrations from spreading through the ground. Without any way to cover my steps, I’d never be able to hide from the Roid-Bulls. Something with light could be complementary, so, ah, Radiant Energy as a potential second category.”
The names were still confusing to Barry.
As the old AI had repeatedly said, all Abilities were at their base some form of energy control. The potential energy captured in their PE node could be actualized in all existing forms of energy - motion, heat, light, electromagnetism, sound. However, some of them, like nuclear energy, would be restricted since they’d too likely lead to people hurting themselves and others around them.
The actual Abilities one could purchase in exchange for Value worked like a set of basic, pre-set instructions that would be executed by the PE node. If you bought [Blur Image] for instance, the Ability would, once activated, manipulate the lightwaves to blur the image of you and your immediate surroundings while draining 2 Joules per second from your PE node. It would work instantly and always produce exactly the same results, but the degree and radius of the blurring would be fixed, and it would never work while moving.
There was a massive list of standard Abilities that one could browse through in the online shop, ordered per category. Despite Pokka’s insistence that this was a more correct way to categorize energy, Barry found the categories highly counter-intuitive. Instead of having the Abilities split per sense, there were only three main classifications: Radiant Energy, Mechanical Energy and Electrical Energy. Within each of those classes, there were a number of branching options.
Under Radiant Energy, you had ‘Generation & Amplification’ or ‘Refraction & Reflection’. The first would lead to Abilities that involved creating flashes of light, or focusing existing light sources into something like a laser. The second was more subtle, going in the direction of bending or otherwise manipulating light, which could be used to hide yourself or change what you looked like to any onlookers. Interestingly, each of those still had various categories of wavelengths to browse through, but Barry hadn’t yet looked into those Abilities.
Mechanical Energy had Momentum and Waves as separate categories, each of which had Generation and Manipulation branching below them. Momentum had interesting Abilities, such as being able to launch or accelerate objects, but Pokka had pointed out they suffered from high energy usage. His PE Node capacity was still only sitting at 50 Joules, which would be enough to launch a small rock for about the same distance as an average throw.
The Waves group contained Abilities that could stop, alter, or generate waves through different mediums. When used in the air, that would result in the manipulation of sound, but waves could also travel through solids like rock. Pokka had suggested that in extreme cases, that could cause earthquakes, while weaker waves would be useful for things like tracking and communication. What Barry was interested in, was the ability to hide the vibrations caused by his footsteps.
Electrical Energy had only two branching options, electrical fields and magnetic fields. These had a host of Abilities that involved manipulating electricity and magnetism. Unsurprisingly, this was known as the most dangerous class, where lethal mistakes were easily made.
“Manipulating light and sound to conceal yourself.” Pokka said, nodding in understanding.
“I would usually advocate against taking such a passive approach, but in your particular situation, working towards stealth is not a poor choice. Very well then, we’ll begin with waves. There’s a certain physicality to them that should help you grasp the feeling of control.”
Barry opened his status screen, noting that the only real change was a significant drop in his Value. Pokka had forbidden him from increasing his Stats any further, stating that he needed to increase them gradually as he progressed in his training. He noticed there was now a drop down option to show how much he’d spent so far.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Unallocated Value: 7637
Value allocated to Stats: 135
Value allocated to Abilities: 0
Value spent on items: 1088
Stats
Strength: 14
Durability: 16
Speed: 8
Senses: 7
Intelligence: 8
PE Capacity: 50 J
Abilities
No abilities unlocked
“In the Mechanical Energy tree, under manipulation of waves, you should find a number of variants on the [Halt Wave] Ability. Get the ‘Sphere’ variant, then get [Cast Wave] from the generation tree. Finally you can then unlock ‘Direct Manipulation - Waves’ in your PE Node Options.” Pokka instructed.
Barry read through the Ability descriptions before he followed Pokka’s instructions.
[Halt Wave - Sphere]
Description: This Ability will create an invisible sphere that will negate any waves touching the edge of the sphere. It has a diameter of 7 feet, centered around the body of the user. It will not move along with the user.
Cost: 4 Joule to activate, then 1 Joule per 10 seconds. Cost will increase linearly with the energy contained in the waves that are negated.
[Cast Wave]
Description: This Ability will create a wave within a range of 25 yards in any direction, with the user determining the point of origin, wavelength, amplitude and direction.
Cost: 10 Joule. Cost will increase in relation to amplitude and wavelength.
“So the first one would hide my footsteps, or any other sound I make. But it won’t travel along with me, so it’s not of much use to me while walking across the desert, is it?”
“That is why you must first learn free manipulation, to address the lack of flexibility in the standard Abilities.”
“Right. Okay.” Barry said with a thoughtful look, scratching the back of his head.
“And why do I need the second one?”
“It will help in the exercises we’re about to go through. But there are many scenarios in which it could be of value. Use your imagination.”
With a sigh, Barry confirmed the purchase. The Abilities cost him another 240 Value in total, while the unlock used one of the two tokens he’d gotten as a reward.
“Now, to start, you should make use of those Abilities with your Direct Manipulation toggled on. The goal will be just to get used to the feeling.” Pokka said.
Barry noticed immediately that there were now more options in the interface, a subtle feeling of something asking for attention at the edge of his awareness. Once he focused on it, three icons appeared at the bottom of his vision. They were mostly transparent so that they wouldn’t block his vision, but he still knew intuitively what they represented.
Feeling a bit nervous, he activated Direct Manipulation with a mental nudge, but nothing happened. He looked around for a bit, made sure that it was indeed activated, then shrugged and activated [Cast Wave].
Without delay, a new overlay appeared over his view of the cave, showing crosshairs and three small dials. It took him some time to move each one, learning that he first needed to focus intently on just one item, then think about which way he wanted to move it. There was no need to move any of the dials, so he just directed the crosshairs to point at a spot on the ground a few feet in front of him.
There was a soft crack from where he’d cast the wave and he felt something faint which he found hard to identify. He frowned as he tried to investigate further, but it was already gone. He thought it might have been a tugging feeling, like something pulling him ever so slightly off balance.
“That didn’t seem to do much?” Barry asked.
“It successfully created a small wave that traveled through the rock, but you weren’t able to notice it yet. We’ll need to get you in the right mindset first. Remember, the goal of this exercise is just for you to start interpreting the information being sent to you by your PE Node. Try to keep an open mind. Close your eyes.”
Pokka paused briefly while Barry did as instructed.
“Now focus on your breathing, how your chest moves and how the air enters your lungs. Slow it down slightly, taking long breaths in and holding them for a few seconds. Keep your chest still as you breathe in, moving only the stomach.”
The old man’s words sounded slow and controlled, full of patience and calm, in stark contrast to his usual, rushed manner of speaking.
“Focus now on your legs, the weight pressing them into the carpet, the feeling of your joints and muscles.”
Pokka continued the meditation exercise, Barry diligently following along. He’d done these exercises often with Dr. Schulz, and they never failed to calm him down and clear his thoughts. It felt familiar as he moved his focus slowly throughout his body, intently aware of how everything felt. The supple carpet underneath, the slight stiffness in his muscles, the cool air of the cave against his skin. Then, he nearly opened his eyes as Pokka veered off course.
“Now, you’re going to pretend that you have a tail. It stretches out from where your spine stops, lined with muscle. You can feel a squeeze at the top of your glutes and movement in your lower back as you move it, left to right. You can feel the cool air moving along its tip as you move it around.”
Again, Barry followed along, slowly getting the hang of it. It was different than feeling his body, now just imagining how a tail might feel. But the state he was in, having been primed by all those sensations, made the imagination stronger.
As time passed and the exercise continued, a strange feeling settled over Barry as he tried to move his imaginary limbs around. He began to feel less connected to his body, less conscious of it, and more aware of his surroundings instead.
“There are four tentacles, two sprouting from your ribs, mirrored by two more on your back. They are thick where they flow into your body, connected to tough muscles, but thinner as they spread out around you. There are tiny feelers alongside them that can sense the vibrations in the air. Now, imagine that the edge of the tentacles can turn incorporeal so you can move them around as you please, even through the ground. Two of them flow through the air, feeling every detailed move of it, while the others float down through the rock, passing through its many layers without any resistance.”
He again approached this patiently, not knowing or caring how much time was spent. His only focus was on visualizing the tentacles and where they’d stick to his back, how he’d move them around, how they would sense slight air flows around his body.
“The feelers sticking out from the ends are fine, sensitive little things, only a bit thicker than a hair. With them, you can feel the vibrations in the air. Think of how your throat moves when you hum, of your fingers pressed against it as you speak. How the vibration would be fast on a high note, nearly a continuous buzz. Or the slower, ponderous feeling of a low purr.”
Barry continued, absorbed in the task, no longer aware of the carpet, nor the feeling of the small aches throughout his body. He took that familiar feeling, the warm buzz of a humming throat, and placed it out into his tentacles. It would come not from his fingers but further away, and it would be stronger, more detailed, the feelers being specialized instruments.
“Now, you’ll move one tentacle closer to me and feel the sound of my voice, how it disturbs the air as it moves all the way through. You can sense the vibrations, high and low, short and long, as they travel through your feelers. Some of them come back for a second pass, weaker, but still present, bouncing off the cave wall, mixing with the others.”
As Pokka kept talking, he seemed to move a bit closer, his voice growing louder. After a while of deep concentration, Barry thought he could feel the words. He tried to ignore the sound and meaning of Pokka’s words, instead experiencing them only as vibrations, short or long, soft or rough, mixing together into a complex, droning wave that traveled through the air. The sensation grew stronger, until it felt less like his imagination and more like he could actually touch Pokka’s voice, like he was right next to the man, fingers pressed to his shivering throat.
There were clear differences in the vibrations, the high notes feeling distinct from the lower ones. They followed each other in the familiar melody of human speech, reminding Barry of a time when he’d tiptoed through the house as a child, seeking a late night snack, and he’d paused for a moment next to the living room door to listen as his parents watched television. The words themselves were unrecognizable, but from the pitch, intensity and composition of the noise, it was unmistakably a person talking.
Following an impulse, Barry started humming, producing a deep, rumbling sound that was immediately felt by his fictitious tentacles. If the sound of Pokka’s voice were gentle, alternating ripples, then this was a sustained stream, feeling more solid and textured as it poured out from his chest.
The steady drone of his humming filled the space in front of him, engulfing the waves coming from Pokka. It filled his body too and, through it, carried down into the ground. As he focused on the space below him, he sensed something new, though it was faint. It was also a distortion, a ripple of sorts, but this one felt much more solid, despite being far away. If it were closer, stronger, he thought he might be able to run his feelers over it like fingers, to touch it, feeling every ridge and curve as it squirmed through the ground.
His attention shifted slightly as he picked something up from Pokka’s words, almost subconsciously as he’d completely zoned them out by now. The old AI wanted him to activate his Ability and try to sense the wave.
It took him some time to split a small part of his attention off without exiting this special state of mind. He didn’t open his eyes, nor trigger an overlay, instead just willing the Ability to trigger. Nothing happened at first, so he did it with more intent, concentrating on his PE node to give it a nudge. He thought of the last time he triggered it, willing it to happen in exactly the same place, no change in the parameters. With that same feeling of giving a mental click, it finally activated.
Without delay or warning, it pulled something out of him. No, it forced him to move something. An additional limb, unknown to him, but somehow still part of him. Like he had an additional arm but someone else was in control of it. It popped into existence, stretching from the back of his neck to the targeted spot on the ground, then it simultaneously pulled at him and pushed something out. Immediately after that, he sensed the wave moving through the ground, felt the smooth ridges, its shape like a snake stretched out to the sides.
The feeling was intense and completely foreign. He snapped his eyes open, feeling his bile rising, becoming aware of his aching hips and knees. He’d been sweating, too.
“Wow.” He said, taking slow breaths as he leaned back on his hands and stretched his feet out in front of him. “How long did that take?”
“Well over two hours. It seems you were able to sense something?”
“Yes. Just the sound at first, but then also the waves in the ground. It's.. profoundly weird.”
“A good start.” Pokka said with a nod. “But you have much further to go. We’ll incorporate this exercise into your daily schedule from now on.”
Barry didn’t react to that, just staring at the cavern walls.
“What is the PE Node, actually? How does it.. work?” Barry said slowly, still shaken by the strange experience.
“We’ve already been over this, you-” Pokka began, then broke off and started over.
“Very well. You can think of it as a powerful microchip, directly connected to your nervous system via your brainstem. Obviously, it can manipulate energy, but it needs instructions. The goal of these exercises is simply to teach you to communicate with it.”
“There is an actual microchip inside of my brain. How did you put it there?” There was no alarm in Barry’s voice, only curiosity.
“It was put there in the same way that your muscle fibers and your skin and bones have been strengthened from your additional Stats. Through advanced application of scientific concepts you do not understand. It should hopefully be clear to you by now that matter and energy can be quite freely manipulated with the right technology.”
“So you're saying that you just teleported it straight into my head?"
"Not technically accurate at all, but if that's how your primitive brain is able to process it, then yes."
"So those strange sensations I felt just now, that was the PE Node sending signals directly into my brain?”
Pokka nodded. “It can detect all types of energy and thus can function as an additional sense of sorts.”
“It felt like.. an invisible limb, but out of my control.”
“When you trigger a pre-set Ability, you’re actually sending a set of instructions to your PE node. Because those instructions don’t come directly from your brain, it would feel like it’s acting of its own accord.” Pokka explained.
“Not from my brain? But I was activating the Ability mentally, literally just by thinking about it.”
“Not directly. The System Interface is not linked to your PE node, the whole system is actually managed by an AI. This is needlessly technical, but what is really happening is that the AI reads the signals sent to the PE Node by your brain. This is how the information flows every time you’re browsing the Interface, making purchases or activating standard Abilities. Then, in the case of an Ability being activated, you could say the AI acts as an intermediary, parsing the instructions and sending them back to your PE node.”
Barry blew out a long breath of air as he let his head drop down to the carpet to stare at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure what to make of this exercise. The last part had been decidedly unpleasant, but being able to sense waves was… interesting. What would it be like to control them? What would light feel like? He smiled as he thought of the implications, feeling excited, eager to learn more.
Then, his smile dropped as there was a sharp flash of guilt as he remembered his family, turning into a slow burn that stayed with him. They were already out there, trying to survive. Would they be wounded? Hungry? Lost? Fighting for their lives?
He wasn’t here to have fun. Every hour he wasted here would be an hour he could have spent getting closer to his family. But he wasn’t yet ready to leave. If he wanted to be able to help his family, at the very least he should be strong enough to kill that damn wolf.
Straining his abs to bring his legs in the air, then pushing off his hands to jump up and land on his feet in one elegant motion, he looked sharply at Pokka.
“Let’s do another round of weapons training.”