Chapter 76: Who needs an Engram?
August 19th
Ripley’s twentieth day… recovering from surgery.
Today’s talk with Diana through my drone had been concerning. She confirmed most of what Missy had said about The Uncaged, whoever they were, they posed a threat to… well, everything. Missy refused to indulge me deeper in my quest for knowledge, but said I was impressing her every step of the way.
I didn’t like that answer, she dragged me in deep… but not so deep that my curiosity would be satisfied. The Hammersmith was my grandfather… saved Diamante from Metal Heavens, Skeleton was his former apprentice, until apparently he started raising my mom. Then he disappeared from everyone’s lives.
What the hell was going on? Who were The Uncaged? Skeleton, Soul Killer and Dogwhistler seemed to all fall under that banner, so were they working together? I wished I could do more to figure out… anything.
Well to start, it would be nice if I could even take more than a few steps with my current state after the spinal surgery. On the bright side, it didn’t stop me from ingesting a daily Bronze BUG, which I mostly fed into fulfilling whatever pending updates were available.
Energized V.1.14 has updated to V.1.15
Effect: Increased projection of Warpcode alongside Warp Energy within Shardware.
Energized V.1.15 has updated V.2.00
Effect: Protocol: Shard Conversion allows you to absorb Warpcode or Warp Energy from other physical sources to fill up your own reserves of Energy. Alternatively, this can be used to alter any grade of Warp Energy absorbed to your Grade, or to convert amounts of Warp Energy in your body into Warpcode.
Yeah, my own mind boggled when I saw that. I tested it out… I could basically munch on shards now to recover my used up energy. Elsa suggested I find a good Sustain BUG able to quantify my inner stores for more accurate testing, to which I only showed confusion. They could do that?
My other thought was if I had found a glitch for infinite money, turns out… no. Shards were physical matter, and while I could now directly form Warpcode like Elsa, constructing something from nothing was a lot harder than it looked. The only downside was that my conversion rate was pretty shit in all directions, but hopefully future updates could change that.
For the last three days, I just sat in a meditative stance as I converted my Gold into Bronze with my liver then slowly drained scraps of Gold back with my conversion from that Bronze. An extremely ineffective and wasteful practice that at least trained me in the method.
Besides, I’d gotten some other updates done in the meanwhile.
Psyche V.2.01 has updated to V.2.03
Effects:
* Increased pain resistance
* Reduced fear of loss of mobility
Okay, not the best updates for Psyche, but Technician got some good ones. The last update used an Iron Sustain BUG aimed at recovery from my surgery too.
Technician V.2.00 has updated to V.2.03
Effects:
* Increased Shardware Operating precision when using Arachne-type Shardware
* Increased ability to perform self-modification
* Increased recovery rate when implanting new Shardware through an Internal Link.
Lastly came Data Mimicry.
Data Mimicry V.1.13 has updated to V.1.15
Effects:
* Increased depth of Feature mimicking.
* Increased sensitivity to abnormal Warpcode Structure.
It was just teasing me with a new protocol… I knew it, hell, I could probably force a BUG in my mouth right now and make it happen. But I was more interested in waiting, I wanted the next protocol to be something natural, who knows what could happen if I meddled with it.
It was tempting… but… I knew better. So, as I slowly trained myself to walk again, I just played around with my Warp Energy and Mimicset BUGs. Accomodation helped me get attuned to the odd feeling of the spine, but I’ll admit that my posture was always pretty lousy, suddenly it was bolted on to be perfect and that felt so unnatural to me.
Yet… it was odd. I expected to have some better control over my movement, but the real thing I was feeling right now was the intensity of my tactile touch. Vibrations, textures, even slight shifts in the air just seemed the tiniest bit louder… It was refreshing, like getting a new outlook on life.
In the meanwhile of my boredom with my own Features, I played around with the current Arachnodyne model we had after Harold Anderson’s back-and-forth input over the last few days. We’d need to make pretty major adjustments to the actual limbs, they were fragile and needed to be strengthened, not to mention they already took a massive toll by disconnecting your consciousness to be in control of them. That was more of a coding thing which Midnight offered to take care of, but the fact remained that even if my body could take the burden of eight extra limbs, my mind might not. Especially if it was simultaneously taking in all the visual information as well.
So… reduce the number of limbs. That was obvious from the start, we thought four was a good number but the numbers started to get wonky with the actual way they worked in their coding. Elsa promised me she’d handle it but I would do anything to leap off my wheelchair and take the thing apart until I understood how to.
For now…
I tinkered with my Feature Links. Turns out it was really easy to make them once you got the hang of it, especially when you could mimic any Feature so you didn’t spend a BUG every time you tried Engramming. I learned my mistake from the last time and installed a backport to disconnect and delete the Engram data off my legs, making them blank slates.
In three days, for my legs I’d managed several different Links across various Features.
Sustain:
* Self-Adjustment (It would passively make micro-adjustments to the various pneumatics and joints)
* Damage Status (Just gave me a status on how damaged they were)
Accommodation:
* Capacitance Limiter (Reduced their capacitance by half, useful)
* Organic Sensation (Made them feel like real legs which somehow felt weirder)
Analyze:
* Environmental Coordination (Makes adjustments based on my awareness of what was around me)
* Sensation Filter (Allows me to better understand vibrations and shit through my feet)
Overclock:
* Surge (One-time increase in power)
* Stream (Over-time increase in power)
* Hyperlimit (Massively increases their output but causes them to increase in Capacitance)
Integration:
* External Efficiency (Any External Shardware attached to them just works better)
Jailbreak:
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
* Disruption (When they connect into other pieces of Shardware they can emit a simple datajammer)
* Unseal (Let’s the Shardware reduce it’s DataShield protection to improve Warpcode manipulation through it)
* Seal (The opposite of the above)
Dataweaving
* Silence (Reduces Warpcode radiation emissions)
* Recode (Make adjustments to the programming of it on the fly)
There were a fuck ton, turns out. In the end, I settled to have both legs take the Analyze-based Environmental Coordinator which would hopefully improve my balance and ability to get the fuck out of dangerous situations. It also synced well with my Spine’s Autonomous Reactivity.
I theorized it would, if only I could fucking move!
August 20th
Ripley’s twenty-first day… finally moving…
So, finally able to move, the spine worked about as well as I hoped it would.
Actually, it worked about too well, for one I felt this weird nagging itch on my back where I placed the other neural plexi to control the Arachnodyne’s movement, and the other thing was that… I was moving now.
But I was moving wrong.
Every step was too much of a step, every flick had too much flick in it. I was basically suffering from a self-inflicted Parkinson’s disease, and while I could talk fine, anything from the neck down had to be slowed down so my body could compensate.
Yeah… I could see why building Shardware took years of experimentation and documentation. I was already a bad shot, but now I was barely able to even grab my gun without accidentally firing it. My dented foot would know. So… I came to the logical conclusion of simply forcing my brain to work with this, make modifications to its Basal Ganglia and Cerebellum which controlled conscious movement and muscle tone.
I wasn’t sure if I needed Accomodation or Sustain BUGs, so I just ordered five of each, waited a third of the day for Elsa to come over with them and pour them into my hand because they slipped out of my fingers like oiled marbles.
”Ripley…” She said firmly. “Are you sure you can handle this?”
I rolled my eyes away from her. ”Mostly… my Integrity has increased.”
Her eyes turned crimson, Midnight crouching to look down upon me. “If you miscalculated, you’re going to very soon lose that dick of yours. I’ll make it painful. But don’t worry too much, I’ll help you get a vibrating one.”
Okay, so I dropped it from 10 BUGs to 9.
I focused on the Warp Energy coursing around my spine like a highway of fireflies, bidding them to fall under my control.
Reading Warpcode… forcing compatibility.
Energized V.2.00 has updated to V.2.01
Effect: Better manipulation of Warp Energy in the spinal cord.
Psyche V.2.03 has updated to V.2.05
Effects:
* Heightened modulation of motor impulses directed through the descending pathways of the spinal cord.
* Increased cerebellar activity to maintain muscle tone and sustained movement
Two updates… I hoped that would… oh, shit, that worked pretty well. I stood up, still a little too fast for my liking, but now it felt limber and light compared to the stuttering mess I was moments before. To be honest, it was almost intoxicating just how much I wanted to move, the stillness of the air felt wrong to me. An idea so stupid I had to try it flung out at me.
”Elsa. Stand back please.” I shooed her away, but nicely. Because she was my girlfriend.
She took a generous step away, and I psyched myself up. Then I kicked, a kick so powerful and fast that it lifted me straight into the air. Then the powerful circuitry connecting my brain and the Preservation Matrix altering it tingled down my spine and through the Reactive Autonomy Link, then into my legs’ Environmental Coordination which processed the movement mid-air to adjust and oh-
I landed! On my knee, but… I had just done a backflip! That was… awesome, and I wanted to do it again!
”Damn.” Elsa said, looking taken aback. “That was… cooler than I expected. Just wish you stuck the landing.”
”Wa-wa-wait! Lemme try it again!” I tried it once more, this time trying to capture what went wrong, it was still too much power. I needed to find the sweet spot, so I tried once more and I kicked. The world around me blurred, first going up before passing downwards to up as I felt my toes touch the ground, stumbling backwards a bit but catching myself in time to keep it from embarrassment.
Elsa whistled, but Daylight took over with her azure eyes. “That was so hot, Ripley! Do it again! Again!”
I obliged, this time managing to keep myself from moving by wagging my arms in place.
”Flip off the wall now!”
I accidentally cracked the wall.
”Summersault from the table!”
I accidentally broke the table. But I stuck the landing!
”Uh… a cartwheel!”
I didn’t have the hand coordination to manage that.
“Try a frontflip!”
Managed that.
”Stand on your toes like a ballerina.”
That remarkably, I could actually do back when I had organic legs because I tried imitating a dance move while I was in the washroom. I don’t know how but I had always been pretty good at it.
My mother walked in just in time to see me leap off a wall and land on the couch with a summersault. “What. The. Fuck… Ripley!”
She ran her way over to me, running her hands on my face and hands like I’d died. “You were in a wheelchair last time I saw you!”
”Uhhh, I recovered? I actually used knowledge I got from Shardware school to help me with it.” I grabbed her hands, helping her sit on the couch. “Should you be moving around so much?”
”I was just… Diamante wanted me to help him fix up some of his guns.” She said quietly.
Diamante hadn’t even asked me to touch a non-existent hair on his chrome head, let alone a gun. What the fuck was he playing at with my mother!?
I calmly kept her seated — correction — forcibly made her sit down. “How about we begin to work on the Arachnodyne… huh?”
———
August 22nd
Ripley’s twenty-third day… and he’s finally making progress with the Arachnodyne.
How do you strengthen a flimsy arm designed to sit on a table all day? Simple, you change out it’s motion mechanism entirely. Now, Arachnodynes were energy intensive Shardware, easily using a whole body’s worth of Warp Energy in hours. Most Tier One Adapters wouldn’t even be able to manage an hour worth, I had done 13 but only because of my Gold efficiency.
So, combine energy intensive with high mental strain and a weak shell, and you get three sleepless nights. Not to mention, it’s not like I could just walk around with four legs sticking out of my back all the time, they had to be compacted down to fit into a neat package. The main solution to a few of those problems was incorporating Livewire, which I had slowly been feeding the fabricator to produce… and over the weeks, it made around four times what I started out with.
So I had a grand total of five tiny cubes of Livewire now, an amount that got me ecstatic except when I realized it sunk me down by 600,000 Shardyne worth of Bronze Shards in the sheer Warp Energy and materials needed to fabricate it.
Not one to be weighed down by the calculation, I got to work.
———
August 23rd
Ripley’s twenty fourth day (well technically it’s past midnight)… and he’s still trying to figure out how to get the Arachnodyne to work.
I knew how skeletal muscles work, you orient their fibers and they contract in that direction. But muscles intersparsed with Livewire were a much weirder phenomenon, they needed to have Neurowire running alongside them because Livewire contracted according to how it was set and expanded, a memory-material of sorts. They needed constant monitoring. Even then, we were making a prototype muscle only slightly reinforced with it, not a true wholly Livewire-based muscle fiber like I was intending.
It took us a whole day, but it might not have been until a couple of hours after my mom left for the night that I finally got a working model running. I sang in victory, this was working and with it I could actually move the Arachne with enough force to do some damage!
[Incoming call from Mom <3]
”O-oh, hey mom?” This was weird, she should be asleep by now.
She sounded worried. ”Ripley… there’s an Investigator here for you, he says his name is… Anthony Grazhe.”