The fundamentals of the new skill the system wanted Albert to learn, Dodge, were all about being fluid like water. About emptying the mind and letting the unconscious take over, trusting one’s instincts.
“I know that you think you are all set now.” The version of the Albert who always spoke in the videos said. “You can take any damage you want, and you won’t even feel it! Then you just heal back to full with the quick healing skill you have. Let me shatter your dreams: you are far from done. In fact, the real struggle begins now.”
Albert almost wanted to retort.
“You slacked off on the body quest. As such, you barely have any protection against incoming attacks. Yes, you have your weak ring, plus a little bit of extra heft from the [Strengthening] skill. So what? That won’t be enough in most situations. What will you do if there’s an attack coming that can one-shot you? You can’t heal if you are dead!”
Made sense.
“With mindfulness, assuming that you didn’t slack off on your meditations like you did with the quest, you should have learned by now that the brain works in mysterious ways. Thoughts come and go on their own, with what we call the conscious ego being at the bottom of the waterfall, downstream in the river that is our mind.”
True. Albert had not slacked off on that front, fortunately, and he was acutely aware now of the illusory nature of the ego. This didn’t mean that he was free from it, but in moments of intense suffering he could always just close his eyes and clear his mind, seeing his thoughts evaporate and with them the source of his suffering.
As such, he knew also that any illusion of control over thought is, indeed, an illusion. There is no way to predict the next thought, and the sense that one gets when they claim to have called upon a thought is only a narrative built after the fact. Just think about how the mind works when speaking. Nobody, when talking their mother tongue, goes around picking one word after the other. People just speak.
It's all the more evident when slips of the tongue happen. Or when someone misuses a word. It is only noticed after the fact, with no possibility to predict that an error was about to be committed.
“Dodge is the same. It needs to come natural, as natural as breathing or speaking, or walking.”
And, Albert thought, together with bullet time he really was about to become like Neo.
Quest: Daily Mission
· Develop the Dodge skill in a simulated combat environment.
· Reward: No reward
Well, it seemed that having a chance to develop the skill in a combat situation was a good enough reward. Albert agreed, and accepted the quest with glee.
“Analysis mode.”
New Skill: Dodge
· I: Upon reaching a flow state, you become able to dance around and dodge incoming strikes. Attacking and taking hits will disrupt the flow state.
***
“They have revoked your access.” Said the Overseer, the man with the lit cigarette. He was talking as if he was not affected by the event, but Samantha was sure that he was experiencing a large amount of pleasure as he told her the news.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Thank you for telling me.” She said, not losing her composure. “I was just collecting my things.”
The real deal was the USB stick in her purse, the one the Lair had given her. She only needed to reach the mainframe room of the Quadrangle, where the AI running the place was housed, and plug it into the servers. A thing she couldn’t do with the man with the cigarette following her.
She coughed lightly, waving her left hand in front of her nose to dispel the thin cloud of smoke.
“If you want to smoke, you should do it outside.” She said.
“The Quadrangle doesn’t mind.” The man with the cigarette said. “And neither do you. A pleasure seeing you, miss Cromwell.”
He smirked, and motioned to leave. But before he was out of sight he spoke again, without slowing down or turning back to face her.
“The Pentagon has ordered an investigation, together with the HDF. You can choose to either be there for it, or not. I doubt it will make a difference, in the end.”
“We’ll see.” She said. Likewise she had also not stopped walking, nor had she turned around.
Her tone of voice was confident but not smug, as she made sure to keep it tightly under control. She needed to, because she still had a couple of aces up her sleeve and didn’t want to reveal them. She had no idea how much the Overseer could gleam from just one sentence too many. She opted to respond to the threat in kind, but without coming off as too sure a favorable outcome was all but guaranteed for her.
With the pleasant chat out of the way, she managed to reach the core of the building without trouble. The AI was still working – more or less – and it was still loyal to her. And soon, as soon as she plugged the stick in fact, the Lair was going to be able to hear and see all that the Quadrangle could hear and see. Removing, for all matters save one, the need for her to set foot in the building ever again.
The only thing that was left was the matter of the brain in a jar down in one of the underground labs. But not only wasn’t she really needed in person for what she kept the brain for, she also had to wait until her son was ready to actually go through with it.
She would never want him to think she was manipulating him, after all. All she had to offer was a way out of a particularly nasty problem for him, and the ticket to freedom once the investigation was underway for her. Two birds with one stone. Just, he needed to be aware of the presence of a problem to solve in the first place. Which was soon: Albert was going to see his friend Marc this evening.
“The control room is still empty.” The Lair said when Samantha finally returned. “I need some resources to furnish it.”
“Did you tell Albert?”
“Gave him a quest. Don’t worry about it. He’ll do it soon.”
“It’s okay.” Samantha said. “I brought my own computer. Can you connect to it?”
She sat down on one of the office chairs in the control room of the Lair, a room with no windows and with only a long table running its entire length. It was otherwise empty in wait for new resources. The Lair quickly connected to Samantha’s laptop and installed itself onto it like some sort of replacement operating system, and many windows displaying the various feeds from the Quadrangle populated the screen.
There was one particular stream of data that concerned Samantha the most. Combined with a map, it featured footage from the latest BSA-HDF joint activities in the area, as well as a secure channel to access the rest of the HDF operations in the rest of the world.
“A tier three event.” She muttered, inching closer to the screen to better see the destruction displayed in the video. “What a fucking mess. And the Egg is missing. Do you think it was SpaceOps?”
“Must be.” The Lair said.
“…another Exclusion Zone. How many Pylons does the BSA have left after this?”
“None.”
“really? Have they sent a request for more?”
“They have. But the HDF has shortages of them all around the globe.”
Samantha’s brows climbed up her forehead. “That’s odd. Are the off-world reinforcements on the way, then?”
“Negative. No request has been put out.”
“That’s even odder… pull up the Overseer’s profile please.”
“Who?”
“The man with the cigarette, Lair. Come on.”
“Sure thing.”
Samantha studied the dossier. In the many pages of digital documentation, pictures and audio clips, she could peer through more than forty years of life, with details that were as precise as the number of times this man got a fever while he was still a child in kindergarten.
And yet. “This all fake, isn’t it?”
“Looks like it.” The Lair confirmed. “Quite more advanced than what even I could make when I was the Quadrangle.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It’s not just him either. Pull up the profiles of the other high ranking officials in the other branches across the world.”
“It would raise a flag. Do you want me to go through with it anyway?”
Samantha sighed. “No. There’s no reason to burn our access on day one. But I could send Lloyd there. Check if he still has access.”
“Checking. No, they revoked his access too. But I can fabricate a temporary key for him.”
“Do it.”
“I feel the need to warn you: if he uses it, they will know.”
“Didn’t he say he wants to move here? They won’t find him after he’s done.”
“He did.” The Lair said. “But before proceeding, I will need master Albert’s permission and additional resources to build some living quarters for Lloyd Cromwell.”
“I’ll ask him.”