In the morning, the crisp autumn air was just as refreshing as Cy’s revitalised mood. Whatever was bothering him the other day seemed to have largely cleared up.
Another day, another task to do. Chatty and relaxed, Cy guided Max through the networks of doors, teleports, and tunnels. Thoroughly confused, Max finally stopped in his tracks in the middle of a grim and musty concrete tunnel. “Where the fuck are we?”
“What do you mean where are we? We’re on our way to Elder Nova’s labs.” The bitter touch to Cy’s voice no longer existed as sass was now in its place. It was good seeing him normal again.
“Yeah, but why’s it so far away? What’s the point of using teleports if we have to use so many and walk so far? How long have we been trying to get there? Twenty minutes? Thirty?”
“Aren’t you impatient?” Cy rolled his eyes before resuming his march. “All the labs are hard to reach. We don’t want things breaking in. Or even worse, getting out.”
The words were a little chilling as Max reflected his experience so far. He wouldn’t put it past the community to have secret, inhumane experiments. Edric never mentioned it in his reports, but he acknowledged that Elder Nova could be hiding things. From her background, Max already knew she was the type to make a deal with the devil in a heartbeat. Anything was acceptable if it meant progress. And her definition of ‘progress’ was a little crooked. Among their allies in the community, she had the least amount of morality and was the easiest to work with.
Darius was mysterious and difficult to predict the extent of his cooperation without Cy’s involvement. Elder Ji-min focused too much on the past, so his guilt could be manipulated. But Elder Nova was in it for herself.
Max was lost in his thoughts as they approached the end of the tunnel. There was a metal gate blocking a teleport to a white room. Cy began knocking on the metal bars, which echoed unnaturally loudly. The action caused orbs of light to frame the teleport… Nothing happened. “Lurch? Where are you, buddy?”
Buddy? Max was suddenly interested in whoever was coming to let them in. They waited a couple more minutes. “Is someone supposed to be coming?”
“Something,” Cy corrected. He tried knocking on the bars again. “Hello?”
They were optimistic as they waited, before their patience slipped away with time causing Max to bang on the bars while Cy shouted for something to come. Nothing. “Should we go back?”
Cy thought about it for a second. “Something is supposed to be here. If it’s not, then it might be a sign of a problem. Maybe something happened?”
“Should we try breaking in?” Max revealed the slip of parchment from Elder Ji-min.
“How’d you get that?” Cy’s voice was getting a little worked up. Was he really rattled by a little piece of paper?
“Elder Ji-min.”
“You can’t use magic without an Elder’s permission.”
“Or you could approve it,” Max reminded him. “Can we count it as part of our experiments?”
Cy debated the idea as he stared at the blank piece of parchment before they both jumped from the sounds of beeping. Beeping? This was not the kind of world where this kind of beeping would exist.
Story Name:
A New Era
Genre:
Sci-Fi
Description:
After upgrading the robots’ intelligence, the MC uses them to create a utopia.
Goal:
Enslave humanity with robots.
Difficulty:
★★☆☆☆
How to Start:
Upgrade the robots’ software!
Robots? After a couple of beeps, a small round robot emerged. It hovered slightly above the ground and greeted them with a pixelated smile emoji on a cracked screen. Max found it surprising. How could something like that be here? Was this Edric’s doing?
“Try not to shit yourself,” Cy smiled at Max’s face. “It’s something called a ‘robot.’ It’s a type of magic Elder Nova specialises in.” No, it wasn’t. She must use ‘magic’ as an excuse for other worlds’ inventions. “It’s not going to hurt you. I know, as a farm hand, this must be blowing your mind right now.”
… “Yeah…”
“NAME.” The robot’s voice was not as clean as his appearance.
“Cyrus Vanga and Max.”
The robot let out a few happy beeps before the bars lowered into the tunnel floor. “FOLLOW.” The robot’s movements weren’t smooth either as it lurched its way forward through the teleport.
“His name is Lurch,” Cy explained. After stepping through the teleport, Max was sad to see it was another maze of white corridors. “Elder Nova’s got a few of them kicking about. They’re not human, but they have a certain amount of intelligence. Right now, they’re confined to Elder Nova’s lab after an incident where some kids got hurt. The other Elders asked her to decommission them, but… How should I explain it to a farm hand?... Bessie has her cows, and Elder Nova has her robots. Maybe later we could-”
Cy’s voice rattled on as Max took in the sights. The walls and floors were profoundly clean and reassuring compared to the clutter at Elder Ji-min’s house. Finally, they found themselves in a wide room that was semi-divided into sections with half-built walls. Above them was a wide window with a clear view below. There were a few pieces of furniture in one of the sections with a couple of robots struggling to move them without being pushed down to the floor and becoming immobile. Seeing them struggle, Lurch panicked before letting out a, “WAIT.” Who it was directed to was unclear as the little robot went to help.
“There you two are.” Elder Nova came in behind them while carrying a thick book. “I expected you two yesterday.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Sorry, we meant to come-”
“No matter. Here.” She tossed what she was carrying over to Cy, who failed to catch it. The book unfortunately hit one of the robots behind them. It let out a few irritated beeps before going back to work. Elder Nova didn’t seem to notice. “A catalogue of the supplies we have at the moment. Elder Edric will pay. Max won’t have any knowledge about them, so why don’t you pick out a few while I get his DNA registered in the system.”
Cy looked at a loss for words as he picked up the book.
“I can’t help Cy pick out supplies?” Max asked. It was a mixture of concern for Cy’s health because of yesterday and an assumption that he would pick out aesthetically pleasing things over practical equipment.
“You can look later. Come.” Elder Nova didn’t wait for him to reply.
“And then they had the audacity to stop my sales and do a mass recall after one, singular robot defected and went rampant in the school here. The nerve. Even Elder Edric forbade me from selling more until I fixed the issue,” Elder Nova complained as she opened the door to her office. This couldn’t be the office that burned down, could it? It was like stepping back into the modern ages. Clean and proper, a modern office with a window looking at an ancient town from high above. The change was so jarring for Max. “Sit, sit.”
Max took a hesitating seat at her desk. “It looks good for a burnt down office.”
Elder Nova waved away his compliment like it was nothing. “That was just the office I used in front of the other Elders. I have another one for the common people of the community. I don’t get many chances to share my real office with others.”
With all the references on the way here to a poor Nnita she dated when she was younger, who originally told her about the system, and working with Edric, Max didn’t see much point in playing dumb while alone. “You share it with Nnita?”
Elder Nova looked slightly offended before a big grin cracked across her face. “I share it with people who are worth my time. So, what do you think?”
“About what?”
“About helping me speed up the upgrade for the robots. Elder Edric said you were okay with tech, and I’ll cut you in on the sales. How about 10%?”
“I’m not always the best with technology. I had a friend who was good at it, so I picked up a few things from her.” It was one of the reasons why he and June began working together in the first place. She was good at dreaming up big ideas and connecting things together, while Max was better at breaking things down step-by-step.
“A few things would probably be enough,” Elder Nova smiled. There was a tap at her door with a few beeps before a robot let itself in with refreshments. “Do you want me to crack it open so you can see inside?” Max felt sorry for the robot, which gave a couple of frightened beeps before dutifully standing next to her. “Or how about this? This is a copy of the ‘computer’ that ignited in my other office.”
Elder Nova handed Max a thick tome. The second Max picked it up, he realised something was wrong as he felt the weight. It was too heavy. Opening the tome quickly revealed the secret. “It’s a tablet?” Instead of paper, a bright screen lit up to show binary code. The series of 0s and 1s was irritating to try and decipher, but Max only had to read a couple of familiar words to understand the message left behind by Edric.
This is a prototype for the Athena computer.
Edric was trying to recreate the computer from Max’s five-star life? Why? Edric was terrible with technology, and he didn’t know until a few days ago that Max was in this world. It’s a good thing he was sent away to concentrate on his real duties.
Elder Nova’s smile dropped for a moment. “Elder Edric told me it was something called a ‘computer.’ He told me it would become extremely popular in the future. The runes you wrote were supposed to be recorded by this device, but…”
“I’m not surprised it instantaneously triggered the runes’ safety features,” Max admitted, as he admired the craftsmanship on the outside. It was deceiving as long as no one opened it. “I thought it was being recorded in a real book.”
“How the hell would you even do that?” Elder Nova shook her head in disbelief. “You guys got a spell that can do something like that?”
“You don’t?” Max challenged back. “It’s fairly easy to do. But I suppose someone with a low amount of innate magic wouldn’t know how easy it was.” Edric’s files were coming in handy again. This was the key on how to manipulate this Elder. She wanted money, she wanted power, she wanted the modern ways; but nothing she had was created just by herself. Her knowledge came from people like them. Max closed the tome and gently laid it back on the desk.
“Or maybe you have a skewed view of this world. Would you call your match with Elder Edric easy?” There was something in her manner that was off putting as she leaned forward for the answer.
It wasn’t difficult. Nor had it been, strictly speaking, easy either. At the time, Max didn’t look at their greeting in terms of difficulty. “It was fun, like a game.”
“Like a game? A game that could have cost your life if you didn’t write that counter.”
“A life for us isn’t really worth much,” Max could see her eyebrows knitting together as she tried to understand. It was moments like this when he felt the most sympathy for the local inhabitants of the worlds. For them, a life was everything since they only got one.
Elder Nova finally leaned back into her chair. “Either way, it was impressive. The last Nnita we smuggled in almost got caught immediately afterwards when one of her spells got out of control. If it weren’t for Elder Edric promptly banishing and sending her elsewhere, we would’ve been in trouble with the other Elders.” Why had none of the other colluding Elders mentioned this? Was she the reason he needed to go all out to change Cy’s fate about them staying in the community? “Good thing you showed your stuff. That undead dragon really caught Elder Ji-min’s eye.”
“What do you mean?”
Elder Nova got her grin back once she realised, she found another way to show good faith. “Elder Ji-min was on the fence about letting you in. The last Nnita left a bad taste in his mouth, and he wasn’t sure if Cyrus brought in a common Nnita or someone with potential. That dragon tickled his feathers.” She leaned forwards even more so she could whisper. “Between you and me, he still has the body of a Nnita tucked away in that cold house of his. If I were to bet, I think he’s going to wait and see if you can really help. Then, when he gets impatient, he’ll either try to learn rune magic from your research with Cyrus or coax you into helping him directly.”
“Help him? To do what?”
“Reanimate the body and see if they could undo a penalty imposed by the system. A member of the community got hit by it a few years ago. Do you want to know who got the penalty?” She teased.
Max looked puzzled for a moment as he ignored Elder Nova’s question. “It doesn’t work like that though.” Going by June’s theory and assuming the system won’t make him skip a world, ‘Niv’ should be waiting in line to wake up in the next world once this world was done with them. “I can only get the muscles to move. What’s inside, the soul or fate or whatever you call it, is long gone.”
Elder Nova nodded her head in agreement. “Let’s speak hypothetically for a moment, can you undo a penalty?”
Max felt suspicious of her words but felt no reason to lie. “No, you must die to shake off a penalty. You can share it though.”
“Share it?”
“Let’s say Person A told Person B. Person A would get a penalty. Then Person B tells Person C.”
“Person B also gets a penalty.”
“Right. It takes a lot of time, energy, and usually magic to delay or lessen the effects of penalties. But if Person B were to create a spell so they could share their penalty with Person A, it’s a lot easier. The system even encourages it.”
“It does?”
“It recommends us to do it in the HUD.” There was something amusing about her surprised reaction. “That way Person A receives not only their penalty but half of Person B’s penalty while they are alive.” The cruel nature of the system shouldn’t be a surprise to them by now. “But when Person A dies, Person B gets their full penalty again.”
“Why? What’s the point-”
“Punishment.” Max’s voice was flat. “We’re not supposed to tell others.” Biting her thumb, Elder Nova seemed deep in thought. He began to wonder if it was Elder Ji-min keeping the body of one of them or her. Edric’s files didn’t mention corpses stored away for a rainy day. Something to ask later. Her frown deepened. Had she been planning to tell others about the system and use her original informer to endure the penalty?
“I’m not going to help you with the robots.”
Elder Nova thought for a second before remembering her original offer. “Okay, you drive a hard bargain. How about 11%?”
Max looked at her unamused. “This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to pay for all of the supplies Cy and I ask for, help me smuggle things in and out of the Tsujuma, and pay for any future treatments Cy receives from Elder Charaka.” A greedy creature like Elder Nova should have no problem covering the costs for an upcoming treatment.
It seemed like the technodiva was caught off-guard again. “You knew it was Cyrus who got the penalty? Why didn’t you mention it? I’m surprised he told you, since only the other Elders know… The next treatment is going to be expensive. And the one after that will be even worse with not much effect. It’s a waste of money, so how about-”
“And in exchange, I will use my free time to build two real computers, not just a shiny screen,” he pointed over to the tome. Her curiosity clearly peaked. “You will help me get one of them to Edric, and in return, you get to keep the other one. Sounds good?”
“… Sounds like a deal.” Her grin was off putting. “Tell me, Max. What supplies do you need?”