GRIFFIN TUCKER, REBORN, LVL 1
MOUNT DISCOVERY, PROVINCE OF ARAGONIA
“…five, six, seven, eight. Ha!” Griffin held out his hand triumphantly. “Pay up. That’s gonna be two thousand dollars! Hmmm… it looks like you don’t have two thousand.” He grinned, chuckling evilly, “Well, I’ve had my eye on those railroads you’ve been holding onto for so long.”
Kismet sighed and massaged her holographic temples. “This game is pointless and horrible,” she said. “Why did you choose this to practice your Adaptive Conjuration graft on?”
Griffin, still chuckling, reached over the board and sorted through Kismet’s properties, plucking out the four Railroads. He hadn’t been able to remember the names of the railroads in the actual version of Monopoly, so these were labeled, “Polar Express”, “Thomas the Tank Engine”, “Blaine the Mono”, and “Chattanooga Choo Choo”. He left Kismet’s cash alone though.
“You said I needed to choose things I was familiar with at first. That I needed to get used to guiding the power for things other than pizza and Dr. Pepper.” He gestured at the tiny houses, hotels, game pieces, and cards arranged between them. “I figured Monopoly had enough fiddly bits that it’d be good practice for details.”
Kismet examined one of the game pieces critically. It resembled a dog in that it had four nubs on a mostly spherical metal body with the hint of a tail at one end and two bumps on the top that might have been meant for ears. “I think you should spend more time practicing on those ‘fiddly bits’.”
Griffin flicked the misshapen dog piece off the board. He closed his eyes, concentrating fiercely, and held out his hand. Fumblingly, he reached toward that bright, warm spot inside him that Kismet had called his tensa pool and drew a little bit out as he thought about making the perfect little Scottish Terrier Monopoly game piece. He obsessed over every detail, seeing the dull grey piece as clearly in his mind as he’d seen anything. His Adaptive Conjuration graft activated, picking up his mental desire and consuming tensa as it worked. Something clunked onto the table, dropping from thin air and Griffin opened his eyes, smiling.
“How about that?” He said smugly.
“You really do need to work on those fiddly bits,” Kismet replied.
Griffin looked at the dog game piece and scowled. He’d somehow made a dog piece with eight heads. “What do you mean? It’s a perfectly normal dog. He’s named Hydra-Fido. No. Fydra? Hydo? I’m still working on the name.”
“I’m sure it is. But you aren’t even playing the game by the rules,” Kismet pointed out. “It should be over now; you won forty-five minutes ago! I didn’t have the money to pay the rent the last time I landed on your property and I still don’t!”
“Oh no, Monopoly doesn’t end until you both hate each other,” he said, still grinning.
He happily sorted his new property acquisitions into his property spread. He owned more than half the properties on the board now, though there were far more properties on this version of Monopoly than there were in his home game. Kismet got up from her spot at the small table Griffin had pulled into the middle of the room and flew into the air, hovering there as she looked around the place.
“Griffin, I am incapable of hate and I think you could stretch this out for another eternity at least,” she said. “But you said you’d try to activate the Systablo again after a game of Monopoly and that was four hours ago.”
Griffin had a shocked and hurt expression on his face as he said, “Kismet, I am shocked, shocked! And hurt! Yes, terribly hurt! That you would level such accusations so cavalierly in my general direction!”
The look Kismet gave him reminded him sharply of Sarah—easy to do since the System Eidolon looked just like her—and he felt a wave of homesick vertigo that he’d been trying to get used to over the past few days. When he looked back at the game, he felt a heavy sadness settle onto his shoulders and it took everything he had not to just sweep it away. He tried smiling again, but it felt forced and he sighed.
“I’m bored, Kismet. I can’t leave this room because of…them,” a well-timed screeching noise could be heard through the thick door that led to the rest of the ruins and Griffin shuddered reflexively. “God, those things creep me right the fuck out. Look, if I just train and train and train, then I’ll go crazy! At least with this dumb board game, I can practice and have a little fun at the same time.”
Kismet looked at him seriously, “Fun is not my primary concern, Griffin. The more I see how you interact with the world, how you think, what you want, the more I become aware of just how ill-prepared you are. The training exercises and meditation, even the attempts to access the Systablo are all to enable you to have a fighting chance of survival. Furthermore, I cannot stop you from leaving this place. You are free to do as you will.”
Griffin huffed out a long sigh and nodded, “Okay okay. It’s dumb not to train! I get it. But maybe I should just challenge my enemies to a game of Monopoly. After all, I beat the pants off a System Eidolon, right?” He started putting the board game away in the flimsy not-quite-cardboard box he’d created for it. The box had a strange, almost skin-like texture that he didn’t like to think about as a result of his wandering attention when he created it.
“The game doesn’t make sense,” Kismet muttered, “and there was no provision in the rules for getting all the money in the middle of the board when you landed on Free Parking.”
Griffin chuckled, trying to get some of his earlier good mood back. It was hard, though. The persistent screeching and scratching at the door had his nerves frayed. He was trapped in this huge luxurious room with no real windows or ventilation or convenient grappling hook points. He even had created a grappling hook and rope with his Adaptive Conjuration just in case, but as far as he could tell, he was in a luxurious prison where the guards wanted to kill and eat him. And burn him with plasma beams. He shuddered again at the thought.
He walked over to the spot on the floor where he’d last tossed the Systablo across the room. It had smacked directly against the wall but, unlike an iPad from back home, the Systablo didn’t break. It was nearly indestructible, according to Kismet.
“Are you sure this thing still works? I mean, it’s supposed to be like twenty thousand years old or something?” He asked, unconsciously rubbing at his temple with his other hand. “That there’s not a…I dunno… a virus or Trojan horse on it?”
The last time he’d tried to access the Systablo had been a couple of days ago and he’d had a terrible headache for the entire next day. All he’d done was follow Kismet’s instructions to activate it with a tiny bit of tensa, but instead of the screen powering on, he’d been immediately plunged into a dizzying and psychedelic explosion of colors, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t figure out what to make of it. He’d only been able to stand it for a couple of minutes before he'd had to forcefully disconnect himself from it by tossing the thing across the room.
He sat back down at the little table he’d set up for Monopoly. The room felt like a well-lit, cozy, tomb to Griffin sometimes. There was no natural light, only the magical lights in the ceiling. Kismet said that there was a window here—a big one, something called a Windowall—but he didn’t have enough control of his anima yet to use it. He held the Systablo lightly in his hands, feeling his palms prickle with sweat as he tried not to imagine the chaotic jumble of colors and noise that had assaulted him the last time he tried this.
“The spell matrices have not been altered,” Kismet replied. “You’re worrying too much. The only reason you’re having any difficulty at all is because of your DEMI Port.”
“Excuse me,” Griffin said primly, “I thought it was impolite to talk about peoples’ ports in polite company.” He grinned.
“That racial gift you have allows you to interact with infused items on a much deeper level than most,” Kismet explained, ignoring Griffin’s bad joke. She flew over to the Systablo, perching weightlessly on the top edge of it. “Your DEMI Port makes it so that you’re going to experience that connection on a personal level. That means you’re going to have to exert some mental discipline to access it, especially one that has been used by an Amethyst-rank Reborn for so long.”
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“Right. Mental discipline. Because I’m great at that,” he deliberately avoided looking at where the spherical “dog” game piece had landed after he’d flicked it away. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot. Deep breath in, find my tensa pool, slowly pull out a liiiiiittle bit, right? And where does the port come into it?”
“It’s a metaphysical port; a controlled mutation of your anima that was engineered during your Chrysopotheosis, your Rebirth,” Kismet said. “Want my advice? Don’t overthink it. The DEMI Port is a useful racial gift, even if it does have some downsides. Now try again.”
Griffin shrugged and nodded. He took a deep breath in and held it as he tried to de-focus his eyes and direct his attention inward. As he slowly breathed out, he felt that warm, vibrant center of power within him, constantly buzzing and pulsing with the beat of his heart as tensa flowed through him. He did his best to ignore the absolutely amazing feeling of having power circulate through his tensa pathways and focused on the hottest, brightest spot within him, trying to draw out a little of the warmth within it.
He felt his anima respond naturally, pulling the tensa out of him and directing it as he willed. When he didn’t think about it, it did exactly what he wanted. But as soon as he focused on making the tensa do anything, his tenuous control unraveled completely. He’d been trying to cultivate a sort of unfocused desire, almost like directed daydreaming. He had to have only the lightest conscious touch on his subconscious, directing it through subtle shifts of desire so that his anima would follow his will without him making it do anything. It was exactly as difficult as it sounds and Griffin spent the next fifty minutes just trying to direct his tensa into the Systablo.
It was frustrating and mind-numbing at the same time, but Griffin didn’t give up. He had worked on support cases where he’d had to read through hundreds of pages of dense computer logs, just to track down tiny performance indicators. He settled into a stubborn daze where he slipped in and out of the non-focused focus he needed to maintain until finally, finally, he was able to keep his tensa draw steady and directed. He very slowly very casually edged the tendril of tensa out of himself and toward the Systablo. He envisioned an ephemeral tendril of glowing mist extending from the middle of his chest and undulating through the air to the Systablo.
When that tendril of glowing mist touched the Systablo, Griffin was immediately assaulted with the same riot of rainbow light and noise that had assaulted him the first time. But this time, he had been prepared for it. It didn’t make it any less overwhelming, but he wasn’t thrown into a blind panic by it this time. Sweat streamed down his face and back as he tried his best to think through the maelstrom.
This is all just noise! He thought, gritting his teeth. Why is there all this…Hang on, what if I just shift my perspective…? He imagined pulling back and turning all the noise away from him. He gulped as his stomach lurched and his inner eye zoomed out.
“What the hell…” he muttered as the noise and light suddenly resolved itself into a holographic user interface superimposed on the world around him. Even though his eyes remained unfocused, he could see the UI perfectly clearly.
Floating icons and runes that Griffin had never seen before were arranged in a purposeful pattern, floating steadily in the air. The UI didn’t seem to be reliant on the Systablo at all: the screen didn’t activate and he didn’t swipe or click on anything to interact with it. All he had to do was think about it and he was able to navigate quickly and easily through multiple levels of the UI. His eyes flickered back and forth like he was in deep REM sleep as he took in everything.
Griffin dug through the system menus and configurations in the Systablo, stunned at the easy, intuitive nature of the design. The Systablo was the most accessible computer he’d ever used. As he looked through the system menus and options of the device, he was getting a feel for what it did more than what data was on it. As Griffin explored, he got a sense of what the device was meant to do.
There were a ton of apps and programs on it that interfaced with the System, providing live updates on a variety of topics. Some apps interfaced with the System in a way he was familiar with and made sense to him, providing information and analysis on politics, commerce, entertainment, productivity, and science. But there was a much bigger part of the device that was dedicated to esoteric subjects that he had no frame of reference for quadrispacial dimensional spell matrices, etheric spectroscopy, relative monster anatomy values, esoteric equation calculators in several different varieties, and a host of other even more opaque things. He tried looking on one of those programs and the menus and data they presented were just meaningless to him: random-appearing strings of numbers and runes accompanied with beautiful yet nonsensical graphs and tables.
He lost himself in exploring what he could on the device, ignoring the tantalizing but more enigmatic features of the Systablo as he tapped into a culture he’d never seen before. He learned that humans weren’t the only humanoid species on Nolm as he watched a holoplay where he saw two different kinds of reptilian-looking humanoids have a vicious but masterfully choreographed fight. Humans didn’t even seem to be in the majority, though neither were the reptilians. Most of the plays, movies, and shows he saw seemed to be about and starring a plantlike humanoid species with a flower where its head should be.
Eventually, after hours of digging through it and only barely scratching the surface of what the Systablo had to offer, his stomach growled audibly, breaking him out of his trance. The UI didn’t disappear, it just shrank from his notice, shrinking away until it was just a little blip in the corner of his vision. Worried that he’d messed something up, he focused on the little blip, and with smooth animation, the UI was back, icons floating there waiting for his input.
“Well that’s convenient,” he muttered as he refocused on his surroundings, noting the little blip of the Systablo shrinking away to the edge of his notice. Strangely, even though he couldn’t see it anymore, he knew it was there. “Wow, this thing is fucking amazing,” he said in awe.
Kismet had stayed silent through his whole exploration, her hologram disappearing as he worked. Now she reappeared, this time dressed in a smart grey suit with a white button-down shirt and wearing black-frame glasses. She had a tiny copy of the Systablo in her hands and was tapping her lip pensively with one finger as she sorted through her holographic menus, far more complex than the ones Griffin had perused.
“This Systablo is frankly incredible,” she said eventually. “It goes far beyond what is allowed in today’s models. Far beyond. Even for an Amethyst-rank Reborn, this is unprecedented as far as I am aware. August Vasilias had nearly unrestricted access to the System! Well, not the System per se, but the System he made a virtual copy of on this device, but it’s…it’s ancient. And it’s completely unlike the System now.” She shook her head, mystified. “Why did he have it on here? I’ve isolated it from the current System update routines. We’re not going to let this thing get updated by the System now…that would ruin the data on it.”
Griffin had no idea what Kismet was talking about, but it sounded to him like August Vasilias had been doing a little something on the side that he shouldn’t have. And that was twenty thousand years ago. “If he was doing it that long ago,” Griffin pointed out, “then if there’s more of these Amethyst-rank people then they’ll definitely have done it too, but better and more comprehensively by now.” He considered the point for a while and said, “In fact, I would be totally shocked if someone hadn’t already either gamed the System by now or figured out how to control it. If it’s as ubiquitous as you say and it controls all this stuff,” he turned his attention back to the Systablo UI and waved his hand at the myriad of apps and tools floating there, “then it must have so many hooks in it by now as to be unrecognizable from what it originally was.”
Kismet didn’t answer him right away, she was absorbed in her contemplations of the data on the device. Griffin was content to let her peruse the Systablo while he took care of his growling stomach. He took a deep breath once more. He did not want to ruin his dinner this time. He’d been able to reliably create pizza with his Adaptive Conjuration graft after more than twenty failed attempts which ranged from almost edible to toxic sludge. The pepperonis still had a bizarre aftertaste of coffee that he could not figure out how to get rid of, so he'd stuck to cheese pizza for the past few days. But he was tired of cheese pizza and Dr. Pepper, even if he was taking a real chance experimenting on dinner like this.
I just want a chicken curry, he thought, mouth salivating at the very thought. He allowed a memory of it to fill his mind, swallowing convulsively as, in his mind, steam billowed off a beautiful, glistening mound of butter chicken on a bed of rice. It was so vivid, he could almost smell it now. As he thought of biting through a piece of juicy chicken, spicy sauce exploding with flavor in his mouth, he reached within himself once more, this time slipping more easily into that weird semi-trance. He pulled the tensa out of his pool and felt it flow out of him and into his Adaptive Conjuration graft. A few seconds later, a steaming plate of butter chicken curry was resting on the table, complete with rice and a pile of fresh naan.
Griffin took a tentative sniff. It smelled right. He tore off a piece of naan and took a small bite. It tasted good. He tore off another piece of naan and used it to pick up a piece of chicken, making sure to get a good amount of rice with it, and stuffing it into his mouth before he could psych himself out of it. It tasted exactly like he’d remembered. Tears started leaking out of the corners of his eyes as he ate, but he didn’t notice. Before long, he’d eaten the entire plate and was mopping up the last of the sauce with the last scrap of naan, mouth burning with a pleasant heat. It was just a bonus when a System message popped up, giving him a new notification:
Attribute Increased!
System Message: Through diligent graft use and training, you have increased your Arcana [Mind] Attribute by 1 point!
Your tensa pool expands by 100 sparks to… 1800 sparks!
Arcana [Mind] – 7 -> 8