“Well,” Jack paused, he had lost the ‘feel’ of it. He walked himself back through the process as he explained it out-loud to Tule.
“Inside of me the electricity feels like a fluid mass. Then I dive into my Affinity and go deeper and smaller past my skin, organs, tissue. Until I get to individual cells. I’m not sure if I’m sensing all of them, but its a lot. These cells act like tiny batteries to store electricity. Inside a cell is a little Nano battery type... thing. It looks like its made of groups of Nano but I’m not sure. I feel the electricity stored in there and from there I move it around until I can pick up an individual Nano that is carrying electricity between cells.
Jack held up his finger and tried to let rip one of Yuma’s shocks. Nothing happened.
He focused on discharging as much electricity as possible from his outstretched digit. A spark ripped out of his finger which bound and bounced in tight arcs around his finger and hand before settling back inside him.
“I can’t shoot the shock outside of myself like Yuma.”
Tule added, “What else does it do?
“When a cell reaches a certain level of charge it will replicate where I’m wounded. It’s been draining me automatically to fix me up. I can also discharge some of the current in a part of my body to make my attacks stronger or faster.”
“So that’s how you are uninjured.”
It was Jonah. He had been listening in, of course he had. It looked like Lea had been listening too. Dammit, why hadn’t he noticed that earlier? He was absolutely Allocating more to EQ when he had the chance. Or would that be his Senses?
Jack sighed, “So? Hear what you wanted? You should check the rest of the crab just in case there are more people to eavesdrop on.”
Lea rebutted, “Funny you should mention that, Jonah and I were going to get eyes on the ports.”
“Ok, well,” Jack waved his hand as he turned his back to them. He was annoyed that they had eavesdropped on him but it was all out anyway so he might as well continue the lesson with Tule. He was definitely going to keep a few of his Skills to himself.
Lea’s eye twitched, it was becoming less noticeable to her, more familiar, steadily working its way into a subconscious pattern. Jonah cleared his throat, “I’m leaving my portable here, we’ll call if we need help.”
Tule looked questioningly at him and Jonah pointed at the portable and brought the thumb and pinky up with his other hand, “linked to me.” Lea looked at Jonah and they headed off a direction.
“So.”
Tule responded, “So, it seems like you had an advantage in that your Affinity and Skill development seem to work together. Electricity is also present in most things which is helpful. Now, use your Affinity and feel Nano in other places in your body. Go as small as you can. Then turn off your Affinity.”
This took a bit more effort. Tule verbally walked him through the Personnel Stats until he got to ‘Endurance’ and Jack was easily able to follow the familiar sense of vitality that coursed through him. It was his favorite one to hit a BenchMark with after all.
He felt his heart beat strong and steadily, effortlessly. Deeper, into tissue which constricted and released sending the current further and deeper yet. Into the cells, softly illuminated in light. He dove his sense into the cell and stopped short at the little electrical storage facilities. He worked his way back from ‘Endurance’ through into his heart, tissue, cells, to… to what? He caught something floating around beyond his Affinity. He relaxed and turned it off. His eyes trailed over the cell. He found it, a minuscule helix spiral of Nano. He violently snapped back to his surroundings.
“We… I… it… The Nano controls our bodies, our DNA.” And the thing that controls my body comes right from the Terminal.
Finally kicking in, his Wisdom flashed a series of long overdue questions. Why had he been so ‘gung-ho’ after touching the HandPad? Why did Yuma trust him so much? What was going on with him, blank memories, blackouts, the headaches that pulsed in his head. He’d been too busy to notice them before but the low grade headache had been a constant since…Well, he didn’t know when.
Jack almost immediately compartmentalized the latest in a long string of near mental-breakdowns. Like his cells however, it had a limit to its storage.
Tule was looking at him.
“What?”
Tule gave him a fractionally raised eyebrow that Jack only caught because of how similar it was to Yuma’s, they were definitely related.
Jack reiterated, “The Nano controls us!”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“And we control the Nano. Now try to sense your Nano around you.”
“Wait, we control the Nano?”
“And it controls our Body.”
“What is a Constitution Tier?”
“A fundamental restructuring of your body so it can handle more Nano.”
“So how do I control the Nano inside me?” Jack needed to know, he had just isolated his recent existential crisis and from somewhere deep and secret wormed a desperate need for control.
“Feel the Nano floating outside of you.”
Jack was at it for a long time. Even so, he had no idea how he would have done this without his Affinity. Did everyone have an Affinity? Jack tried. He really did. It just didn’t feel like there was any Nano around him. It was all inside, wasn’t it supposed to be?
“There’s nothing there. No Nano around me.”
“It’s your Nano-Trace, your Trace Field. It’s Nano that surrounds everyone. Everyone has one.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, I don’t think I have one.”
Tule held his knife downwards as he tapped his bottom lip with the hilt. He refocused on his own healing efforts.
“I don’t know.” He tightened his grip and jammed his knife into his thigh and carved upwards about half a foot. Jack saw the giant fist sized ball of Nano held in his other hand. Tule dropped half the ball of Nano into his thigh then did the same on the other leg. He picked up his packet of Medjel and roughly tried to get at the last drops of it.
Jack’s desire to do something else meant he was already spreading a thin layer over the inside of the thigh meat.
Looks good. His stomach rumbled and Jack froze, finger still in the meat of Tule’s thigh. He quickly wrapped it up and Tule placed a hand over each cut, palms down. His hands gripped into fists and the thigh meat slapped closed with metallic clangs. He held his fists closed until, Jack estimated it was approximately the time it took the Medjel to harden.
“So, teach me how to do stuff like that.”
Tule looked Jack over then in the eyes, “It’s called Nano-Cultivation, and yes.”
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Jack sat back, exhausted. He didn’t notice it before as he was always jabbing the Zappa into himself, but when he actively used his Affinity it drew a surprising amount of electricity. Passively, it still drew electricity from him but it was at a lower rate than his generation. He tested the difference. Passively, it just seemed to highlight his body maybe it had another effect. When he activated it he was able to sense all electric signals.
Regarding things that drained his electricity, so did the Gauntlet. Thinking of his GreatShield, now he was really missing his Zappa. Maybe he should try and find a battery somewhere. Some of the tricks he learned from Tule he used to shift the Gauntlet’s draw to a feeding trickle of electricity instead of having it constantly suck him dry.
He rolled over and saw Jonah’s portable. He moved to grab it and a little laser swept over his fingers.
“Ow shit!” Jack rubbed his knuckles, the bone was exposed on them. He moved waves of new electricity to his hand and it started to heal, the process was visible if you looked long enough.
“No reason to touch my portable unless I’ve called first.”
“Jonah?” Now both Jack and Tule were looking around.
“This is a recorded messa-”
Jack tossed the AI disk at the portable and waited a few seconds as it rested on top of it. Wait. Why did he do that?
He walked back over and kicked off the AI disk and picked up the portable to start fiddling with it. It looked complicated. He sat it back down. It didn’t seem that useful, maybe he shouldn’t have done that with the portable. He looked towards Tule, he was building another ball of Nano.
“Can you show me how to aspect Nano?”
“What does it say at a Terminal for your Soul Core?”
“Shattered, why is that important? Will you teach me how?"
“No.”
“What? Why won’t you?”
“If you can’t sense the field of your Nano-Trace then it is impossible. Your Soul is also, most likely, a problem.”
“Well, explain it and I’ll see if I can do it.”
“You gather your Nano Trace around the unaspected Nano, maintaining its shape. Then you push your Nano against the unaspected Nano. Some converts,” a gleaming shimmer dropped into the smaller ball of Nano below it, “and some does not.” A flake of Nano broke off and dissipated into the air.
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Leanne and Jonah’s trip down was illustrative for a number of reasons, first and foremost were the size of the Ports. They found themselves hanging around the middle of the gap, debating between swimming inside or following the wall of the tendon around the lip.
Leanne prepared to jump but stopped at Jonah’s “Wait!”
He tapped the sides of his goggles, twisted one lens back and forth.
“There are creatures feeding on the crab, under the water's surface.”
Leanne regathered herself against the wall, “Around then.”
They shimmied around the back until they found a solid place to touch down. There was complicated machinery strewn in scattered piles or atop one another in heaping piles.
Jonah clicked through settings on his goggles, “Nothing, everything is dead, unpowered.”
They wandered, picking at scraps. Jonah seemed enthused by some of his findings, cutting and placing bits into a bag that appeared from somewhere on his bedraggled clothing. Leanne didn’t see much of use here. She walked towards the back of the chitinous cave, illuminating her surroundings with a small penlight.
A shuffle behind her and she whirled, pistol drawn down on whatever had been sneaking up on her.
“Relax Sentinel, just me.”
Leanne’s pistol was aimed square at the center of his head. His palms were raised facing her, she noticed that despite his nonthreatening gestures, several of his fingers were directed towards her and charged with odd energies.
She lowered her pistol, “Why do I get the feeling you weren’t as helpless as you tried to appear?”
“You have a vivd imagination Sentinel, now, what has you so on edge?”
She flashed her penlight to the 20-foot tall sphincter-like portal. To its right was a HandPad with a small disk slot.
Jonah instinctively shuffled through his portable jacks until he found a Disk-shaped one, he approached the door.
A large hand clamped on his shoulder, “No, we don’t know what’s in there, let’s return.”
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Jack was laying down next to Tule, both had their eyes closed in Nano-Cultivation. Jack was exploring each of his Stats, feeling how Nano affected his Strength, his Agility, and all the rest. Each was different and he tested overclocking the Nano in each one. He kept his experiments very small-scale since he didn't see a Terminal nearby.
He was hesitant to start messing with IQ and couldn’t find any EQ-Allocated Nano inside him if his life depended on it. Well, maybe he could but it would take a life-threatening situation for him willingly mess around with the Nano in his brain. He was logically getting a little hesitant about messing around inside there.
Jack felt a small strip of electricity, about finger-sized, approach.