“Max, your friends are approaching the front door,” Casa said.
Max greeted Leah and Charlie when they arrived at the Casa de Mitchell. The entryway was configured into a Spanish American motif today, the floor was lined with sandstone tiling and some colorful murals were displayed on the side walls. The one constant with Casa and her decor, it would change frequently.
“Hey guys, welcome to Casa De Mitchell.”, Max said, waving his friend inside.
He led them deeper into the house to the main kitchen area where Casa’s avatar was waiting for them. The kitchen was very active with foods being levitated out of the compiler with utility foglet and into the oven for final prep before show time. Casa was projecting an avatar and talking animatedly with another guest, a projection avatar of an elven sorceress with a pseudodragon on her shoulder. Casa quickly turned to welcome the teens.
“Welcome, Charlie and Leah! I’m Casa the house AI. Max has talked a lot about you both and your training classes. This lovely girl over here is a virtual projection of Max’s sister, Mira, and her pet dragon Tiamat. She is still in class at Tranquility U on Luna and couldn’t get down here in time for tonight’s show.”
Greetings were cut short by Leah’s squeal of excitement upon seeing Tiamat.
“Ooh! Look at her! She’s so cute!” Leah exclaimed. Tiamat sensing a fan, took to the air to hover in front of Leah and accept her praise and head pats. Leah looked confused as the projection had some solidity, but quickly accepted it without raising the question.
“She is quite the diva. Mira takes good care of her and loves to show her off. She loves to play when she isn’t stealing my desserts. Sorry Mira and Casa, we need to go over some stuff before the show starts.”
“What’s more important than seeing your brother compete on live VR against dinosaurs?”, Mira asked.
“I want to see if we can share some of our latest skills,” Max whined. “We’ll be back before it starts. Casa, can you spin up a dojo for us, and my other gear too, while you finish with the snacks?”
“Of course. I already had it mostly configured downstairs, go ahead. It should finish loading before you can get down there,” said Casa. As a stairway appeared in the wall, the trio crowded down it.
The dojo had materialized with an open floor plan. Holograms mimicked a view of terraced rice paddies through its expansive open architecture. Leah and Charlie took up positions around the tatami mat in the center of the room. As a breeze of warm air blew through the dojo, both startled slightly. Casa and her house were very high-end to be able to run simulations this good. Oblivious to their shared look, Max went behind a rice paper screen and wheeled over the first of several large machines.
“Is that a baseball pitching machine?” Leah asked.
“Yes indeed.” Max crowed. “There are at least two methods to learning the fast cog skill that I got from my trial last week. The slow way and the fast. I tried the slow way by meditating to try to slow my perception of sand that was dropping through an hourglass. That kinda sucked. When that didn't work, I got a test to catch an arrow. I think that with this game I’ve concocted, we can help you both get there faster; but without the lethality of the arrow catch test.”
[New Quest Unlocked: Sharing is Caring – craft a training exercise to unlock another student’s skills.]
Max’s eyes glittered and his tail began to wag unconsciously. Apparently, the training system agreed with his methods and was rewarding him. Nice! he thought.
“I’ll set up a few of these machines and will randomly trigger them. You need to catch the ball, or you will get a nasty bruise. I suspect that proper motivation is the key to unlocking most skills. You need to really want it badly to goad the system to give up the goods.” Max advised.
“So, I’ll set the speed to maximum. With multiple balls coming at you, you will need to think fast. If I’m right, the system will respond by giving you what you need. Who wants to go first?”
Leah stepped to the middle of the mat with a nervous expression. Max provided the same centering and breathing advice the funny monk had given him. Once Leah was ready, Max triggered the machines. Despite a couple of false starts where she threw herself to the ground to avoid the pitches, she was soon spinning around the tatami, giggling as she caught ball after ball.
“I got it!”, she declared proudly. “Thank you, Max.”
Charlie stepped to the center of the mat, ready for his turn. Determined to succeed, he didn’t flinch even with a baseball hurtling toward his face. With a loud crack, three baseballs hit Charlie, two into his chest and one directly on his nose.
“I thig ih brod mi node.” Charlie said with blood pouring from his nose. After a quick cleanup and a painful straightening of his nose, Charlie took his position again, refusing to give up.
“Comb at me agai'.” He demanded, wheezing through his still bloody nose. With a cringe, Max complied and threw the switch. This time Charlie neatly plucked two balls from the air and with a slight twisting motion managed to avoid the third. Several more volleys confirmed that Charlie would no longer be a victim of the machines.
“Success!”, Charlie said. “I even picked up the healing skill, my nose is already feeling better.”
“That was super nice of you to help us, Max. I’ll think about how I can mimic the memory palace test for the both of you.” Charlie said.
“Umm. Sorry, Charlie. I just got that one too.” Max described the Kintsugi challenge and the ultimate rewards.
“Damn, guess we both need to compile some big pots and get to cracking, eh?” Charlie smirked at Leah.
“Do you guys really want the Immersive Idioma test? That was quite the experience, although with augments it did help speed up the process considerably.” Leah said. It had only been yesterday when her quest had finally judged her fluent enough to discharge the skill and had ended her forced language immersion lesson.
“Maybe we should pass for now on the language skill. I’m just glad to help you two.” congratulated Max.
“Hmmm, if you two are game for it, I have a test that I would like to run,” Leah said.
Both the boys nodded for her to go ahead. Leah's face screwed up into a look of intense concentration. After a couple of seconds of nothing happening, Max intended to ask her what she was doing. Surprisingly, he found he couldn’t move. He struggled but his body refused to budge. Leah, with sweat beading her forehead, finally gasped and Max’s muscles unlocked.
[New mental skill Bastion - 1 unlocked. Build your mental resistance to augmentation hacking]
“Whoa! I was totally locked up there. What was that?”, Charlie asked.
“Unlike you boys with your physical skills, I’ve been working hard to advance my access skill and it evolved into a hacking skill. I’ve been hacking everything. It just evolved again yesterday into an Intrusion skill, enabling me to hack higher level systems like augs.”, Leah explained.
“Nice!” Max exclaimed. “We need to work on this. When you hacked me, I got a new mental defense skill called Bastion. If you keep attacking us, our defenses should improve.”
“Crap. You two need to evolve your skills. I need protection too!”, Leah replied.
“Let’s take a break. This was an awesome sharing, but we need to get upstairs for the main event of the night. The Diamond Man show's latest event is starting tonight, the Cretaceous Challenge. I’m hoping to see my brother Bo competing.”
[Quest Completion: Sharing is Caring – 2 successful skill unlocks, 200 XP awarded]
[Max reaches Novice 7, 10 Free Stat points awarded]
The trio rejoined Casa, Mira, and Tiamat in the living room and settled into comfortable chairs as snacks floated around the room. The wall projector was starting as the lights dimmed.
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Bo raced through the undergrowth as thunderous crashing sounds followed close behind. His chest heaved and he pushed himself to the limit. He missed his augmentations, but this challenge put an upper limit of human normal only for augmentations. His augments would save him from a gruesome demise to the dinosaurs, but no performance enhancements would come his way for the qualifying phase of the event.
He had already cleared the first two zones. The first zone was not difficult in his estimation, a traversing broad valley where the choke point was an active battleground between a Triceratops and an Ankylosaurus. Proper timing and quick feet easily got him past the preoccupied beasts with minimal delay in his time to cross the zone. The second zone was much harder. A briar hedge maze with doors that randomly opened and closed while velociraptors prowled the lanes. Bo had to retreat to safe pockets multiple times to avoid the deadly terrors. He got lucky towards the end, finding that the velociraptor guarding the exit was already busy “disqualifying” another competitor. The third zone was the last one for the qualifying round.
As Bo raced forward, another runner with a spear came out from the undergrowth paralleling his path. That explains it, Bo thought, I know I was all Stealthy McStealth-Face to not attract the T-Rex’s attention. She must have tried to get past it to get the weapons cache that it was guarding. Rookie mistake, those primitive weapons won’t help nearly as much as not having a goddamn apex predator chasing you. Fast feet don't get eat.
The forest branches exploded outward as the T-Rex broke out of the forest line with a terrifying roar. It immediately sighted both Bo and the other runner. Bo doubled down, learning hard into his run. His goal was already in sight, a drainage pipe about 4’ in diameter. It was plenty big for a running dive and too small for the giant to follow.
With a last surge of speed Bo pushed his body forward, diving in headfirst. The other runner was hot on his heels but had forgotten her precious cargo. The spear hit the edges of the pipe which clotheslined the girl in the chest and throat, bouncing her back from the safety of the tunnel and stunning her. Bo watched in horror as the T-Rex closed on the downed woman.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Gods, this is hella stupid., Bo thought as he amped himself up. I’m not even sure what the real goals of the game are other than "Don’t die". But I can’t let this girl go out like this, not if I can do something about it.
Bo grabbed the dropped spear from the tunnel entrance and dashed forwards as the T-Rex’s head was dropping for his snack. Bo was too late to distract the beast with a safe spear toss. Instead, he dove forward and rolled to a crouching position over the fallen girl, bracing the spear’s end into the dirt, he ducked as low as he could.
The descending jaws quickly reversed as the long spear gouged into the soft palate of the monster’s upper mouth. The foot-long teeth missed Bo by inches as it snapped shut on the spear and jerked away in pain. Without a second to spare, he grabbed up the unconscious girl in a fireman’s carry and crashed back to the pipe.
Bo couldn’t help but peek out, the aerial drones should have gotten a good show there. Regardless of whatever points were used to win this game, to truly win at the Diamond Man, you had to perform. Bo knew that, with his rescue of the girl, he had set himself apart from his peers and likely guaranteed a sponsor signing him for a long-term contract.
The wall projection ended as the screen filled with advertising, and applause filled the room. Max was overwhelmed with pride. As the show ended, the hosts showed the contestants who had made the qualifying round and recapped the action. Bo has made it past the qualifying rounds. Casa turned the VR feed off and brought the room back to normal.
“That was incredible! Who knew my brother had it in him to be a hero!” Max glowed with pride. Mira looked a little ill while Tiamat pouted, upset that the dragon-like T-Rex didn’t win.
“Oh my god, Max, that was amazing. Your brother had his augments turned off for that? That’s some insane contest.” Leah exclaimed.
“That’s the Diamond Man for you. Bo said that the sponsors pay handsomely for impressive footage, and it helps with the bigger contracts. Plus, you get to see the real Bo in action. Bo is a quiet guy, but he is such an adrenaline junkie. I’ll keep my fun restricted to the ThousandWorlds gaming, thank you very much.” Mira said.
“The Diamond Man is only for professionals, kids. Don’t try this at home with your pet dragons.” Casa announced, “The next phase of this event is supposedly a secret, but the forums all think that as the series progresses the competitors will get some of their augment skills reinstated. That will also probably come with challenges that get more difficult. Then we will see some very impressive action. Bo has top marks in all his skills and is very creative in their application. If you come back for the next show, I’m betting it only gets more exciting.”
The conversation went on but even with the smile on his face, Max was not hearing a word. He had his brain working hard, searching for a way to challenge himself and his friends. Bo’s example showed that even with beginner training they could accomplish a lot. As the party wound down, Mira said her goodbyes as she had an exam in “Applications of AI” in the morning.
Max wanted to continue the push for skills. They had spent the last two weeks getting some great training at the Wuxia Dojo and competing Rumble quests. He called his status.
[Name: Max E. Mitchell Level: Novice 7 (3150/3500 XP)]
[Body Design Model: Custom – Canis Familiarus Uplift Free Stats: 50]
[Strength: 14 Agility: 20 Endurance: 16 Vitality: 18]
[Perception: 21 Intelligence: 15 Will: 14 Energy: 63 Regen: 32/min]
[Body Skill - Stamina: 8 Leaping: 7 Healing: 8 Strike: 6 Unbreakable: 3 Speed: 6]
[Body Skill – Gymnast: 6 Balance: 5 Claws: 2 Ballistics: 4 Stun: 1 Gland: 1]
[Resist Skills – Poison: 1 Shock: 4 Sonic: 4 Light: 4 EMP:1]
[Sense Skills – Scent: 9 DigiSense: 6 ExVision:1 EM Fields:1]
[Mind Skill – AI Assist: 7 Access: 5 Identify: 3 OverLayer: 4 Fast Cog: 4]
[Mind Skill - Pattern: 5 Dream Learn: 4 Daemon: 1 Memory: 1 Bastion: 1]
Quests, Max thought.
[Active Quests: Meditation IV, Ready to Rumble III 2/20, Grudge Match, Sharing is Caring]
[Completed Quests: Novice Obstacle Course, Ready to Rumble I/II, Born to Run I/II/III, Purr-fect Reunion, Sands of the Hourglass, Musing on Musashi, Way of the Sword, Kintsugi III]
Max had an idea, perhaps another skill he could share with his friends. He triggered his augments to call a car.
[Mental Skill: AI assist +1, AI Assist reaches 8]
“How about I accompany you two to your homes? I’ve just summoned a car. There’s something I’d like to show you on the way.” Max said.
Max thought it odd, but Casa seemed perhaps a bit over-eager for Max to leave the house so late, maybe she was just happy for him to be socializing. The trio left the house in a larger autopod. With his AI’s help, he accessed the car and drove it to the lesser forest at the base of the Grand Oaks. In the parking lot, there were no lights, and the park’s tall gates to the walking paths were closed. Max locked down the car.
“Hmm, well that plan was quickly aborted,” Leah said. “I don’t think they allow access at night.”
“Just another training challenge, I don’t see a sign saying it’s closed,” Max grinned.
With a laugh, he scooped up Leah like he had seen Bo do for the fallen girl and activated his leap skill. Leah squeaked as they arced in a perfect landing on the top of the wall. Max turned to tell Charlie he would come back to him after getting Leah on the ground and was surprised. Charlie had transformed his walking stick into a long pole and pole vaulted with perfect form over the top of the wall. As he cleared it by inches, his pole shrunk and wrapped around his shoulder as he gracefully rolled into a landing.
With another bound Max brought Leah to the ground safely as she held on with an iron grip.
“I think I see that you two have quite literally leaped ahead of me in your physical training. I guess this night's exercise is on point for me.” Leah laughed weakly.
Max chuckled as he surveyed the walking paths ahead with his thermal vision. “My plan was actually to help you two get thermal sight with some night running or maybe hide and seek, but this place has yielded so many skills for me, who knows what we can get you.”
“Come on. Catch me if you can!” Max yelled as he sprinted down the path. Both Charlie and Leah went considerably slower as their normal vision struggled, and roots impeded their run. Charlie kept his echolocation skill suppressed; he really wanted the vision enhancements.
Max would run ahead and double back. He would swoop in as silently as he could and tap one or both as they struggled along the path. Miyamoto whispered in his ear advice on moving silently while still going fast in the forest. An hour later, with a lot of effort and laughs, they had all made it to the top of the rise and the waterfall. Charlie leaned against the meditation boulder.
“Thanks again, Max. Another skill unlocked.” Charlie said.
“Me too!”, Leah chimed in.
“Hey, Max. Have you ever used this rock to meditate yet? You should both give it a go.” Charlie said with a wry grin.
They all jumped up to the broad rock and took a seat. Max closed his eyes and controlled his breathing. Miyamoto whispered in his head methods to meditate deeper, into a state of no mind. Like before, his distractions faded as Max got deeper into his trance. The expanse below was immense and silent. Max sensed something behind him towards the Grand Oaks, it felt like when he had found Casa while meditating. Without turning he reached outwards and back with his perception. Each of the enormous trees had a presence. Together they radiated in his awareness, towering above and in great numbers. His access skill twitched but the trees were not open to him.
Leah gasped and whispered, “I think I can hear the trees. Are they talking with each other?”
Max opened his eyes to ask what they were saying. However, as his eyes adjusted, he saw something new. The entire valley stretched out below, with Utopia far in the distance. Pulses of light in a color Max had never seen before flashed out in patterns over the town. Short pulses erupted from a central location a couple of miles northwest of the falls. The light would draw a line across the sky and rebound at an angle twice before streaking back to its origin, creating a pulsing pinwheel of light. Max was about to say something when he realized the origin point. It was Casa de Mitchell, his home.
[Quest completion: Sharing is Caring – +2 skills unlocked, 200 XP awarded]
[Quest: Meditation IV complete, 100 XP awarded]
[Max level +1, Max advances to Novice 7, +10 Free Stats awarded]
[Perception +1]
[Sense Skill: ExaVision +1, ExaVision reaches Level 2 - Ultraviolet wavelengths added to visualization]
Charlie and Leah were discussing the Grand Oak bio machines and speculating on the messages they passed back and forth. While the trees looked natural, they were anything but. Meanwhile, Max was thinking to himself. Casa is up to something fun without me, I need to hurry back so I can see what she’s doing. If she manages to open the tesseract, I want to see it.
Without appearing too hurried, Max and his friends made it back out of the forest. The way back to the entrance was much quicker than the way in now that they all could see in the dark. Max saw the pair off in the larger autopod as a new one arrived for him. Max took control of the pod to get back home as quickly as possible. The light kept repeating its pattern overhead, but the radius seemed to be tightening. Max hoped to make it home before the show was over.
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Max ran through the front door. The lights in the sky overhead were still closing into a tighter and tighter circle, indicating that whatever Casa was doing, it was still in progress.
“Casa, I’m back! What are you up to? The whole sky is lit up like the drone laser show we saw earlier this summer at the fireworks!”
Casa materialized looking sheepish and a bit worried.
“You can see that?” She spoke.
“My augments have been expanding my visuals, it must have sensed it and unlocked my vision so I could see it too. What does it mean?”
With a sigh, Casa said. “Fine. I guess I could use your help. Please jump in the elevator and I’ll explain on the way to the NetherLab.”
As the roomy elevator suite dropped swiftly, Casa explained how she developed her custom drone with equipment to measure the value of pi the same way that Miss Montoya had used. She had sent the drone out to the line of distortion and was monitoring the subtle spacial effects as she tweaked the tesseract's fractal array’s exponent values. She hoped to achieve a working portal when what she suspected was the focal error was corrected. Already she had shifted the pi discrepancy field down from 10 miles to only 2 and was learning how to close the gap further with the feedback from the drones.
Casa was worried about the visibility though. She figured that the low-tech town wouldn’t sense her stealthy drones and ultraviolet lasers. She had even timed the test on this moonless night to maximize the drones’ stealth capabilities. But with Max noticing, she was worried again. A report to the town might get her in trouble. Utopia’s edict against technology was extreme and could get her, and the Mitchells, evicted if what she was doing was discovered.
The elevator arrived at the NetherLab where the marble-sized tesseract sat immutable on its días as always. The field sensors and cameras focused on the little ball, some of them humming with the power of their projecting fields.
Max strode into the room with the image of Casa’s avatar mimicking walking as well, “Casa, could you share the data and feedback you’ve been getting? I don’t want to miss it as we get close.”
Casa nodded and with a wave of her hands the data visualization began to stream in from all corners of the lab. Max could see the field information from the sensor nets mapped on one wall. On another, a fractal pattern from the antenna array with its exponent variables was shown. It almost started to make sense to him when the field reached the zero point. The room remained still except for the hum of the sensors. The tesseract, as usual, did nothing.
[Mind Skill: Pattern +1, Pattern reaches 6]
“Is it just me or was the distortion radius not centered exactly on the Tesseract marble?”, Max asked.
Casa rewound the data and quickly confirmed it. The epicenter of the distortion was 5 meters beyond the tesseract with a 20-degree azimuth.
"Good eyes, Max. Even I missed that." Cas said.
The pair ran the numbers again and readjusted the distortion back to put the tesseract tangent to the field.
Max's memory flashed back to the class on the path of senses. While Professor Qasim discussed the various animal senses, he also briefly explained how the eye worked and that the image was inverted. He had shared the phenomena of the camera obscura, which had interested Max because of its counterintuitive inverse reflection of reality.
“Casa, I have an odd idea. Could you keep adjusting the distortion field to the point where it inverts and then expands again? I know it sounds odd, but can you try?”
With a thoughtful expression, Casa slowly tweaked the field, inverting the focus and then bringing the field back to tangency with the tesseract. When it crossed the plane of the tesseract, a hole appeared in space surrounding the tesseract. The gap in the air had hits of a deep blue glow from the interior. Energy popped and fizzed along the edges of the floating hole.
“Well, trade me in for a smart toaster oven. I do believe we have it, Max. The tesseract is finally working!” Casa exclaimed.
Unable to hold himself back, Max peered inside and gasped in surprise.
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