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Max wolfed down the rest of his breakfast. Bo had already left, on his way for a series of meetings with his agent to discuss the proceeds for Diamond Man and new opportunities down in NYC. Mira was still sleeping. Bill had worked through the night, repairing the first Tesseract and comparing the differences between it and his paired versions. Despite glanding caffeine, he was looking for a nap but wanted to see Max off.
The house's normally seamless flow of everyday activities felt off. Casa was still down in the lab finishing measurements of spacial rifts and couldn't fragment anymore. Her ability to anticipate everyone's needs was sorely missed.
“Hey Max, try to enjoy your class OK? Remember, no one has ever successfully finished the Adept Obstacle course on their first run. Most can't finish it until the Master stage.” Bill advised.
“I will, Dad.”, Max said around a mouthful of pancakes. “But someone has to be first right?” He grinned, exposing his full set of long sharp teeth, looking more aggressive than normal. Bill sighed and waved as Max rushed out, both could sense from the house sensors that Charlie’s Cam-Airo had just landed in the drive.
Max dove into the back seat, seeing Leah already in the passenger seat.
“Hey, Max! Ready?” Leah asked.
“Yes!” Max said, licking his snout, his excitement building.
“Hey, what’s that up at the end of the driveway? I can see a small heat source.” Charlie said, squinting his eyes.
Max toggled between heat and Eagle vision until Mal helped by blending the two into his active OverLayer. The small form of that lost cat, Sadie, quickly filled his vision, lurking halfway up a tree just beyond the property line sensors.
“Oh shit, it's that librarian’s cat. It must have gotten loose again.” Max groaned.
“No time.”, Charlie said. “If it's still in the tree when we get back, we can try to catch it and bring it back. That thing is a professional stray by now. If it can get up the tree then it can get back down.” Boosting the turbines, Charlie’s car lifted straight up 300 feet and shot toward the center of town.
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The trio quickly made their way into the Academy building, a welcoming voice projected into their minds as they hurried to the classroom.
“[Three students advance | From novice to adept's stance | Welcome, path's expanse.]” Tatemono’s sonorous voice echoed within their augs.
“Thank you, Tatemono! Sorry, but we’ve no time to chat. Class is starting.” Leah said as they rushed down the hall. They charged into the classroom and saw it was bigger and full of students.
“Ah, there we are! Now we have a quorum. Take a seat and we shall begin the instructional portion of the class.” the familiar teacher, Professor Qasim said from the front of the class. The trio quickly took the last seats in the back of the class. Max peered around the room.
Up front on the elevated stage, Professor Qasim was pulling down screens in the OverLayer that the Academy building used. Mrs. Matthews was on the other side of the stage, seemingly in meditation. Max couldn’t miss the alien Thark form that was almost fully turned in his seat waving back at him and smiling. It was that cosplaying kid from the tournament, Xavier. He nodded to him and continued looking around.
He saw another couple of new kids on that side, a curly red-headed boy and a blond girl. He also saw an androgynous kid with blue hair. Scanning further in front, he saw Marc, Sasha, Dalton, and an angry gaze looking back at him. Tyler!
They let him come back. Max thought with a cold knot of unease in his stomach. He would surely cause trouble. Max nudged Charlie and nodded in Tyler’s direction.
“All right, class. There will be time for socializing later, eyes front, please. Mrs. Matthews and I will begin an important lesson in a moment.” Qasim’s voice cut through the chatter.
The class obediently turned their attention to the front, anticipation simmering in the air. Professor Qasim and Mrs. Matthews took their positions in the center of the elevated stage. There was an expectant hush as Professor Qasim began.
“Before we start, we would like to congratulate each of you for achieving the next level in the augmentation training program. The first stage is uncomplicated but can be a shock to many due to its very physical requirements. I see many familiar faces and some new ones. Pacing is always difficult, so we tend to combine cohorts as they advance. Welcome everyone, to the Adept portion of the Augmentation training!”
"Today, we delve into the complexities that will take you a while to tame and even longer to master. The Path of Dominion covers your expanding control of the world around you." he began, his voice echoing through the immense room. A collective gasp filled the air as a large holographic model of utility foglets, nano-motes, and microdrones appeared in the field in front of them.
"Up until now your ability to access items has been based upon your systems skill levels and the restriction levels of various devices." Mrs. Matthews added.
“Third-tier skills will require a deeper understanding to level these skills. No more free lunches, just by using a skill. If your studies have not delved into these already, I would strongly recommend leaning upon a daemon or your AI to learn them.” Qasim said.
“Skillz and Dream Learning as well.” Mrs. Matthews piped in from the side. “And machine code can be considered a language if you’ve dabbled in the Immersive Idioma quests.”
“Most of you know that the first tier Access skill evolves to Hack. Has anyone taken it to tier three, Intrusion?” Professor Qasim asked.
Leah was the only student to raise her hand. Qasim raised an eyebrow with interest, “Ah, Leah. Good. Can you tell the class what level it is at?” he asked.
“I’ve had it for a while. It's level one and hasn't advanced at all.” Leah admitted.
“Nor will it.”, Qasim confirmed. “You need to master humankind’s first stumbling techniques into logic bypass and subterfuge with exploits like Brute Force Attacks, Phishing, SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Remote Code Execution, Buffer Overflow, Zero-Day Exploits, Man-in-the-Middle Attacks, Encryption cracking, Credential Stuffing, Session Hijacking, DNS Spoofing, Packet Sniffing, and Decoy Scripting. These are all viable methods that you'll need to learn and to do manually to advance that skill.” Mrs. Matthews picked up the thread and continued.
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“As your skill grows, you can cap the skills with more modern techniques like Neural Impersonation, Quantum Data Breaches, Matter Manipulation Exploits, and Virtual Ecosystem Infection,” she said. The class looked both dumbstruck and a bit fearful of all the new terms being thrown out.
“Right.” Professor Qasim said, “Sorry for the infodump there, kids. Perhaps it's time for a demonstration before I put everyone to sleep.” He pulled a pen from his jacket’s inner pocket and held it out. He pulled his hand back and the pen stayed hanging in the air.
“The nano foglets surround much of the modern world, this lovely town is one of the few areas with such a low concentration. Most urban areas have a very dense layer, completely accessible to the general public, as a basic utility provided by the United Nations Coalition.” Qasim said as he demonstrated his control of the fog, spinning the pen in multiple axes and sending it arcing over the students' heads.
“How many of you have unlocked the Telekinesis skill?” Qasim asked. Perhaps a quarter of the class raised their hands. Max whined under his breath, chastising himself for not getting the skill yet, even after Leah’s instructions on it.
“[I’ve added it to your training priority list, Max. Right to the top.]” Mal whispered in his head.
Mrs. Matthews paced forwards and stepped up, into the air, and stepped up again as if climbing invisible stairs. She paced across the stage around two feet above the ground, she came to a stop, and continued the course instruction.
“Utility fog is extremely versatile. With minimal commands, it can be solidified and made rigid into temporary structures, enabling the creation of foglet frames to aid you like this Air Step function.”, she said.
Qasim resumed, “or for more dexterous uses like this!” The professor said as the entire student body found themselves hoisted and levitated a foot over their chairs. Max started to flail his hands for balance and realized they were locked together as if manacled. Max looked down and saw the ghostly outline of densely packed foglets wrapped about his hands. Max flexed using his augmented strength and grinned as the foglets stretched and snapped free. He was lowered quickly to his seat.
“Sorry for the surprise and discomfort, but as most of you aptly demonstrated, foglet structures have serious limitations in strength. Massive flexibility, transparency, and utility were emphasized over durability for foglets. It is called utility fog and not combat fog for a reason.” he chuckled.
Mrs. Matthews interjected, “However, an important note here - the amount of fog you can control and your ability to manipulate it scales geometrically with your skill advancement. Some of these abilities may be considered skills in their own right within the training program."
Professor Qasim then proceeded, "Now, what do you think happens when two people try to assume control over the same volume of foglets? Anyone?”
Some hands went up but Xavier in the front yelled out, “A battle of wills!”
Mrs. Matthews smiled at him but corrected, “Close. Your will stat does affect the fight for control and the amount you can effect, but skills and how you used them will more assuredly discern the victor.”
The professors' back and forth was energetic and natural which kept the kids' rapt attention. Despite that, when Professor Qasim clapped his hands, several kids in the front row jumped.
“Now! Let us proceed with a demonstration of a battle of Skills. Mrs. Matthews versus myself. Watch closely students and extend your senses. After a minute, I will look forward to your observations.”
The professor’s pen returned to his pocket as if of its own volition and Mrs. Matthews settled back down to the ground level of the stage. They both stood still in concentration, but at least visibly, not a lot seemed to be going on upstage. Max could feel a breeze picking up in the room. Mal gasped in his mind.
“[Look at this Max]” she said, and she activated both his EM Field sense and thermal vision and put them together on his personal OverLayer. The air around Qasim was getting colder, creating a globe around the man that was slowly expanding. Mrs. Matthews was surrounded by a warm layer that began to rotate and was picking up speed until it soon looked like a heated tornado with her as the eye of the storm. Both radiated a strong EM Field and the foglets, little scintillating points, responded, being drawn in from the corners of the room.
Max was enthralled by the sight. Snippets of hot foglets would lash out from Mrs. Matthews, breaking up on the cold barriers belonging to Professor Qasim. Thermally, the tornado soon matched Mrs. Matthew's temperature hiding her thermal outline. Strangely, Professor Qasim’s thermal outline faded as well, getting colder to match his globe of cloud.
Mrs. Matthews sent larger probes of foglets at Prof Qasim. Every time Max thought that she might drill through his barrier, the probes weakened and got pinched off, losing power and focus until they disappeared. Mrs. Matthew's attacks continued to build in intensity, chiseling away at Qasim’s dense globe.
After another minute, just as Mrs. Matthews looked like she might break through, a flare of EM burst from Professor Qasim’s position, and all the foglets in the room dropped to the ground. He clapped his hands and spoke.
“Well done, thank you for an excellent spar, Mrs. Matthews. Now students, please! Tell me your observations and thoughts.” Qasim said.
Max shot his hand up, with a few others. Qasim’s eyes tracked the room but soon settled on Max.
“Alright. Max, I think you were slightly faster than the others. What did you see?” Qasim asked.
“Your foglets were pulled into a globe shape and were cool, while Mrs. Mathews’ foglets were hot and formed a tornado,” Max said.
“Yes, indeed. And can you explain why?” the professor asked.
Max thought for a second, boosting his cog speed slightly to frame a good answer. His time spent in the NanoCraft forge simulation had covered the foglets’ design and functions. They could recharge their batteries by absorbing the thermal energy from the air like an e-brake could reclaim energy from a rotating wheel to recharge. Likewise, a foglet could move through the air faster by bouncing itself off air molecules, but it would add thermal energy to the air while draining its internal power stores.
“Ah, your strategy seemed to be more defensive, absorbing energy. Mrs. Matthews was using more energy to move her foglets fast, and it heated the air as a result.” Max said, trying to sum up his thoughts.
“Excellent. Good observations. Always be aware of your surroundings. Sudden increases or drops in temperature might be an indication of different types of foglet activity near you. Any more observations? You, there. Xavier, right? What did you see?” Qasim pointed at the Thark.
“Mrs. Matthews attacks. When she probed your defense, they seemed to break apart and disappear.” Xavier answered.
“Yes indeed. Any theories why?” Qasim prompted again.
“Um, it's easier to control foglets that are closer?”
"Partially correct. Access is easier with proximity. An EM noisy environment can also inhibit control of foglets. This can be mitigated by lines of contact between foglets. Hence the string-like probes of Mrs. Matthew’s attacks and my globe-shaped defense. Foglets can link communications, controls, and power via contact. This boon, to secure and extend control, can be disrupted with, ah, aggressive decoupling.” Qasim explained.
He then turned to the class. “Yes, another comment? Samantha, go on.”
"The foglets dropped to the ground after a burst from you, Professor. Was that due to an EM pulse?" the new girl Samantha asked, her voice carrying a mix of curiosity.
“Yes indeed.” the Professor beamed. “My EM pulse disrupted the foglets temporarily. I would caution you all, should you have that skill, to keep your pulses low or you will destroy the foglets. All is fair in battle, but if you should destroy public foglets about town, our good deputy will most assuredly show up at your parent’s house with a detailed expense list. Likely down to the last mote and foglet.” Qasim’s expressive eyebrows waggled with mock fear, but his eyes stayed serious. Mrs. Matthews picked up the dialog stepping forward.
“The lessons of access of the foglets and third-tier Intrusion skills extend to all your smart devices and even to your augmentations. Be very aware that the security of these gifts is intentionally low-end. This training program has very intentionally given you a boat with many holes in it that are leaking. Your mission going into the master stages is not only to learn how to break security and control but also to use that knowledge to patch your own augmentations and devices.” she finished.
“[That explains why it feels so drafty in here.]” Mal whispered, giggling, in his head.
“Excellent observations, students.” Professor Qasim's lilting voice said, “Now, it's my pleasure to extend a gift to each of you, courtesy of the Augmentation Training Program.” As he finished, a series of tiny boxes floated into the room, conveyed as if upon a foglet conveyor. One box gently landed in front of each student.
Max’s eyes lit up. He had received gifts from his family when he finished his Uplift procedure. He had yet to experience Christmas but was counting the days. The human culture of gift-giving was one of his favorite things about being part of the family. He inspected the little box with avarice.
What could it be? He thought.
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