“Walter, beneath you!” Michelle shouts just in time to keep him from falling into the deathpit forming under him.
Walter launches up twenty meters in a bot-assisted jump and lands safely outside of the area as the desert soil where he had been standing collapses into a roiling mass of grinding bot clusters.
Training on the new anti-bot tools is a little tricky. We don’t want to really let a wild swarm go, or actually implement any of Jeff’s destructive algorithms as part of our software baseline. So one of us needs to dedicate themselves and their cloud to emulating our best guess for how they would act when Jeff gets them going. And by one of us, I mean me. It’s much easier for me to do it than it is for any of the others, and I feel like the training on using the automated systems is less critical for me given how naturally my brain interfaces with my cloud anyway.
The pit of grinding doom would have sensed him as he came down into it and changed from destructive consumers to a gentle catch, but Walter and Michelle don’t know that yet. Neither do Lin, Valerie, or any of the others that haven’t been taken down yet in this exercise. As far as they're aware, I’m testing them with live ammunition.
“Thanks, bro,” Walter says, dodging back from a death cyclone. “I mean sis. Sorry.”
“It’s OK, we’re all working on the transition,” Michelle says patiently, as a wave of her hand tangles the cyclone’s nanowires in a crashing reverse avalanche of congealed rock and sand rising up from the ground.
I feel the other pairs, the ones out of my physical eyesight. Lin and Valerie have taken to the contact interface as naturally as any of the Butler children. Between them, they’ve made short work of everything I’ve thrown at them, and I’m not going easy on them just because I like them. Lisa got Phil to adopt headphones like hers and I swear she’s syncing their responses to my threats using whatever music she has them listening to. Not something I would have thought of, but very effective.
Stan and Steph are struggling, mostly because they don’t want to cooperate. Individually, they are each the two best in their class, but they aren’t even trying to work as a team. And there’s a kill, my first one on either of them. Stan failed to watch Steph’s back and now she’s encased in a soft but immobilizing cocoon that represents the bots that would have consumed her. With her down, I make short work of Stan. Once they’re both trussed and they’ve had a minute to feel embarrassed about it I form a mic and a speaker near them to accompany my omnipresent eyes.
“You two need to either find different partners that you can work with, or learn to work together,” I tell them. “I don’t care which, but I want it fixed by tomorrow.”
They both nod soberly. I release them and give them a few minutes to talk strategy before I start in again on the non-stop onslaught. Part of this training is about teamwork and skills, but another part that’s just as important is endurance. If Jeff gets any of the monstrosities that he envisioned automated, or if he releases a wild swarm, we’ll be dealing with challenges that may span hours or days. It’s one thing to be able to stay on your toes for a few minutes, it’s another entirely to do it over a long haul. The others have been practicing in shifts, taking breaks as they become exhausted. I’ve been at it since before dawn.
I take a sip from my water bottle and tear the wrapper off of another granola bar as I contemplate the sun hanging low in the afternoon sky. It dipped below the line of my shade canopy a little while ago, but it’s not bothering me enough to adjust it yet.
In some ways, this whole experience resonates with the feeling I get when I read my logs from the training I did with the implant way back when I was getting ready to kill Father. Compared to what I can do now, the capabilities I was working on then seem so basic and simple, though mastering them pushed me hard at the time. Today’s mental and electronic exercises have been engaging, but not strenuous. More like an invigorating jog for me than a grueling marathon. I could do so much more if I disregarded Louise’s demands and let myself go all out.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I can see that most of the others don’t feel like I’m going easy on them though. It’s probably time to do another shift change and let them get some rest. I frost my bottle with my cloud and take another cool sip.
To All: Take a break. Head back to the campus to rest if you need to, otherwise the next round starts in ten minutes.
I feel and see sighs of relief from all the pairs. I almost had Marc and Becky again with a pair of death from above attacks, plummeting combinations of bots and inert mass from way above detection range coming in at terminal velocity. Mine have to be more bot-heavy than we would expect Jeff’s to be, since I need to be able to make them non-lethal at the last instant if I’m about to get a hit. I form a speaker and congratulate Becky on her quick reactions that saved them both.
Lin and Valerie zoom towards me, each perched on a hovering disk with a set of handlebars protruding upwards. The dev team had been hesitant to do proper flight suits for the contact interface since without the feedback the implant provides it would be hard to steer it at high speed without crashing, but they’d wanted something for mobility. These floating scooters are the compromise, slow enough that a fall from it won’t kill you, fast enough that they’re still a big upgrade from walking. And they’re kind of fun to ride. Both girls look like they’re doing well, but they had just swapped in at the last break.
“That was great,” Lin says.
“I feel so powerful,” Valerie agrees.
“Good,” I reply. “Need some water?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Lin says, popping open my cooler and grabbing two bottles.
“Not for my sparkling personality?”
“No, just the sparkling water,” Lin says with a smirk. She opens the glass bottle only to be disappointed by the lack of fizz.
“Need a hand with that?”
“Would you?”
“Only if you admit that you’re actually here to see me.”
“Fine,” she sighs. “You are so handsome, I can’t go without seeing you for more than a hour or I will waste away and die. Happy?”
She’s gotten funnier since I stopped letting her erase our fights. Snarkier, but in a good way. And it hasn’t even been bad. Valerie was right, arguing and remembering it has been good for us. I pressurize her bottle and inject some carbon dioxide bubbles, chilling it as I do it so that the water will be extra refreshing.
“Thanks,” she says, hearing the satisfying hiss of the seal breaking again as I finish.
“Any time. Valerie, you want bubbles?”
“I’m good,” she says, taking a deep pull on her bottle.
“Are you both in for the next round?”
“Yeah, I can do one more before dinner,” Valerie says, and Lin nods in agreement.
“Sounds good. Three minutes till start time. I’ll need you to move away from me by then. You don’t have to go far, just give me enough space that I don’t have to worry about hitting myself with shrapnel from anything I throw at you. Louise insists that I don’t push myself too hard, so I’m not deploying any defenses for myself while I run everyone’s trainings.”
“OK. Thanks for the drinks.” Lin blows me a kiss as their disks materialize and they jet off.
“Any time,” I call after her.
I feel out the remaining siblings dotting the deserted landscape of the desert. No one called it quits. Good. I adjust my sun shade to block the late afternoon sun from shining on my face as I mentally plan out a sequence of calamities to inflict on each pair next. I consider for each set how I can best help them see weaknesses they can work on or strengths they can build up and start scripting out functions and doing the calculations to target each of them.
And it’s time.
I sound an alert and close my eyes as I let another cavalcade of dangers fly.