“Shields up!” Marc yells.

All the Geologists duck down and gray-brown shields surround them like eggshells. Stan is locked in first, followed closely by Phil, they’re both paying close attention and rapidly responding. Jen and Becky straggle in last. It seems like it took them longer to put in the command than it should have. I guess that’s the downside of getting started training this soon after installation. Marc looks like he’s on it though. As they come out of their shells he gives them some extra attention. On the upside, with this much time to practice, they’ll be great by the time we take them off campus.

It’s weird seeing the shields from the outside. I’ve always been the one in the shell before.

I feel Andrea’s invisible hand on my back, gently pushing. My attention snaps back to my biological body a kilometer away back on campus. I sigh and push myself a little harder, picking up the pace. I’m not as weak as I was when Andrea started working on me. The near atrophy my muscles were in from months of being a pure desk jockey has disappeared away under her training and I’m probably in the best shape I’ve ever been in. Even so, she still effortlessly laps me several times as we do our morning run.

I let my attention wander back to Marc’s training session out in the desert. He has them building all sorts of things. It’s a much more diverse and fun training routine than Father had us on. Everyone is doing a good job creating various structures according to neat little guidelines that Marc is laying out. No, check that. The asphalt near where they are working buckles as an emergency shelter starts popping up in the middle of our private street leading out that way.

Through my many eyes out in the desert, I can see that Marc has the Geologists building all sorts of things out there. It’s a much more diverse and fun training routine than Father had my class doing. I notice the road from the campus to the freeway start to buckle and crack.

“Watch your build, Erik!” Marc yells.

“Sorry,” he shouts back.

My eyes focus on him and I see his hand twitching. He’s clearly struggling with focusing his eyes and writing in the console at the same time. Basics like that should be under control from their simulator training before they get their implants at all. I create a task to remind me to talk to Marc about getting the next class on simulators earlier. We should also have them spend more time reading and writing while doing other things, that should help.

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Between Marc, Phil, and Stan, they get the road flattened back out, though it’ll probably get a pothole there the next time someone drives past the damaged section. I’ll wait until they’re done practicing to fix it properly. Andrea gives me another nudge to remind me not to slack off. I pick the pace back up.

I turn my attention to the parts of me up in my office. I bang bots against my keyboard to jam in my credentials on my computer. I slide the mouse around and click a few times until Erik’s progress report pops on the screen where some of my many eyes can read it. No wonder he’s behind, he hasn’t been using the training games at all. Most of the siblings with implants have liked those as a way to practice, but Erik tends to avoid conflict and competition. Maybe we should hide the score lists that seem to be motivators for the others when he trains.

I hit the twelve kilometer mark and my legs are burning. I’m not sure how much farther I can go, but Andrea’s not relenting, so I keep moving. Every time I go past the dorms, I hope she’ll let me go in, but that invisible hand keeps pushing every time I slow down. I’d be tempted to just let myself collapse, but the field is dotted with my siblings making their way to and from breakfast and I feel like I need to maintain an image. Besides, if my sibs outside the campus walls can push themselves working on their new powers, I can push myself on this.

The soft grass looks awfully inviting to just flop down on though.

And there Andrea goes, running ahead to lap me again.

I reach out to the well just over the wall that Steph and Lisa dug yesterday and pull some water. I stream a glistening arc across the desert and over the wall, filtering it en route to my mouth. I get a round of applause from Evan and Louise who are just coming out of the cafeteria, acknowledging the difficulty of the operation. I guess it would have been an unthinkably complicated sequence of actions not so many months ago, but it’s so easy for me now. The bots are such a part of me that it’s as natural as moving the hands that came with my body.

The water helps, but my lungs are still on fire. We go another lap. I can’t even see out of other eyes at this point. All my focus is on not falling down. Another lap. This time I see Andrea slow as she approaches the dorms. She turns toward the doors instead of starting another lap.

Sweet relief. I hate running so much.