"The world is so much different now.", the hot water began to condense on the cold mirror of the bath. "Bobby, can you really go to school like this? You know you aren't dumb.", Bobby spoke to himself without shame- spending 28 years with only yourself and your subconcious thoughts did that to one. Bobby browsed the binary math he had downloaded into his brain. He understood all of it, he was not dumb.
Getting bad grades with a state of the art bleeding edge technology brain enhancer? No sir, uh uh. But for that Bobby needed to learn something looming like an insurmountable barrier over his future: common sense. Bobby had decided to become the best common sensualist that the world would ever know. A down to earth guy, who could answer any normal question in brain shattering depth - but only would give tiny fragment of this knowledge as to not be too common. Bobby got the soap and started scrubbing his skin.
It would not be pleasant, but he would have to consult someone who knew some common sense - himself. The neural implants towered over the brain, bloodshot eyes viewing from within the inner life that all those neurons possessed. Changes in growth, macoscopic behavior, hormones, all that gave them a bird eye view on a city of the mind.
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Found you. Bobby had found Bobby jr., his alter ego, his common sensical being - and he turned him into a program based on binary math so that he could understand him.
What else was needed? Bobby chose to record his daily life from now on in a binary format, that the program Bobby - why not call it BOB? - would have to parse and relay critical information upon being asked certain things. Utilizing time acceleration would allow BOB to come up with a solution in time, but constant acceleration would threaten to unravel the weave of common sense instead of strengthening it into a net of groundedness.
Bobby still had Bobby jr. as a backup if that happened, it would be an awful lot of work going down the drain though, as making BOB had taken quite a while.
Bobby felt tired, so he then got to sleep - his parents that believed Bobby had run away to the hacker that had hacked his mind, were very relieved to find him asleep in the shower in the morning. All that would be for naught if he did not make it to school fast enough - the threat of being thrown into a death-work-camp loomed over the physically 12 year old.
All that Bobbys parents could do was awaken him, make him aware of the threat and then go to work.
Bobby was brave, very brave, but then BOB told him following:
"Emergency Quest! Your main goal - becoming master of common sense - is in danger. Manage to go to school in time and you still got a chance."
This had been a close call, almost content with the situation of the death of overwork, Bobby got dressed, did not eat breakfast and ran to school.
"Followup Quest! Do not cut it so close next time. You did well tho - Emergency Quest successfully mastered. You are doing great so far.", Bobby had even released a bit of narcotic in order to ignore the pain in his legs. He felt dizzy and wanted to go back to sleep.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"Critical Learning Quest!", BOB shouted from within his head to wake the sleepy man from his sloppy Robertesque behavior "Pay attention to history class as repeating government propaganda is important in the final test. Failure will result in death. You are on a deadline of 5 years.", so Bobby tried to pay attention. The glorious motherland and its esteemed leader for life (who was also a self proclaimed god), and the (highly successful) war against the heinous foreigners were key concepts in history lessons. Every good citizen prayed to their glorious leader at least 3 times a day, Bobby learned. There were several books written by the leader. Citing the right texts at the right opportunities to cite them, made you an upstanding person. Forgetting to cite them made you a criminal that could be legally executed on the spot (unless of course they were one of the key supporters of the glorious leader, deserving of more justice). Then the teacher went to recite advertisements from which the school regularly profited - there were also advertisements of foreign countries that were not pure evil (but nobody pointed out the double standards - that could get you executed). Bobby paid rapt attention.
In sports, group exercises prepared the young patriots for their time of mandatory military service. BOB had dropped various hints on physically impossible movements attempted to be made, which improved Bobbys performance significantly.
In math lessons, BOB gave Bobby the challenge to convert binary to decimal - not an easy task for someone who had routine for blood.
Grammar too had been changed into less repetitive 0s and 1s - Bobby had some experience in that from yesterday stealing all that loot from Robert.
At the end of the school day, BOB told Bobby his actions had reached 2/10 in comparison to the inacceptable 0/10 of yesterday, also issuing a timely return home and a talk with his parents - forgoing the logical usage of propaganda.
"But BOB, if my parents tattle on me, I am getting executed.", Bobby complained loudly.
"Sssshut up. If someone hears you talking like that you ARE getting executed. Who of us is the rational one? Me. Now go home and talk to your parents. Normally.", BOB hissed from within his mind. Bobby had enough of BOB and turned him off. Too much personality, not enough math. He would have to iterate on it to not get irate by it.
Good parts had been the x/10 ratings. Maybe something like:
x/10 History
x/10 Sports
x/10 Decimal Math
x/10 Social
x/10 Rule adherence
And he could keep emergency quests. Maybe that would be better. Higher numbers, better behavior, improved common sense. Bobby nodded as his logic was sound and putting a number on random culturally positively seen concepts could not go wrong. Definitely better than a chatterbox that would annoy him with random quests to talk to his parents without mentioning the greatness of the glorious god leader. You could get executed otherwise.