CHAPTER 17: PROGRESSION

Hiro flailed as she heard the voice in her head. She felt a gentle hand on her arm. "Button is that you?" She opened her eyes and saw Moria studying her closely. It was her hand on her arm.

"In your flesh Miss," The chipper AI replied.

Hiro blanched and Moria took her hand away. Hiro shook her head at her and pointed to her new gemstone. She scolded Button, "That was weird don't ever say that again."

"Of course Miss." Button said.

Hiro took a minute to look around at her surroundings. She was still in the workroom. Some machines quietly hummed in the background. Mrs. Celeste was nowhere to be found. Only Moria and her were left. Well and of course their Personal Guidance Assistants.

Her eyes finally rested on Moria "How long did that take?" As soon as she asked the reflexive question, she knew the answer, but she waited for a response anyway.

"About two hours, Mrs. Celeste takes a little longer than a doctor would but she did a good job. I kept an eye on her." Moria replied.

Hiro nodded and then her eyes widened in realization. She had heard her words nearly in real-time and in the voice of Moria, not a bright AI voice. The weight around her neck was gone and she spotted the translation necklace on a counter. Mrs. Celeste had not lied when she said the translation program was top-notch.

"I heard your words in your voice nearly at the same time as you said it!" She exclaimed, "Button that's a really good translation!"

"Thank you Miss Skylark, Mrs. Celeste did a good job of upgrading me. There are a few other systems I wish to go over with you at your earliest convenience."

Moria smiled as Hiro listened to Button. She was used to new Sparks not realizing not everyone could hear all the AI in their heads. When her attention refocused on her she replied, "Mine still has a delay, but Mrs. Celeste told me she'd upgrade mine soon to help keep up with yours. However, some language classes wouldn't go amiss. There's a universal common language that everyone in the Spark system learns at least the basics in. It helps when we go to worlds where translators are few and far between."

"Good to know," Hiro replied before lifting her free hand to behind her ear. The faceted gemstone there was different than the previous one. It had a slightly raised surface the faceting felt more complex. Hiro turned her head "What color is it?" she asked "Is it still rainbow?"

Moria leaned in to take a look, "Yes, the light dances through it like light through ocean spray. It's beautiful." She said with her familiar half-smile.

Hiro smiled back before her stomach gurgled at her. "Um, I think I might be a bit hungry." She said sheepishly.

Moria's smirk got wider. She beckoned her to follow her. "I was expecting that. I'll go make us lunch."

Hiro followed her back out of the workroom in down the hallway way to another door. She slit open the hexagonal door to reveal a small room with two of the six walls covered with cabinets and countertops and two hexagonal tables with chairs around them. There was a large panel on the third wall that looked like the screens Hiro had seen in other areas. The smell of tea reached Hiro's nose. It was the same smell as Nadia's tea the day before.

Moria gestured to one of the tables, "I'll whip us up something not cube-shaped. This is the break room for the main building, but it has almost everything that the living units have. Should be easy enough for us to get something nutritious before going to our next item on the agenda."

"What is on the rest of the agenda for today?" Hiro asked. As far as she could recall she had done the key things she remembered from the morning. Button answered before Moria.

"Well Miss, you are to gather anything you have here and travel with Moria, Natia, and Bellator back to headquarters with the doctor. The other team will be arriving shortly to relieve them."

Moria noticed Hiro's eyes looking into the distance. "Did your PGA answer for me?" Moria asked after Hiro's eyes lost their glazed look.

"Yeah, sorry." Hiro rubbed at the gemstone, "This is hard to get used to."

"You'll figure it out soon enough. Honestly, that's what they're there for. To answer those types of questions mostly when people aren't around to answer them for you. Sometimes they like to jump in even when someone else is around. Why don't you have a chat with your PGA and get familiarized with it while I cook us up something to eat." Moria suggested before turning back to the counter.

Hiro nodded absently and did just that. "You mentioned things you wanted to go over, what do you have for me Button?"

"Well Miss, I have a lot of new features built in! Let me turn on the connection to your optic nerve!"

"What?" was Hiro's reply before her vision cut out for a brief millisecond. It popped back into view but this time with a few things overlaid over her vision of the world. She turned her head but anywhere she looked it followed her her view. Smack dab in the center it read "Welcome to the network. Please follow your personal guidance assistant's instructions to set up your user interface."

"What the hell Button! When did you get the ability to tap into my visuals?!"

"It is one of the new features! Don't worry, it was safe in 99.5% of testing! It looks like I've integrated perfectly. Now let's go through some setup." The alternate reality overlay in front of Hiro's eyes switched to a new overlay. This one looked much like a setting screen that you would see on a video game.

"First of all, you can adjust most settings and sliders here to fit your needs. After it's set up the main inputs I need are recording, Power measuring, and identification permissions. We will get to that after you have had some time to familiarize yourself with the settings. I will need some brain wave patterns to log as sections and yes and no so that in the future you can adjust things non-verbally. Do I have your permission to record these as you make adjustments?"

"Do these readings get sent anywhere else?"

"No Miss, they are all internal to your gemstone. However, they can be downloaded with a direct connection at certain maintenance facilities." Button answered.

"Good enough I guess. Button my first command is to never share any of my data without direct confirmation from me."

"Of course Miss. However, that is not your first command."

Hero paused for a moment searching her memory. She'd only been awake less than ten minutes. She was sure she hadn't given any other commands, "What do you mean? What other command have I given you?"

"Hey Listen! You told me to say that before any unsolicited information."

Hiro snorted, yeah, she had said that back in the cavern. "You're right, make that my second command then, and let me get a feel for this screen. Is there a way to make the words smaller?" She began mumbling to herself and learning how to select things by looking at them. She started by reaching out her finger and selecting them but it read her intent without the hand gestures.

Hiro then spent some time moving sliders selecting things having to do most of it vocally but she soon found after a few minutes she could mentally select things and change things without having to say anything out loud. When she was satisfied with how big the words were going to be and how they overlaid the world, she went through the next set of choices. She messed with settings to say when they could pop up in front of her face if she was in the middle of something with a lot of focus. She didn't want to be interrupted when she was doing something like healing Bellator or herself for that matter.

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Button would occasionally explain something to her when she was confused but for the most part, it was a video game user interface but in her real-life vision. She didn't have a health bar or magic or mana bar. Button said after some testing at the academy he could add them, but she wasn't sure she wanted them. She did find an icon that she could click that gave brief histories of various things and explanations of things. It was a little wiki that she would dig into later.

"Alright Miss, I got all the readings I needed for you to interface nonverbally, let's go over the permissions. Since this is a new system you have greater control over the permission settings than normal. I have quite a few more capabilities to monitor you than the former versions and privacy laws dictate you have to opt into some of those settings. However, there are some things I am required to report. Such as, if something goes wrong in my internal system it can be fixed as well as the error log data. I also have to report if you're a danger to yourself or if you're in danger and unable to respond or consent such as if you are passed out and injured. There is a full list in the terms of service but I have gone over the basics."

Hiro nodded along, she was fine with what he had said so far. Button continued, "Let's talk about recording permissions first I think your second command will cover most things, but I still wish to go over them so that you understand my capabilities."

Hiro nodded with the last part, "What are you recording?" She asked warily.

"Everything Miss Skylark. Physical, visual, auditory, and power levels, I can read practically anything as long as the signal goes through the brain or nervous system. I can even monitor your magical pathways to a degree, at how they interact with the rest of your body. Though of all things, it is the hardest for me to track since it is centered in your core and not your brain. I can access this information to monitor it and help you understand yourself. I have a short-term memory that helps me function accurately and respond to your needs. I log certain things in my internal memory banks such as your mental commands to properly take advantage of my installation. As well as storing some baseline information to flag when your systems are out of sync with what they should be. However, recording it to review or share is where permissions come in."

"Like recording conversations or visuals to then play on things like that screen over there or send to others."

"Right you are, however, visuals are the hardest for me to record so that others can view them. There's simply too much information your brain automatically filters out. Your eyes are not camcorders I can get what you are directly focused on and the rest fades into the background. For example, right now I can record the backside of Ms. Kinross in detail as she's cooking..."

"Nope, no thank you Button," Hiro broke over him darting her eyes away. She had not really been focusing but her eyes had drifted to watching Moria as she worked to make lunch. "I'll make this simple, record what you need to work but not share anything personal with anyone without my permission. However, is there an icon I can have on this overhead to hit record if a conversation seems worth recording?"

"Indeed." A little icon popped up next to the Spark Wiki. "Auditory is easiest. I can record conversations and play them back perfectly. Powers are a hit or miss depending on how fast they happen. For example, your teleportation and multishot will be hard for me to measure beyond power output before and after. I can only process what you can process, and to a lesser degree since it's secondhand readings. I might be the most advanced PGA ever, but I still have major limitations."

"That makes sense. Will Dr. Celeste be able to access any of this information we are talking about since she is the maker and designer?"

"Yes and no Miss. Without a direct uplink, she cannot remotely bypass the protections built in to keep this crystal safe from Geneisis's potential influence. While they have beefed up all firewalls and access to the network across all PGA's my generation has not a wall but a fortress. However, if she does have a direct connection she could theoretically bypass your commands as the maker. I would be greatly surprised if she doesn't have a way to gain backdoor access. However, she would have to jump through legal hoops to get to that point or face ramifications. The goal behind this version was to make sure it was as independent and safe as possible from outside threats."

Hiro pursed her lips. "Remind me to never be alone in the room with that woman again then." She muttered.

"Of course Miss." That made Hiro roll her eyes, her snide comment was not a command, she'd have to get used to him responding to everything. She was used to talking to her dog all the time. She had a bad habit of saying thoughts like that out loud.

"The next thing is how do you wish for me to help monitor your powers? This is a core function of PGA's to help assist Sparks in controlling and growing their powers. Former versions mostly could measure outputs and suggest ways to expand power sets. I can monitor and help much more. While most of your powers are already in the gold rank, you have one silver we could always push to deepen your understanding. Eventually, we could break accuracy into a gold concept if we expand it enough. Most also think gold is the pinnacle of the Spark Cores, but when you're just starting out you won't have a full understanding of your concepts. As you use and learn about them your powers will expand with your connection with them. You also have a shocking number of confluences that can expand as well. Formally all information was verbal with percentages. Now I have several preset visuals to accompany the information to make the information easier to understand."

"If you don't know what I can do how can you measure it? I don't even know everything I can do yet."

"At the academy, we will measure what skills you started with in the cavern and teachers will take you through several other common skills. From there you will be free to work from skills others with a smile skill set have done, or when you discover a new utility you get to help name it. Or alternatively, I can generate names for you. However, I need certain permissions to measure and generate this information. My short-term working memory will not be able to measure things accurately to show improvements or progression without more comprehensive permissions. I can operate under the no divulging policy of your second command of course. But with the new capabilities I need more permissions than the norm."

"Yeah, that seems fine for now. What do the visuals look like?"

An overlay flared to life in front of her. There was a strangely accurate outline of herself to one side and a radar chart collapsed with each of her powers on a corner. A collapsed list of her power list was underneath the blank chart. On the outline of herself, her hands were a slight yellow color but the rest of her body was green. She looked at the list of concepts she had absorbed. Time of course nowere to be seen. None of them had any sort of marking on it yet.

CORE CONCEPTS:

>Light- Gold- Novice 0%

>Accuracy- Silver- Novice 0%

>Sky- Gold Rank- Novice 0%

>Electricty- Gold Rank- Novice 0%

>Magnitism- Gold Rank- Novice 0%

>Water- Gold Rank- Novice 0%

She clicked through them but they all had greyed-out ability screens. Nothing was listed not even her healing. "I assume nothing has been filled out because I haven't given permission?" She asked.

"That and I won't fill them out until you have a chance to use them at the academy. I have some data to compare a baseline from your time in the caverns, but not as much as I would like. Once it's filled out the confluences will also be added. For example, I know you have healing abilities, but I haven't added them to the screen until we have a better way to get baseline data in your admissions."

"Got it. I give permission for you to give me an awesome video game character sheet. Though is the radar graph and a weird outline the best way to show it?"

"We can work on the visuals, however, due to your uncomfortable nature at having no clothes in the cavern I opted to skip straight to the outline rather than the anatomically correct 3D model of your person I have made to keep track of your body systems."

Hiro's ears went red and she coughed. Moria gave her a look as she placed some plates and a covered bowl on the table that smelled divine. "Sorry," she muttered pointing at the object behind her ear.

"I said I had an anatomically corre..."

"Button, you have said you can see what I see, you know I wasn't talking to you," she cut him off, exasperated now.

"Right, you are Miss Skylark. I will endeavor to process your visual inputs more. The base system was mostly based on voice commands. I will have to work to make sure I respond to all cues. The final permission is simple compared to the rest. Do I have permission to categorize and search objects and items you find to cross-reference them to our databases to help you identify various things in your environment as needed?

"Can you highlight things in my vision?"

"That is a possibility I can work on Miss, but I don't currently have that function."

Hiro frowned just a little disappointed he wouldn't be able to highlight herbs and collectibles with a push of a button. She chuckled at her joke to herself then moved on. "I don't mind as long as you aren't sharing the information."

"There is a possibility to upload data about rare things to the network. May I prompt you if an object you identify is flagged as rare to share any new data with the network?"

"Sure." Moria put two more steaming bowls onto the table. "Now be quiet for a bit Button, I want to enjoy whatever this is that Moria cooked up."

"Hey Listen, it's Gurthiy Fish Ste..."

"I said shut up Button."

She sat with Moria as she explained the food she made based on food from her homeworld. She enjoyed the first non-geometric food she had had in days and listened to tales of exotic locales while Button began to develop baselines in the background of her mind.