12.1 Eyeshot's Card
This morning, Maeven left breakfast early for a brief visit to the convenience store across the community centre. Captain Eyeshot was browsing the refrigerators when she had arrived. Maeven watched as she shut its door and walked up to the counter with a bottle of chilled water, topped it off with a packet of mints from the display box by the POS then patted around her bodysuit. The captain froze, looked around a moment. It seemed she forgot to bring her bank card.
Maeven felt her Will heighten as the captain glanced around.
“Sorry, it’s on the bus. One moment.”
The shop owner stopped her, insisting he wouldn’t charge. There were a few seconds of back and forth. The Captain said, “It’s not a problem.” And the shop owner shook his head and replied, “No, no, no, no, please take it.” Maeven had slipped under the commotion, held her bank card at the tip of her fingers to the machine in his hand. Everyone went silent as the kiosk beeped.
The transaction went through.
“Fifteen…what’s this?”
Now, the captain is holding something between her fingers. It’s from the collector’s card game Willed Guardians and has a picture of Eyeshot with a raised sniper rifle that she likely never posed for, not intentionally. Maeven doesn’t play the game; she took it as a keepsake when she won it at a vending machine at Kingpin Bowling. Hunter’s thirteenth birthday, she thinks it was. She’s kept it in her card holder ever since.
Captain Eyeshot must have nicked it when she was reaching over the counter. A droplet of sweat forms on her temple.
“Why am I level 989?”
Captain Eyeshot shifts her eyes to look at her, and Maeven holds out the water bottle and mints to trade, smiling awkwardly.
Once they exit the shop, a couple plastic bags swinging from Maeven’s fingers, the captain says to her, “While you are here, I have another task for you.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Sky Company has been assigned a mission this morning, however assignee Farrington is occupied with another assignment and won’t be able to participate. You will fill in in two days.”
“Okay.”
“It will be dangerous. I can’t imagine you’ll be able to do much with that cat.”
“Okay.”
The plastic bottle crackles under the captain’s grip. She points at her with its cap. “I haven’t forgotten about you, Maeven Riel.”
It isn’t so much a warning as it is a threat.
Captain Eyeshot parts ahead. “Go back to your company,” she leaves her with. The bottle in her hand deformed as it swings.
Maeven stops to takes her card holder out of her pocket. That was embarrassing. How did she even see the card? They’re all stacked in the same compartment, overlapping each other, behind her bank card, her ID, and her old student card.
She ponders another question: how did the captain know she left her bank card on the bus? They hadn’t ridden the bus since they arrived in Jurn. Leaving it in her tent, that would be reasonable. The bus, less so.
Does she have x-ray vision? Maeven considers. The captain had looked around. Her gaze stopped as if she saw the card with her own two eyes, even though on the surface it seemed like she was just staring at the cigarette shelves.
Internet forums speculated that all she can do is use her vision to zoom in and out like a scope. But the knowledge of the public is always incomplete.
I better watch what I’m doing. Maeven pockets the cardholder.
There’s a few more minutes until she said she’d meet back up with Ocean Company. In the meantime, she heads for the community centre.
“Captain June?” calls Maeven, just outside of the captain’s tent flap. No Resonance. She’s come to find the man likes to hide it away sometimes, for whatever reason. “Marco?”
“Polo!” she hears.
Maeven steps inside.
“Good morning Riel,” says Captain June, sitting cross-legged on his fold-out bunk with a mug in his hand. He’s out of uniform like usual. Striped pyjamas.
“I was just wondering, um.” She searches around the tent, points to one of the corners. “That thing. Where can I find one? I didn’t see it in storage.”
“You want a field chair?”
“Yes.”
“You can have that one if you’ll do something for me.”
“OK.”
The captain sips his tea and leaps out of bed. He doesn’t even know what he meant by “something,” Maeven surmises, as the old man meanders around the room, poking at things with his stick and seemingly no goal in his mind. Eventually, he takes a clipboard from his desk, examines it back to front, then unclips the paper so it’s empty.
Captain June holds it out to her.
As Maeven reaches for it, he cloaks the board with Will forming a brief flash of harmless fire.
It’s slightly warm and very solid. It doesn’t squish like normal cork anymore. She gets the idea. Maeven sets her plastic bags on the ground, she holds the clipboard in both hands, heightens her Will, and squeezes so hard her muscles begin to shake.
Fuck it’s hard!
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Her grip loosens with a sharp exhale.
Captain June hums. “It may take a couple days, but you can do it.” He sips his tea.
Maeven takes her bags. Nothing she can do at this moment, she’ll have to keep trying. She leaves with the board.
Nothing’s free, she muses.
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12.2 True Soul Theory
“C’mon Heigen. Move.”
“Your mantra should be at the front of your mind.”
It’s their second patrol. They’ve settled on a roof of a residential block, standing in front of Win’s stubborn manifestation. The dream homework has made progress. Win said he dreamt of a rice bowl after two nights, now he’s trying to put a garden around it. Maeven understands that it’s not easy. Vivid dreams seem to only come if they want to and lying on a portable nylon bunk doesn’t grant them the best of sleeps. Then as for visual exercises, he’s been doing them every hour or so, though it seems he’s not quite convinced of what it’s done for him yet.
Time is all he needs, Maeven thinks. Progress will come natural to him.
“Heigen, I want you to move your arm,” he repeats. The armed creature stands idle, swords lowered at its sides. Maeven advised that he should avoid working directly on Heigen until he developed his dream control a bit further, but Win insisted.
“Why do you want it to move its arm?” says Maeven.
“Because then it can actually do something,” he answers.
“What do you want it to do?”
“I want it to fight.”
“Why do you want it to fight?”
“Because I want to be strong.”
“Why do you want to be strong?”
“To prove myself,” he states. He shakes both arms and stretches them towards Heigen. “That’s my mantra. If no one else believes I can do it, doesn’t matter. They can watch if they want, but the only one that deserves to see the proof is me.”
His Will is rising. It manifests itself as a purple glow around his body. Prove yourself. It’s a mantra of certainty, of dignity.
The sound of clanking steel catches their attention. Heigen’s arm twitched. Maeven shifts forward in anticipation. Win holds his lips shut and concentrates.
The minion begins to raise its arms inch-by-inch, and the long katana slowly angles itself with it, upwards until its glinting under the moonlight.
Like a clock striking twelve, the arm reaches full extension.
“Yes!” Win exclaims. There’s both shock and relief in his voice as he grips the sides of his head.
Maeven smiles. She notices him drop his hand for a high five, and after staring at it for a fraction of a second too long, she claps it. “It’s all about taking control,” she goes on to explain. “You need to convince your Will that your commands align with your true nature. Soon enough you shouldn’t have to formulate anything and it’ll synchronise with your unspoken intentions.”
“It only took about…” Win clicks his wristwatch. “Three hours.”
“Three hours is—urg nothing.” Her voice strains as she starts to leave for the steps. She’s kept Captain June’s clipboard with her so she can try her Will at it every now and then. There hasn’t been a dent since it was handed to her.
Win de-manifests Heigen and follows behind. “What do you keep doing with that thing?”
“Trying to break it,” she utters.
“Why?”
“I need it for Captain June—UGH.” Maeven’s grip falters again.
“It’s just wood. Give it to me.”
She hands him the clipboard.
Win holds it between his hands and squeezes. Nothing. He breathes, then tries again harder.
Why does he think he can break it if I can’t anyway?
He repositions. With his foot on one of the steps he presses it against his leg and pushes it with almost everything he has before Maeven swipes it away.
“What the hell?” says Win. “Why is it like that?”
“June Optimised it,” she explains. “You’ll hurt yourself if I let you try any harder.”
“It’s like metal,” he says, examining his hands.
“Anyway,” says Maeven, stepping down onto the sand. “I think you can imagine how much concentration it takes to fully control a minion. On a battlefield, unless your minions have a very good autopilot, you’re going to have other things to think about at the same time you’re controlling your Creations. We can play a game that flexes this particular muscle. Once I say start, start counting every second that follows.”
“Um, OK.”
Maeven’s sure he thinks that it sounds like the easiest game in the world, and as he’s digesting the concept, she pulls the little watch from his left wrist and straightens.
The only movement he seems to notice is the minor shift of her arm as she slides it into the pocket of her VR jacket. “Ready?” she says.
“Sure,” he answers. He’s oblivious.
“Start.”
1…2…3
Predictably, Win starts off with no visible trouble, though he’s staring at her with a tinge to his eyebrows.
“So, what did you get up to today?” asks Maeven, when his eyes then harden to a look of protest.
“What did you get up to today, Win?” she repeats as he pockets his hands. “Don’t count with your fingers.”
“I…ate…breakfast…then…distributed…wellbeing…kits…to locals…” he answers. Maeven knows what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to talk between counts.
“What then?”
“Went for run…with Gunner…”
She grins. “What’s Gunner’s assignment number?”
A long pause. “Eighteen,” Win answers.
“What about Callum?”
“Nine…teen.” He’s shutting his eyes now.
“What about—”
“You’re fifteen, I’m sixteen, Forrest seventeen.”
So this is what her academy professors felt like. No wonder some days they looked like they were having the time of their lives, watching their students suffer with mind-excruciating activities. For a few seconds she grants him a welcomed, extended silence. Win seems to relax a little.
“Add twelve,” she says, watching him press his fingers against his eyelids.
That one’s a classic.
“Wanna see if we’re on the same number?” says Maeven.
“You…were counting?!” says Win.
“3…2…”
“Wait—” Win glances at his emptied wrist. “Where’s—”
“…1”
He throws his arms along with a number. “72.”
“58,” says Maeven.
“Dammit!”
Win looks sceptical. He tells her, “You made that up.”
“Your watch seems to agree with me.”
Dangling it from her fingers, Win snatches it from her. The clockface reads: 00:00:46 paired with the function mode indicated in a little banner across the top: STOPWATCH. Add twelve, and Maeven’s number lines up.
They try a few more rounds on the way back to the community centre, and she finds it shamefully funny seeing Win error again and again. It’s not like it’ll last very long, anyway. So far the assignee has been learning things at a terrifyingly fast pace. Apparently, it’s a common attribute to the automanifested, and despite having already known this, it hasn’t yet ceased to exceed her expectations.
“62,” says Maeven
“47,” says Win. “I’m getting worse.”
They finish outside the community centre. Maeven picks up the backpack she left by the door and unzips it. “Wait a second Win.” She begins to hand to him its contents.
It’s a textbook with a blocky abstract hardcover. Win brings it up to his face to read it. “The Inner Psyche.” Maeven hands him another. “Homo Sapience: A History.” He grimaces. “Are these psychology books?”
“Psychoanalysis and anthropology,” she clarifies. “The last one’s a journal.”
Win takes the moleskin from the top of the pile.
“If I knew I would be teaching a Creationist, I would have brought a different library,” she says, slapping a pack of highlighters to top it off. “Read the books. Highlight what stands out to you. Just use the purple highlighter or something because mines in pink.”
“And the journal?”
“For journaling. Write about your day, write what you're thinking. Especially write if something’s bothering you.”
“This is dumb,” Wins states.
“What is Will, Win?”
She expected a comment like that.
Win shifts the books under his arm. “It's the power to make what we want happen.”
“It’s fulfilment,” says Maeven. “It has its limits. I can’t stare at my bank account and Will it to a higher balance. I can’t use Will to get the stars to fall or Earth to disappear. Will rises from the spirit. Your strengths and limitations. Your true purpose. The more you know yourself, the more you know your Will, and the better your Will will cooperate with what you want it to do. Journaling helps because it forces you to articulate yourself.” She opens the door of the centre, the creak of yellow light shines through.
“I know myself,” Win argues.
She turns back. “You don’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I don’t even fully know myself. I’ve been journalling since I was eight.”
“Maybe that just means it doesn’t work.”
“It means it takes a lifetime to learn, Win.” Maeven says. “One last thing. You summon Heigen using two hands, you notice that? You should try to drop it to one, if at all. Break the habit while it's early,” she says. “Users can fall slave to their own arbitrary rituals. If it’s a necessary condition, that’s fine. But if you can avoid it, you should. At least have a hand free in a fight.”
Slowly, Win nods his head, shoving his new homework in his bag.