Chapter 41: The Heart of the matter

Libby was very concerned about Adam’s mood swings of late. It didn’t make sense acclimatize should have the opposite effect, especially when used to its fullest extent.

Meca and Trey were worried that they knew exactly what the problem was. However they felt like two naughty school boys who have just kicked a football through the headmasters study window. Followed by perhaps killing his cat. And then maybe setting fire to the whole dam lot, school and all. Perhaps even with everyone still in it. In short they felt like Dr Frankenstein and Dr Miles all rolled into one. They had created a monster.

There was no doubt in their minds now, that the Nanobots had some kind of sentience. They had not been acting randomly but with purpose completing tasks before they had even been sent instructions. This had been fine to start with, Meca and Trey had been thinking about taking credit for this amazing happening, when the Nanobots took it one step to far.

That is the Nanobots that had been upgraded to god-tier to fight against the system allegedly tried to wipe out Adam’s existence. They had been upgraded again the second time it happened. And that’s when they started acting weird.

They had tried talking to Echo by circumlocution and were sure he was not on to them, probably. He had divulged that a lower life-form such as snail could in theory be transformed all the way up to god hood, not by simply tier-ing up its spirit shell but pretty darn close to that. After that they didn’t ask any more questions.

Anyway problem was the tier-G Nanobots, had decided to go for a walk about in Adam’s soul shell and had not returned. Meca and Trey of course were frantic.

“It is our prime directive to tell the others.” Said Meca. But Trey was still hesitant.

“But what actually happens if we break our prime directive? Clarissa said she and the others had broken theirs.” Trey said sounding rebellious, when he was actually just shitting himself, wanting to avoid Libby’s wrath.

“Seriously! Clarissa and the rest… well Clarissa anyway was the one who released the void beasts. And according to Iakesi, she was working for the Elios system still. Therefore she couldn’t very well have broken it could she. Q.E.D she lied to trick us.” Meca said, firmly.

Meca sent a private message via nanobot (old school) to Libby.

Adam managed to shake the beasts eventually. Crashing through the undergrowth did no good as they were good at picking up his trail. So, he had to shadow phase then run a fair distance through the shadow realm before returning to the physical realm. He then commenced Quest T for Trap.

First he tried making a hole by sending the earth to the shadow realm. This worked to start with but then hit a snag, as the subterranean sections of the forest were ditto in the shadow realm. So he couldn’t send soil there. Instead he had to do things the old fashioned way, he fashioned a spade out of lumber.

The digging was a pain in the arse but after a while he actually found it therapeutic. To be able to do something constructive with his anger. He actually calmed down enough to wonder what was wrong with himself? Why had he calm demeanour evaporated? He knew he had responsibilities and couldn’t just go full on berserker and risk getting killed. Besides he also knew that the kids were watching. He felt bad about that. He carried on digging.

Libby was pulling her metapholical hair out, as the bomb dropped. “Aaaargghh” she thought. At least Meca had told her, he was a dear.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She investigated one of the G-Tier Nanobots. She found out something very revealing.

Previously, she had studied everything and anything in the environs of the spirit sea: spirit shells, the shadow strand and the system strand. Also the symbols that turned out to be space magic.

The real find however, was when she continued to look further and further into the complexities of the energies involved. She found underlying all the symbols there were an even more detailed set of instructions.

Well she thought of them as instructions. It seemed a similar hierarchy, to programming languages. You have machine code, assembly language, low level languages, high level languages and finally, no need to know anything about programming: software.

From what she had read most practitioners had no idea of these underlying mechanisms. They used differing methods to inject code: magical or spiritual items, cultivation methods and/or transference of energies from another practitioner.

The code was held in their spirit shell, where it could be activated (executed) later. They could level up these abilities by simply adding more energy. Her mission had been to decompile any symbols into this most basic of energies. Then she could get ideas for how to make her own symbols.

It was all very interesting to Libby as it seemed she could delve further and further. And that’s exactly what she had done. Well now she had an excuse, prime directive and all.

She found the G-Tier Nanobots (God Tier Androids, GTA for short) had some rather interesting and very particular instructions encoded into their very fabric. This also turned a lot of the theories she’d read upside down and perhaps even inside out. The GTAs had been given a prime directive: Save Adam.

Adam slumped the side of his pit, surveying his hard work. A ten meter deep trench. He wasn’t quite sure it was deep enough yet, but even he needed to rest from time to time. It gave him a little time to think, and a lot of time to notice a strange feeling. It was not the rage he felt from before but more subtle but like putting on a pair of new shoes, it didn’t feel right. The emotions did not gel with him. They did not feel like they were his, they were panicked, he was calm.

The GTAs had hurried to Adam’s aid when they sensed damage to his core’s integrity. No one else had noticed but repeatedly using acclimatize does have consequences. Uniquely using it at over level 50. Which was actually Tier-T, Terra Tier.

Don’t get me wrong amazing ability. Can’t breathe under water, use acclimatize. Can’t find food, use acclimatize and it will adapt your body to live on sweet fa.

The last acclimatize had changed Adam’s brain functioning, any more of that and he would no longer be Adam. And soon enough would just be a beast.

No Adam meant a breach of the prime directive, so the GTAs swarmed his spirit shell to try and rectify matters, or matter for sure.

They had been trying everything but there was nothing they could find that needed fixing. They even tried communicating with Adam, to warn him. They weren’t sure if it had worked.

Then they remembered how one of them had been sent to Libby before. They would ask her help.

“Help! Adam is being erased. Please help us comply with the prime directive.” Was the message Libby received.

“If you tell me what is erasing Adam we can try and fix this. And who are you by the way?” Replied Libby, thinking she knew all too well who it was.

“Danger! Acclimatization of materials from stone-tusk boar, has meant, decrease in integrity of Adam. If percentage drops further he will no longer be human or Adam. Please help, we are Nanobots, we think.” Said the Nanobots urgently.

Shit thought Libby. What can we do? If only Bones was here, he was the medical expert. Trey was good but evidently not that good otherwise he would have foreseen this blatant danger. Trey give him his due had the excuse of only ever utilising dead life-forms before.

They would need to un-acclimatise him or at least try to stabilise him in some way. In short they would need to operate.

The GTAs were not willing to wait any longer and sent another message. And they were all egging each other on to send something.

“Where can we find knowledge to help him? Please assist us. Please. Urgent. Very.” they stated.

That was a good point. Meca and Trey had used the nanobots to copy some regions of Bones for well just this kind of circumstance. She would need to get onto them.

“The information we need is held in a structure recently created by you Nanobots. We will get the information assimilated into one of us so we can use it.” Libby contacted Merc.

The GTAs didn’t need to be told twice, several hundred of them left Adam’s spirit shell and headed straight to the construct holding Bones memories. They knew exactly where it was they had built it after all, they just didn’t know what it was at the time.