The hands reached for my face, fingers straining to scratch at my eyes, then they dropped back to try to pry my wrists off with some urgency.
They eventually went limp.
I’d later regret killing him. It was a lesson I learned. Since he was the last one I should have subdued him so that I could question him later. At the time he was just someone who had tried to kill me, and therefore someone who had to die.
I looked at the three new bodies again.
I’d stripped them, harvested the implants from the center of their brains, and set them outside to freeze. It was easier moving bodies once they were frozen.
Now that I had time, I thought. I considered.
I remembered the mirror from exploring the settlement and had retrieved it.
The man, Thad, hadn’t been wrong. My eyes were indeed red, but I couldn’t understand exactly why they would have responded in the way they had.
I went over it in my mind again.
We returned to the town, I pulled the sled down main street stopping at the house I had cleared out and boarded up. I was using it to store food.
The men made some comments about the pile of meat but they all helped carry in the slabs of meat and stack them on the plates and trays I had collected from the other buildings in the settlement. Once the meat was stored, except a large piece for dinner, we returned to the power distribution building.
The crates of valuables, at least according to the value the system places on things, were still there though there was evidence the tarps had been disturbed.
The large vehicle with tank treads was parked in the street.
The room I slept in was crowded with the electronics that made the settlement a settlement, the settlement systems, batteries, and the power distribution system. Adding four people made the space cramped.
“This the only building you have heated?”
Thad elbowed him and he grunted.
“He means thank you for the hospitality, anything with walls and a door is great. After dinner-” he paused as he pulled the head covering off exposing his face. The others were removing gloves.
I didn’t have gloves, but I turned around as I pulled my goggles off and hung them on the wall. Then I began unwrapping my scarf.
“After dinner,” Thad had continued, “We’ll take any building you offer. I got a small gen heater that will keep us alive. Then in the morning we can talk- Red eye!”
The other two were getting their heads clear of scarfs and hats and coverings. Thad had looked up into my face, his eyes going wide and his skin going white. Then he screamed “Red eye!”
Nothing happened for a moment, and then they tried, and failed, to kill me. They did get a knife into me a few times and even into some important bits but I healed up after no more than an hour.
I don’t think they could.
Heal I mean. Which would explain why the man I’d originally found in here had died of a single gunshot wound.
I looked over at the wall where I’d hung the mirror after I’d hunted it down. The red irises of my eyes looking back at me. I didn’t so much smile as expose my teeth. The polished metal spread from canine to canine across the top teeth. The canine teeth longer than those of other humans.
I’d already stripped down and checked myself out with the mirror to compare myself to their dead bodies, just to make sure there were no other differences.
The eyes, teeth, and the port near my hip seemed to be the only obvious differences. I had a feeling though I could dismiss the port near my hip. That the internal fires would dissolve it and leave me smooth flesh if I wanted them to.
Not the eyes or teeth though. Those I didn’t feel I could change but I wasn’t sure why.
I activated the icon that had changed to blue earlier on the hunt.
It displayed a page titled, [New Notifications]
[Skill Javelin Throwing - 7]
I cleared the page and the icon returned to gray. It was easy to unlock skills. All you had to do was ask for help with a certain task or if there was a skill associated with a task. Then follow the instructions and guidance.
When I unlocked the Javelin Throwing skill I had to learn how to align and twist my body and then incorporate my arm motion as well. When I was being guided by the skill it felt like there was a groove where it was easier to move in, and outside of that correct motion it was more difficult.
I’d only been able to get to level three by going through the motions and then level five by throwing at a wall in town. Then a message would let me know the skill was capped and have a suggestion on how to raise it higher.
At level five the suggestion had been to work with moving targets. I hadn’t moved on to those, instead finding the skill was good enough to hunt with. Since the animals moved I still earn skill ups occasionally.
I looked out the window at the three bodies again. They had cooled enough that snow was beginning to settle on them without melting.
The system didn’t know why red eyes would anger them, nor why I had red eyes and they didn’t.
I began exploring the icons and the pages they displayed again. I stopped on the page title status.
[Status]
[Name - Pete Redstone]
[Rank - STRAT/22K3.4.2]
[Health - 100%]
[Health Reserve nodes 34/34]
[Energy - 100%]
[Energy Reserve nodes 0/0]
[Modification - Charging port]
“What is an Energy Reserve Node?”
“Unknown.”
I spent an hour asking the question in different ways but I couldn’t get any information at all on either health or energy reserve nodes.
In the morning I hauled the three bodies to the end of town where I’d piled all the other bodies. The dog things wouldn’t come into town, but they would come this close.
I climbed up to the roofs and cleaned the solar panels off and then returned.
After exposing the skill system while trying to learn to throw a javelin I had become aware of many other skills. Currently I was skilling up sewing as I mended, repaired, and modified the heavy clothing I wore.
I spent an hour in the evening with the sledge hammer, splitting wedges, and hatchet. Wood working wasn’t advancing past five, but that was enough.
I’d collected the small lighters from around the settlement and from time to time had fires where I cooked the frozen meat I’d stored.
The next day I worked in the forge making another barbed head for a new javelin. The voice explained the equipment, including the welder, cutting torch, and smelter when I’d found the building.
I had expected the associated skill to be called Hammering, but I was leveling Blacksmithing instead. Sometimes that went up when I used the forge to heat the metal, and sometimes when I used the hammer to shape it.
There was only so much liquid fuel in the tank. After creating the first two javelins I noticed the liquid fuel was about half full but I don’t know at what level it had started.
With the third javelin complete I moved on to exploring the large metal box that appeared to move on tank treads. Thad and his two companions had brought it when they arrived.
There was a massive door in the rear, that likely lowered to create a ramp, but the only external- anything- that wasn’t metal armor, was a small plasteel box with the same type of connection port as we all had at the base of our skulls.
Since that had many strands that ran directly to the implant, and the implant seemed fairly important, I wasn’t willing to connect the two.
When the batteries topped off I turned the electric heater on. I made my own mittens, which was more a hat for each hand than a mitten. If I needed to do anything I’d just take my hand out to do it.
The cold must affect me differently, like the healing did. Thad and the other two had multiple layers of clothing on.
Once I tried it I found it was very much preferable.
I ate and charged and cleaned the solar panels off. I collected and sorted items the system valued and put them in crates I made from wood planks and nails.
I made two more javelins and reworked the three I’d already made adjusting weight and balance so they were all about the same.
I circled the settlement with the weapons and the sled but rarely saw tracks of larger animals. When I did I hunted, butchered, and brought the meat back.
I continued to modify the clothing and equipment, including the breathing tube and goggles, until I had something I could speak and breath through that wouldn’t fog up the goggles.
The crossbow the man had was a wonderful device. I’d gotten the skill up to level eleven over a handful of days simply by shooting birds while I pulled the sled. Of all the animals birds seemed the most resilient to what the system called “mutation.”
I rarely saw birds with anything more than an extra leg.
Two days later, as I examined the first bird I’d managed to shoot while it was flying, I paused.
What if the birds were mutated the same as everything else?
A bird with only one wing wouldn’t be able to fly and would die off. They were tiny things, with their wings being most of their weight anyway, so likely having three or four wings would make them too heavy to fly. Which would kill them.
I considered that for a while, then popped the bird into my mouth and crunched down on the animal.
The trick with birds was to take a deep breath first. Trying to breathe past a mouthful of feathers had caused me to cough violently in the past.
Their bones were also easier to chew than other animals. Even the small rats that the traps caught were almost more trouble than they were worth because I had to debone them.
I’d come up with a quick enough method. Cut the heads off moving upward and then peel the skin back down along the spine. Then just eat the flesh as it was exposed, shoulders, middle, and rear. I’d leave the feet and tail attached to the peeled fur and toss the whole of it aside when I was finished.
Birds were even easier. Even the larger birds weren’t that big under their feathers.
The bigger birds were simple to eat. You just pressed both thumbs into their chest, and then swiped your thumbs away. The feathers and skin would rip and slide and expose the breast meat. I normally just ate the breast meat and discarded the rest of the bird.
I spent more time retrieving the bolts than I did eating anyway.
I continued doing the Settlement Tasks when I could. Many required items from outside the settlement. Some asked me to establish trade agreements with surrounding settlements, and the help page on of surrounding settlements had two suggestions. That led me to figure out that the settlement had it’s own map. There were hundreds of items listed with prices with EE Credits. After each price, on the same line it always said, [Founder Discount 100%]
I purchased, for 0 EE Credits, all public map data. Below it, listed in a different color, was a line stating [All Map Data (Restricted to Citizens)] which I purchased as well. Again for zero credits.
Once those two were purchased, there were no other items listed for sale.
“What else does this settlement sell?”
The other items for sale, both public and restricted to citizens were listed as schema.
Again the Founder Discount meant I could buy everything for zero credits. Which I did.
This time it took time for the list to clear.
Each item was highlighted in blue from left to right. As the color shift completed the line disappeared.
Most items were listed as variants.
[Red-rock Revolver 9mm Schema - Iron 6 Variant]
[Red-rock Revolver 9mm Schema - Steel 3 Variant]
[Red-rock Revolver 9mm Schema - Plasteel 1 Variant]
[Red-rock Revolver 9mm Schema - Iron 9 Variant]
There seemed to be forty or fifty of the revolver 9mm variants.
The voice replied with “unknown” to all my questions until it explained with a schema was.
“Open schema,” I said.
“Missing argument. Which schema would you like to open.”
“Any of the revolver variants.”
“Working,” she said, then a moment later added, “No revolver schema variant can be opened. File structure unknown. Would you like me to update file structure definitions?”
“Yes.”
“Unable to establish connection. Feed connection restricted to local communication net.”
Most of talking to the system was just asking questions about the last thing she said that didn’t make sense.
“Why is feed restricted to local communication net?”
“Settlement is running as isolated node.”
“Can you change that?”
“Founder permissions needed. Do you authorize settlement to change feed node status?”
“Yes.”
“Node status change failed. No external node communication hardware found. Would you like to create a task to install communication hardware?”
“Yes.”
“Unable to create task, no suitable communication schema found.”
“Where can I find suitable communication schema?”
“Unknown.”
I sighed.
The conversation ended in much the same way that most conversations with the system ended.
I was studying the map locations several days later when I realized I had made no plans what-so-ever. Even with new information about settlements that were close, I kept to my routine. Eat, charge, hunt, clean solar panels.
I was converting metal into crud crossbow bolts during the day and exploring the settlement. The wall that surrounded the settlement was odd.
I remembered walking endlessly around it and eventually solved the puzzle when I activated the breaker that fed power to the walkway.
The metal planks electrified one at a time. Ten planks were not electrified and then two were. After three seconds, one of the planks de-energized and the plank ahead of the other energized plank, became energized.
It was clever. To stay recharged I had to walk. I’m not sure exactly what benefit there was from having me walk along the walls but that was the apparent mechanism to induce me to do so.
I stopped recharging.
I estimated it would take me four days to walk to Raven’s Rest, the closest settlement listed on the map. Which meant eight days for a round trip. I needed to see how long it would take before I grew hungry for energy.
Two weeks later it rained. It was the first time it rained instead of snowed all winter and I had a vague notion about spring. A short series of questions to the system showed me where we were in the seasonal cycle.
Two weeks without charging and without changing my routine left me at seventy percent charge. Experimenting with a knife and cutting myself. Small scratches and superficial burns did not activate the white hot fires of healing, but deep gashes and blistering burns in the forge did.
The healing took a large portion of energy.
I wasn’t sure what would be best to trade, so I loaded the sled up with items that the system didn’t assign a value to at all but that I had found value in.
Mostly it was clothing, but I piled on the useless guns, the ones without ammunition, as well as boots and shoes in sizes other than my own.
I recharged fully, outfitted myself for a hunt, and made sure the items I’d secured to the sled the night before were still secure.
“How does the map update my location?” I asked the night when I was sure I was outside the settlement’s feed range. The map was updating in white as I walked confirming information I had received from the settlement system.
“Positional location is updated via local system feeds, pings with other entities sharing location data, extrapolation of stellar charts, and extrapolation of satellite and lunar signals.”
“What are stellar charts?”
I worked my way through the confusing answers expanding the questions when I needed to.
The implant could guess my location when I looked up by studying the night sky. Currently it was guessing my location with much more accuracy by measuring invisible flashes of light from big bits of metal with computer systems far more complex and powerful than the settlement systems that ran in circles around the planet.
The how of it was hard to understand and involved math. Somehow.
I could add fine, and even the multiplication the system explained made sense because it was just adding over and over. The geometry didn’t make sense beyond that it had to do with pictures and shapes. Trigonometry had to do with those same shapes but mostly with the triangles, which were apparently very complex, even though they only had three sides.
There were also people on the moon. Or had been.
The signal that repeatedly broadcast from the moon was a transmission asking for emergency evacuation. The date encoded in the transmission was over a hundred years ago.
While my estimate on on the distance to Raven’s Rest and my rate of walking had been accurate, I made a poor assumption about how much I would sleep.
I found, once I was on the road and away from the known elements of the settlement, that I did not want to sleep for fear of being attacking while I slept.
I should have increased my levels with the Welding skill and constructed a metal box with a door I could secure for the sled. Or perhaps attempted to cut into the armored box on the tracks to gain access to it.
While I grew tired and needed breaks from the physical activity of hauling the sled, I did not sleep. Instead I arrived at Raven’s Rest two days after I departed.