I tried everything I could think of to get the leeches to condense around me again. I wanted to see if what I had done was something that would fade with time or would it turn out to be a constant thing. After a while of blasting the liquid fire around me with propulsion energy, it was enough to attract a mountain of leeches. When nothing happened I decided that it was a long-term solution.

“So, it would seem that the leeches are either connected somehow or a communal entity. Once one is harmed or killed the rest will not interfere with whoever harmed them again. I can’t tell if they are still around me, just unwilling to condense and feed… or if they have fled this area altogether. I also don’t have any way to know if what I did had affected other miners or if it is just me that the leeches will leave alone now. I will find out when I reach the south pole in a few hours.” I said as I opened my map again and reset my destination marker before beginning to jet through the sun. I noticed something odd, a coloration that I would fly through if I chose to pick a straight path to my destination. I was in the middle of zooming in to check it out when Meditati’s voice interrupted me.

“Kevin! Do you have any idea what you have just done?” She seemed to scream out at me from the surrounding fire.

“Put a bigger bullseye on my head?” I asked. It seemed that that was all I was doing recently. The more I learned about the Tela race, the less I felt that I was safe amongst them. Some, for whatever reason, seemed to almost be monsters in their thirst for power.

“Yes, sadly, you made what was just a novel interest into the focus of all Tena Citizens. You see, in the beginning, mining was a big thing. Similar to the gold rush your country experienced in the past. Once fatigue began, however, everything changed. Mining cr became something that most Citizens wouldn’t spend their lives doing. They would rather stay in high-speed VR time than to have everyone that they cared about forget them while they worked away in real-time.”

“Why didn’t they have the cr mined by robots?” I asked.

“Oh, they tried to, but that was deemed illegal in a matter of moments once everyone realized that all of the wealth would stack onto the first person who was able to do it. With Citizen miners, the wealth would spread out. Additionally, a couple of stars were mined in that manner and it quickly made them have such high fatigue levels that no robot or citizen could enter or leave once inside the Chromosphere.”

“So what is happening out there in the Tela Empire?” I asked as I was starting to get bored having nothing to see but a dotted line stating my progress towards my destination.

Bullseye? Bullseye…. Why does that word tickle my memory? Oh no! I forgot to drop off the tracking module! I quickly shot it off behind me and sped up, even more, to get away from its location.

“Well, the good news is, I have been transferring your achievements to display as if they are happening to my Core’s sun. It has all been registered to an undisclosed citizen with nominal cr abilities. This has flooded miner guilds into my Core at record rates in the attempt to duplicate your findings. All Tela Citizens are watching this event to see if it will pan out. I really must say that the power output that your strange cr can put out far exceeds what ours can do. It is beginning to seem like it isn’t cr at all, or at least not our nanobots that are driving yours.”

“It isn’t. Please keep this just for your simulation data and not for public records. When I received my cr it said that it was from an unknown source. Also, I think I remember it saying that it was incompatible with Tela systems.”

“Why isn’t there any record of that in my brother’s archives?”

“Because my VR home was unable to alert the System of the Error. It seems that I can be the sole Authority in my personal habitat.” I answered.

When Meditati responded I could practically hear her buzzing with excitement at having new information to create simulations with. “This is so amazing! Please keep me informed of anything new. I am just happy that I managed to get the focus off of you for awhile. Try to find some cr to pay your debt with and get out of there. I will keep you updated as things progress. All of this is happening in real-time so the Mining Guilds haven’t even reached my sun to begin attempting to duplicate your research yet. The news being generated by this is going crazy.” She said before leaving me to my journey through the layers of the sun.

I checked my map again and found that I had passed into the Photosphere while I had been talking to Meditati. There was something here in the soup around me. I could feel it occasionally bounce off the skin of my cr as I sped through the fire soup. It began to happen more often until I reached the Convection zone and ran into a river of the stuff. A window of text popped up soon after.

-Unregistered harvestable cr detected-

“Well done Kevin! You have found raw cr!” Num started to say when I slowed to a stop to figure out what I had discovered.

“Normally, as part of the tutorial, I would enable access to modify and use your limbs as vacuums to suck up and hold any raw cr found. Since you already have complete control of your cr I am unable to do that. I can only advise you to gather as much as you can and to bring it to a Convict Carrier for processing.

“Excuse me Nums? What was that last part?” I asked as a different text popped up into my vision and stayed centered at the bottom of my view.

“I said that you need to take all raw cr to a Convict Carrier so that it can be processed and turned into cr embedded with Tela microrobots,” Num replied as if he was unaware of the extra text hovering in my view. I could feel my surprise rising as I decided to back up away from the river of cr. Sure enough, the strange new text faded away when I got a short distance away from the raw cr.

“Num, could you tell me what all is displayed on my Interface when I touch the mass of raw cr again? I am troubleshooting something so that I can learn how to spot cr faster.” I said, making up the last part.

“Yes sir, Kevin,” Num replied as I began nosing forward again until the front of my teardrop front touched the raw cr again.

-Unregistered harvestable cr detected-

“Your display states 'Unregistered harvestable cr detected' in bracketed bold text,” Num said a second after the notification popped up again.

“Ok! Thanks, Num.” I said before messing with the block of text and changing it into a circle of color that got darker the more raw cr I was around. “Wonderful idea Kevin! That will keep your visible space more organized while you harvest.” Num said, unaware that I had simply done that to move it out of my vision, keeping the strange new text within my view instead. I had a feeling that this was coming straight from my strange cr and was not something that I should reveal to the Convict AI just yet. Too many interesting secrets that I discovered were slipping through my fingers and into the greedy hands of others.

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I pushed my way into the river of raw cr and began to make a cargo bay out of the material of my cr, enlarging my teardrop shape to allow for the center area to keep it all. My little robot was relatively tiny and I could only stretch my cr skin just so far, making me a hollow dart.

Once I filled my internal space up to the max I compressed it all down, pushing inwards with my cr, until all the liquid of the sun was out before re-harvesting some more raw cr. I did this several times until I was packed full of compressed cr. I smiled as I inspected my little robot body. I was a foot and a half long dart of raw currency.

-Estimated raw cr harvested: 4,500,000 CR-

“Hahaha! This is wonderful! Now I can go and pay my bill and get out of here.” I said happily as I started south again, moving through the huge river of cr around me. It seemed that down here there was no lack of cr. I wondered what opening up mass harvesting would do. The Tela race were smart, I had to give them that, they just seemed to have blind spots when it came to what the effects of their actions would have on the universe. I mean, they harvested materials, whole solar systems worth, just to build dyson spheres.

I had so much cr that I decided to contact Ash to see how much he owed. Hopefully, I could clear out his and all those other Convict’s bills to get them free.

“Hey, Ash! How are you doing?” I asked before I could think of how stupid the question was.

“Kevin?” Ash replied a second later.

“Yeah, who else would it be?” I asked as I added even more speed, wanting to shave off time as much as I could. I glanced down at my map and noticed that I was almost to that dark discoloration that I had seen before. I slowed down, not wanting to pass it by as I talked to Ash.

“Have you heard the news, Kevin? Someone over at the Provil Research Core has discovered a way to negate fatigue!” Ash asked me, I could hear a hint of desperation in Ash’s voice at the end.

“What does that mean for us, convicts?” I asked.

“Nothing good, I only heard about it because all of the guild miners are raging about it and getting ready to leave. They are angry because all of the rental harvester robots have already been rented out to other guilds. Not only that, it seems that too many Guilds are arriving at once, causing pressure and a backlog on the banks as they allow for currency to be released to make more harvest robots. I just…” Ash broke off at the end, seemingly unable to continue speaking for some reason.

“Ash, how much cr do you owe?” I asked, beginning to understand what this would mean for convicts. Convicts had no access to the news or outside networks. They would be pushed out, possibly of all mining spots while the free Citizens reaped the benefits from the influx of new wealth.

“What? Why do you ask? Are you just trying to rub it in my face? It is public knowledge, Kevin, just look it up in your Interface.” Ash said before going silent.

I tried to get Ash to talk to me again but was unable to. I must have done something taboo between convicts, asking how much the other owed. Perhaps Ash was just dropping into depression due to the outlook of his situation becoming even more dire.

“Num. Can you open up a display of all the convicts and their current debt for me?” I asked as I watched the dark patch on the map grow even closer. What could it be?

-Warning! Approaching Sunspots! Turn back!-

Weren’t Sunspots the dark patches recorded on suns? Why would the System warn me about it?

A list popped up in front of me of all the resident convicts and all of their debt. I searched and found that Ash owed 1.2 CR. On an impulse, I had the Interface tally up all of the convicts' debts. The total came out to just above 3,900,000 CR. There were a couple that had massive debts accrued. There were no reasons for the debts given. My debt was relatively near the bottom. There were several thousands of convicts who were almost done paying off their debts beneath me on the list.

“Hey, Num… what is the deal with Sunspots?” I asked as I started to map my way around the dark patch in front of me.

“Sunspots are areas of the sun that have a higher density and fatigue rating than any other location on the sun. The reason is unknown, as no miner or convict has ever returned from entering one.” Num replied.

“What do you mean? Can’t they still send data when trapped?” I asked as I started to move around the mass.

“No… from all records it appears that they all die when inside the Sunspot. It is as if they are crushed.” Nums said.

Hmmm… that was foreboding, I thought, as I noticed that the brightness of my surroundings lessened the closer that I was to the Sunspot. I didn’t feel any warning or fear from the cr that made up my robot body. I zoomed into my map and found a tiny spot that had formed a short distance from the main body of the Sunspot and decided to angle towards it. I was really curious what my cr would tell me the closer I got to it. System warnings kept popping up over and over again the closer I got to the smaller mass. I turned off the warnings and focused on how close I was to the surface of the small Sunspot. I say small, but here on the surface of the sun, I might as well have been looking at something 8 times the size of the earth.

This whole map vision was starting to get annoying. I needed and wanted to see. The moment that I got frustrated about not being able to see, the fiery soup around me cleared out.

“Whoa. Oh my goodness….” I said as I looked around clearly for the first time. Something amazing had changed, I could see everything around me as if I was swimming in an ocean. Down far below me I could make out the yellow-white core of the sun. Each layer upwards from it was a different shade as if it was different layers of water from the core of the star. Ahead of me was what appeared to be an iceberg. It was a dark jagged spike that reached all the way up from the core like a dagger of hard matter. The larger Sunspot was even more huge compared to the smaller one that I was looking at. Both seemed to have a long root that extended down into the core of the sun. “Are you seeing this Num?” I asked as I looked around. There were rivers and oceans of tiny little flecks of light, like tiny pearls hovering in the sea of the sun. I looked behind me and off into the distance. Sure enough, the “river of cr” that I had run into was a stream of the little dots of light. I could see the cr around me now!

“What am I supposed to see Kevin?” Num asked.

“Is there a way that miners can see through the material of the sun?” I asked, wondering if this was another gift from my secret cr.

“Negative. All miners harvest blind. They all use geo-coordinate systems provided through their Interface and the mapping functions of the carriers around the surface of the sun.”

“Oh. Ok…” I said as I stared around me in awe. I looked down at the core, enchanted by its color and beauty. At the very center of the core, there was a tiny, almost invisible dot of black. “Hmm… that is odd,” I said as I looked at it. I wondered what it was. I could almost feel the dot through the skin of my cr. It felt… a little like home or gravity. There wasn’t any text that popped up when I looked at it, my Interface wasn't seeing what I could see and my strange cr didn’t function as my Tela System Interface did so I was left just wondering what it was.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a small fragment of the darker material that matched the color of the smaller Sunspot. It was just a small chip in comparison to the iceberg next to it. I moved closer to it, wondering if it would damage me when I got too close to it. Nothing happened until I got right up next to it.

Gold? So what was my current cr made out of? - I wondered as I read the text that appeared at the bottom of my vision.