Drifting in this pod wasn’t much different from the one Sam had used every day. If there was one thing he could say, it was that it was faster. It was different, but he thought it might be like the difference between a sports car and a regular one. Having never been in a sports car, he could only guess.
It felt smoother and more realistic. In a normal simulation he felt half-numb because he was. The senses were dulled so you couldn’t mistake the simulation with real life. He could feel cool air on his skin and could smell something that reminded him of lemons and mint in the air. As he appeared in the simulation he found the pod didn’t open to the same tiny underground bunker he’d seen in the real world. Instead he found himself in the middle of a white void. The ground looked like white tile and every direction seemed to look like illuminated swirling fog lit by invisible lights Juan and Loki stood beside him.
“This feels so real,” Sam said, raising an arm to pinch himself. It was a common test to double check pain settings. Ian had screwed with his pod more than once in the past.
“Ouch!” he said, pinching his arm hard enough to bruise. “It’s 100%.”
“Better hope we don’t get hurt in here then,” Loki said aloud. His voice was clear and sounded like someone in their mid-teens.
“Yo, what?” Juan said, startled. Sam was no less shocked.
“You can talk?”
“I can talk?!? I didn’t mean to talk! Why can I talk?”
“That would be me!” King’s voice boomed out across the void, and he suddenly appeared towering above them as a hundred foot giant. The mist did nothing to conceal his figure, and he appeared illuminated by great spotlights.
He then spun in the air and shrunk himself down to their own size, landing in front of them with a flourish.
Sam suddenly realized he was in a sim with 100% immersion with someone else in complete control of it. The other two cheered, but he suppressed a shiver.
“I hope grandma was right about him.” He thought.
His grandfather seemed to give him a small smile, like he knew what Sam was thinking. The other two didn’t seem to notice.
“You could always talk!” King said, “Cat vocal cords aren’t meant for human speech. It hurt to talk like a human, right?”
“How did you know?” The cat asked.
“That has to do with the augments you all got. It’s time to tell you all upfront: I can hear and read your thoughts.”
Everyone was shocked, and Sam felt a cold bolt of terror go through him.
“Now, now, don’t be too frightened. I’m not doing it because I want to control your mind. It’s because this procedure is very dangerous, and I need to know what you’re thinking as you go through it. If you start to have issues I can fix it. That’s especially true for you Loki. This procedure was created for humans, and if you weren’t already made with DNA designed to give you a human-like brain it wouldn’t have worked at all.”
“How will you uh… how will you fix me?” Juan said, still faltering.
“The same way you all are getting upgraded. First things first. This is a clock connected to the outside world.”
He raised his hand and a digital display appeared in the air. It read 9:47 AM.
“I want you to tell me when that clock changes. Remember, this is directly linked to the outside world, running in real time. I’ll give you a hint: Don’t look at the minutes or hours.”
With that he vanished.
“So we just look at the stupid clock?” Loki asked.
“I guess so?” Juan said hesitantly.
Sam walked over and tapped the clock, expanding it. Seconds appeared. It was frozen at 03.
“I don’t know how this works,” Loki said. “Is it broken?”
“It’s stuck.” Juan said.
“I don’t think it’s stuck,” Sam said. “Is there a display for the amount of time that’s passed for us here?”
“Of course.” King’s disembodied voice boomed.
Another clock appeared. They’d been there for a little over a minute.
“What?” Juan asked. “We’re going fast?”
“Yeah.” Sam said. “The question is how fast.”
“I’m bored,” Loki said, immediately curling up and falling asleep.
“Well,” Sam said, “I guess we’ve got time. I never got to thank you for saving my life. If you hadn’t pushed me out of the way I would have died in that alley. Thank you.”
“I saw the uh… the footage.” Juan said. “You hit him in the head with a rock.”
“Yeah, I did. It’s a shame I didn’t take him out, but at least I got that.”
“I’m glad you hit him.” Juan said. “Your grandpa wrecked him.”
“Yeah, he did. Thanks for that, old man.”
“You’re welcome.” The voice echoed out.
They fell into a silence and stared at the clock, waiting for it to change.
“It’s been 20 minutes,” Juan said. “That’s crazy.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
“I p-paid to have augs for this. Brainergizer, have you seen the ad?”
“You can think twenty seven hours a day?”
“Yeah. It’s called framejacking, like the frames on a monitor or… or something. Time for you goes faster than the real world. That’s fast but it only gives you three uh…” he trailed off, becoming frustrated.
“Hours?” Sam asked.
“Right. Thanks. Yeah, it gives you three of those. Going too fast could kill you.”
“What?”
“Heat will cook your brain.”
“So are we getting brain damaged right now?”
“No.” King’s voice rang out.
“Loco,” Juan said.
They sat in silence a while longer before the clock hit one hour in local time - and the timer ticked over. One second had passed in the real world.
“How? I took a college c-course on this! We should be dead!”
King suddenly reappeared in front of them again.
“Hey everyone, I’ve got good news. I’ve been monitoring all of you and I should be able to take care of things.”
“About time,” Loki said, getting up, yawning, and stretching. “That was boring.”
“That was the point. I needed some base scans of all of you to make sure everything was working right. Besides, it’s a lot easier to show you how things work rather than just tell you. So it’s time for me to tell you the truth about your augment.”
King came close, pulling them towards him by just waving his hands in the air. “You are absolutely right,” He said to Juan. “Any normal brain gets fried by having a very hot computer inside their skull whether it’s made of flesh or steel. Your brain is no longer normal. All three of you should have died in that alley,” He said bluntly.
“What did you do to us?” Sam asked.
“This augment is the only augment you will ever need again. It is an upgrade to your nervous system and brain, essentially converting them to run on fiber-optics and is made out of something a lot tougher than regular gray matter. This isn’t an upgrade, it’s a replacement that absorbs the original.”
“It’s eating my brain?” Loki screamed. “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH MRRRROOWWWWWLLL!”
“You killed us?” Sam asked, horrified.
“Depends on if you think you’re dead. I don’t. You’re walking, talking, and you can remember your life right now. You’re the original Sam Wharton, with his memories. Most of your nervous system and brain are still unaugmented. Given time, this augment will absorb, copy, and replace all of that regular tissue but at no point in time will you disappear. You will be the same person with a much, much faster nervous system. It won’t hurt. After all, it’s been going on since you were first injured and you couldn’t tell.”
“Yay! I’m not dead!” Loki cheered.
“W-why am I damaged?” Juan asked.
“Parts of your brain were destroyed in the attack. I got there right after, but the injuries caused gaps in your memory. The brain takes time to heal itself even in the best case. Now it’s trying to rewire itself with much faster augmented tissue connected to it. The artificial tissue could replace what was missing, but couldn’t replace destroyed information. Your job here is piecing yourself back together. I’ve created a simulation to take you back through your life and help you rebuild your mind.”
He gestured and a door appeared where he pointed, seemingly hanging in thin air. It looked like a normal door.
“Walk through there and you’ll get your life back. I promise.”
“What about me? What about me?” Loki asked.
“You have intelligence but you don’t know how to use it. Like a child that grew up in the wilderness. There are a lot of tools you can use you’ve never heard of before. There’s no such thing as a school for cats, after all. At least until now.”
“You’re sending me to school? Noooooo! That’s a stupid human idea!” Loki whined.
“Tough luck,” Sam laughed. “Does that mean he’ll be able to talk outside of here?”
“That’s something I’m working on adding,” King said.
“So what about me?” Sam asked.
“You got your ass kicked. You’re going to fight school.”
“Hey! I got him in the head with a brick! What was I supposed to do against an augment?”
“You’ll see. Alright everyone, head through your door.”
“Wait!” Sam asked. “How long are we going to be in here?”
“Only five minutes,” King said, chuckling.
“Wait, that’s eight months!” Juan said, as the world turned and he suddenly fell, his doorway swinging open and catching him.”
“That’s all I’ll give you,” King said. “Anything more really would hurt you.”
Sam saw Loki falling as well, their own doors opening. As he fell through he felt light wash over him.
—
Sam’s fall stopped immediately as soon as he went through the door. He found himself in an arena he knew well. On the other side “The Fall” Monroe stood relaxed, leaning on the rope. There was no audience. There was one person there, however. In his corner he saw his grandfather dressed as a boxing coach.
“Come on! Get ready kid!”
“You want me to fight this guy on 100% pain settings? Are you nuts? The last time I fought him he killed me! Literally killed me in the ring!”
“Hey.” Monroe said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to beat you up too much.”
“What the heck?”
“It’s me, kid,” His grandfather said behind him.
“I’m playing both parts,” He said in front of him from the body of Monroe.”
“Come on, put up your fists! Get in your stance!”
Sam reluctantly put his hands up. He felt clammy. In the real world his body was broken. He’d been through simulated pain a lot on one quarter intensity. Being beaten in the real world was much worse and had put a deep fear in him.
Not moving forward, his grandfather moved first. His movement was the same as the boxer. The moment he realized that it would hit he tensed up, jumping back and far away.
Suddenly he began to breathe heavily. Panting, he began to tremble, falling back against the rope, almost climbing out in a panic.
“Oh? Now what’s wrong here?” ‘Coach’ Grandpa said behind him, grabbing him by the shoulders. A bell dinged and “The Fall” went back to his corner.
“When you were coming at me I just panicked! I couldn’t breathe. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to screw up like that.”
“We’re here because I asked about what you did at the gym. I went to high school with Jerry, you know. He told me you’d do those sims over and over again, and then take ket strips afterward.”
“Yeah. They keep you from developing PTSD. Is that what happened to me? Can I take a ket strip?”
“Well, your brain isn’t entirely flesh and blood anymore. A ket strip won’t work on you the same way now. Nor would it work now that you’ve gone so long after being hurt, nor would it work with that level of hurt. It’s not an option now.”
“So am I stuck like this?”
“No way. The flesh and blood parts of your brain are in a panic, but the augmented sections of it are basically simulating you. Hold out your hand.”
Sam did exactly that, holding his hand out in front of him with fingers spread wide.
“Now say menu.”
A transparent box appeared in front of him, hovering in the air. It said, “Simplified Menu”.
“Just like a game.” Sam said.
“Exactly. But this isn’t something you should take lightly. This menu directly controls your brain and nervous system. Play with the controls and you will be stone dead. Am I understood?”
“Are you serious?” Sam shouted, shocked to his core.
“Of course. You’ll even have access to this menu outside of here. But don’t worry - I built this system so that you can use it without accidentally shutting your heart off. Making something like that’s not an easy feat, let me tell you. Someday you will have that ability. Treat this with the seriousness it deserves.”
“Right, of course.”
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“Alright, this is a node-based system. Right now it’s pointed at your operating core. That’s the circle in the middle of your screen. Put your hands on the screen and pull apart like it’s a touchscreen.”
“I know how to use a touchscreen, geeze.” Sam said. He did and zoomed out, looking at the vast system in his body. It was arranged in the shape of a human, with nodes appearing seemingly everywhere. He could see small, flashing red lights wherever he had been injured. A node off to the side of his chest read, “MekBaks”, and he could see glowing lines combining it with all the injuries.
“There is a lot of stuff here. A loooooooot.”
“That’s right, and unless you care exactly how your liver or intestines works a lot of it won’t mean anything to you. Just remember that this is your entire operating system and your body. From here you can zoom in on any point and see it. Zoom in on your head.”
Sam did as he was told and suddenly the floating window seemed to explode into nodes. There were so many that it was completely incomprehensible. From a distance it was simply a single circle - the “brain node”. But here it appeared to be hundreds of thousands of little nodes of coding language.
“I’ve done the hard work for you with this one. You don’t need to think about what it takes to remake a brain. For now I just want you to find your status. There’s a flashing icon for it in the window.”
Sam did just that, pressing the button. Soon a display of his brain appeared. He could see that almost a quarter of it was now white and looked similar to plastic.
“I’m really not entirely human anymore, am I?” He said.
“Oh you are. Everything here was built with just a little bit of something like a fancier MekBac and your own body. This just isn’t a naturally grown brain. It’s still all you in there. Just in a new shape.”
“Well that’s a good way to look at getting your brain turned into plastic or… whatever this is.”
“It’s definitely a whatever. Not quite flesh or plastic or metal, but a mixture of all of it, designed to be as tough and efficient as possible. That’s what those dietary supplements were for. Don’t worry about the details now, they’re classified. I’ll give you a manual and let you learn about it later. For now I want you to just select the brain region and use the search menu. Look up, ‘Mental Trauma Treatment’.”
“Alright,” Sam said. He did so and a menu popped up.
“Would you like to run the mental trauma treatment program?” The window read.
“So I should just hit yes now?”
“Yep.”
Sam hesitated for a moment and then pressed the button. A moment later he fell to the floor, feeling increasingly disoriented.
“What just… what happened?” He said.
“Relax. You think you can just change your brain at the press of a button with no side effects? You’re going to feel good for a moment and then the trauma will be gone. I promise.”
Sam was completely disoriented and sat down in the ring. He suddenly couldn’t sense his body, and everything seemed to tingle so hard it vibrated.
Then it hit him. Love. Limitless, overwhelming love. Love for everyone. Love for everything. For a moment he couldn’t imagine a single negative emotion. Time no longer mattered. Time no longer existed at all. He felt like he was drifting on a limitless ocean of joy.
Then slowly it faded, and he came to. He could remember his name, and then he could remember where he was and what he was doing. When he opened his eyes, he knew he was aware again. He could think again. He existed again.
“What was that?” Sam asked, unable to keep the happiness out of his voice.
“That was the feeling of your brain resetting itself. At least the simulated parts. Once you get out of here you’ll need to run that again a few times as your mind is digitized. You’ve been out for three hours in sim time. That’s not enough time to affect your meat brain much.”
“I was out for three hours?” Sam said, shocked.
“Yeah, and that’s just three milliseconds. Your meat brain can’t keep up. It moves at the speed of lightning, which is a heck of a lot slower than the speed of light. It’ll take time in the real world for you to feel the effects. Once you’re fully augmented you’ll just need to run this once. This will help calm you though.”
“That could be addictive. Really addictive.” Sam said, remembering the utterly overwhelming sense of positivity and joy he’d just felt. He still wanted to laugh and hug the ropes like they were a friend.
“It should be. It was based on a cocktail of psychedelic drugs.”
“You just gave me addictive digital drugs? And you’re telling me I can just turn this on whenever I want?”
“Basically, yeah. There’s none of the side effects the real thing would have, either. You can’t OD if you try. Still, I don’t want you to be a pleasure button addict. Look for the addiction remover program.”
“Is this going to be like last time?”
“Nope. It’s completely different.”
Sam pulled up the menu again and hesitated before pressing the button. The last time had felt overwhelmingly positive, and he was worried about getting suddenly drugged again.
He pressed the button, and the pleasure he was feeling died. He felt neutral - so neutral it was jarring. The lingering craving he had to press the button again that he was unaware he’d even been suppressing had been removed.
“That’s crazy! My mood changed at the press of a button! I feel like I don’t care if I never use that again.”
“Trust me. That’s the smallest level of power you have over yourself right now. As time goes on and you learn how you work you’ll realize you were just taking your first steps.”
“Alright. My head is finally in this. I feel like I can fight now.”
“Good,” King said from the body of his coach. This time when ‘The Fall’ came for him he didn’t feel the slightest fear. No matter what happened he knew that he’d be able to recover.
His grandfather didn’t pull his punches, but the injuries healed as soon as the round was over. He never beat him so badly as the sims, but his grandfather clearly had the skill. Every round was round one.
Unlike the sim, each time they traded blows his grandfather would pause and give him advice, position him differently.
After five bouts, Sam asked him a question.
“Why are you training me instead of having me download Monroe’s fighting skills?”
“What good is a downloaded skill? The best knowledge is always knowledge you earn, and there’s nothing but time in here. You’ll find that out soon enough. Keep fighting!”
It was around that point that he began to realize that he wasn’t getting tired at all.
“Why would you be tired?” King asked, laughing. “You’ve been in the ring for less than a second.”
That was the moment Sam realized he could really end up fighting a world heavyweight champion for a hundred and twenty five days straight. Always in his best condition. Always at his sharpest. Never traumatized or broken. The weight class between them didn’t matter.
The next time he fought a simulation of Monroe not controlled by his superhuman grandfather he was going to slaughter him.
—
Loki sat in the classroom surrounded by young tweens, all of whom shared his bright blue color in their hair. He liked them because they gave him treats and catnip and petted him as much as he wanted. Loki knew they weren’t real, but that didn’t matter.
In the front of the room the old human stood in front of a screen filled with words and had students take turns reading them.
“Your turn, Loki.” School teacher King said.
“See the cat b-bound, uh, bounding swiftly across the plain, but he can’t drive a car. At least not very far. Hey! I can too learn to drive a car!”
“Oh yeah? We’ll have to get to that lesson in the future then. Now try this line.”
The teacher’s aide, a nice tall lady with blue hair, said, “Remember to sound out the big words!”
Although it was frustrating to learn human stuff, Loki had never had so much fun in his life. As he went through the lessons he felt better.
He never noticed how similar those simulated schoolchildren were to his former family. How the boys and girls resembled his brothers and sisters, or how the “teacher’s aide” resembled his adoptive mother. They were humans after all. They were nothing like him except the one he loved like a brother. He always bought the best treats.
But for the first time since he’d lost his feline family he felt happy again. When they died to protect the human that had protected them, he’d stopped eating. Old lady’s delicious steak or ham smelled good. Then Sam came back to him, and he remembered he still had a family to live for.
After Loki got another question right, King clapped his hands and said it was time for a reward. Loki perked up. The walls of the classroom were lined with mouse holes, and a rumbling began as mice started pouring out of them, rushing across the floor in a wave.
As Loki dove down and began hunting them along with the equally excited schoolkids with inexhaustible glee, he truly felt this was the best his life had ever been.
—
“This is the worst my life has ever been.” Juan said. He sat in a recreation of his study room at home. He’d spent countless hours studying for degrees here. King sat in the same chair his mother had so many times before.
“You really think so?” King asked.
“You’ve helped me a lot, but I still get hung up on… on… uh…”
“You still lose your train of thought and you still have words that cause you trouble. I keep telling you, don’t rush it. We have time.”
“I feel so stupid. I hate it! My family is counting on me to get into the Star Stations. I don’t want to let them down.”
“Look, I’m going to tell you something I haven’t even told Sam. You see my eye?” King asked, seriously.
“The one you got done in chrome back in the stone age?”
“Yeah. But this doesn’t just replace my eye socket and make me look cool. No! This is the prototype of the augment you have now. It replaced part of my flesh and blood brain too. It was the first augment to ever do that.”
“Why would you do that to yourself?” Juan asked.
“I didn’t have a choice. Much like you didn’t. I’m just going to say that I’ve been through the same thing you have. The exact same thing. I was a scientist at the top of the world, then I got hurt and I felt like I was worthless. One accident was all it took. At least you got hurt doing something heroic.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s alright kid, I’m just saying I get it. I know how frustrating it is. You’re not stumbling over your words because you’re stupid. You’re stumbling over your words because the neurons those words were stored on were destroyed. Your mind thinks the words should be there and they’re not. This augment can replace brain cells but it can’t magically create data that was lost. Some of your meat brain is still damaged too, and won’t be fully healed until the augment replaces it. But once it does, you can truly be whole again. All you have to do is sit down and study.”
“This is really going to heal me?”
“It would have worked even if you never did this. It’d just take you a few decades to recover.”
“We won’t be here that long.”
“Wanna know a secret?” King asked.
“Uh… yes?”
“This isn’t just something you can do in the pod. The pod is only doing one thing, and that’s making sure your old brain isn’t hurting itself while you’re doing this. As more and more of your mind converts over to the new type of artificial neural tissue, you’ll be able to run this simulation everywhere. At home, at the office, even on that fancy contract ship of yours, if you decide to stay on it. You’ll heal much faster than it would have taken with regular brain tissue, and if you’re ever injured again this makes backups of everything in different sections of the artificial neural tissue. You can’t get concussions or be knocked out.”
“How are you doing this?” Juan asked. “This should be impossible because… uh… uh…”
“Because everyone goes insane when you augment the mind too much, right?”
“Y-yeah. Sam doesn’t know but I do. I know how dangerous this is.”
“Do you feel insane?”
“No.”
“I’ve been through this firsthand. I know what to do to keep you sane because I’m here to tell you about it. If it failed with me I wouldn’t be here.”
“You’re not just talking to me right now, are you?” Juan said.
“Nope. I’m teaching all three of you.”
“How fast are you going?”
King smiled. “Fast.” Was all he said.
“How do you keep track of it all?” Juan asked.
“Multitasking is one of the things this augment makes you good at.”
“How good?” Juan asked.
“That’s still classified,” He said, but he said it with a twinkle in his eye.
“But I already told you that this essentially upgrades your neurons to fiber optics, didn’t I?”
“You mean - you’re really running at the speed of light? But that’s insane!”
King smiled.
“Like I said, don’t worry about time. Soon enough you’ll have forever to get better.”
Juan went back to studying with renewed vigor, but also more than a little fear. If his thoughts traveled at the speed of light how much faster could he get than experiencing one hundred and twenty five days in five minutes?
There would definitely be plenty of time.
—
“Alright, Time’s up.” King said to Sam as they tapped gloves in the ring. “This is the last round.”
“What?” Sam said. “Already? It feels like I just got here!”
“Well you’ve only been here for five minutes. Now come on, put up your dukes!”
Sam did just that and immediately noticed something off about his grandfather’s stance. While he was always seemingly casual and relaxed, even when doing something dangerous or intense, The Fall now seemed to practically vibrate with angry energy.
“This is his regular sim!”
“Oh! You caught on right away,” Coach King said behind him. “Don’t doubt yourself. Go get him.”
The Fall began his powerful, inevitable attack. His main strategy was always to come from your weak side, positioning himself so that he could essentially hunt you down, corner you and pummel you.
Every time prior to this Sam had found it to be an inescapable vice for him. He could defend but never keep up with the endless attacks.
“Is this really the same Sim?” Sam asked as he dodged The Fall’s punches with the combined skill of a hundred and twenty five days of practice. Eight solid months worth of fight practice. Not eight hours a day, but twenty four hours a day - always at his best, always at his strongest. Never tired. Never fatigued. He didn’t even get bored once.
“He’s the exact same one on the public net.” King said.
The Fall seemed glacial. Every step took an eternity to come towards him, even though he knew they were moving at what passed for normal speed in this place.
Sam never felt like he was good enough at dodging before, but it almost felt harder to get hit than to move out of the way of those punches now.
“Stop dodging and fight me you pansy!” The sim shouted.
“Shut the hell up!” Sam shouted, and stopped dodging, squaring his feet.
The Fall felt slow to him. If dodging was this easy, he’d decided to try countering. The Fall was no amateur and knew how to see them coming, but the glacial slowness he seemed to move in didn’t leave any doubt that Sam could do it.
Monroe launched a hook and Sam countered with a cross, managing to strike inside of his guard before he could react and recover.
“It’s just like you said! I know his weaknesses inside and out!” He shouted.
“I’ll kill you!” Monroe’s simulation cried, unleashing a speedy flurry of blows.
Sam realized to his amazement that he could stop them all. Every strike that Monroe tried was countered, dodged, or deflected. Sam’s punches were much weaker than The Fall’s but they were also connecting.
The champion boxer fell back and began to fight defensively. Sam was able to dodge well enough that he could fight without his guard up at all, using both arms to attack. Every attack by Monroe was viciously countered. Sam began to pummel the same spots on Monroe’s arms and body again and again, and slowly he lost speed and control of them.
“This isn’t a fight,” Sam thought. “I’m bullying this man.”
Feeling a twinge of guilt, he decided to launch an all-out attack and put the man down. “I’m not going to torture my hero.”
“Don’t count me out!” Monroe growled. To Sam’s surprise, he leaned into his counter. A moment later, Sam saw stars as the fist Monroe had sent flying took him in the jaw. He felt the crunch as it shattered, and saw his own fist connecting with Monroe’s temple.
Sam wanted to scream as he flew back as fast as his legs could take him, but as soon as he’d jumped back he noticed the blank look on Monroe’s face.
“I can’t get concussions now but he can.” Sam thought. Moments later, The Fall, true to his name, fell to his knees and collapsed.
“I did it! I won!” Sam cheered.
“That you did!” King said, slapping him on the back. “Just remember you’re not invincible! You got sloppy there at the end.”
“Yeah, I knew I could win if I took it slow, but I just realized I could take a hit better than he could. It worked.”
“True enough! Besides, there’s nothing wrong with mercy. Now remember: What you learned will help with augments using his fighting style. If you meet that little bastard that beat you up again, just remember he’s reinforced with metal. Just shock him and he’ll go down fast. I suggest you read up on electricity in your down time.” He tapped his head and the chrome around his eye rang. “Extra vulnerability to electricity is part of why cybernetics are out of date now. Your body is only human, but combine skill and using your head with your mental speed and you’ll be able to beat most regular people effortlessly.”
King slapped him on the back. “Now come on, let’s head back to the lobby.”
A doorway appeared in the air and this time they both walked through.
—
Sam met Juan and Loki in the same white void they’d first entered. “Guys!” He said. “It feels like it's been forever!”
“What, Eight months is short for you?” Juan laughed.
“I went to school! Sam! I went to school! I learned how to hotwire a car!” Loki shouted.
“Wait, what?” Sam asked.
“Hey, when can I get that class?” Juan said.
“You didn’t actually teach him that, did you?” Sam asked.
“You all learned the skills you needed to learn and that’s it!” King said, appearing behind them and startling them.
“MROOOWLLLLL!” Loki said, jumping higher than Sam’s head and bounding back from the man. “I hate when you do that! It’s worse than cucumbers!”
“Somehow it gets funnier every time!” King boomed. “And yeah, I did teach him how to hotwire a car, and that would be a problem if people still used the cars from a hundred years ago. It was just for fun. I mostly taught him things kids learn in school. Alright, that was five whole minutes. How was it?”
“I feel like I could take on the world!” Sam shouted.
“I can be better than ever!”
“I can eat all the mice everywhere!”
King laughed. “Alright, see you on the outside.”
The world faded into darkness, and Sam realized his eyes were closed. He opened them and found himself in the pod. On the wall was an old clock. Exactly five minutes had passed. King sat at a chair at the room’s lone desk, somehow already up before them.
As Sam got out of the pod, he was startled to see his grandfather vault over the desk and send a punch his way. He heard a voice in his head. “Remote framejack initiated.” Time slowed, and Sam suddenly felt like he had hours before the punch would land. His body moved just as slowly, but he simply needed to plan. With so much time it felt easy - his grandfather was delivering a punch at superhuman speed, but Sam only needed to dodge it.
The punch passed within millimeters of his face, but it was a clean miss.
Time suddenly resumed its normal speed and King patted his shoulder. “See? Dodging an aug is as easy as that.”
“You two are crazy.” Loki said in his head.
“You can still talk?” Sam exclaimed.
“You all have a short range neural link built in, designed to talk only with others on this system. Anything else is too vulnerable to hacking. So long as he’s within a few feet of you he’ll be able to chat.”
“Talking! Talkingtalkingtalkingtalktalktalk!”
“Can we mute him?” Sam asked, joking, before the cat swiped at his leg.
“Don’t you dare!” Loki yelled. “I’ll pounce your face in your sleep!”
“Alright everyone. I’m a busy man, so this is all the time I could spare you. The automated system in your augment will help you until you’re ready to use everything, but don’t worry. I’ll see you soon and check on you again.”
“When are you going to meet us?” Sam asked.
“Are we coming back here?” Juan chimed in.
“Do you have any treats?” Said Loki.
Reaching into his pocket King pulled out a small bag filled with dry, crunchy cat sized treats and tossed one to Loki, who ate it just as readily as in the Sim.
“When and where have the same answer: I’ll see you on the first day of the Idaho State Fair!”