“That sounds like a pretty terrible way to run a ship, but I’ll take you up on your offer,” I informed the computer projection before me.
“Very good,” said Geeq. “This is going to be fun. I knew that you’d take the offer. IQ of 6,000, remember? I’ve had this planned since you made your skill on the way to Ghostlight Falls. If you’ll recall, I sent you a dream of the same. Kind of a show of good faith.”
Geeq seemed like he had many screws loose, but I kind of liked him. I am sure that he had other options at his disposal, but this seemed like it was maybe more fair than most. It was a lot of information to absorb, but as I sifted through it, some things fell into place. It kind of made sense.
“Any other questions, Harris?” Geeq asked.
“So when did our experience cut over to the tutorial?” I replied.
“The chime while you were camping was the break point. I don’t know why people from Earth like camping so much, but it is just so easy to snag you campers. Slap a quick camping bridge program onto the standard tutorial and you all take to it like ducks to water. Your ducks, not ours. Anyhow, I blame all of the cartoons, but grabbing camping humans is by far the easiest abuct– rescue in the galaxy,” answered the computer.
“So are you ready? I notice that you wrote nothing on your notepad. While at least nothing fit to print in your file. Really Harris. I am doing what I can for you here,” said Geeq.
“Yeah. Let’s do it,” I answered.
The room disappeared before me and the interior of some kind of pod greeted me as I got back to reality proper. I was, of course, naked. The process was pretty simple from there. Exit the pod. Have a quick shower and change into my new Technician’s uniform, which was just some comfortable clothes underneath a gray jumpsuit. There was some kind of silly, pillbox type military hat, but I decided to opt out of the hat. Then there was the Incoming Technicians Celebration.
When officers get their commissions, there is an elaborate ceremony with a party following. Everyone wears their dress uniform and enjoys cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Since Technicians are the lowest of the low, we had a brief meeting in a breakroom. The attendees were all cleaning and service robots. I mean I am calling them robots. They were definitely driven by magic artifice, but Geeq wasn’t lying when he said that technology had come a long way. Maybe they were actually golems, I had plenty of time to figure it out over the coming months. For now they were there to celebrate my becoming a Technician, essentially their junior, and they did so completely silently. The items in the vending machines were free for a few minutes as a sort of celebratory “hurrah for Harris” type of gesture and then we all got going.
I was confident that I’d find a time to reconnect with my friends, but this wasn’t it. Geeq did let me record a brief message for them and agreed to play it for them at an appropriate time. They were no doubt being commissioned and would also be settling into their new positions and routines, so they would need time to adjust for themselves as well. Included with my uniform was a device that could project a sort of heads up display in my vision. I expected that it functioned much like the Unified System UI in some way, though of course that was a topic I knew precious little about. Interestingly, under these circumstances I didn’t have any real objection to using it. It was just a tool at this point. I hadn’t changed my stance or anything, but the change in context made all the difference for me. It is weird how those things can happen.
I followed the navigation guidance provided by the heads up display and it played out almost exactly like it did in the dream of the ship that I had experienced in Ghostlight Falls. It was familiar in an empty sort of a way.
***
Fortunately, Queakers was still able to use her text boxes to communicate on board the Esperanto. There were other options enabled by the technology of the, especially with the diversity of races that it had ferried to Oberous over the years, but she was comfortable with the text boxes. Some races, like the elves, were still pretty stuck up about the pecking order, but really the only thing that mattered was the ability to generate and control magical particles. If a being had the spirit to do this and they weren’t totally corrupted in the process, like monsters were, then they had equal footing in Oberous’ society. That is not to say that Oberous didn’t have factions, there most certainly are powerful factions on the planet and there had been for thousands of years. The politics of these factions could be dizzying and complex, but even they typically had a meritocratic bent that reflected that of their society as a whole.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Queakers, easily slipping into her new role as first officer of the Esperanto, commanded Geeq, “Give me Harris’ position. I need to see him.”
“Unfortunately, First Queakers I cannot provide information on any such crew member,” responded Geeq’s disembodied voice. However, one of Geeq’s projection units breezed into the party following the commissioning of the new officers shortly after and collected Queakers, Jim, Karen, Kelly and Sarah. Geeq led the team into a private lounge and simply said, “I think that you’ll agree that it is best that this stays between you.” He then played my video.
An image of me in my Technican’s uniform appeared before the team, “Hi guys. Turns out that I failed the tutorial at 4% completion. Geeq tells me that it is a record. Anyhow, I was working up to another really epic complaint on this whole thing, but instead Geeq and I made a deal. I will be discharging my very important Technician’s duties in the forward section of the ship. I am fine with it and should have plenty of free time to work on a few things.
“When we get to Oberous I am going to try to find the real Galan and Leirin in Loramen. It sounds like Elen, Ruven and Phraan were cheating in the tutorial program to try to game their rank en route to Oberous and that they probably would like to repay me for ruining their plans. I am going to be hiding out in a spot where I am almost certainly assured to be safe from my admiring public, but sadly it means we won’t be able to spend much time together during the journey.
“Let’s meet-up on Oberous in Loramen if not before. I hear that it is hard to get to Loramen, but I think that it will be a good place for us. Anyway, stay safe. Geeq can get me a message if you need anything from me, but it is for the best if no one knows where I am at right now. I think that we should meet up from time-to-time, I’ll handle the invitations when the time comes.” My recording winked out and Geeq reappeared in front of the group.
The Geeq’s computer projection followed up, “If you have any questions, ask them now. Harris and I are of the same mind that it would be best if everyone forgot about him for a while. I didn’t go into too much detail with him, but Elen and her group of elves aren’t just random acquisitions like you all. They are from a branch of an existing elven faction who is moving into the interior of their faction organization.
“The details of the tutorials aren’t public, but they all know what happened and they are absolutely livid. Falling in the reranking is going to leave them gunning for you all, but they are going to do their utmost to make sure that Harris doesn’t make it to Oberous in one piece. Though Harris is uniquely suited to eliminate that threat at least as long as he is by himself.”
Sarah, who had ranked nearly as high as Queakers, responded first, “I don’t understand how you think that Harris is going to use his max stealth skill across the voyage Geeq. I thought that you said that we would have to relearn our skills on Oberous and it would be extremely difficult to use skills out here anyway because of the extremely low density of magic particles in most of the space that we’ll be passing through?”
Geeq answered with a sly smile, “I think that it is best if Harris explains that to you the next time you see him Sarah, but I think that it is safe to say that he won’t have an issue.”
“Who is Harris?” Sarah asked.
“Well I guess that is that," said Geeq. “Everyone back to the party. It is time I showed you my dance moves. Prepare to weep at your own inadequacy.” Yeah, Geeq never really suffered from a lack of confidence, even if he didn’t have things as well in hand as it initially seemed.
***
“Well captain, what do you think of the new recruits?” asked Geeq.
Captain Aenorin, replied with some earnest frustration, “I think that you need to share a little bit more about how we got here Geeq. A successful party goes in for a rerank and wipes in a tutorial where a dog from a backwater planet gets a 97% and a bunch of newly awakened humans aren’t far behind. Doesn’t really seem possible outside of an asteroid strike or some kind of glitch. The elves affected have already lodged a complaint and you know that with their affiliations that is going to blow up to be a huge pain in the neck.”
Geeq projected himself into Captain Aenorin’s quarters and looked her directly in the eye when he said, “You know that I can’t and won’t give you any more specifics about the tutorial. I will tell you that it is interesting, probably the most interesting one that I have seen. Deal with the elves yourself. That is why you are here afterall, to keep all of these fools in order en route. I have a ship to run. Don’t ask me about this again.”
The captain shot right back, “Geeq. You are the one who asked me about the new recruits in the first place. Are you going a little computer senile?”
“Oh yeah. You’re right. Sorry about that Sana. Have a good night,” Geeq responded. He was absolutely going a little computer senile, but his job was actually quite demanding. Even during the voyage the awakened passengers, who were also the crew, would be tested, trained and evaluated. It wasn’t a simulation this time and Geeq took this responsibility very serio