JAARU ANIIK
The weather in Runwind was stormy. The weather service had issued an orange warning, so work continued as usual, aware that once the warning turned to red, the entire office would evacuate. It was this part of the year again, Jaaru knew that, but she could not get away. Moving costs money. Levelling up costs money (albeit indirectly). Life costs money and in Jaaru’s opinion, it did cost too much, so she could do little more than working in a job that while sometimes frustrating, at least gave her a feeling of satisfaction: It gave her the feeling that she was able to stop worse from happening. She checked her own status secretly in a moment of lull.
Name: Jaaru Aniik
Species: Sigya-ha-Sygia
Level: 3
Class: Practitioner of Social Arts
Coordination: 2
Impact: 2
Resilience: 5
Skilled Practice: 5
Synergy: 5
Please be aware that the average of an unlevelled Sigya-ha-Sygia is 3
HP: 20/20
MP: 30/33
Skills: Calm emotions, Suggest, Sense Motive
She would need to be quite a few levels up to be able to get a better job and that would require spending time in the wilds. However, with her bad physical stats (with the exception of Resilience), she would need to find a group to adventure with and her last dozen attempts died in the scheduling stage.
She concentrated on her work again. Or at least tried to. That was when she saw a message from her subject matter expert. It was about this weird case where supposedly a second system existed. It urged her to stop the integration effort immediately. She reached for the headset.
“Jaaru, do you have a moment?” a familiar voice called out.
She mentally cussed. Her manager wanted something from her. “I need to make a quick call. Can it wait for 30 seconds?”
“No, it cannot. There has been a complaint about you.” he said.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Please open the case 23-42-16-99-21-E, can you?” he asked
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After a bit of spelling took place, the case was opened. Well, it was already opened, but with case numbers being how they are, she was not certain if this was the right one or one slightly off.
“Yes? What about it?” She asked.
“There has not been any movement in the case for seven days!” the human manager started to go on a long tirade about case activities and service level agreements. About 15 minutes later, he asked her what she thought about the matter.
“CP640, CP4’140 and CP75’603.” Jaaru said.
The manager looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“CP640 mentions that status updates are optional if the client doesn’t want to receive them. Which had been confirmed as per the case notes. CP4’140 states that sensitive cases need to be handled promptly, which means, when there is a delay from the subject matter experts, to get back to the case swiftly. As you see, the response is about 17 minutes old. I am not sure how long we were talking but I would assume that counts for most of it. CP75’603 says not to use text to communicate with the outer territories but to use synchronous means of communication to avoid miscommunications.” Jaaru made a clicking noise, indicating that she deemed her point made.
"That's it! Come with me! I am writing you up for subordination!" the manager shouted.
Jaaru looked at him in confusion: “You asked me for an explanation, I provided it without any hesitation. I had notated these things on the case to have faster access. If there is subordination, please help me find it.”
“Don’t talk! Go to HR! Now!” the manager insisted.
The talk with the frazzled HR person took about an hour and eventually boiled down to communication differences between the human manager and Jaaru who, despite looking human, belonged to a splinter species, a Sygia. These species from pre-system times were the result of human biohackers trying to prepare their offspring for the predicted ecological collapse by excessive gene manipulation. Sygias often vaguely look human but differ in not easily noticeable areas like high tolerances to pollution and often seemingly random psychological differences. There are Sygias with the aggression of rabid dogs as well as those who pretty much embodied meek and mild. There are extremely daft and extremely clever ones. The system gave these people their own description and split the wide area into 4 groups. Sygias of her own designation (Sigya) were often pioneers on newly integrated planets due to higher tolerances to extreme temperatures and because of their often nonstandard social skills. As such, many unsaid things are not caught and even if they were, might still provoke unexpected reactions. The HR person thus asked if the foreign species protocols were followed. As the manager had forgotten that Jaaru was Sygia, he tried to blame incorrect records and when that was proven wrong, Jaaru for not reminding him.
Jaaru asked how she was to remind him next time and he got enraged.
The HR person told her to return to work and that she would receive clarification on this matter via email.
As such, Jaaru thanked the HR person and went to her own little piece of joy in the open plan office. The case was still open, she took a glance over the last case notes, checked the time and was just about to ring when a loudspeaker started blaring: The weather service had changed its rating to red and people were to return home and shelter in place.
TEKI
The researcher had dreamt of the open ocean in the last few days. Not the bigger pond of Tsanh, but of wide open seas, reefs, schools of small fish which would normally be considered a nuisance. The area here was hot and arid. For a keani, the worst combination. The pod from which he operated was small and even when swimming, the entire ocean seemed sterile. While there were some algae, these were more akin to lichen than forests, to give an example of landstriders. He could not bear staying in this place for a long time. So when there was no response from the compliance team, he pressed the button to start the initial version of the system.
A message appeared in front of Teki’s eyes:
Welcome back to the System Unlimited Potential!
Starting up…
Integration of the planet Tsanh starting…