KEREU TAAKI
Coming into work, Kereu felt miserable. The weekend was too short and he had been run ragged caring for his sick children. He knew that the only way they would get better would be a visit from a high level healer, but no matter how many hours of overtime he or his wife Keliit Antaa took, it was not enough to afford that. High level healers never made it into the Akaain settlement. Heck, they probably never made it to Windrush. And so he could only watch his children do worse day after day. The Diminishment took them little by little, day after day. He went into work and sat down on his desk.
He looked at the phone with dread. He didn’t want to get screamed at, but he had no alternative. He checked his messages, there were some procedural changes he needed to keep in mind. He shook his head, as this would make his life somewhat harder, but just slightly so. “I have to stop believing that life will ever get better. It won’t. It gets worse until I die,” he murmured. Then he looked at the clock and as soon as his shift started, he set his phone to Available. 3 seconds later, there was a beep and then an angry voice. Kereu moved into his worksona, which included a smile, a straight back, a soft voice and the use of specific words that foreigners love, but no one on Windrush uses. As he explained to the caller that the issues he experienced were their own fault, he saw that there was a small card on his desk. He frowned. This was probably a trap. Last time there was a note on his desk, it looked like a few folk tried to start a union, except that it was a HR sting operation and folks who did come to the meeting were fired.
Kereu still checked the note before chucking it into the trash. Maybe there was a bit of gossip that could at least help him have the fictional feeling of connection to his colleagues.
A new class is possible!
Are your skills limiting you? Go to the old Lexah building and audibly ask for integration! Solidarity will reign!
This was not the kind of screed that HR would post. This seemed more like the work of someone who absolutely had lost it. That said: while he was helping people who bought land on newly integrated planets and had the issues of living on newly integrated planets, this intrigued him. If he could get skills to heal others, he could help his kids. And what was the risk? He could arrive home about 30 minutes later. Someone could catch him speaking to himself. But apart from that? Nothing really. He absolutely planned to do that.
He looked around and kept an ear out to listen to if anyone else mentioned such a note but no one did. That seemed strange to him. When he whispered about such a note to a colleague he disliked the least, an elderly woman of an unrelated Sygian group named Saanshey, he was shocked to hear that she didn’t receive such a note. She seemed impressed and offered to come with him. He accepted. The chance that Saanshey was a mole was low. And if she was, he had enough information on her that they would go down together. Mutually assured destruction, so to say.
In the evening, Kereu and Saanshey walked to the Lexah building. They both were absolutely done with the day and walked silently. Their worksonas left at the door, their gait slow and slouched.
The Lexah building was an old warehouse. It was known for a scandal involving Lexah and Laaijek, two guys who were caught shagging behind the building, which would have been okay except for the fact that they were married – just not to each other. In addition, they were also supervisors and the company frowned on fraternisation. Since then, his department called the place the Lexah building. As they reached the place, Saanshey said: “I will go first! Okay?”
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Kereu nodded.
Saanshey spoke: “I am asking for integration.”
There was a pause. Eventually Kereu asked: “Did anything happen?”
There was no response.
Kereu was not sure what to make of this, but as no HR goons appeared, he said: “I come because of the note on my desk. I am asking for integration.”
JAARU ANIIK
As a newly minted Level 100 Established Founder, work was surprisingly easy. Yes, she still had no skills, spells or other abilities, but she had been able to coast on high base stats. Her Synergy sat at 50 points, most from a bonus of reaching the highest level. While generally, classes provided crown-skills when reaching that level, her class simply raised her stats. This was an absolute boon to her. She no longer had her skills but based on raw stats, she could power through. Of course, she was ridiculously underpowered compared to other level 100s, but the highest person in the team was level 7, so she didn’t mind.
On the last night of the weekend, Init and her collated a list of colleagues that were miserable and good candidates for integration. They prepared notes and dropped them on the desks of folks who they assumed to be good candidates. Then, they went to work and Jaaru enjoyed her elevated stats.
On the way home, Jaaru felt two people join. She was not sure how she was aware that she perceived it, but to her it was as if she suddenly gained a new sense and at the same time, it was as if she had an understanding of the things she could sense with it as if she had used it for all of her life. It was an amazing thing to feel. She realised that she could feel the foundational skills that these people brought into the repository. She realised that she could slot these in into a part of her self that she was instinctively aware of. This would also dislodge her own foundational skill, but that one could be restored. She felt that the repository would keep it until it was needed again. Her eyes opened wide. She twitched. It felt like a bucket of warm water had been emptied over her on a particularly cold day. “Init! I understand it now! My new class! I now understand how it works!”
Init raised an eyebrow: “What do you mean? You are a level 100, of course you understand what every level up entails.”
Jaaru shook her head: “There is more to it.”
Init raised an eyebrow: “Do I want to know?”
Jaaru nodded: “You have a foundational skill, right?”
Init looked around, checking if someone was eavesdropping, then said: “I mean, yes. So do you, right?”
Jaaru nodded: “I am pretty sure that I can use yours.”
Init raised an eyebrow: “What?”
Jaaru slotted the Technologist skill that she knew Init possessed. She felt a weird sensation as she realised things about tech that she had never realised, then said: “An infraction can be caused by incorrect system configurations. Generally, this is an issue with the unicode standard. If a subsystem expects UTF-8 but the file is in UTF-16, the configuration cannot be parsed. This is a frequent issue because some text editors just mention that the file is stored in Unicode but not in which Unicode standard.”
Init looked at Jaaru and raised an eyebrow: “You… how‽”
Jaaru made a vague gesture: “If I said that the ability is kinda… about a hand’s width above my left shoulder, how insane would you think I was?”
Init looked at the place, first on Jaaru’s body then on her own. There were raised eyebrows, confusion and then, a wide smile: “Yes, you are right! I have seen it! I think I can do the same as well!”
Jaaru hugged her sister. “Awesome!”
Init looked much more sombre: “Management must never know about this. They would dream of anyone being able to work on any request! And to fire anyone without skills getting lost!”