I lay in my too small bed, my homework done. I didn’t have the motivation to study more. What was the point as a cat? I just needed to pass my classes and then join the military. Fight in some distant jungle against the hordes of snake cultists and actual snakes.

The good news was I had my own room. Since a cat wasn’t to be trusted with other creatures. It was a closet, with no lock on the door, barely able to fit a bed, and no window. The bed was too small, I couldn’t lay out all the way, which was annoying. I liked to stretch out when I slept, but complaining was pointless.

Looking at the artifact my father had left me years ago, it was a gray piece of stone with several runes on it. The language was unknown and he had said it had been written off as a piece of trash. He liked it since it was tough and I could scratch my claws against it without making too much noise or causing a scene.

It was a habit that helped me relax after the stress of today. My right paw clawed at the flat gray stone with its tiny indentations while I lay there wishing things would get better. All my mother’s belongings and our house had been sold. The money put into an account that was sealed until I came of age.

That was another reason why I couldn’t afford to cause any issues. One paw out of line and I had no doubt it would all be taken from me. Every time I wanted to scream and rage at the unfairness and cruelty heaped upon me, I held back.

“Ow,” my claw cat a bit and pulled hard. A drop of blood dripped onto the piece of stone while I licked the blood off my paw. I froze as the stone began to glow blue. The indentations glowing a bit brighter. The blood on the stone had disappeared.

“Please wait as initialization commences,” a voice said. I looked around, but couldn’t see any creature, and no one was moving outside my room. I looked back at the stone.

“Was that you?” I asked quietly.

“Please wait as initialization commences.” I took that response as a yes. I looked at the glowing stone and slowly picked it up. What was it? Carefully turning it over and looking at it closely, revealed nothing. I waited for a minute, then two, that was when the stone spoke again.

“Greetings. I am the Multi-Aspect Energy System or M. E. S., Mes as a shorthand reference. Permission to access your thoughts?”

“Hello,” I whispered back. “We need to be quiet, so we don’t wake up anyone else and get into trouble. Why do you need to listen to my thoughts?” I asked a bit concerned.

“Of course,” the voice said much more quietly. “My purpose is to help you, the user, achieve a high combat potential. By allowing access to your mind, I can display myself, speak to you in your mind, you can speak back, and not be dependent on the interface you have. It is a standard procedure.”

I didn’t know what to think. I was just trying to process everything this object was telling me. “What are you, who made you?” I asked.

“I am a Multi-Aspect Energy System or M. E. S., Mes as a shorthand reference. I assist the user, you, in combat through the use of energy manipulation. My exact creator is beyond your level of authority to request information about.”

“You can read all my thoughts if I let you?” I asked nervously.

“Yes. It is a requirement for many critical features including skill generation, mind protection, body protection, inventory space, and many others.” I didn’t understand half of that. I understood the words, but not what they meant.

“What if I don’t want you anymore, can I turn you off?”

“Unfortunately, not. Once bound, I will integrate with you. A separation will suspend many features, while removal will result in death. There are no risks or side effects from integration.”

“That sounds like a cult. I don’t want to get in trouble with the Covenant Church.”

“Ah, my apologies. Stealth is my highest priority. That is why I interface with this level of reality through proxies. Your hesitation is understandable, but you will not be required to do anything. Instead, you will be offered rewards for the completion of tasks or quests as they are assigned. They can be refused with no penalty. Once integrated with your mind, I will be able to conceal myself completely. Your success is my success.”

That all sounded incredibly sketchy. This was how cults dragged people into their craziness. “Level of reality, you aren’t from here?” I asked.

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“Based on my passive scans of the general energy level, no. My last user was killed in circumstances that allowed my interface to escape from his corpse. A regrettable event, but there are many dangers out there. Which is why concealment is important. What do you desire?” Mes asked me.

“Just…my mother back. She died, can you bring her back?” I asked hopefully.

“No. The ambient energy is too low to form a proper soul and too much time has passed. Your level of authority is not high enough to risk Causality or handle the events that would occur. It is best to accept there is nothing that can be done.”

“But there is something?” I asked hopefully.

“No. My speculation was just that, speculation. Messing with Causality has a high chance of destroying your reality as it exists. Your level of authority is not enough to override the safeguards I have in place at this time.”

I was silent at that and sad. I had got my hopes up. This was something powerful, incredibly powerful. Mes was something I had never heard about. Now it couldn’t do the one thing I wanted most, bring back my mother.

“You help in combat?” I asked.

“Indeed. That is my primary purpose. While I have sub-modules for crafting, research, and understanding, my primary purpose is to improve combat through the use of energy within the user. It will take time, and the ambient energy in the environment is quite low, but with time you will improve.”

“How? You want to be a part of me for the rest of my life. I don’t trust you, since you sound like a cult.”

“I am not a cult. I am a techno-energy construct that primarily exists outside your layer of reality. My primary goal is to acquire users and more power for myself. That is how the give and take relationship between me and a user is handled.”

“You kill things, I process the energy of their soul, and you earn experience, credits, points, or whatever you want to call it. You trade that in to me, and I give you access to improvements, features, or skills. If you want to improve your balance, I can create a skill that will do just that, and your balance would improve rapidly as you trained it. Or increasing an aspect of your physical body to improve your balance.”

“Energy based skills are limited at the moment, based on your reality. Empowering them is not simple if we want to remain clear of detection in such a low energy environment.”

“So, I kill things, and we get a currency I can trade for powers or abilities.”

“Yes. While I can allocate energy for the completion of tasks or quests, those tend to be very hard and you are not ready yet. The only way is killing, since I require souls to be processed.”

“That sounds like you are getting a drop of this soul energy, compared to what you already have,” I challenged Mes.

“Yes. But, our interaction is based on trade and understanding. The tasks and quests I would like to assign you are not simple and will require combat. I am a combat system as my primary function. Just giving you power doesn’t mean you know how to use it.”

“It has been conclusively proven that investing a large amount of power into an untrained individual creates for sub-optimal outcomes by a couple orders of magnitude.”

“Sounds like a cult,” I muttered with a sigh. It was tempting, but I had some serious concerns. “What if I say no?” I asked.

“Then I will go back into standby mode, and you will not be able to reactivate my interface. Conversing like this and hiding my presence requires investment from me. An investment that will take a long time to pay off.”

“And if your makers come and decide to yank you away, I will just die?” I asked. There was a bit of silence at that.

“Yes. I will not lie to you, since that would defeat my purpose. You would need to raise your authority level by trading in experience points. Once it is high enough, you will be able to gain administrator authority. But the amount needed would be quite a bit. I will also add that no user has been forcibly disconnected from my end. Only their deaths have resulted in a disconnection.”

“Then I would die too eventually?”

“Ah, I wasn’t clear. My apologies. I can prolong your natural life indefinitely. It is not that expensive to purchase more time. Most users eventually get powerful enough they move on to greater and greater challenges, eventually overreaching and dying, or getting tracked down and killed.”

“Would I have to worry about that?” I asked.

“Not for a long time as long as I don’t do anything major.”

“Will it hurt? You accessing my mind?” I asked, leaning towards agreeing. I was planning to join the military, and this thing, this Mes seemed like it could help me fight better.

“No. I take the well-being and health of my user very seriously. If you die, it will be ages before I find someone else and activate the interface process. While I do not mind waiting, it is not productive. I like being productive.” That was the first thing Mes had said that really resonated with me. Being productive, I liked that.

Taking charge of my own life, my future. That was what I truly wanted. Just living out day after day, stuck in the group home was horrible. I wanted to escape this place and just be me. The killing thing was questionable, but there were a lot of snake cultists out there in the jungles.

No one cared about the snake cultists. The Covenant Church would probably give me award for killing as many as possible. Mittens Snake Slayer had a nice ring to it. “Alright, I agree Mes. You can access my mind.” I made the decision before I could hesitate any longer.

“Thank you for agreeing. Before we start, may I have your name?”

“Mittens,” I replied.

“Very well Mittens. You will black out for a moment and then regain consciousness in about ten thousand ticks. A tick is the time it takes to say this word, interface.” That was about ten thousand seconds, which was a bit over eight hours.

I had gone to bed early. There was no reason for me to stay up, since I didn’t get along with anyone. “I just need to be up before the other creatures in the morning,” I replied.

“That shouldn’t be an issue. I will keep my passive scan active and will make sure you wake up on time. Starting, in three, two, one.”