Chapter 7 - Letters to Molly

Dearest Molly,

I promised I’d write to you every day. I miss you. I never realized how painful it would be. I saw you almost every day because of class, and then we finally go out together, and now you're all I can think about. Except now, there’s no class the next day. How is everything? Are you going to take your Start-Aheads or are you going to take summers off? Gymnasium sounds like it’ll be really great. Like Lyceum, but with more freedom. Are you still going to study Business Management?

It’s weird for me here. Everything is so crazy! I was introduced to the team today, they all seem really nice. Professor Cecilia and that guy Standish I told you about have been really helpful and understanding. I’m in some underground base. I can’t really go into much detail about things, security’s pretty tight. The project is so awesome, though! I’m really excited to get everything started. The Professor explained that I’ll start physical training tomorrow. I have to go through a few weeks of BASIC before they’ll let me get in the simulators. Apparently, even the Sims can be really physical. I wish you could see my dorm, It’s crazy! It’s like out of a painting or something.

I don’t want to eat up all your time, Molly. I miss you, and I hope to see you soon. I’ll be in touch.

Yours, truly,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

Ugh! I don’t think I can do another push-up. And the food still hasn’t got better. I’ve only been here a week and I think I’m going to die. If you hear about me on the news, it wasn’t my fault; call the authorities, let them know I was worked to death. I can barely type this, my arms are so dead. Gunny Garrell is a slave-driver, I promise you! It was good to hear back from you yesterday. It really is hard, you know? When I get out of here, you’ll be the first person I see, promise. It’s true, though, “We’ll always have a hard time seeing each other.” But, if those knights used to do it back in medieval prehistory, I think we can pull it off. I’m glad you’re taking summers instead of Start-Aheads. It’ll take longer to get commendation, but you don’t get breaks in the real world, live it up! Do you think you’ll do an abroad and maybe even take a gap year, too? I would love to visit the Southern Union sometime, their culture is just so unique!

The food really isn’t the nightmare I say it is, though. A ton better than Lyceum’s cafeteria, but still not quite home-cooked. And nothing like the diner. I miss that diner already. And the coffee tastes like sugary chalk. But, I can’t complain too much, at least they have it. I talked with a few of the office people around here, and they said on other bases they’ve worked at, they didn’t even get coffee at all! Could you imagine? There is still so much going on here, finding my feet is hard. Like I said, I don’t get to see the others on my team much, I spend most of my time either in BASIC with the two other new recruits or in my dorm studying the dozens of manuals they’re making me read. There are so many regulations, rules, and proclamations they require you to know, it’s crazy! Gunny will randomly yell at me “What is 104(c)5 of the Treaty on International Prisoners!” and if I don’t answer right, I have to do push-ups until HE finishes reciting it, and if he’s feeling brutal, he talks REALLY slowly. Anyway, I'll let you get back to things. I truly miss you. It's so hard being away!

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

I was so happy to see you yesterday! I know it'd only been 3 weeks since we last saw each other, I know, but every minute with you is precious. I talked to the Commander like I said I would and she said she didn't know when I'd get more shore leave. Apparently I'm half-way through BASIC now, so she may give me another day or two when I finish. I don't wanna plan on it, but if I do, I'd love to spend it with you. I know I couldn't shut up about it yesterday, but I do seriously like your dorm, I wasn't just trying to flatter you! Claire and you really have it all organized and decorated perfectly. It was nice to meet all your new friends, too. Send them my regards. Maybe one day I can keep my promise and show you my room. I know you said it looked great in the video tour I brought, but like I said, it doesn't do it near enough justice. Anyway, I saw you yesterday so there isn't a whole lot to say other than I miss you like crazy. This is getting really hard!

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

As expected, I'm done with BASIC next week and the Commander said I could have that weekend off. Can we see each other? I know now that you're the Student Events Coordinator and Dorm Captain that you're super busy, but I really was hoping we could hang out. If not, it's cool though. I'll try and get online with Deka and Shamz and some of the guys from the team. I have barely been able to see them much because our schedule never overlaps. Anyway, I'll make it quick tonight. I miss you so much! Talk to you later.

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

I miss you! I'm glad we got to see each other last week. I know you've had so much to do with school that it's hard to fit everything in. It means a lot that you were able to clear some time for me, even if it was only a night! I'm really sorry to hear about Claire and Roger. They had been dating forever, I can't believe he'd do that to her. But, I guess it's best to get it out of the way before the school year starts. It'dve been terrible if she found out about the other girls during finals or something.

Now that BASIC is out, I've got a year or so of training before they'll even let me into the simulators. It's so crazy! I thought I'd be right into it after I finished. But, apparently, the first step of being a pilot is learning how the machines work. The Commander was pretty insistent on Standish not short-circuiting that, so I'm taking a pretty extensive crash course from the mechanics for the next few months. Tim, the lead mechanic I told you about, is a really cool guy, but I don't think he makes a particularly good professor. He keeps talking and using words and stuff like I know what's going on. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. Did you visit your guidance counselor today? I know you were supposed to so you could get your classes set up. Did everything go well? Anyway, I miss you like crazy. I will talk to you later, and I will dream of the next time we get to see each other.

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

I know it's only been a few months since we got to see each, but it feels like I got out of BASIC yesterday. Every day is just the same, it all seems to meld together. I'm still waking up at first bell and spending almost the entire day in the pit with Tim working on the cores. Tim says I'd make a top-rate mechanic if the pilot thing ends up not panning out. I'm finally starting to get an idea of how they work, and not just Tim telling me what to do. If I keep at it, Tim says he'll probably give me the go-ahead to start training as a pilot in the next couple of months. It feels so far away, but I can barely believe how much time has passed already. I miss you like crazy. I feel like the only thing keeping me going is the fact that I'll get to see you in a few weeks for holiday. My parents are really excited that they'll get to meet you finally, as well. You seem to be all my mom ever talks about to me anymore. It keeps her mind off of things, I guess, so it's not too bad. She says dad hasn't been home a lot because of work. Now that it's been 90 days since I finished BASIC, I get my first paycheck and the back-pay for the 90 days. I'm really excited to give it to my dad so he can take a break. He'll probably give me a hard time about it, but it's the least I can do. How is your family doing? You said you hadn't talked to them much after the big fight about changing your major, is everything back to normal? Anyway, I miss you terribly. I love to watch the video message you sent a few days ago. I know I've said it a bazillion times, but I really do like what you're doing with your hair! I know Claire is insisting you keep it short, but I really do like it a bit longer. I can't wait to see it in person.

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

I love you! It still feels magical to say that to you. I know it's been a while since holiday when we started saying it, but it's still a rush every single time. My mom said to say “hi” again, as well. She is still so in love with you, it's crazy. She said that the microsurgeries went well and that she should be up and about for at least a little longer. The doctors say she shouldn't have another scare like that for a while, at least. The paychecks I've been sending to dad have really been helping, too. Mom says he's home more and that he's been really pleasant. They're the happiest I've seen them in a really, really long time. I still am so sorry you had to hear us fight, though. It's just how he is. He still wants to be the patriarch of the family. Admitting he needs the help just isn't in his nature. Speaking of which, how are things with your family? You said your mom was going to come by yesterday, did you get anything worked out? I'm so glad you decided to stick to your guns, I really think Ancient Archaic Literature is better for you than Business Management. I know your dad was really set on you taking over his business, but it's like you said, your younger brother idolizes him and has dreamed of being the family's standard bearer since he was a child. And, with how much help you needed in Math...I'm kidding! You're so smart I'm sure you could've handled it no problem. But you love those old pre-Collapse books so much, and our culture is so obsessed with pre-Collapse things that I don't think you'd have any problem with work, either. Anyway, I know you always say you could read my notes for hours, but then what would we talk about tomorrow! I love you so much, Molly. My heart is bursting for you and I miss you more and more each second. I'll talk with you tomorrow.

All my heart, forever,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

Ugh. I failed, again. I feel so worthless, Molly. I don't know how I did it, either! Tim said I was going like gangbusters in the pit. These machines are so amazing, Molly, I wish you could see them. It's not even their anatomy that boggles me, though, to be fair, that is quite amazing. The way their arms articulate, the way their fingers move. You can tell it was modeled on our own anatomy, but you can see that since it is purpose-built, where they made the upgrades that evolution misses. And the interface controls are mind-boggling. The sensor stalk, the thing that looks sorta like a head, is connected to a giant test-tube-shaped plug that's filled top-to-bottom with computer systems and in the middle a tiny little door swings open and the whole thing is lined with memory foam you get sandwiched in. The craziest part is that the memory foam is full of living nanomachines that respond to environmental stressors. They hook you up to the flight rig, this complicated helmet that feeds you air and is full of sensors and stimulators that intercept and insert brain signals, so that you ARE the robot, you aren't just controlling it. Since Standish and you had that talk and said we can talk about this stuff (I really am sorry about that, he is much nicer then he apparently was when he, “interrogated,” you) Tim said that the old world had planned to put these on the orbiting missile bases so that they could be deployed from space and dropped onto any location with minimal traveling overhead. However, the Great Collapse happened before they could get them up there. Anyway, I'm pretty sure you don't care about the Cores, and the less I talk about them the less chance Standish will show up to harass you, again. How're classes? Did you ace your first mid-term? I know you'd been studying super hard for it yesterday. Did your dad come by yet? I know you guys have been OK for a while, but you said you were scared of why he'd want to come visit you, still. Mom is stable but it still isn't looking too great, long term. She's never had an episode this bad and the doctors say that means things are worse than they thought they were. I'll let you know if anything changes. Anyway, I need to get back to studying as I'm sure you do, too. I really want to finish this practical exam so I can start training in the Sims. I love you Molly. I miss you desperately. I dream of you and the next time I get to see your beautiful, serene face. It's the only thing keeping me going sometimes.

All my heart, always,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

I'm still in the hospital. Mom's had her third major episode since last month and they don't know if she has much longer. Standish is furious that I'm interrupting my Sim training, but Professor Cecilia has my back and even Gunny Garrell gave him a hard time. I know you're busy with school and Student Government and the dorm, but if you could come by, the Commander said I can have a few more days here. I really need you. My dad comes by after work every day, but you know how he is. I think this might be the last time I get to see my mom. I could use someone here who gets that. Anyway, if you can't it's OK. We'll see each other next time I have off. I don't know when I'll get leave again, however, I'm pretty deep into training so it may be a while. If you need help getting here, I'll do whatever it takes. I miss you, my love.

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

Today wasn't a good day. I thought jumping back into training after the funeral was the best thing I could do for myself, but I can feel my scores suffering. I haven't been able to get better than a 75% sync ratio with the simulator and I failed just about every exercise today. I could barely even get the damned thing to walk. I still can't believe how hard this has all been hitting me. You keep saying that it's OK but I really wanted to meet your parents in a different venue. Them seeing me so frail and not being able to even mention a single thing about what I'm doing, especially with you only now being back on really good terms with them, was really scary. Your dad has been a real godsend, though. It was murder for my dad to be in that hospital every day for the whole 6 months she was in there. We were there for a little bit with him, and he said it helped a lot, my dad loves you so much, but I couldn't be there for the 3 months after that where she was at her worst. My dad said that the weekly coffees he's having with your father are the only thing keeping him from falling apart completely. I don't know where I'd be without you, myself, Molly. I feel like my life is shrinking. I don't even game anymore. It's just wake up, training, and sleep. I haven't heard from Deka and Shamz since the team won finals and my dad barely talks to me anymore. I still don't get to spend any time with any of the other pilots and now that I'm done with mechanical training, I don't even see the other recruits I signed on with. It's like my life is just the simulators, my dorm, and you. Which is fine. You're all I'll ever need, I love you so much. But I don't want to smother you. I feel like I'm becoming more and more needy and I don't think I could handle losing you. It pains me to even admit that. Standish says that if I can get my sync ratios and my technical scores back up, I should graduate from flight school right before you start next semester. He has been uncommonly kind since the funeral. If I can hold my time-table, he said you can come to the graduation ceremony here on the base. If you can't make it, I get that, but it might be the only chance I get to show you my world. Anyway, I don't want to dump on you any more than I already have. I know you are having a hard time with your life as it is. I'll talk to you later, my love.

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

Thank you again for the support. I don't know how many times I can thank you, but let's figure it out. I know I've been so weird these last several weeks and you've just been so great. I really think I'm starting to get back into the swing of things, and I can thank you for that. I'm so happy that you've been able to work things out with your parents and that our parents are such good friends now. I knew your dad would come around. Anyway, my sync ratios have been through the roof these last few days and I aced all of my technicals. They're going to upgrade my training simulator to the highest levels and once I pass these exams I can actually get into a real Core. It still blows my mind. Controlling them with my head! Do you think I should Aug? Could you love me if I were like that? Would you think I'm a freak? I can see how much it'd help me now. When I get out of the simulators I'm just exhausted. The injection sensors are saying I'm burning almost ten thousand calories a day. One thing I didn't realize is that The Box, as they call it, uses your nervous system instead of your brain. So it waits for signals to be sent to your arm and then intercepts them instead of you just thinking about moving. So, I just sit in a foam jewelry box full of machines, twitching and thinking. It's physically exhausting as well as mentally. Apparently, Auging will alleviate pretty much all of that stress, as well as amp up my synch ratios and response times. I just don't know. The control of these things is so crazy, too. It's like learning to walk all over again. I have to plow through just a ton of exercises so that my brain can sync up with the machine. Where I am right now, it still feels like an out of body experience. I chatted with Marion about all of this and she said that it'll come in time. Now that I'm getting pretty good with the things, they had me take a quick run in the full sim modules and I was able to talk with some of the other pilots. They are all super competitive and when they're not piloting, a lot of them spend their off-hours in the simulators as well, so Marion and Adrian and I had a talk about it all. They said the out-of-bodiness goes away and the machines start to feel like a second skin once you get enough time with them. Anyway, I know you have a huge party coming up that you need to plan for, and you wanna study. Finals are still a bit off for you but it's good. I know how important your classes are. I love you, Molly. Thanks so much for being there for me. I can't wait to see you this fall. It's been too long.

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

How is the Southern Union? I'm so jealous! The tropics sound pretty great right now, even if they are having their winter. It has to be SO beautiful. I know you're down there to look at an abroad college for next year, but you must be spending at least a LITTLE bit of time on the beach. And don't think I mentioned it yet, but I am so proud of you that you got accepted to the abroad program in the SU. Gymnasium is an amazing college and everyone around the world would agree, but the Southern Union is the academic center of the world. Highlands Institute for the Study of Ancient Text is like THE best college for archaic literature to have ever existed. If you have HISAT on your resume, no one can not listen to you. Are the jungles really as beautiful as they say they are? They say that they were one of the few places that remained mostly untouched by the nuclear waste and that there are still some tribes of humans that live beyond their Veils. Our little self-contained biomes simplify our existence tremendously, and remove our ability to destroy the planet like we had in the past, but life on the outside just seems so incredible. In the rough and tumble, where mankind has no hold and nature is free to live it's own merry life without us ruining things. I told you Standish has been beyond the Veils and into the Wilds. He says that the wilds may not be so wild if things get too hot, politically. I truly hope we never get there. It took us centuries to develop ways to peacefully coexist on this planet and to live in sync with the natural order. I would hate to see that progress get flipped because we can't look past our differences and help our friends out. Anyway, send me more pictures and videos! I miss your voice and I miss your face. And I told you your hair looked great longer. Even Claire can't deny that, now. I love you so much, Molly. It's only a few more months before I graduate and you get to spend time with me!

All my heart,

Jim.

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Dearest Molly,

One week! I can hardly wait! How have you been? I feel like I haven't heard from you since you got back from your trip to the SU. What happened with Professor Daniels? You said he talked to you about an internship with the State instead of your abroad and that was the last I heard. What's going on? Anyway, I promised you I'd write to you ever day and that's not going to stop me. I have been going gangbusters in the sims recently. Standish said the scientists can't shut up about how well I'm doing and how high my synch ratios are. I'm at 96%! They said that not even Blaize has broken 95% and he's Auged. I've also aced every single one of my exercises and I have my final exam tomorrow. I really feel like I'm getting the hang of these machines.
I finally heard back from Deka and Shamz, too! They say the team is doing so well, but even the coaches miss me. I even helped Deka work on a new strat. I'm so proud of how well they're all doing. I got to chat with Adrian, again. He wanted to hear about all my old gaming stories. It was nice to just relax and focus on something that isn't related to the Cores. Not hearing from you has been driving me batty and even something so small has been a lifeline. I really think I'm ready for tomorrow. I want to get some studying in before I go to sleep so I'm going to let you go. I hope to hear from you soon. I love you so much, Molly, I can hardly wait to see you.

All my heart,

Jim

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Dearest Molly,

Alright, if you're trying to make me worried, I'm worried. Are you going to be able to be here tomorrow? I really hope so. I can't wait to see you. I'll be looking for you. I am getting a special commendation for doing so well on my exams and Dyman himself is going to be there to give it to me, so if you could be there for such an honor, I really can't think of a way I could ever be happier. Anyway, if you get this, let me know. I'll look for you. I love you. Miss you!

All my heart,

Jim

Chapter 6 - White eyed and bushy-tailed.

 The commander led them to a rear-exit, as it were, on the other side of the hanger, connected to a similar hallway to the one they entered from, and dumped them back to the circular main area. They got back onto the circular walkway and followed the ring around past a few archways and finally at one of the entrances at the rear of the complex, in relation to the Ritz. The complex was, after all, a circle. It couldn't, necessarily, have a “rear.” The entrance itself had two sliding blast doors opened up on either side of the rock outcropping. They walked down another longer hallway. This one was sheathed in metal and sloped inward until it reached “average” height, about 10 feet, what is generally referred to as a “story,” and terminated on another blast door, this one sliding vertically. They were walking abreast of each other down the hall, the commander on the right. As they approached the blast door, the commander broke stride and entered in a series of numbers on a control pad beside the door, and inserted her index finger into a circular hole underneath it.

Jim broke the silence, “What's that?” he pointed at the hole. He had seen a lot of security doors, but never something like that.

“The portal is lined with a series of scanners. It detects blood flow, temperature, and rapidly images the DNA. Essentially, it verifies I'm still attached to the finger and then uses my DNA fingerprint as authorization. This is the Lab area, Jim. The stuff that goes on here is highly sensitive, so security is about as tight as humanly possible. Access is identity-encoded. You are always under several forms of surveillance. Every action you perform is tracked. You need data access and security training before you're even allowed to touch a keyboard in here. Even then, the people who do have clearance here sign waivers that completely invalidate their right to privacy. One wrong move, and all of your privileges are stripped and your personal life put on lockdown,” The commander pushed a big red bar that had begun blinking and the door slid open.

“Why enter the code, if it knows who you are from the DNA scan, the keypad seems redundant,” Jim inquired as the commander once again gave him an open-palmed prod through the doors.

“There are several different number configurations you can enter in case of danger. For instance, there are several codes you can enter when you're under duress. They'll do things like alert the authorities you're being forced to access data you don't want to or change the data accessed so as not to breach security. There are a number of convenience codes, too. Entering in them will alert people you're on your way to their department, or prepare certain test stages of your intent so things are powered up and ready to go by the time you arrive at your lab,” The commander pushed on Jim's left shoulder and steered him down a side hallway. The steel-lined halls and their offshoots were all windowless, occasionally studded with more sliding blast doors and keypads. Each door had a colored light over it, no doubt indicating whether it was occupied or in the midst of an active experiment. The blast doors looked remarkably sturdy, as though they could each survive a direct bomb hit themselves, which they no doubt could.

“That's pretty ingenious. I never could have thought of something like that. Is the stuff contained in here really so important?” The endless rows of doors and halls were incredibly disorientating. Jim focused on the commander to ensure he didn't lose her, or else he'd never find his way out.

“This entire base of operations is one of the most important, and top secret, facilities in the IA. Some of the experiments going on behind these doors are the blackest of Black Ops. Some of it I wish we weren't doing. It can get pretty unsavory. There are server clusters in some of these rooms that, if compromised, would be the downfall of nations. Things that, even internally, would lead to revolt and revolution. However, this is also hallowed ground. In these halls our ancestors toiled tirelessly to preserve humanity and further our survival. In this very facility, Tyson Dale engineered the Adam Bug that saved humanity an eternal damnation of survival in the bowels of the planet,” the commander stopped in front of a door with a green light blinking over top it. “What goes on in these halls has, and forever will, determine the course of humanity, Jim. We take that very seriously.” The Commander inserted her finger into the portal underneath the keypad. A button underneath it illuminated green, the blast door opening as the commander pressed it.

The door opened up to a laboratory similar to the command hub in his dorm. Black slate tile with white grout. Digital chalkboards along the walls and monitors everywhere, dim blue lighting, bordering on black-light, and banks of computer clusters speckling room. There was also a large window looking into a surgery room, accessed via another blast door on its side leading into an intermediate prep room. The surgery room was lit only by the spill-over glow of the main room, which was full of bustling scientists diligently scrutinizing computer monitors and discussing things over digipads at the chalkboards.

As they entered, one of the scientists at the nearest computer terminal noticed the commander and greeted her with a salute, “General Cecilia. Interop alerted me you were on your way. To what do I owe the pleasure?” the scientist went at-ease. All of the researchers had on military uniforms beneath white lab coats.

“We have a special recruit coming through and I'm showing him around,” she extended a skyward-facing open palm to her side in presentation. “Magister Ronilado, this is James Ross.”

A look of surprise burst into Mg. Ronilado's face. He shakily extended a hand to Jim, who took it and gave it a pump. “I wasn't expecting to meet you for quite some time, Mr. Ross. If you're here, I assume the commander has already introduced you to some of the fruit of our work.”

“You mean the Augmentations?” Jim craned his head around, batting glances at the surgery room and the scientists at the chalkboards, as if to indicate his statement of the obvious.

“Indeed. I would also hazard a conjecture that you are dually interested in the program?” the magister gave Jim a penetrating and inquisitive stare.

“It's definitely something I'm interested in understanding. Standish and the commander have given me a cursory rundown of what all is going on,” Jim wrapped his arms around each other as he glanced down. The magister's gaze was quite intimidating.

“And do you have any questions,” Ronilado's visage locked in place.

“What goes on in there?” Jim pointed to the surgery room. The room itself was adorned with robotic surgeons and an array of manual instrumentation. Unlike the observation area they were in, it's walls were similarly lined with black-slate tiling and white grout instead of screens and chalkboards.

“These labs are outfitted with a set of standard-fitted rooms. This is a human-medical research dorm, so it comes with the surgery gear, regardless of if we use it or not. Which we don't. Augmentation is a relatively simple procedure. It involves an IV and a lot of computer instrumentation,” the magister extended a hand to his side indicating they position themselves in front of a screen lining a wall. He then went over to his desk and retrieved his datapad. “I have a presentation I cobbled together for Dyman when we first started on this program. It has a lot of really great models and simulations. I'll take you through the highlights.” Rinolado began gesturing on the datapad's surface and after a few flicks “threw” the presentation from his datapad to the screen.

A rendering of a mannequin in a stark white 3-D plane of gridwork was positioned in Vitruvian pose. “The first stage of the Augmentation procedure involves hanging an IV of nanomachines,” the magister gestured to the monitor over his datapad. A rendering of an IV appeared in the plane, connected to the mannequin. A diagram of rudimentary vasculature laid over the model with arrows indicating flow direction. The arrows showed blue-flow to the head, red arrows indicating the deposit of the nanomachines, and green-flow arrows indicating the evacuation of the payload-free fluid leaving the system.

“The nanomachines,” Rinolado continued, “are micrometers in size. They are coated in a sheath that makes them attach specifically to the brain, and not other fibers in the body. Each contain an impulser that can emit an electrical signal, a battery and inductor to absorb and store charge from your body's waste heat, a sensor that can detect electrical signals in the brain, and a transmitter that can broadcast information a dozen or so feet outside of the body.” The magister changed slides. A model of a human brain appeared in the grid-realm of the presentation. It was powdered in little flashing specks. “Once inside, the nanomachines latch onto groups of neurons in the brain. The resolution isn't quite 'one sensor per neuron,' but we're at roughly one nanomachine per hundred.”

With another gesture, the slide changed again. It zoomed into the brain to a microscopic level and showed a nanomachine floating in a group of neurons. The sensors had red wavy lines with arrows pointing into them, green wavy lines emitting away from them, and both the neurons and the sensors had blue jagged lines emanating from them, again with arrows showing direction, and each were flashing in a particular cadence. “The sensors absorb waste heat from the body via induction, convert it to electrical charge, and store them in a small super-capacitor. The sensors detect electrical activity in the embedded neuron cluster and broadcast that via encrypted radio wavelengths. An impulse can be generated from the sensor that will force the neural cluster to fire.”

Jim interrupted the presentation, “What would happen if all of the sensors fired off at the same time?”

“Good question,” the magister turned from his screen and acknowledged Jim. He turned to the commander and gave a smirk, “I can see why you guys like this kid.” He turned back and addressed Jim, “It'd be the equivalent of a Grand Mal seizure, a psychotic episode, an orgasm, and a horrible hallucinogenic trip, combined. We don't map the sensors in the brain stem for obvious reasons, so we can't control autonomic functions like breathing and heartbeat, but just about everything else is fair game. So, assuming the charge didn't melt your brain, the majority of your neurons would fire instantaneously all at the same time. However, the programs that attach to the sensor arrays are pretty competently coded. They have security features that'd prevent that from happening, as well as extraordinarily strong encryption to prevent unwanted access. And, as far as we can tell, the code is air-tight. You can never take such things off the table, but brute-force hacks and exploits seem like an impossibility. So unless you bring it on yourself, it seems highly unlikely such a contingent would occur.

“Continuing on,” the magister returned his attention to the screen and changed slides. On this one the mannequin had returned and green wavy lines were emanating from its head as the model brain inside it sparkled with simulated activity. The mannequin was also flanked by crude renderings of computers and imaging equipment. “Once the sensors are in place, scanners begin mapping them. Each sensor is assigned a permanently-ingrained (x,y,z) value. Once the sensors are locationally aware, the Artificial Encephelograpic Network, AEN for short, can come online. The computers then begin to map the entire brain, creating the Natural Encephelograph, NE for short.”

The magister changed slides. On it was a picture of billions of dots, some red, and some blue, forming a cloud the shape of a brain. “This is an actual picture of the graphs. The blue dots are neurons, the red dots are the nanomachines. Each position is accurate with a six-sigma level of confidence.”

“That is absolutely amazing,” Jim stared at the cloud, mystified. “That's a real brain?”

“It is, indeed. Watch this,” a huge grin crept across Rinolado's weathered, caramel-colored face, stretching his bleach-white mustache across his cheeks. He used his free hand to swipe his shaggy white hair away from his face and then made a gesture over his datapad. The blue dots began to flash, and the red dots began to glow. As the video played, regions and parts of the brain began to light up and shut off. “This is a video of the test subject solving a number puzzle at a pace of ten frames per millisecond.”

Jim was enrapt. His jaw dropped. Some regions of the brain flashed bright, some were barely used, others blinked into and out of usage at various interval. “That's someone thinking?”

“You are staring humanity in the face, Mr. Ross. This is an early test subject, so even his brain stem is mapped in this video, so that persistent strobing at the bottom is the brain controlling the autonomic functions. You can see things like the hippocampus light up as the subject recalls information from his short-term and long-term memory to solve the puzzle. This region right here,” the magister pointed to a specific region of activity flashing intermittently, “is his motor cortex as he moves his hand to write down solutions to his puzzles. Right now, you at looking at someone's entire encephelograph. Their soul.” The magister's voice was solemn and prophetic.

He changed the slide again. It was back to the mannequin. It was seated in front of a screen with abritrary images flashing across it. The brain had the green waves emitting from it and the banks of computers in the background had ones and zeros flashing across it. “Once the AEN and NE are synchronized, the AEN is attached to our super-servers. We begin training the subroutines to match your NE. Over time, the computer program begins to learn the way your brain processes information and your neural functions become programatized. Essentially, your brain becomes an ever-evolving code structure in our database. Because of the prodigious amount of information this generates, it is impossible to ever store your entire encephelograph, because that would require memorizing and storing the data of each individual NE state at nanosecond resolutions over the entire course of your life. There aren't, nor ever will there be, a system of computers and storage large and powerful enough to store and graph that data. However, we can get close, by developing a program to operate the way your brain does.”

The slide changed again. It was sliced in two, and on both sides was a large maze. One was labeled “Simulation,” and the other was labeled “Human.” There was a picture-in-picture in the lower corner of each. One contained a robot arm, and the other was the picture of a human male. The magister started the video playback. The solving of the mazes commenced. In the picture-in-picture, you could see the human solving the maze and the robot-arm doing the same. They each solved it in almost exactly the same amount of time, with the robot only making a small deviation compared to the path the human had taken. “This is the human versus the computer simulation of it. As you can see, the code, at it's highest level of optimization, is pretty close to the actual thought process of the human. Once we start getting into more complex things like emotion and decision-making, the unpredictable randomness of the human condition causes the simulations to break down, but at a base level, the code can generate subroutines to mimic the brain's function.”

“Wait,” Jim held his hands up and shook them side to side, “You're telling me that robot arm was moving on it's own based on how it thought the test subject would solve the puzzle?” Jim stared at the looping video in disbelief. “This is insane.”

“You are correct. Our ancestors were pretty 'insane,' as you put it.” Rinolado changed the slides again. This one contained another split-frame. One was labeled “Displayed,” the other “Reproduced.” When the videos rolled, the sides were almost mirror-images of each other, with the “reproduced” occasionally having odd video artifacts. Overall, however, they were pitch-perfect recreations of each other. “This is a reading from the visual cortex. A picture-in-picture below the “Reproduced” showed the blue/red encephelograph, with heavy activity in the area of the occipital lobe. “This is a rendering of an interception of the data-stream being sent to the visual cortex before it is processed by the brain.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Jim excitedly extended a finger to the screen. “That's what he's seeing!” Jim exclaimed in absolute disbelief.

“Correct. With enough optimization and training, our computer programs can intercept all of the data streams your sensory structures produce. All of your five basics, if you would. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. We can also interpret some of the more obscure data streams like your sense of orientation, balance, temperature, and so forth. We know where those data streams originate from, and our computer programs learn how to interpret them. We're not quite as good as your brain, obviously, but it's close. Again, the unpredictable randomness makes it hard to recreate exactly what your brain does with this data after it's received, but we can read it before it gets processed.”

“Can it recreate it? I mean, can you implant data onto those streams?” Jim cocked his head sidelong at the magister, batting his attention between the stone-faced commander and the magister, consternation riveting his gaze.

“To some degree, yes. The sensors are able to produce impulses and read impulses, but they have no way of interrupting them, so it is impossible for them to close you off from the world. But, if there is sufficient charge in the super-capacitors, they can generate activity to simulate the data streams.”

“Holy shit,” Jim's eyes widened and he gaped at the professor and the magister. “You can control them. Turn them into robots. You can tell them how to move and what to do and change the way they think and everything. Why would anyone do this? How can this be allowed?” Jim's brain was racing frantically. The implications were too immense for Jim to wrap his brain around.
“Slow down, Jim,” the magister turned to him and raised his hands in a flat-palmed halting gesture. “The programs aren't coded to handle all that stuff. 'Rational thought' is way beyond the purview of the program. With enough processing power and data collection we probably could figure out how that all works, but the program as it is currently coded can't map it and create subroutines. We're still unfurling how the computer program works, let alone how to expand it into such areas. For now, the subroutines are limited to basic logical deconstruction and sensory monitoring, with some light sensory generation routines built in. Essentially we can jump into your body and experience 'you' as you exist, and can listen how your brain does what it's doing, but we can't tap into what you're thinking or how you solve problems. We can't control your mind, Jim, we can just look at it.” The magister calmingly folded his arms over his chest, hugging his datapad in.

“That's still pretty scary,” Jim was a little more at ease, but still visibly shaken. “You no longer have even the privacy of your mind. Is this procedure reversable?”

“It is a little scary, yes. There is a lot of security in place, though. As I said, the operating platform is mostly unhackable, and the training process is lossy, meaning, save for some bits of historical data here and there, the training input is dropped instantly. There is far too much data to store in a histographic format. And, everything can be localized. Once the process is complete, a compactified unit will be given to you to sync up with that contains the subroutine programs. If you don't want it accessed remotely, you don't have to network it, meaning only things in the physical presence of your pod can access the streams. And yes, the process is reversible. There is a special “wash” that can be administered that will destroy the nanomachines and flush them out of your brain and into your lymphatic system.” the magister resumed his position in front of the graph and changed to the next slide.

On it was the mannequin with a small box in what could be assumed to be his pocket. The green lines were emitting from the head and the box toward each other. “As I said, after the training process has been completed, the subroutines are uploaded into a compactified unit. The training data and all of the program are stored on that unit, and no where else. If you ever lose that, you'll have to start from day-one again. The box itself is notably slower than our super-servers, so any subsequent calibration and training will need to be linked up to a processing farm.” Rinolado gestured over his pad again and a computer appeared behind the mannequin in the 3D plane, and yellow lines emanated from the pod and it. “This uplink is where the nifty tricks like controlling devices and the like come in. The first one we like to teach is how to turn off net-linked lights remotely.”

“Oh yeah. I saw that one already. Which reminds me, how come the eyes turn that weird blue-white color?” Jim recalled Standish's menacing gaze. It caused him to shiver slightly.

“Some of the fluid casing of the nanomachines, as it's washed out, has weird interactions with the fluids in the cornea. It is entirely harmless, but it bleaches out the the color and causes them to be phosphorescent in the blue wavelength. I meant to put a slide in about that, but I thought it was a minor detail so I left it out.” The magistrate let out a chuckle that caused is body to quake a little and his white lab coat to flap a bit.

The slide changed again, and this time, a Core-shaped mannequin appeared in the grid-realm, with the human mannequin sitting in the Core. The disproportionately-large pod was docked inside the simulated cockpit with green lines emitting to and from it and the core. More rudimentary lines of vasculature with arrows to the pod were laid over the Core. “This is the last slide. Unlike the traditional sensor harness, by directly inputting the data streams from the core into your brain, synchronization rates increase ten-fold. This will increase the control you have over the Core, integration of the Core sensory data, and understanding of the Core's operating platform. Obviously we highly recommend this to all of our Core pilots. And, also obviously, not all of them like the idea of undergoing the Aug.”

“Do you have any more questions, Jim?” The commander's voice was startling. It felt like ages since he last heard it.

Jim shook his thoughts into place and then looked at the commander. “No, not right now at least. There's a lot to absorb. I definitely need to think about all of this.”

“Thank you, Magister. I'm going to get Jim back to his dorm. I appreciate you taking time out of your research to help Mr. Ross here.” The commander put a hand on Jim's shoulder and began guiding them out of the lab.

“Any time, General. It was a pleasure meeting you Mr. Ross. I hope to work with you very closely in the future.” Rinolado's beaming smile returned as he hugged his datapad to his chest and waved his goodbye to the two.

Once outside, Jim halted as the blast door slid closed. “If I'm understanding this correctly, Commander,” Jim began as the commander halted and turned to face him, arms folded across her body, “the Aug program is, essentially, installing a brain scanner into my head that can also make me think things?”

“That's about the long and short of it, yes,” the commander cocked a hip out in anticipation.

“And if I don't Aug? How do I pilot the Cores?” Jim furrowed his brow a bit, already knowing the answer.
“We hook up a crude external rig that does the same thing, but not nearly as efficiently or effectively. It's imperfect so it'll be mentally exhausting. It's can, at times, be somewhat painful. It will inhibit your ability to perform at optimal levels. Some of the pilots are so good they don't need it, though. Adrian is a sniper and he has not undergone the procedure. By Contrast, Tomah is Augmented, and is an excellent marksman on the range, but couldn't snipe for the life of him inside a Core. However, it is questionable if Tomah could have succeeded at all as a Core pilot if he hadn't Augmented. The procedure won't make you a better pilot, Jim, it just makes everything easier.”

“If I want to Aug,” Jim looked sheepishly at Commander Cecilia, “when would I have to choose?”

“Never. It is always available. If you never want to undergo it you don't have to. If, half-way through training you decide that the Augmentation is worth your time, we'll start you the next day. It is entirely optional. For all we know, you could be the best pilot we've ever seen with nothing but a harness, and the Augmentation won't change a thing. I'd like to think that's not true, as any advantage is always going to help, but there may be a skill-cap that we haven't hit yet, that you will.” The commander's gaze softened and she smirked a soft smile. “It's not something you need to worry about yet, Jim. You haven't even started any training. You have no idea what you'll need. It can wait. For now, just focus on being the best you can. If you feel like it's something that can make you better and you want to do, we can go from there.” The commander turned her back and craned her neck. The soft smile creased her round cheeks. “Let's get you back to your dorm. It's getting late around here.” The commander turned back forward and began walking again.

Jim looked down at his watch. Without any access to natural light, he hadn't realized what time it was. With a skip and a shuffle, he fell back in line behind the commander as they made their way to the dorms in silence, rapt in thought.

Chapter 5 - Steel Giants

 Steel giants. The Cores stood like steel giants in the hangar. The machines were familiar. Two legs, jointed forward, with foot-like structures at the bottom. 2 arms, jointed in the center, with hand-like structures at the end. A central power plant, similar to a torso; a sensor stalk at the top, similar to a head. A skin of sleek super-metal. Plating and stylistic flourishes like armor and clothes. The plating was thicker in certain areas, giving it a sort of physique. They looked, at first blush, like people.

“Impressive, aren't they?” Standish gestured with the brim of his hat to the monoliths. He had moved off to the side of the entrance, and was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, face wrought with a awe-filled grin. “They get me every time. I've set foot on the surface of Luna. Been on exploratory missions in The Wilds, visited the Carved Cities, and seen all 131 Great Craters in the world. And still, nothing puts my hair on end like these guys.”

“They're amazing,” Jim's mouth was agape. “How come there are so few? Why don't we just make our own?” Jim turned to look at Standish, and furrowed his brow in scrutiny. “Also, you've been to the colonies? And The Wilds? And the Craters?” That information seemed almost more interesting than the Cores.

“Don't, Jim,” the Commander said, with a stern leer. “Not now.”

Jim looked at the Commander, then at Standish. “Who are you? What are you?”

“I'm Eli Standish and that's all you need to know, for now,” He turned his attention to Jim, a wicked grin creasing his cheeks. “Let's show you around.” He bucked away from the wall and gestured for them to follow him to the stairs. Carol prodded Jim with the palm of her hand, and they both followed in tow.

After a few dozen steps, they were on a steel scaffolding running along the walls of the large open room. “This also used to be a growing room, but not as big as the farming facilities. We've retrofitted it to serve as a hangar,” the Commander gestured around the large open space. “As of now, the International Alliance has nine Core units, but only five are fully operational. We know, currently, that our three militarized international 'allies,'” the Commander used air-quotes, “have at least six units amongst them, though we don't know who and in what concentrations. The best intelligence we have suggests that the Democratic Pan-Regional Council has at least two, and the People's Island Republic has at least one unit. As for the Southern Union, the way international population treaties are set up, they potentially have enough 'physical capital,'” again with the air-quotes, “to be militarized, but we don't know if they have the resources to maintain a standing regiment. It's possible that some of our non-militarized partners have units, but that would probably be in only a research capacity.”

“So, that leaves three unaccounted for?” Jim questioned, still gaping at the behemoths while they paced the outer edge of the wall on their way to what looked like a small outpost in middle of the scaffolding.

“Correct. And we have no idea where they are, just that they were discovered by nomads, and that at one point they were trafficked through the PIR. The IA is unequivocally the strongest nation in the Great Union with the most population treaties and top-3 in everything from academics to economy, but we're definitely not the most liked. There has been stable peace for generations, short of a few power-struggles here and there, but politicians have been letting population treaties inflate on the back of military spending. The IA is equally to blame, though we are a very peaceful nation. The PIR, on the other hand, has been expanding rapidly and isn't quite content with their lack of standing in the Union. Diplomacy has kept them well in hand, as have a relative lack of military power, but if they can acquire a significant portion of the Core population, it is possible they may attempt to assert their power with force...”

“Carol,” Standish cut her off. “Enough politics. It's boring. You're going to make the boy's head explode.” They had all stopped in front of the outpost's door. Standish opened it and led the two inside. The room was very small, despite seeming quite large on the outside, and was crammed with computer terminals, work benches and a few chairs. “This is the machine shop, Jim. Behind that door is the warehouse. Back there we have a collection of in-demand parts,” Standish gestured to the back room, “the bulk, however, we keep in the Styx. We perform the repair work needed to keep those suckers running here. The major systems on the core are all self-healing, thankfully, but not everything is quick to repair. 50-foot bomb-proof metal giants aren't easy to patch up, either.” Standish gestured to one of the work-benches. An eighteen-foot arm was running across its entire length, splayed open with wires, hydraulics, coolant arteries, and other such mechanical bits exposed and dangling. “The meta-materials were too badly damaged during training. They would fix themselves, eventually, but we don't have months to wait, so Tim and his boys have to fix it up.”

“How Human,” Jim commented as he surveyed the arm, unconsciously having wandering over toward it.

“Don't you even think of touching that,” a burly bearded man said as he came out from the door in the back, forcing Jim to retract an also-unconsciously extending arm. “Thought I heard someone say my name. New recruit?” Tim had on tan coveralls and was coated thick in sweat and wreaked of chemicals. His long brown curls were tied behind his head in a thick pony tail, and his thick bushy beard was recently trimmed. It was obvious that at one point in the day it had been neatly combed too, however that time appears to have long passed.

“I'm Jim,” he shook his head to bring him back to the present. He extended his hand toward Tim instead, who shook it warmly with a solidness rivaling granite.

“Our ancestors used human physiology as a template when making those guys,” Tim gestured with his head to the Cores outside, “durability and energy expenditure are some of the biggest reasons humans stayed as small as they did during our initial evolutionary process a hundred sixty-five thousand or so years ago. Scientific advance overcame those with compact high-output energy sources, ultra-durable meta-materials, and advanced mechanical engineering techniques. So, they applied the best of both worlds and came up with the Cores. Me and the other guys act as mechanical surgeons and keep those things running. So, be careful with them, will ya? My job is hard enough as it is without you kids taking a direct hit from a mass-driver in the arm.”

“I-I'll remember that,” Jim was still enrapt as he inspected the metal arm. “How, exactly do they work?” He shifted his focus back to Tim.

“Well, there's a cockpit in the center. We attach a bunch of sensors to your head that read the electrical signals in your brain. Then, you think about how you want to move. The robot you're inside reads that and does what you thought. About that simple. The robot itself is modeled pretty heavily on human physiology, as you can see,” Tim gestured at the arm. “The machine itself is composed of some pretty advanced stuff. Meta-materials that act like muscle tissue. Wires and hydraulics that act like tendons and ligaments. Capillaries that carry fluids and electrical signals throughout the matrices.” Tim pointed up to a few posters on the walls that Jim had missed when looking at the arm. They were elaborate wiring diagrams and images of musculature splayed open, almost like a doctor's anatomical diagram. “When I said 'mechanical surgeon,' I wasn't being facetious. This stuff is intricate, complicated, highly interconnected, and we still have a pretty poor understanding of the big picture.”

“It's just so beautiful,” Jim went from poster to poster, studying the rich complexity and beautiful artistry of each one. They looked more like DaVinci diagrams than anything you'd find in a school textbook.

“You busy?” Standish had his arms crossed and was standing near the door. He gestured to Tim with an upward tick of his head.

“Davis is out in the Styx collecting some parts so I have a few minutes, yeah.” Tim, who's arms were also folded, shifted weight to his back foot and kicked his hip out.

“We should take him over to meet Vishnu. He's going to pilot him, after all,” a huge, white-toothed grin creased Standish's eyes as a look of confusion and fear crept into Tim's face.

“Vishnu? Seriously? Why would you do such a thing, are you trying to kill the boy?!” Tim dragged a rugged palm over his forehead and along his hair until he gripped his ponytail. His other hand planted on his hip and his voice sounded strained and afraid.

Jim tensed uneasily. “What's he talking about?” Jim darted his glances between Tim and Standish. Standish stood resolute in his grin. Commander Cecilia remained silent and unmoved.

“Vishnu is a scary piece of work,” Tim started. He settled back into his cross-armed stance and shifted his focus to Jim. “He's the most recently uncovered Core, and he's not like anything we've ever seen. He's composed of material we've only begun to start analyzing. His computer system is loaded with insanely intricate coding structures, and we have no idea what all of his functions and subroutines are capable of. There are big black-box structures all over him that we can't crack open and none of our imaging technology can see what's inside. We've already mapped some of the pilots to him, but we have other functioning robots so we don't really take him out.”

“Dyman sent down the command to have a dedicated pilot on Vishnu ASAP. That's why we called in Mr. James Ross here to take him out for a run,” Standish pulled an open palm away from his elbow to gesture at Jim.

“Wait...Dyman is pulling in the Big Gun?” Tim's eyes grew wide as he locked his stare on Jim.

“That's enough, gentlemen. Let's introduce Jim to his newest best friend, shall we?” General Cecilia interjected with a calm voice and a hand raised in a flat-palmed “stop” gesture.

“Carol's right. Lead the way, Mr. Rothgur.” Standish turned his body to the side and swept his hand out signaling Tim to lead the way.

“Alright, follow me, then,” Tim lurched forward, an uneasy expression creeping into his already-alarmed face. He led them out of the building and along the back scaffold of the room. They walked past a series of slips, each lined with their own towering scaffolds ensconcing the Cores. Each Core they passed had slightly unique features about them. Some were burlier, with thicker armor and more dynamic physiques. Others were more slender with lankier builds. The cores were sometimes outfitted in fabric, as well, it seemed.

“Is that a skirt?” Jim pointed at one of the Cores they were walking past.

“Kilt. It's an ancient Scottish garb. The clothes they wear help insulate the metamaterials, reducing heating and cooling loads, just like your clothes. They also help differentiate who's who on the battlefield. The materials they're made out of also offer armoring to areas that you can't plate over because they need flexibility, like joints and sensor stacks,” Tim pointed the Core they were walking by. It had on the kilt, as well as sleeves over it's elbows and wrists, leg-warmers over it's ankles and a scarf-like collar over it's neck. It's “chest,” however, was openly exposed, as were its thighs and to a lesser extent its knees, though the kilt was long enough to hang down over them. “Cúchulainn is a Barbarian-class Core, one of the first we discovered. He still remains one of our most powerful Cores, as well. Heimdall, across the way, is his partner.” Tim pointed at a similarly-dressed Core across from Cúchulainn on the other side of the room. The covering and styling were slightly different, but the physique was almost identical.

Tim pointed to a very slender-looking core that was covered in a tight, form-fitting black jumper. It had more feminine flourishes. “That's Annie Oakley. She's a Cowboy-class Core. It has a lower center of gravity, is much more flexible than the others, and can put a phase round through a coin from miles away. The jumpsuit is actually made of Chameleon Cloth, as well. Essentially, she'll go invisible when it's activated. And to answer your question, yes, our ancestors were pretty sexist, but there are good anatomical reasons why the female archetype is more suited for her task.”

“How many classes are there?” Jim swiveled his head around as they walked. It looked like they were able to fit 12 slips in the hangar, but only 9 of which were full. Some of them were shrouded, flashes of light and noise periodically emerging from behind the screens.

“Right now we have 4 primary Core types. Barbarians, Cowboys, Hermes, and Deities There are various cross-over designs, but those are essentially it. Hermes Cores are light and agile...”

“Scouts,” Jim Interrupted. “Soldiers, archers, scouts and equalizers. Just like in my strategy games. Barbarians are beefier front-line soldiers, but at the expense of agility and sensory advantages. Scouts are fast and agile with strong sensory output, but low in combat skill. Archers are ranged, but lack any direct combat power. Equalizers are ace-in-the-hole types that are strong in all relevant combat strengths, but require a large investment of resources and strategic protection because of their comparatively high value.”

“You got it,” Tim affirmed, a modicum of impression leaking into his face. He craned his neck and addressed the commanders, “Smart kid. Dyman has good taste.”

“Who is this Dyman guy?” Jim craned his own neck to address the three.

“General-at-Arms Tyler Dyman. He's the overseer for the outfit and the liaison between the Alliance and New Roman Industries,” Tim began.

“Tim, please. That's more than enough,” Carol chimed in.

“Why do you keep interrupting him, Commander?” Jim inquired. He was beginning to get frustrated with all the secretiveness and half-information.

“You'll find out in time, Jim. It's just a bunch of politics. And, more than you need to know right now. We want you focusing on your training. I already feel like we're overburdening you with information. The last thing we need is you getting confused about what's going on and what you're here for,” the commander rested a hand on Jim's shoulder mid-stride. “You're a solder now. You need to trust that we have your best interests in our intentions.”

“I trust you professor, It's just all so confusing,” Jim turned his neck to look at the the commander.

“I understand, Jim,” Carol smiled warmly. “It's for your own good, though. I promise.

“Here we are,” Standish interjected, breaking the moment. Jim returned his attention to the hangars and focused on the Core where Tim had stopped.

“This is Vishnu,” Tim raised a hand upward. Everyone's eyes followed in suit. “He's a Deity-class, obviously. He and Jupiter are the only known Cores of this type to exist. The DPRC has the other one, and they're pretty tight-lipped about it. We'd love to know if Jupiter has the same sort of black boxes and code weirdness.”

“He's magnificent,” Jim gawped. Vishnu didn't have the sharp physique or slenderness of the other Cores, but still maintained a visage of power and grace all the same. He wore a dhoti-style piece of fabric around his legs, a stole-like piece of fabric wrapped around his shoulder-sockets and hung loosely down his torso and a long thick piece of tubing ran around his neck and down almost to his groin area. “What's the pipe do?” Jim pointed to the necklace-like structure.

“Don't know. One of those black-boxes we were talking about,” Tim shrugged. “Best we can tell is that it contains a ferrofluid that circulates around and generates a very strong electromagnetic field. We haven't tested him much as we don't really know what all he's capable of, but when we did, imaging showed pretty intense electromagnetic fields emitting from it. Our best guess is it's a defense mechanism. Radar scrambling, laser deflection, something like that.”

“We're all pretty excited to see what interesting details you can tease out of his system,” Standish had his hands in his pockets and he rolled onto his toes as he thrust his pelvis forward and then rolled back onto his heels as he pulled his pelvis backward. “A keen and penetrating mind such as yours, Jim, is a rare commodity. We foresee great things.”

“That's a lot of pressure, sir. If my mind were so 'keen and penetrating,' you'd imagine I'dve done better in school,” Jim glanced uneasily at Standish.

“I never realized how much I hate being called, 'Sir.' How do you deal with it, Carol?” Standish winked at Jim. “You'll do fine, Jim. When you get to where I am, you learn a thing or two about spotting talent.”
“And 'where are you,' exactly?” Jim pursed his lips and pulled his nose and lips to a side as his brow scowled.

“I'm a problem-solver, Jim. I bring the right resources to the right people to get things done,” Standish flicked the brim of his fedora with his index finger, and flashed another toothy grin at Jim.

“Is he going to be Processed?” Tim interjected. “I really don't think anyone should go in dry on Vishnu.”

“Neither do I,” Standish replied.

“He hasn't decided, yet,” the commander scowled. “He hasn't even been on base for more than a few hours.”

“It'd be a waste of potential, is all. Tomah's stats went through the roof when he made the switch. And when we put Marion on test in Vishnu dry, she could barely get him to walk,” Tim glanced back at Jim but maintained focus on Carol and Standish.

“Just give him time. We have some other things to show Jim. Do you need to get back to the shop, Tim?” Commander Cecilia made an implicative face and nodded her head and body forward.

“Yes, right. I should get back to the shop, yes. Thanks for reminding me,” Tim turned to Jim and extended a hand. “I'm sure we'll see a lot of each other in the future. It was a pleasure meeting you,” A warm smile crept across Tim's face as they shook hands. Tim then turned and walked back the way they had come and made his way back to the shop.

Jim shifted his weight back and forth uneasily as he compulsively crossed and uncrossed his arms, “What have I got myself into...” he uttered to himself.

“You'll be fine, Jim. Really. Just don't think about it too much. It's not as crazy as it sounds,” Carol put a reassuring hand on Jim's shoulder. She could feel his muscles relax under her palm.

“Touching,” Standish said dryly. “That's the end of my tour folks. You are released from my custody,” Standish spread his arms wide and grinned from ear to ear.

“You're such a prick, Eli,” Carol snarled at the fedora-ed man.

“It's not my job to be nice,” he quipped back.

“But it wouldn't kill you to show some compassion now and again,” Carol glanced off wistfully, a glassy sheen twinkling in her eyes.

The barb caused a visible shift in Standish's face, “Jim. Just be calm and try your hardest. Ignore the pressure, ignore the consequences, shut out the world, and focus on the tasks at hand. Pay attention to the objectives, and strive to achieve your goals. We'll take care of the rest,” Standish put a hand on Jim's shoulder to soothe him, his face visibly softened at Carols prod.

Old wounds, Jim thought. A troubled expression crept into his brow as his mind returned to everything around him. “Is it normally this jarring for everyone?” Jim glanced up at the Commander. The twinkle had faded from her eyes and her expression had returned to its normal, warm but enclosed visage.

“We don't normally introduce you everyone quickly, no. The others were all recruited from already-established military service, and had orientation classes beforehand so they knew what they were getting into. I wanted to take it slower with you, but Standish,” the Commander batted her eyes up in acknowledgment, “and the High Command insisted we get you briefed and combat-ready as quickly as possible.”

“Why the rush?” Jim looked over at Standish, who put his hands up, flat palms facing Jim, as he shook his head back and forth.

“I haven't the foggiest what Dyman is thinking. I was pretty adamant about trying to get you through the standard channels, but he insisted Carol and I pulled you straight in as soon as possible. With school out and your team in a solid position for the Digital Championships, we decided to get you here ASAP. Our command team said they'd give you a quick and condensed BASIC so you can be certified through the military, and I agreed to take on your 'education' needs, with the help of Commander Cecilia, of course,” Standish smirked and mockingly acknowledged Carol with a glance.

“Don't you guys have other important things to do? Like recruiting and 'fixing things,' or whatever?” Jim was batting his head between the Commander and Standish.

“Absolutely,” the Commander said, as Jim rested his gaze on her. “But, an order is an order and if High Command and Dyman think that superseding the standard channels and getting you into the squad as soon as humanly possible is the right call, then that takes precedent.”

“Great,” Standish pulled the brim of his fedora down and began wandering away from them, “Now that we have that out of the way, I have other things to attend to. I think the Professor has something else she wants to show you,” Standish flashed his blue-white eyes at Carol, an implicative glare permeating his expression, “I, however, have need to update Dyman and take care of some other matters. With that, I shall bid you two adieu.” Standish turned his back on them and made his way back to where they came in.

“What was that about?” Jim inquired, referencing the unspoken conversation the commander shared with Standish through their glance.

“You know Standish,” the commander stuttered, appearing somewhat shaken. “The man has a flare for the dramatic.”

“Everyone around here seems to,” Jim smirked at the Commander.

“Indeed. Being able to see through the theater is a real talent, Jim. So much of what goes on in life is bloviation and grandstanding, that sometimes people lose site of the world past the end of their nose. All of the trouble we're seeing in the Islands are so much theater, but when your job is to keep people safe, you have to take it seriously. And, sometimes, the less cognizant forget it really is just an act and start taking things a little too seriously. When that tension runs too high, and you've got too much time and too many tools at your disposal, people of less cool temperament start trying to fix things that aren't broken.” the Professor paused and folded her hands in front of her.

“You mean the DPRC?” Jim cocked his head to the side, the pieces finally starting to fall into place.

“The economic expansion of the last few decades has been fueled by defense spending,” The Commander started slowly, taking special care to choose her words. “The economic expansion has allowed population treaties to expand. The population expansion has lead to a need for more land. However, development permits have not grown, and the Global Initiative has no intent of issuing new ones. That means Real Capital, things like people, property, and goods, are starting to get more expensive. That's leading to a lot of inequity in trade, especially considering the relative goldmine of RC that we in the IA are sitting on. As a consequence, some of the disadvantaged nations are trying to create a climate of fear in an effort to balance the trade equations. 'You wouldn't want to raise prices on goods, now would you, what with our finger on the button and all,' as it would go.”

“So, now you have a bunch of rich, power-hungry countries sitting on huge troves of weapons and itchy trigger fingers, motivated by over-dramatized diplomatic theater, and everyone's gaze trained at the asymmetrically-powerful IA expecting them to kowtow to aggression in the interest of peace,” the puzzle pieces falling into alignment as Jim shook his head and knocked them into place.

“You got it,” the Professor exclaimed with a finger-point.

“And we need to get Vishnu operational as a fiat accompli, in order to silence the saber-rattling of the other nations, who'd be far too afraid too go up against such a potent force,” Jim continued to train his focus at the floor as the epiphany struck. “But why now?” he shook his head again and broke his trance to train his eyes on the Commander's.

“There are only three military powers in the Global Initiative. There are, however, a lot of nations who feed those powers via research, manufacturing, and physical goods. If we were to break into conflict, there would be a massive market destabilization. Some industries would sky-rocket in value, some more peaceful endeavor would see their value plummet. People with a lot of skin in the game, New Roman Industries as an example, would prefer that the status quo be maintained.”

“So a business man is pulling the strings that determine the fate of the world?” Jim sounded almost indignant.

“When has that ever not been the case? Dyman has consinderable influence over the High Command and he himself is heavily invested in the well-being of NRI, if you catch my drift. If a guy like him is ruffled enough to sick dogs like Standish on the scent, than things are a lot more serious than they appear,” the commander was unable to hide the worried tone that crept into her voice.

“And what is Standish, anyway?” Jim thought he'd try again.

“New Roman Industries was at the head of the Aug program. When Standish became patient number 1, he and Dyman got tight. Dyman is a senior member of NRI and started getting Standish involved in some serious black-ops stuff, which is when we started growing apart. When I refused to Aug, Standish got very vocal about it. That's when I left him,” Carol looked very troubled, the glassy twinkle sparkling in her eyes again.

“Why didn't you Aug?” Jim furrowed his brow in inquisition.

“I knew my limits,” she mused as she blinked away the glint. “Anyway, I have one last stop I need to show you before I'm done with you. She grabbed Jim by the hand and tugged him out of his reverie. “This way.”

Jim shook his head as the professor let his hand slip out of hers from the lead. With a skip, he start his momentum and fell in step.

Chapter 4 - Hail, The Gang's All Here

 Saying his dorm was “big” would be a dramatic understatement. It was much larger than any room he'd ever had the luxury of calling his own, combined. It was 6 rooms in total, all splendidly appointed. Rich, soft, leather sofas could be found in every room. The king-sized bed was bedecked in sheets softer than even the downy fur of an ermine. There was lots of oak and mahogany and maple, all stained darker than coffee. The kitchen was full of granite and steel-colored appliances and cast-iron black flourishes. There was a study with floor-to-ceiling book cases that had ladders to get to the upper shelves complete with real wood-pulp books. Books! Ladders! The digital lounge felt almost anachronistic. An island of modernity in this sea of retro-classic style. Screens and digital chalkboards and desks and any manner of interface devices studded the command-room-like compartment, dim blue lighting and black slate floor with white grout gave the scene an eerie feel, further enhancing the out-of-place-ness of the room.

“This facility used to be the capital of the underground network all those centuries ago,” the professor had explained to him upon arrival. “Between colonies like these, and people who found nuclear-shielded caverns and the like, it's estimated that only a few tens of thousands of people survived the Great Collapse. This specific facility housed about two thousand people. This wing, called 'The Ritz' in historic records, is where some of the most affluent and influential people of their time called home. Your training is going to be extraordinarily stressful, Jim. We all decided that the pilots should have these chambers. Enjoy it, as they may become your only sanctuary from your new way of life.”

When he arrived in the room, his various trunks and suitcases were waiting for him. There were lots of open shelves and book cases for his various trinkets. Closets and wardrobes for his clothes. The rest was in their rightful place amongst the cabinets, closets, and shelves of the flat. The room would be maintained by a cleaning staff every few weeks, as well. The professor had instructed Jim to locate his uniforms, change quickly, and meet her at the front of the dorm for his tour of the facilities. He found his uniforms in a wardrobe in a small changing room attached to the sleeping chamber. Very bland affair. Tan-colored cargo pants tucked into black mid-calf boots, a black canvas belt with pewter clasp, a tucked-in, rough, white, collared shirt with black buttons, a pewter analog watch with black canvas band, and a tan military-style brimmed hat.

When Jim arrived back in the dorm lobby, also magnificently appointed in rich red tapestry and velvet couches, more wood and glass, more retro-classic stylings, the professor was waiting for him, diligently studying a datapad in a high-backed chair near an old-oak coffee table. There were even canvas-and-paint pictures in thick golden frames along the walls, something, until now, Jim had only thought existed in museums and private antique collections.

“General,” Jim began, as he approached the obviously enrapt professor.

“Jim, yes,” the General slowly lowered her datapad from her eyes and stood up to greet Jim. “I wanted to show you around the facility before your training tomorrow. Was your room satisfactory?”

“It was more than I could have ever dreamed of, professor,” Jim looked her straight in the eyes, unsure if more gratitude could ever exist in him.

“That's good. I'm glad the facilities are to your liking. Also, now that we're on base, it might be best to get in the habit of calling me 'Commander' or 'sir.' Anyway, shall we go? There's a lot to show you here. Right now, as you know, we're at the farthest-east corner of the facility, known as the Ritz. In its heyday, this was where the rich and powerful secured their future. As time went on and generations iterated through, the nature and socioeconomic structure of the enclave shifted, and this eventually became a sort of headquarters for the enclave's Politburo. There are roughly 30 or so dorms equivalent to yours, and a few dozen lesser dorms for support staff. Then as now, it has become our base of operations, as well.”

“So, you're telling me this place is a few thousand years old?” Jim glanced around again. The masonry around the walls was pristine. The book cases looked aged, but not decrepit. The couches and tapestry and paintings were pristine, untarnished by the millennia.

“Yes, these are all pre-Collapse genuine artifacts. Before the Great Wars that lead up to the Collapse, our forefathers were some of the craftiest minds around. While developing awe-inspiring ways to destroy one another, they also created some of the most fantastic inventions to ever have existed. We're getting better every day, and ramping up fast, but they reached an inflection point known as 'the Singularity,' a place in time where technological innovation builds on itself and advances so fast, that it begins to scale exponentially, and not linearly. Scientists and great minds the world over toil day in and day out to decode and disentangle the legacy they left behind. These specific artifacts, the ones in this room, have all been treated with, for lack of a better way to state it, 'magic chemicals' that more or less negate the effects of time on their structure. So, while still vulnerable to wear-and-tear, they are impervious to aging alone. That's how we've been able to recover so much information about our past. They truly were the modern-day equivalent of wizards and sorcerers,” the awe and reverence in the professor's voice was palpable. You could feel her passion and empathy for the Old Times.

“Magic? Wizards? Socerers? ...Commander?” The words were so foreign from the professor, Jim was a little shocked.

“What is magic, Jim?” the professor asked rhetorically. “It's the violation of the natural order as you know it through trickery and mastery of the world around you, harnessing unseen forces and laws. So, yes Jim, until we can find a way to explain how they work, it might as well be magic. When Standish turned the lights off in that train, didn't you, for an instant, imagine he might be a wizard?”

“I guess. I just never thought of it like that. I always thought of magic as a way to hand-wave what you don't understand. I just thought Standish had done something that I couldn't quite explain, yet.” Jim looked at his shoes. He'd never had to think of something like that before. He wasn't really sure what he thought in that moment. If Standish had said he was a wizard, would he have believed him?

“That's a good way to think, Jim. Always question what you see. Just remember to always keep an open mind, because the wonders of the world are not limited to what you know. Anything in the world is possible, Jim, the only limitation is finding a way to trick the laws that govern our world into letting you do it. Anyway, we have a lot to go over, so we should get moving.” the Commander started walking through the hallway adjacent to the lobby where they were standing. The whole cavern was lined with stone walls and wood paneling, much like a castle. At the end of the hallway, they arrived at a large circular arena. In the center was a large fountain and reflection pool full of colorful fish and various plantlife covering it's bare stone floor. “The water pushes up through the geyser-cum-fountain in the center, forming this natural aquifer. The rock and sediment filter out the toxins, so we're left with clean water. This pool actually provides the majority of water for the facility. It may not look it, but at it's deepest, this lake extends down to about 25 feet.”

“And the trees?” A series of rings radiated out from the central fountain and pool, Jim pointed at the inner-most circle, an arboretum full of vegetation and flora.

“For hundreds of years, this was the only home anyone had ever know. That arboretum would have been the only forest anyone would have ever seen, this lake the only body of water. The people who built this facility knew that and so they did whatever they could to preserve the outside world in here.” The professor guided Jim down the circular walkway that encircled the perimeter of the cavernous expanse. Unlike the Ritz, the cavern was almost entirely exposed rock, save for the ceiling, which was lined in metal plates, no doubt to protect against cave-ins. A bit down the walkway they came to a staircase, which they ascended. It brought them to another ring, this one, however, was a moving walkway that moved around the entire perimeter in either direction. At interval were stairs up to the arboretum, or stairs down to a lower ring which served as a tram station to the other underground cities.

“This place is pretty incredible,” Jim gaped in awe around the place, dumbstruck by the sheer feat of engineering involved in making such a place reality. They mounted the moving walkway. It moved faster than a brisk walk, but slower than a run. It was transparent as well, so you could see the still, crystal-clear water beneath it as the fish leapt and splashed in their pool. Wide archways studded the outer wall of the geofront.

“That hallway takes you down into what was commonly referred to as 'The Styx.'”

The professor pointed to the archway to their right as they passed by it. “That would have been where the 'average citizen'” would lived. It's comprised of roughly a thousand mostly identical dorms. The wing, as of now, is mostly uninhabited, though we do use a few cells to store supplies and have repurposed others into research labs. No one lives there, though.” They passed on by the arch and carried on around the ring. “The ring completes a full revolution every half hour. The outer-most ring was designed to take a full one to walk. A lot of people like to run the ring, too. Current record is just under fifteen minutes.”

“Down that way is the mall,” the general gestured to the next hallway on the path. “What we're doing is very top-secret, Jim. There isn't a lot of coming and going. We have a fully staffed cafeteria and commissary in the mall, and some of the staff have set up little shops and recreational areas as well. It's a pretty safe bet that if you're looking for someone, that's where they are. I'll have the cadets give you a tour after I'm done with you.” The general shifted weight on her feet and recrossed her arms. They continued walking along as the ring crept ever forward. “Here we go, Jim, this is the hallway we want to go down.” The general pushed gently on Jim's shoulder as she guided him to the side of the walkway. The transition from moving to stationary was slightly jarring. Jim shook his head back into place. “Down this hall is training facility. Everyone should be there.”

The hallway was a large steel-lined affair. Large circular floodlights lined the ceiling and created large circles of light on the ground and large triangles of darkness on the walls. Jim was reminded of the long hallways that led from the locker room to the stadium floors during the world competitions. The professor led at a fast clip, arms swinging, boot-heels thudding against the cement floor. Ahead, in one of the dark spaces, a shape started to form. It was a person, one leg outstretched, knee locked to support their weight, the other foot flat against the wall, same as their back, head and hat lowered, staring sidelong at them with folded arms, casually disinterested at their presence.

“I prefer the fedora,” the familiar voice said from the shadowed darkness. “But you do look pretty good in uniform.” Standish kicked off the wall and followed stride from behind. He was wearing a suit, as usual – a grey, Italian-cut, double-breasted affair with a black mandarin-collared shirt, tie replaced with a large ebony button.

“How'd you get out of wearing uniform?” Jim shifted uncomfortably in his military garb. It felt heavy and overly-official.

“Being who I am and what I am comes with a few perks, Jim.” Standish winked as Jim glanced back.

“Who are you and what are you, then?”

“Jim,” the commander's voice was stern and finite.

“Yes, Commander,” Jim acknowledged, letting the subject drop.

The three walked in silence for a while. The pressed-leather heels of Standish made a loud clicking sound, in contrast to the vulcanized rubber of the commander and Jim's more functional uniform boots. At length, the hall terminated into a small red door.

“That door should be painted black,” Jim pointed.

“What?” the commander turned around to face him.

“Nothing,” Jim shook his head again to collect his thoughts.

“Anyway, the training facility is through this door,” the commander pulled her sleeve back to look at her watch, “They should be in the middle of calisthenics right now. You have a few days to get adjusted to everything before you have to start BASIC, but for now, I want you to meet the pilots.” The commander gestured to Jim to go through the door.

Jim pushed the door open. Inside was a large bank of computers, rows and rows. It looked like the old command centers from Ancient History class, like the old NASA and Cosmonaut control facilities. There were dozens of people seated at the computer monitors, numbers and figures and shapes flashing across the screens. The command center was relatively small with a door on either side, a large window filling the entire front wall. The window looked out into a huge, open expanse. Dozens of stories high, and as many yards long, the dome-shaped expanse was lined with large steel arches and crowned with gigantic, terawatt lighting fixtures, simulated suns.

“This used to be the farm facility, back when this was a shelter. We've converted it into a combat training center. The entire facility is climate-and inertial-controlled,” the commander pointed at the rows of monitors. “Everything and everyone is watched. Heart rate, mental state, exhaustion levels, thirst and hunger states. In the coming days, you'll receive a few implants. After they're calibrated, we'll be able to tell just about everything your body can tell us.”

“Those ones aren't optional,” Standish said with a wry smile.

“So, those read-outs on FPS aren't fake?” Jim noticed one of the monitors, on it was a cartoonified body flanked by dozens of numbers, percentages, and progress bars.

“Not anymore, no. Reality has a way of mimicking fantasy. Some of the best ideas we can conceive start out as elements of a story,” the commander walked over to one of the doors. “This way Jim.”

He followed dutifully. The push-bar double-doors swung open to another hallway. It was lit by diffuse yellowish lights, the floor lined in cream synthetic tiles, the rest painted a calming pastel yellow. The hall terminated onto another set of manual-open doors. “I never understood why all these shelters have mechanical doors when they were so technologically advanced. If you have the technology to print physical objects, integrate nanomachines into flesh, and build weapons so powerful they can level the world and render it uninhabitable for thousands of years, don't you think they could just automate everything? It just all feels so anachronistic.”

“One of the first things these shelters teach you about the Old World is an adage our ancestors lived by: 'Never digitize something vital that you can just as easily do mechanically,'” Standish put a hand on Jim's shoulder as they walked. “What would happen if there was an earthquake and the major door circuits failed? We'd be stuck in this hallway until they came back online. Those doors aren't ones you can just kick in, either. This whole facility was designed to shrug off a direct bomb hit.”

“And, Jim,” the commander interjected from in front of him, “Our ancestors were very afraid of technology. If you look back through time, there are hundreds of books and movies about computers going crazy and ruling the world. Gaining sentience and turning against their masters. During the AI Renaissance, anything that was vital to human survival was quickly removed from any form of advanced artificial intelligence. That's why combat robots and drones are still human-controlled.” The commander opened the door at the end of the hallway to a small locker room where a few people were changing. She cleared her throat as the door closed loudly behind her. The four kids turned on their heels and snapped to attention, in various states of undress. None of them looked to be older than a few years into twenty. “Alright guys, this is our new recruit, guys. James...”

“James Ross, ma'am,” the strong-jawed, buzz-headed, blonde young man on the farthest left of the line said with a salute. His coveralls were unzipped to his waist, arms dangling to the side, gold necklace hiding behind his white a-frame shirt, nestled between his brawny chest. “I'd recognize that face anywhere. Been following you since your breakout at the DO. You're kind of a hero to me, sir. Adrian, Adrian Pavelavski, sir,” he reached out a soft, incredibly solid hand to Jim.

“Thanks,” he leaned forward and took his offering. His shake was solid and a little bit scary. “I'm nothing special though, and don't call me 'sir,' it kinda freaks me out.”

“Alright, sir,” Adrian said as he rocked back to his at-ease position, “Er, sorry. The way you beat Athlete Pro in the DO qualifiers was pretty special, though, James...”

“...Jim...”

“...Jim. There isn't an athlete alive who can transition so perfectly from rhythm game to physical game to tactical game like you can. Scoring near-perfect on the guitar challenge and then wiping in the dance challenge and still being able to execute a flawless reverse flank in the strategic simulator? Magic, sir. A true spectacle to watch.”

“Well, thank you. I didn't really think many people followed pro gaming that closely. I'm truly flattered,” Jim couldn't help but smile. He'd never really met a fan in person before.

“You're welcome, sir” Adrian smiled from his at-ease position. Jim let the “sir” slide knowing it probably wasn't a habit he was going to be breaking any time soon.

“I'm Marion,” the woman to Adrian's right introduced, leaning out for a handshake as well, “and I promise you I have no idea what he's talking about,” she made a thumb gesture at Adrian as she resumed position. A jocular smile creased the edges of her dusky brown complexion.

Jim made a note of her homochromatism. Not a whole lot of dark-skinned people made it through the Collapse. The Old World was apparently pretty lousy to them, and with shelters and the like being financially and academically motivated, it was hard to find a spot in such a selective group when everyone else on the planet had a boot-heel on your throat. Still, considering how many people didn't make it through, the few who were able to did end up composing a demographically significant portion of the population. However, in the intervening centuries between then and now, the small pool of people lead to a large amount of cross-racial interaction. As such, just about everyone was some level of heterochromatic.

“Jim,” Marion waved her hand in front of his face.

Jim had been staring at her blankly while he thought. He shook his head and snapped back into the real world. “Sorry, I wasn't, I mean...”

“It's Ok. I get it a lot. Culture Kids are rare,” her visage assumed a knowing and explanatory face that she seemed to have quite a lot of practice with.

“That wasn't why I was staring,” Jim looked her in the eyes, an impish grin creeping across his cheeks.

“Oh? Then why?” Marion broke her at-ease stance, placing her hand on her side and cocking her hip out.

“I was staring because you're beautiful,” he said with a wink. Marion's jaw dropped slack, eyes wide in shock.

“Jim!” the Commander swatted him across the back, “You're a soldier. Manners, please!”

“Hey, she asked,” Jim exclaimed as he rolled his shoulders forward and put his hand up for protection in case the professor decided to swat him again. “Don't worry, though. I have a girlfriend so you're safe.”

Standish let a chuckle slip through and the rest of them all let out a comfortable laugh in suit. He elbowed Carol in the rib gently and leaned toward her ear, “I think he's gonna fit right in,” he whispered with a surreptitious wink of his own.

“Blaize. I'm Blaize,” He waved his hello at Jim, who returned in kind with a nod and a wave of his own. “And you're pretty cute yourself,” he said with a wink of his blue-white eyes. His short, well-coiffed pompadour and long blond sideburns made his jaw, like the rest of his flawless physique, look as though it were carved of the purest marble.

“Well, thank you, darlin',” Jim struck a pin-up pose and waggled his hips. Everyone, the commander included, blurted out an impossible-to-stop laugh.

When the roar calmed down, Standish put a hand on Jim's shoulder and leaned close to his head, pointing at Blaize with his free hand. “If you didn't notice, Mr. Lancaster here is one of the Aug'ed pilots.” Standish returned upright and clasped his hands behind his back.

“Oh, are you considering entering the program, Jim?” Blaize got really animated and folded his arms across his chest.

“Yeah, are you?” The last of the four, a burly, caramel-skinned guy with a bushy, well-trimmed, full beard also crossed his arms and looked at Jim with similarly blue-white eyes penetrating into him.

“Well,” Jim started, “I only just learned that Aug'ing was even a thing until today, but I've given it some thought a few times since I learned.”

“Well, it comes recommended highly. I started out clear-eyed, but Blaize gave me the final push,” he said as he elbow-checked him in the shoulder. Blaize rocked side-to-side as he grinned and chuckled in reply. “It really does make the whole piloting thing a lot easier. That lot over there still gets the job done,” he subtly gestured to the first two with a nod and a thumb, “but not having to be wired into the bot really eased the after-flight stress. You'll see what I'm talking about soon enough.”

“It really isn't that bad,” Marion said with a casual shrug. Adrian added an agreeing nod-shake and a “Nah” as he pulled a “no-big-deal” frowning face.

“Whatever,” he said as he leaned over and shot Marion and Adrian a glance and a smirk, his long-cut curly locks breaking out of the tight pony-tail they were pulled into. “I'm Tomah, by the way.” He leaned a bow to Jim, who acknowledged it with a nod and bend of his own waist.

“Alright guys, carry on with whatever you were doing. We're going to take Jim to see the Cores,” the commander made a gesture and the pilots went about changing out of their flight suits.

Jim waved a goodbye as Commander Cecilia and Standish lead him past them to a door on the other side of the room. They entered the door, and again down a long yellowish hallway. “They seem like good kids,” Jim said when along the path.

“They're all really talented individuals. Strong, intelligent, skilled. If you're half the man I think you are Jim, you'll fit in well. You have the capacity for great things, James Ross. Prove yourself to them, and they will forever have your enduring respect,” Standish assumed a reverent tone. “The service has a way of bonding people. Closer than family. Putting your life in other's hands has a way of doing that.”

“Wow, Standish, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you sounded almost wise there,” The commander snarked. “But he's right, Jim. They are good kids. Trust in them, and you'll see.” They reached the end of the hall. “The maintenance bridge is on the other side of this door, Jim.” The commander made a gesture to Jim, who pushed the door open.

Chapter 3 - The Game

 “Dek, what's your the status on your armada?” Jim voiced over his communication link.

“Moving along fine Day. How goes the expo?” Deka's response came through Jim's headset.

“Good. Scouting now.” Jim repositioned his overlay to analyze the miniature map. This map, one of Jim's favorites, had lots of variable terrain levels that caused tight corridors. The base-origination points also had some very interesting geographical protections that made base defense easier, but also afforded lots of back routes and side-channels that made sure bases were anything but fortified. “I'm in an enemy side channel. Sending in a scout to see if they have expanded onto the resource point here.” Jim speedily selected and ordered a stealthy unit ahead of his army. As expected, a small detachment of enemy workers and light defense units were harvesting the resource point.

“Do we want to choke or should we gatecrash?” Shamz voice squeaked through the com.

“Let's play it safe and choke,” Jim advised after a few beats of deliberation.

“On my way there, Day,” Deka boomed in as the blue dots that composed his armada came floating toward Jim's units on the mini-map. All at once, they collapsed onto the expansion point, and began heavy bombardment. The base had little to no aerial defense, so his warships made quick work of the workers and infantrymen on guard. No sooner, though, had Dek floated his armada in then a hail of missiles and bombs came through the “fog of war,” the part of the map that their units weren't revealing, followed swiftly by a huge detachment of mobile platforms and heavy gunmen. “Counter!” Deka boomed through the com, causing the speakers in Jim's headset to clip and crackle.

“Pull over to me, Dek,” Jim ordered coolly. With a click, a gesture and a flick, Jim's regimen of ground troops moved toward a point on the map Jim had marked with a flashing dot. Dek danced his flying units away from major fire, preventing them from sustaining any seriously crippling damage. As they pulled back through the ravine, the units pulled forward and followed. The missile and anti-air fire was constant. Deka deftly maneuvered his units between blasts and explosions, making sure to keep a good scramble preventing the enemy units from landing any seriously devastating blows. “Shamz, go gatecrash,” Jim very pointedly commanded through the com.

“On it,” Shamz wheezed through.

Deka's units finally reconnoitered with Jim's cavalry and an epic battle ensued. The enemy, understanding the power of Air units, focused primarily on an anti-air tactic. Jim used this opening to send in his light and agile fighters to decimate the slower, more cumbersome units. Mobile platforms fell one after another as Jim weaved his units in and out of the line of fire. The enemy, in anticipation of such a dismantling force, deployed it's close-range shock troops. These carried high-damage short-range sustained attacks that would counter the mid-range-mid damage units Jim was dismantling the heavy tanks with. In anticipation of such things himself, Jim had peppered his brigade with long-range sniper-type units. They summarily destroyed the short-range shock troops, allowing Jim to advance his infantrymen back into combat.

Soon enough, the enemy's regimen was dismantled. A few troops had pulled back to safety, but the knife's edge had been thoroughly dulled. Jim sustained a relatively low amount of damage, though his losses weren't insubstantial. The twisting nature of the map would prevent his reinforcements from meeting him in a timely fashion. The mini-map showed Jim that Shamz was in place, however, so he didn't have time to wait. He pulled them into his group and began closing his troops in on the pathway. “Rendezvous with Shamz, Dek. I'm going to press the alley,” Jim announced with a flurry of clicks and waves. As Deka's armada moved a low arc around the canyon to meet up with Shamz, Daybreaker pressed his units along the side path. Once he was knocking on their back door, he gave the command, “Go!”

Shamz opened with a volley of missiles on their front gate. They were heavily fortified, expecting the traditional siege method. There were also a fair bit of anti-air guns studding the raised edges of the canyon their base sat in. Shamz, smartly, ignored the front gate, however, and used his large mobile platforms and heavy units to focus down the most obvious anti-air structures. They fell in quick work. Now, in full reaction mode, the edges filled with sniper-type and heavy units to counter the siege assault. With the anti-air structures no longer a threat, however, Deka was able to sweep in and carpet-bomb the valley walls. Unable to offer any resistance, the units fell before they could do anything in response.

Thoroughly defanged, Jim pushed his infantry into the back entry. Completely unprepared for a flank, the local bases began producing whatever countermeasures they could muster. All for naught, however, as Jim's Blitzkrieg ignored all resistance and cut straight to the front gate. After destroying the guard structures, the gates opened wide, allowing Shamz mobile platforms and heavy units to roll in uncontested. With doom imminent, the opposing team threw a surrender, and the game was over.

They were kicked to the post-game lobby. A small chat box, where they could communicate with the enemy team was embedded amongst a sea of statistics and game analysis. Jim's coaches would break down the numbers and they would discuss the strengths and weaknesses they would need to work on in future matches. In the text box, they and the other teams bid each other a “good game,” and offered very formal and congenial acknowledgments to each other. “At least we got knocked out by Daybreaker and not some scrubs,” one of the opponents had said in chat.

“You guys didn't make it easy,” Jim responded in the chat message, taking the compliment in stride.

“Sometimes I don't know how you do it, Day,” Deka grumbled into the com. “If they had made any sort of aggressive play on us, our entire strategy would have backfired. If they hadn't fortified their gates like you expected, or if they had counter-pushed, it woulda been game over.”

“We made the right plays to keep them defensive. It's all about tactics, Deka. It's like poker. You gotta know when to bluff, and when to go all in. Hey Shamz, do we have any more matches for the day?” Jim took off his HUD glasses and made a few gestures to close out the programs on his computer terminal.

“Why, you got another date with Molly?” Shamz taunted. “Or is Professor Cecilia going to take you out for coffee again?”

“No, Shamz,” Jim said, indignation rife. “I'll take that as a 'no,' though.”

“We don't have any more matches today, Jim,” Deka's low voice came through in stark contrast to Shamz's. “By the way, how did your date go? Coach was kinda pissed you didn't come in for practice right before a qualifier.”

“Incredible, actually. We went to the diner. She sat next to me. Let's just say PDA was the dish of the night.” Jim could feel the smile creasing his eyes as he leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “She's a pretty good kisser, too, from what I can tell.”

“'From what you can tell,' my dog is probably a better kisser,” Shamz tweeted through, completely deadpan.

“Why you gotta rain on his parade, Shamz?” Deka boomed out with a chuckle

“Well, I know your mom is a really great kisser, Shamz, so I used that as a point of comparison,” Jim snuffed through the mic.

“Oh ho ho, Shamz. That one has to hurt.” Deka laughed heavily. If Shamz had said anything in retort, it would have no doubt been drown out. “This might be the last time we play with you, Day,” Deka's voice trailed off slightly, the humor replaced with wistfulness.

“We're gonna miss you, man,” a rare tone of seriousness in Shamz's voice.

“It's going to be hard. I don't know what's going on with anything. I hope I can get back into games after, though. There are plenty of guys on the team just aching to take my spot. You guys will do fine.”

“I don't think anyone on the team could have pulled off what you did today, Day. You're Daybreaker. The legendary Daybreaker. There'll never be another.” Deka was empassioned.

“You wait, when I'm out, I'll be reading about the legendary Deka in the papers,” Jim tried to choke back his sadness with optimism. “And it's not like I'm going anywhere. I'm sure I'll have some downtime eventually to hop on and play with you guys from time to time.”

“Won't be the same, Day, and you know it,” Shamz voice filled Jim to breaking.

“It'll be fine guys, I promise. You're my friends. We'll make it work,” Jim was trembling. All the stress of the matches had wreaked havoc on his nerves and he couldn't handle his emotions right now. “Hey, I'm going to get off and go wash up. I'll catch you guys around later, ok?”

“Alright buddy, we'll catch ya later,” Deka was calm and pleasant again.

“Sounds good, man. Later,” Shamz's typical contempt had returned.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

The couch was comfortable. It was an all-black leather affair. Lots of overstuffed pillows. Very modern. The room was small, just big enough for a couch, a coffee table, a few overstuffed chairs and a lamp.

“Meet me at this address on Monday. Make sure you're packed. You won't need to bring anything, the Service will come by and get your stuff. Make your peace before tomorrow, Jim. Once you're in the program, it's a pretty intense ordeal for the next few months. You won't have much contact with the outside world,” the professor had told him the morning before.

“Do me proud, Son,” was all his father had told him. His mother cried a lot, but she seemed very supportive. Her sickness was getting worse, and there wasn't much anyone could do.

“We'll miss ya, bro. Do us proud,” Deka had told him at the training center. He had packed up the stuff at his dorm and spent the night in his room there. “Can't wait to play with you again, bro.”

“Write to me?” Molly had asked when he told her what was up. “Please?” She and him had spent a lot of the last day together. She had asked him to coffee, alone, that afternoon. They talked a lot. There wasn't as much physical contact, but they held hands on the table across from each other. “I've only just now had the courage to get you into my life. I don't want you walking out of it, yet. Write to me, please?” Jim promised he would. Every day.

“Nice hat,” Standish had said to him from behind a newspaper on the train there, “it looks good on you. You'll be fine. Truly. The program is tough, but it's worth it. You'll do us proud, I'm sure of it.”

“Come on back, Jim,” the professor said after emerging from a door in the corner of the waiting room, “we're ready for you.” The door opened to a large hallway. There were multiple closed, windowless doors on the right and left as she walked Jim to the one at the end. It opened up to a large reception room. There was an older looking woman sitting behind a desk, multiple filing cabinets and shelves behind. To the right of the desk was another door. There were austere benches and more filing cabinets encompassing the perimeter of the room. “Merril, this is the new recruit, Jim.”

Merril, the receptionist, pulled out a datapad with a stylus chained to the top. “Fill out these forms while you wait,” her voice lacked any form of animation, dead and soulless. As if she had done this a million and a half times.

Jim took the pad, “Thanks, ma'am,” and sat down on one of the uncomfortable-looking benches. He began filling out the form. It was your generic personal questionnaire. Name, date of birth, parent's address, that sort of thing. It then progressed into more and more private questions. Physical health, mental state, family medical history. It then delved deeper, still. Assumed athletic ability, relationships, academic record. After pages and pages of increasingly personal questions, he, quite uncomfortably, finally finished the “sexual activity” section and the form itself and returned it to Merril.

“Thank you,” she took the datapad from him and began leafing through the pages. “Looks good. I'll put this through to central processing.” She pushed a button on her desk, “General, you can take him through, now.”

The professor emerged from the door to the right of the desk, “This way Jim.” The door led into another hall. At the very end was an elevator. “We're going down,” the professor pointed to the back of the hall, mid-stride. “Are you ready, Jim?”

Jim, “I don't know. I feel sort of numb. I don't even know what I'm ready for,” Jim tried to bury his hands deeper in his pockets. He had taken his lucky coin along and was thumbing it around his fingers in his pocket.

The elevator ride was long. The elevator didn't feel like they were going slowly, either, so Jim surmised they must be going very far down. The elevator finally came to a sliding halt, and with a ding, the door opened to a large steel corridor. The General led him along, and eventually to a dead end. Before them was a large black expanse, and a gated platform with a large red-lit control panel in the center. The General approached the panel and Jim followed suit. With a few button-presses the platform they were on lurched into motion and sent them deeper yet along a diagonally-descending path. As they descended, track lighting along the bare rock above head clunked on and then off, the lights necessary to keep the platform illuminated being the only ones on. The spotlights cast an eerie shadow as they slid further still into the bowels of the planet. Jim almost felt compelled to ask to where they were heading, but felt that would extinguish the dramatic tension that the General was attempting to build.

The platform eventually clanked to a halt at the end of its track and alighted next to a train platform. There was a tram car waiting on the tracks, leading into a large black tunnel. The car's door was open, and Standish, walking cane in hand, leaned against the side of the entrance. He was wearing a grey fedora that matched his suit, with a black flannel-patterned ribbon to match his belt and cuff links, and a small blue feather to match his tie. He cut a dashing figure, by every definition of the statement. “Your chariot awaits,” he said, obviously disinterested in maintaining the auspice, as he erected his shapely frame, making a sweeping gesture with the arm not holding his cane. The General scoffed at her dramatic slight as she boarded past him. Standish made a wink at Jim as they met eyes on his way by. “Nice hat,” he whispered to him in hushed tones, commenting on the fedora Jim was wearing. The one he had given him. As they both entered, the General took a seat on the far side of the cart, motioning Jim to sit next to her. Standish assumed a seat across from them, casually sprawling himself across the bench, legs and arms wide, cane resting precariously against his inner thigh. The train's gullwing door lowered shut, and quietly shot forward into the black abyss.

“I always seem to meet you on trains,” Jim began, a grin creeping across his face.

“You know Eli?” the General sounded thoroughly aghast.

“I caught him on the train a few days ago. He gave me this hat before my date,” Jim took off the fedora and held it in front of himself, studying the ribbon and feather.

“And here I thought you two just had the same horrible taste,” the General flippantly crossed her legs and arms, casting Standish a gaze withering enough to melt a Redwood.

“What do you know about the Old Times, Jim?” Standish casually shifted focus to Jim, completely unfazed by her glance. “Give me the 5-minute version, if you could, too. We're on a tight schedule,” he winked again.

His odd blue eyes penetrated Jim. He shook his head, snapping himself back to the present moment. “Uh, a while back, there were a whole lot of people on the planet who really hated each other a lot. They developed nuclear weapons, bombed the hell out of each other, and destroyed just about everything and everyone. A few governments had set up programs to 'preserve humanity,' and a bunch of important and intelligent people got locked away into bunkers and the like to ride out the post-war fallout, and eventually rebuild. A few others, herded by The Shepherds, found a way to get underground and defend themselves in caves and the like deep in the belly of the earth. In the bunkers, a guy named Tyson Dale developed a bacteria that could eat radiation, released it topside, dying shortly thereafter from the extreme radiation exposure. A long long time after that, we returned topside. Natural disaster, the Adam Bug's inherent caustic properties, and time had more or less leveled the world and returned it to a feral state, ruins still present, but the world was mostly lost. We rebuilt, learned from the governmental and emotional mistakes of our past, and have lived a mostly peaceful existence for the last few hundred years. That about good?”

“Very good. Thorough,” Standish closed his legs together, pulled his arms into his lap, around his cane, and leaned forward onto his elbows. “Right now, we're traveling down one of the tunnels those ancient people did. This lava tube leads to a giant natural geofront. Now, Jim, what do you know about Bio-augmentation?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Jim put his hands up and leaned back in his bench. “That is some, like, seriously sketchy stuff there. That's where they like, flood your system with nano-machines that link up to your brain, right? That stuff is super experimental. Really, really dangerous stuff.”

“Experimental? Sure,” a big grin crept across Standish's face. All of a sudden, the lights in the train clicked off, and they cruised along in darkness. “Dangerous? Not so much. What do you think it would be like, Jim, to have a heads-up display without the glasses?” Standish continued through the dark. “To be able to see frequencies of light hitherto fore unknown to man's vision?” Across from Jim, two white-hot dots glowed. “What if you could hear electromagnetic waves? What if you could smell light? What if you could think something, send it to a computer, and have it return that information to your mind in the blink of an eye. What if, Jim, what if you could become a computer?” The two white dots disappeared and the lights on the train clicked back on.

The General scoffed again. “Always with the theatrics, Eli.”

“General?” Jim's mouth was hanging open. He was batting his attention between the General and Eli, who had resumed his cavalier posture, a wicked grin beaming across his face.

“Eli is an Aug, Jim. Patient number 1, to be exact,” the General uncrossed herself and turned in her seat to face Jim sidelong. “As you know, when the Nomads emerged from underground, they had with them millennia of technological advanced stashed away in computers and information repositories from before the Great Collapse. The specific site we're on our way to was a top-secret military cache. The government found the Aug program and decided to resurrect it. Eli was a Post-Doc just out of service at Gymnasium when he got tapped to be the first member of the CORE program. He and I were living together, and he had me transferred.”

“And the light thing? How'd he do the light thing?” Jim's mouth was still hanging open, his eyes still wide with disbelief.

“Practice,” Eli smirked across from them.

“Your brain is a glorious device, Jim. It learns to integrate any device it is capable of utilizing into its structure. I'm sure you've heard the '10,000 hours' rule, right?” the General folder her hands into her lap.

“Yeah. We talk about it at the training center. As a rule of thumb, you need like 10,000 hours of diligent practice to become a grand-master at something.” Jim was trying to maintain his focus. His head was swimming and a few shakes weren't bringing him back to reality.

“Correct. Your brain is why that works. That's how long it takes to fully integrate something into your logic circuits. So, when we flood your brain with the nanomachines, they don't just instantly 'work.' They take a long time to train up. If the light isn't controlled by a switch these days, it's controlled by a computer. Essentially, what Standish did was hack the train's computer and control its light matrix. It took him months to master that party trick.”

“And it was a party trick,” Standish said with a large wink and a finger-point to the General. Carol made a face at him, and turned her attention back to Jim.

“Augmentation has its ups and downs, Jim. We're not going to ask you to get Augs,” the General put her hand on Jim's knee.

“Well, I am,” Standish interrupted with a hand wave.

“The government isn't going to ask you to augment, Jim. We have you slated for a different mission. I would be lying if I said that being augmented wouldn't help, though. It would be a serious help. But we have a few trainees in your program at the facility who are not augmented and are doing very well.”

Jim leaned back into his seat and slumped his head and shoulders forward, looking at the ground in front of his feet, “And what program is that?”

“Pilot,” Standish said as he assumed a more traditional sitting posture.

“I was rejected from the pilot program,” Jim looked up at Standish, correcting his posture and sitting up in his seat, squirming a little with uncomfort.

“Not planes or mobile platforms. A different kind of pilot. A Core pilot. That's what the CORE project is all about 'Core Operator Recruitment and Education' Program, or CORE program as we call it,” Standish's voice had a leading quality, as if to invite the next question.

“And what's a Core?” Jim was still gawking.

“Bipedal hominid battle structures,” the General squeezed Jim's knee, drawing his attention.

“You mean like giant person-shaped robots,” Jim squinted at the General.

“Like, giant person-shaped robots, dude,” Standish parroted mockingly.

“Like, from the video games and cartoons and sci fi type things?” Jim addressed Standish with a far more mocking tone. Standish scowled a little.

“Yes, Jim. Though, not nearly as elaborate or theatrical. These are highly-developed and extraordinarily powerful pieces of battle equipment,” the General let a bit of silence hang, waiting for a response.

“Why,” Jim said picking up the cue, “why not tanks or planes or whatever? Why use bipeds. They fall over and stuff. They can't be better,” Jim furrowed his brow deeper.

“These things are huge, Jim,” the General began, after a small moment to ponder a response. “Bipeds can traverse dicey and incongruous grounds easily. Their primary form of locomotion is assisted by gravity, so they utilize power output more effectively. They offer higher vantage points to assess battle situations and aide in battlefield dominance. Because they maneuver in a way that humans like us understand. Because they are intimidating.”

“And you want me to pilot one of these machines?” Jim couldn't help feeling like he'd wake up at any point in time.

“That's the general idea, yeah,” Standish's snark was unmissable.

“And that's why you pick gamers,” Jim said, his eyes widening with realization.

“The interfaces we designed for our Cores very closely resembles the feel of a video game,” the General affirmed with a soft, approving tone, “when we put our interface in front of test groups, we discovered that gamers tended to pick up the interfaces the quickest and perform the most efficiently under duress. We do recruit from other fields of discipline, but our most successful pilots have so far been professional gamers.”

“And how many other people are there?” Jim was curious if any of his gamer friends were secretly recruited.

“There are 6 pilots right now, and about two dozen people are fulfilling various supporting roles in the program.” In front of the tram, a light started to grow in the distance. “We're almost there. I'll introduce you to the group when we arrive."

Chapter 2 - Ceremony

 “As I look out here today, I see future doctors and lawyers and politicians and artists,” the principal began. “Thought today is your last day at Lyceum and your travels will bring to you far away lands, and meet interesting and new people, the experiences you've had here will follow you for the rest of your life. Some of you will be off to Basic Training to serve your community and keep our world a safe place to learn. Some will be going off to Gymnasium to further your education and provide for the common good. No matter where the gusts of life blow your sail, know that you will always have a home here at Lyceum.”

Jim shifted in his seat. The robes sat on his arm a weird way and it made him uncomfortable. The tassel on his mortarboards sat uncomfortably in his periphery and the seating had him cramped. Some students really liked the graduation ceremony. It was one of the few remaining vestiges of ancient preculture that survived the Collapse, and some of the students, particularly the academics, enjoyed the old ways. Jim, however, was not one of them. He had tried to dodge the ceremony, but his parents would have none of it.

“And now, as my last act as your principal, I hereby bequeath the honor of graduation up you all. Rise up and celebrate!” No sooner had the words left the principals mouths then did the students roar to their feet, throwing their mortarboards to the sky.

“Congratulations!” Said the random person next to Jim who's last name also began with an “R.”

“Congrats to you, too,” Jim idly shook their hand as he began parting the throng in search of his hat.

“Congratulation, Jim,” said a voice over his left shoulder. He spun around to see who it was.

“Molly. Hi. Congratulations to you, too.” Molly sat next to Jim in Math lecture. Mousy little redhead. Sharp as a tack. Beautiful green eyes.

“Could you?” She said, extending a finger.

“Hm?” Jim snapped out of his reverie. He realized he'd been staring blankly at her. He followed her arm down to her finger and then to where her finger was point. It was her mortarboard. “Oh right, sure.” He picked it up and handed it to her. “Sorry.”

“I didn't see you at my open-house,” She took the hat from Jim She held it in front of herself and looked deeply into Jim's eyes.

“Uh,” Jim was entranced. Her gaze was locked firmly on him. She was remarkably pretty and Jim found himself very distracted. A few blinks and a shake of his head knocked his thoughts back into place. “I, uh, never got an invitation. Was I supposed to be there?” Jim finally said when he could find words, again.

“Oh, ha, I guess not. I must have forgotten to invite you. I would have liked to have seen you there, though.” She twisted her body side-to-side idly as she spoke, shrugging her shoulders and batting her eyelashes slightly.

Jim's concentration was jarred slightly as he heard a subtle chorus of giggles over the cacophony of people milling about. Over Molly's shoulder, a crush of girls were watching the two, no doubt laughing at the spectacle. He looked back to Molly, who was expertly ignoring her entourage. “I would have liked to have been there, myself,” Jim stuttered out. He knew where this was going, and was trying very hard to not mess it up.

“Well, If you want, a bunch us are going out tonight,” She gestured with her head to the gaggle of giggling girls, who giggled louder with the acknowledgment, “Tammy and them are bringing some guys along and they said I should ask you to come out with us, too. Do you wanna come?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. I think that'd be great. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah,” Jim was having a hard time maintaining composure. He felt his cheeks tighten, an uncontrollable smile filling his face. Molly's backup saw and giggled loudly again, easily following the situation from afar. “Should I meet you somewhere?”

“We were gonna go to the diner. Wanna meet up there? I'll let you know when we're on our way down.”
“Ok sure, that'd be great. Sure. Ok,” Jim fidgeted with his robe around where his pockets would have been.

“Great, I'll see you then,” Molly's face was full of smile, as well. She turned and skipped away, over to her friends. They all huddled and chatted and laughed. You could hear muffled tones rise over the din of students rummaging around. Jim stood around for a while unmoved. Eventually the crush of girls moved along. A few idle people gave a “congrats” and extended a hand for a shake. Jim would roboticly reply and instinctively reply shake hands, as well.

“James.” The low, feminine voice was unmistakable. It snapped him back to reality.

“Professor. Or should I say, General,” He turned on his heals to face Professor Cecilia.

“Not until you're a soldier. Until then, you can call me Carol,” the professor was wearing her faculty robes and mortar. She was a decorated teacher, so she had on various tassels and medallions bespeaking her praise. “I haven't heard from you. What're you going to do?”

Jim opened his mouth a little, and then closed it. Opened again, and closed again. He had not been able to stop thinking about their encounter, her offer, since the coffee shop.

“I don't know professor. I can't make a decision,” Jim lowered his head sheepishly. It was hard to admit.

“Walk with me, Jim,” Carol turned and positioned herself next to him and made a gesture to walk abreast. They walked in silence a while. The thrum and buzz of students and their doting parents hummed around them as the eventually made it to the edge of the crowd. The ceremony was held on their outdoor sports field. The sun was shining bright and the temperature was cool and comfortable. A slight breeze was rolling through, and it fluttered their robes as they slowly paced the perimiter of the field. “Where are your parents, today?” Carol eventually said, breaking the calm. Most of the parents had watched from the stadium seating, but were now mostly on the field fawning over their children.

“My mom is a little sick these days. Nothing terrible but not just food poisoning, either. Makes it hard for her to travel. Dad picked up some extra shifts a few weeks ago at the factory. They're operating way over capacity right now and are on a very tight deadline. I told'em it was ok. Times are a little tight for us, and the money for overtime is good.” Jim clawed at his hips, trying to find pockets to shove his hands into.

“I'm sorry to hear that, I know this is an important day for you,” the professor was looking at Jim intently. Casually batting her head forward occasionally to see where she was going.

“It's alright, really. My family and I aren't exceptionally close. Mom's been sick forever and Dad is a busy guy. We make do with what we have.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, too, Jim.” Jim looked up at the professor as she spoke. For a second, he would swear a look of genuine sympathy flashed across her face.

“Ain't nothing, professor. Really. I made my peace with it when I was very young,” Jim had contented himself to grip a handful of robe at his side. He shuffled his feet as he walked. He was a fair bit taller than the professor, so his average gate moved faster than she seemed to want to go.

“Isn't, Jim. 'Ain't ain't said by nothin' but fools and yokels,' my mom told me,” A smile crossed Carol's face. She looked down at her own feet idly. “Jim,” the wistfulness vacant from her eyes again as she turned her head back toward him, “we need to know what you want to do. This opportunity isn't one we can extend again.”

Jim looked up and locked eyes with her. They both stopped walking, near the far edge of the field. “I don't know what I want to do, Professor. Carol.”

“Why not?” Her tone wasn't derisive or condescending. It was inquisitive. Socratic.

“That's what I've been trying to figure out, Professor. To me, it's a pretty big question. 'Why don't you want to do this,' is tantamount to 'what do you want to do with the rest of your life.' You're not asking me to choose what color socks to wear or even what career to take in my later years. You're asking me whether I want to live a normal life, or I want to become a hero.” Jim was calm, but there was despair in his voice.

“At least you get to choose. Many heroes don't get that luxury. For most, the job is thrust on them, whether they want it or not. A thousand years ago, during the Collapse, Bartibus and Chaira didn't choose to become the Shephards. But when the bombs dropped, they were the ones who went out into the streets and corralled survivors into the shelters. Tyson Dale didn't choose to sacrifice his life to release the Adam bugs during the blasts. They were presented with a situation, and they acted. It's calm now, though. We're not the Nomads anymore. We're working to rebuild our society. Repopulate. But this peace can't last forever, Jim. You already know the people across the pond are restless. You do have a choice, now. The heroes of our time don't have to be made from dire circumstances. They can be chosen. You're right, Jim. This is a choice between a normal life and a life of heroism. And some people aren't cut out to be heroes. That's why we remember people like Bartibus and Chaira. That's why everyone knows Tyson Dale. And that is a lot of responsibility, Jim. But, remember, for every Tyson Dale and Bartibus and Chaira, there are thousands of equally-heroic people living relatively normal lives. Tyson Dale didn't discover the Adam bug and release it into the world on his own. He had lab assistants. He had friends to help him along the way. I'm not asking you to be remembered in history, Jim. I'm just asking you to make a difference in the world,” there was passion in the professor's voice. Burning, undeniable passion.

“You had to make this choice, too, didn't you,” Jim was unflinching.

“When I was a much younger woman, I lived with a man. We were both in the service together. I had rejoined as an officer after finishing a long degree in Gymnasium. He was a part of the CORE program, then in its very infancy. He pulled a few strings and asked me if I wanted in. I was confused myself on whether to join or not. He told me what I told you, and I haven't looked back since, Jim.”

“What happened to him?” Jim pressed. No one had ever been so candid with him.

“We got into a fight and I left him. You'll meet him if you enter the program. He's quite a character. You'd like him,” Carol smirked, the wistfulness briefly in her eyes again.

“What's a normal life like, professor?” Jim sounded very distant.

“I think you know the answer to that already, Jim,” there was a long pause between the two. “Can I count on you?” The professor put her hand on his shoulder.

The contact sent a jolt through Jim. He found a focus he hadn't had before. Things seemed to fall into place. “How long do I have to say goodbye?”

“You'll have time for your date tonight, if that's what you're asking.” Carol slid her hand down the side of Jim's arm and squeezed his bicep before pulling away.

Jim blushed, “and my tournament tomorrow?”

“That won't be an issue either. You're making the right choice, Jim. I promise,” the professor turned and began walking back to the crowd to gladhand and make small-talk. Jim stood for a while longer and eventually did the same.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

“We'll be at the diner in a few. Meet us there?” the message read on Jim's standard-issue communicator.

“I'll leave now. See you there,” he responded in simple text form. Another relic everyone seemed to say would perish with every passing generation of technology. Nothing, however, seemed to dethrone the simplicity of text-based communication.

Jim grabbed the keys off of his night stand, slipped on his shoes, and headed down to the diner. He had his favorite shirt and slacks on, a rare opportunity for him to wear something other than Lyceum uniform and government-bought clothes. He made his way down the halls of the dormitories and over to the train platform a little way up the commons. He caught the train just as it pulled in. It was somewhat full, with no obvious empty benches. Jim decided to just stand at the back instead of sit down near anyone. A dapper man boarded the train just before the doors closed and appeared to have a similar idea. He took up side next to Jim at the rear. Jim couldn't help but notice the man's black walking stick and feathered fedora hat. They were relatively plain affair, with the stick having a normal silver ball for a handle, and the fedora a black deal with a black grosgrain ribbon holding down two small purple feathers. The fact, however, that such a dashing younger man was sporting them was quite odd, as such items were typical on very old genteel men trying to hark back on a bygone era of history.

“I like your hat,” Jim said, after the young man caught him idly staring.

The man smiled, “Thanks, kid.” He turned and extended a hand out, “Standish. Standish Eli.”

“Standish Eli?” Jim grabbed his hand and shook. His grip was firm. His hands were solid as stone, but not hard and calloused.

“Alright, you got me. It's Eli Standish. But everyone calls me Standish anyway, so it's how I introduce myself.” Standish returned his hand to the handle hanging from the train and tapped his walking cane on the train's metal floor. “I didn't catch your name,” the man's smile was enchanting.

Jim shook his head again, jumbling his brain back into function. “Ross. Jim Ross.” The train lurched to a halt as it pulled into station. “This is my stop. Nice to meet you, Standish.” Jim made his way to large hatch doors on the side of the train.

“Hey, catch,” Standish hollered. As Jim turned to acknowledge him, Standish deftly threw the fedora at him.

“Thanks,” was all Jim could stutter out from the platform. The door closed as Standish winked a sky-blue eye at him. He turned the hat over in his hands a few times before trying it on. It fit perfectly.

The diner was just behind the train stop, and he could see a ghostly reflection of himself in the large plate-glass window. The hat matched his black slacks and purple button-down perfectly. Jim had even forgot to gel his hair, so the hat was a perfect addition. “I look great,” he unconsciously said out loud to his reflection.

“Yes, you do,” said a mousy voice from behind him as a finger jabbed into Jim's rib.

Jim spun around. Molly, her friends, and their dates were behind him, their train having just pulled in behind his. “Oh Molly, I didn't see you there. I wasn't trying to, I mean, I wasn't,” Jim stammered, trying to not sound like a self-absorbed jerk.

“I know, silly. But you do look great,” she smiled sheepishly.

That Smile, Jim thought. She was wearing an emerald-green, sleeveless blouse with frills along the front and chocolate-brown, high-wasted slacks. Her close-cropped hair was mussed and straightened and parted at the side like the pixie cuts models of the time were wearing. She looked like a model, herself. The blouse brought out her eyes to make them seem even more sparkling and even more green.

“You do that a lot, Jim,” she said with a giggle, and put a hand on his bicep.

“What?” Jim shook his head again and snapped into reality. The hand on his arm made his heart skip a beat and his face turn bright red.

“That,” she said, pointing with her other hand, her other fingers wrapped around a chocolate-brown leather clutch. “Your eyes go all blank and you start staring. You did it whenever I asked you a question in Math class, too.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to stare. Sorry,” Jim hung his head slightly and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He was a large bit taller than Molly, though, so he couldn't really hide his eyes from her.

“Oh no, don't be sorry. It's really cute, I like it.” She started walking forward, spinning Jim a little, as she still had his arm, and and subtly urged him forward. Tammy, Molly's partner-in-crime, and her boyfriend, who's name Jim couldn't remember, but he sat behind him in Chemistry, and Molly's other friend Claire, who Jim wasn't particularly familiar with and some other guy Jim didn't recognize, all followed her in tow.

“It's just. I just can't help it. It's just those eyes.” Jim stammered out again. He was having a hard time regaining composure.

“Oh, ha, I get that all the time,” she turned her head slightly and glanced deeply into Jim's eyes, batting her eyelashes. She had a very pale complexion and was dusted ever so lightly with freckles across the bridge of her nose. Jim could tell she tried to soften them with powder, and he could feel himself wishing she hadn't. She very subtly slipped her arm underneath his and wrapped it around his elbow. Walking abreast, even in what looked like heals that were a few inches long, She barely came up to his shoulder.

Arms locked, Jim felt his heart jump in his chest, again. He could feel his nerves calm, though. She felt so relaxed Jim couldn't help but ease up himself. “Heh, then I don't feel that bad, then, I guess.” Tammy knocked an elbow into her boyfriend's rib and both of them chuckled a little bit. Jim spun his head around to take a quick peek, and both of them snapped into an overly-casual posture, an impossible-to-hide smile creeping into their cheeks as they tried to suppress it. Jim reached out and pulled the door of the diner open. He let everyone through and closed the door behind them. Molly went straight to a corner booth. The other four piled in first, leaving the end seats for Jim and Molly. Molly lowered herself into the chair. Jim softly sat next to her, making sure to not cause too much ripple in the bench pad.

Molly put a hand on Jim's knee. The contact sent lighting through him. Her other hand held her clutch in her lap. Jim pulled a hand off the table and rested it on his thigh, the tips of his fingers brushing against the place where her thumb met her wrist. Molly pulled her hand back and threaded her fingers between Jim's. His eyes were burning hot. The feeling sent a shiver through him, standing the hair on the back of his neck on end. “So Jim, what're you doing now that school's out?” Molly broke the silence at the table.

“I'm going into service, actually,” Jim said as he scanned his eyes around the table and eventually landed them on Molly's.

“Oh, that's nice. I was hoping you were going to make it to Gymnasium. Me and Claire made it in. You helped us so much, I woulda thought you coulda made it in easy.” Molly idly stroked the back of Jim's hand.

Don't say 'Claire and I.' Don't say 'Claire and I.' Jim repeated in his head. He looked down at his other hand, which was fidgeting with the paper band around his napkin and silverware roll. “I, uh, I got in, yeah. But, I, uh, it didn't work with what I want to do with my life.” Jim felt the nervousness creep back.

Molly, not missing a beat, felt his tension. “So, you're going into the service, then? That's cool. I like a man in uniform,” she interjected before anyone could ask any questions. The booth was a little tight, but Jim felt Molly press her shoulder a little harder into his, as if to say, It's all right, I get it.

Jim felt himself ease again, but then blush at the comment. He chuckled nervously. “Yeah. It'll help with my training more, and I think it's just the right way to go for me.”

“Training?” said the guy Jim didn't know across from him.

“Jim is a professional gamer,” Tammy said from the middle of the circular booth. “He's won a bunch of awards or something. I read about it in the school paper.” Tammy had long, straightened, brown hair with baby-doll bangs and brown eyes. She nodded a little acknowledgment in Jim's direction.

“Oh wow, that's pretty cool there. So you on a team and stuff?” Tammy's boyfriend asked.

“Yeah, I...” Jim began. Molly cut him off.

“He plays for the national team. He's like super good. Didn't you win like a prize or something when young that was a really big deal?”

“Mhm,” Jim began. He paused a beat to make sure no one was going to cut him off again. “I won the Gold medal in a pretty major event at the Global Digital Games when I was 13. At the time, I was the youngest person to ever hold the title.” Jim could feel himself relaxing more, and leaned back into the pad on the bench.

“You don't look like much of a gamer, Jim,” Claire said with a bit of a scoff. “You're, like, not skinny as a rod or super fat.”

“Well, most professionals are actually in pretty good shape. I mean, I won't be running a marathon any time soon, but I work out a few times a week with the team and eat a pretty strict diet. You need a strong heart and really fast twitch reflexes to be a good gamer, especially some of the more physical ones that don't use traditional interfaces.” Jim felt himself starting to get really technical. Whenever he got started on games, he knew he could talk forever about them, so he often tried to derail himself so more people could be included. “But yeah, that's why I'm ok with joining the service. It won't be too hard physically and they're gonna let me be a pilot or something.”

Just then, the waitress came up. “What can I get ya,” she said in a very casual tone. No one really needed to look at the menu, they'd all eaten there enough to know everything on the menu. Everyone placed their orders. The waitress jotted everything down on her notepad, “I'll put that right in for y'all.”

“So, Roger,” Claire said to the guy sitting next her, who Jim didn't recognize. “Are you heading to Gymnasium?

“Oh no, I'm joining up, too. I didn't get enough grades to get in.” Roger shrugged.

Molly laced her fingers through Jim's again. After she had woven her fingers into his, she pulled up and rest Jim's hand on her thigh. Her focus was forward on the group, but she gave Jim a sidelong glance and an impish smile. Instinctively, Jim began to idly caress her leg.

The conversation carried on for a bit. Jim would occasionally throw a word in here or there, ask a leading question, or answer a simple one. At intervals throughout the night, Molly would escalate physical contact with Jim, and Jim would respond in kind. She clung tightly onto Jim's shoulder, never moving her eyes away from the crowd, except for the casual glance back at Jim, a wily blaze burning behind those deep emerald eyes.

When the food arrived, Molly disengaged from his shoulder, and Jim took the opportunity to drape his behind her. Molly responded by snuggling against Jim's chest, resting her arm across his lap, her hand idly stroking the side of his thigh. The position forced Jim to eat with one hand, though with an omelet and sausage, it wasn't that hard. Fork-eating bacon looked a little weird, though. Molly caught it and snickered. From the shelter of Jim's frame, she, looking mousier than ever, took her hand out of Jim's lap. “Open up,” she said as she fed him a strip of bacon with a giggle.

As the night wound down, Roger and Gracie, Tammy's boyfriend decided to head off to the bathroom. Molly and Tammy also took the chance to duck out, as well. Jim and Claire remained at the table.

“She's really into you,” Claire said in hushed tones when everyone had left. “She's kind of had a crush on you like all year. Tammy and I told her this might be her last shot.”

“Really? I never knew,” Jim scratched the back of his head under the fedora. “I'm not really good with that stuff. I'm in kind of a special program for the military, so if she hadn't caught me today, it really might have been her last shot.”

“Oh, then she like really lucked out,” she looked up quickly. Molly and Tammy were almost back to the booth. Claire leaned in close,“You should totally kiss her tonight. Just saying.” She leaned back in the booth. “Hey! I'm gonna go to the bathroom quick, myself.”

“Really? You know, I kinda wanna powder my nose, do you have any powder?” Tammy rocked her weight onto her other hip as she and Molly approached the table. She on had a dark blue flowered-print dress with white lace trim and a small yellow cardigan. Her legs were clad in black tights and some low-slung black ballet flats finished the ensemble.

“Sure do, let's go.” Claire hoisted herself out of the booth and followed Tammy back to the back of the diner, winking not-so-subtly at Jim before Molly sat down next to him.

“Gracie stepped outside for a cigarette. He and Roger were talking about baseball or something so he's out there with him,” Molly plopped down next to Jim. Jim lifted himself up out of the booth and craned his neck to make sure the other girls were out of sight. “I'm not much for sports, myself. Never could understand...”

Molly couldn't get much more out, though. Mid-sentence Jim placed his hand underneath her chin and leaned down. His lips connected, and a shock went through them. It traced back along his sinuses and into the part of his head right behind his eyes. His friends had said his first kiss would be hot and wet and sloppy and weird. It wasn't anything like that, though. On the lips, it didn't feel much different than any other kiss he'd given. To his dog, to a trophy, or on his mom's cheek. But the way it made his body feel, well that was a different story. It gave him gooseflesh all across his body. He could feel a slight breeze from the ventilation duct above the table on the back of his neck. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and finger tips. He could feel his eyeballs on the back of his eyelids. His whole body tingled like the split-second before you pass out. There were sparkles dancing in the darkness behind is lids. But most of all, he could feel her lips under his. He could feel them twitch and wiggle and pucker and suck and flex. It made him kiss harder. He used his tongue to wet his lips mid-kiss, and felt her tongue meet his. He felt his hand move from under her chin to behind her head. He felt her hand thread behind his back and up to the side of his face. He could smell her. Deeply. He could make out every note. From the cosmetic smell of her makeup, to the fruity scent of her shampoo and hair pomade, to the soft vanilla scent of her body soap. He didn't want to stop, and Molly wasn't giving any indication that she wanted him to. Jim turned his head and brushed noses with her, kissing again when his head was angled the opposite way.

After what seemed like both the shortest and longest instance in his life, Molly pulled back and slid a finger between them, resting it on Jim's lips. Jim took the hint and pulled his head back, opening his eyes to stare deeply into the bottomless pits of hers. “Claire told you to do that, didn't she?” She said, a longing smile filled her face.

“Yeah,” Jim said simply. He rested his forehead on hers, knocking the fedora back slightly.

“Have you ever kissed anyone before?” Molly's mousy eyes hid a devious visage.

“No,” Jim blinked, remembering the shock, the feeling.

“Me either,” Molly closed her eyes. “Tammy said it wasn't anything special.”

“I thought that was kinda special,” Jim said, reaching his hand up and softly caressing her cheek.

“I didn't say she was right,” Molly said, that impish grin crawling ear to ear.

“I'm telling you, Terrance Filopino was the greatest catcher, man,” Roger was gesticulating wildly as he and Gracie approached the table.

Gracie was fidgeting with his lighter and gesticulating in return. “No, no, no, that title belongs solely to Jake King. That guy is legend, man.”

“Jim, who do you think is better, King or Filopino?” Roger asked when he and Gracie reached the table.

Jim had since resumed a more casual repose. “Honestly? I have no idea who you're talking about.” Jim was still running high from his kiss. He couldn't get the shock out of his mind. “If we're talking about games, I could go for hours, but I don't have time to watch sports.”

“Bummer, man. No big, though. You're still cool by my book,” Gracie's sleeves were rolled up slightly, revealing a tattoo-covered arm as he extended a hand to Jim. He locked thumbs and wrapped his fingers around its back, a much more casual version of the standard handshake.

“Yeah, you're alright,” Roger mirrored in kind.

The girls arrived back from the bathroom just then, as well. “We good to go?” Claire questioned as she returned. She had her bleach-blonde hair in a tight pony tail with side-swept bangs almost covering one of her hazel-brown eyes. She had on a blouse with a low-cut sweater overtop, the white collar casually undone a few buttons down, tight blue jeans and tan stiletto heals. She casually swept the bangs away from her eye. “I'm good.”

“We just gotta settle up,” Roger said. He and Gracie made their way to the cashier by the door.

“Yeah,” Jim made a motion for Molly to get up so he could make his way over.

She lowered her head and leaned into Jim, “Are you sure?”

“Definitely. Don't worry.” Jim said in a confident tone. Jim lifted himself out of the booth after Molly let him free with a defiant stare. Jim made a fair bit of spending money in prize purses from his competitions. He gave a lot of it to his parents to help with his mom, so it wasn't anything he could go crazy with, but it let him enjoy some luxuries from time to time.

The tabs settled, they all stood in a semi-circle outside waiting for the next train, each girl clinging to their respective man. Jim's train arrived first. “This is mine,” he addressed the group. Molly walked him to the edge of the platform. Jim waved goodbye to everyone, and everyone waved goodbye back. “I had a really great time tonight, Molly. I'll talk to you later, ok?”

“You'd better. Or I'll hunt you down,” she stood on her tip-toes and pull Jim's head down by his collar. She kissed him on the cheek and whispered goodnight in his ear before letting go. The train buzzed and she stepped back as the door closed, eyes locked on each other until they were out of site.

“She's cute,” a voice said from behind a broad newspaper sitting on one of the benches behind him. “Be careful. Redheads have a temper.”

“You'd have to say something pretty wicked to piss off Professor Cecilia, Standish,” Jim said without turning around.

“Trust me, it's a lot easier to get her going than you think,” Standish dropped the newspaper to his lap. He had on a new black fedora, this time with a red ribbon and black feathers.

“Do you just like to ride the trains, or are you following me?” Jim turned now to face him. He had the same cool smile, his rich peanut butter-brown skin eerily offset by his almost-white eyes

“Truth is on the trains, Jim,” Standish raised the newspaper back up without saying another word.

It was past curfew when Jim finally got back to his dorm. His roommates were already in bed, so he quietly slipped into his closet-sized compartment in the quad, hung his clothes up and crawled into bed. Jim replayed the night over and over in his head before finally drifting off to sleep. Molly...

Chapter 1 - The Adam Bug

 The professor paced the front of the classroom. The floor-to-ceiling displays were covered with equations, pictures, diagrams, and theorem. The attendants in the lecture, numbering in the hundreds, all sat on the edges of their seats, hanging on every word.

“The Adam Bug,” she began “anyone know what it is?” There was a brief pause as the class discerned whether the question was rhetorical. An intrepid youth raised his hand. “You. Mr. Ross. What is the Adam Bug?”

“The Adam Bug is a custom-developed bacteria invented by Tyson Dale in the late twenty-second century.”

“Good, and what does it do?” The professor turned on her heels and paced the other direction. Everyone in the class was intently focused on the young man.

“Well, I don't know exactly. It eats radiation.”

“Well done, Mr. Ross, thank you. For today's lecture, we're going to talk about exactly what radiation is, and how the Adam Bug, as Mr. Ross so astutely put it, 'eats radiation.'”

Jim sat back down and began jotting down notes as the professor talked. Occasionally, she would stop to ask a student a question. Occasionally, like Jim, the student got it right. Most of the time, however, the student would get it wrong, and Professor Cecilia would pull up some diagram, or swipe away some other formula so she could craft another one on the display.

Jim really liked Professor Cecilia. She was firm, but kind, and very intelligent. She gave great lectures. They were interesting, easy to understand, and he always felt like he learned something. Advanced Chemistry was often the only class at Lyceum that he cared about attending, even if he didn't particularly care about, nor was he necessarily good at chemistry. He had already taken all the other science classes she offered. Physics, Engineering, Biology. Chemistry was the only one left, sadly. As this was his senior year, however, he'd be shipping off to Basic for his compulsory military service after semester. He'd been hoping to get into pilot's school, but his grades weren't necessarily up to snuff.

As class wound down, Jim started to pack his bag. A.Chem was his last class for the day. “Mr. Ross, can I have a word with you?” Professor Cecilia boomed, her deep-but-feminine voice carrying over the din and shuffle of students. Jim finished packing his satchel, threw it over his shoulder, and made his way down the lecture hall to her.

“Mr. Ross. It's getting very close to graduation time,” the professor said, not raising her eyes from her desk as she shuffled her notes around.

“A few weeks, ma'am,” Jim shifted his weight to his left foot and adjusted the satchel to hang across his body.

“Indeed. Will you be attending Gymnasium after your studies here?” The professor paused from adjusting her notes and looked up at Jim over her slim black-frame glasses. Her tight ponytail was curled up and the pencil holding it in place poked up over the back of her head.

“No, sadly, Professor Cecilia. Me and my parents can't afford the buy-out, so I'll be heading to Basic right after graduation.” The professor was standing straight now so she could look at Jim directly.

“'My parents and I,' Jim. And that's a shame. Have you talked about a program with your recruiter?” The professor crossed her arms and began to idly chew on tail-end of a pen she had been holding. It showed signs of previous chewing.

Jim gaped a little bit, his eyes slightly widened. He'd been in Professor Cecilia's lectures for the better part of three years now, and this is the most he'd ever spoke to her. “Uhh, no. I...I wanted to be a pilot, but the recruiter said that 'with my grades that probably wouldn't be a program I could make it into.' I think I'm probably going to go into an engineering role though. My dad was a mobile platform mechanic when he did his time. It doesn't sound too bad. I was going to talk to my recruiter after class today and see what I can do.”

The professor shifted her weight to her other leg. She wore very plain clothes. Looser-fitting jeans, a plain white tee-shirt and a shimmering blue brocade vest. White flats and a digital watch finished the outfit. She shifted her folded arms and flashed the watch in front of her eyes. “Little too late for that. If you left here, you wouldn't make it to central recruiting in time. “

Jim looked at his own watch, a cheap gold analog timepiece. She was right. Even if he had left right after class, he'dve missed the shuttle down to central recruiting. “Darn. Well, I don't have a lecture tomorrow afternoon, I'll just go then.”

“Are you busy tonight, Jim?” The professor unfolded her arms and put the pen she'd been chewing behind her ear. She leaned back down and went back to shuffling her notes into her briefcase.

“Um, uhh, no. That was all I had planned, why?” Jim stood still and started fidgeting with the flap of his satchel. What was she playing at?

The professor finished shuffling her notes into her briefcase and snapped her fingers loudly. The text on the display zipped into a brightly colored box labeled with the date at the bottom corner of the display. “I want to talk to you about something. Do you have time to meet with me at the coffee shop?” She hefted her briefcase and moved to the front of her desk, directly in front of Jim.

“Yeah, OK. Yeah. I can do that.” Jim only had a lab and a lecture tomorrow. It being the end of the semester, there wasn't a whole lot of homework to be done. “Do you want to meet down there?”

“That works,” the professor turned sideways and glanced over her shoulder at Jim. “Be down there within the hour,” and walked away.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

When Jim walked into the coffee shop, Professor Cecilia was sitting at the table, sipping what looked like a very large latte. She had a laptop open in front of her and was skimming a datapad. She was young, but it would be pretty hard to mistake her for a student. In addition to eschewing the modern fashion trends, her features were that of a woman, not the children that seemed to surround her.

“Professor Cecilia,” Jim said as he approached the opposing side of the table she was sitting at. He pulled the chair out and slowly lowered himself into it.

“Jim. Good. Thanks for coming,” she didn't look up from her datapad. A blue glow from its screen reflected off her glasses. “So. I wanted to talk to you about something.” She looked up from her datapad, finally, setting it down next to her laptop and touching her finger to her temple, resting her elbow on the table. “You've followed my classes for the last couple of semesters, even when you don't get great grades,” She paused, indicating she expected a response.

“I like your teaching style. It clicks with me.” Jim, still a little bewildered and confused, responded.

“Do you board here or are you or do your parents have an apartment on campus for you?” The professor shifted her hand to rest her chin on her fist.

“No, professor. I live in the dorms. The apartments are a little out of my range. My dad works in the factory maintaining the printers.” Jim shifted in his seat. “I live in a quad with five other guys.”

“I see. What do you plan on doing after Service?” she settled her face into a neutral gaze.

“I dunno, professor. I never really thought about it. If I can land a gig in engineering, I guess I'll probably follow my dad to the factory. It's honest, stable work. My dad was home every night before dark. It wasn't hard, and you're mostly surrounded by robots and other mechanics, so it's pretty low stress. The pay isn't bad, either. Could live off it pretty well, I think.”

“What about going to Gymnasium after service on a soldier's package? Have you thought about that?” Her gaze remained unchanged. Neutral, unjudging. Inquisitive but unobtrusive. Her typical undynamically dynamic face.

“Yeah, but 22, 23 for me, is a lot older than 18, to be frank. And service changes you. A kid I grew up with back home tried it. Did a year and never went back. Was too different. Just didn't feel right. And, if he couldn't take it, I know I couldn't. Civils don't make that much more, anyway,” Jim fidgeted with his hands. He never knew what to do with them in a conversation.

“Pragmatic. Civil Engineers get to program the printers, though. They get to be creative, make things. Don't you think that'd be a lot more fun?” she prodded, her gaze still unflinching.

“Well, my parents taught me that work wasn't supposed to be fun, professor. You go to work to be productive and make a living, so that when you come home, you can have fun there.”

“What do you do to have fun, Jim?”

Jim paused for a long time. “I'm in a tournament league for my video games, professor,” he said sheepishly.

“Oh?” A slight smirk crept across the professor's face, “That would explain why you're doing so poorly in my class.” She winked at him. A moment of genuine bemusement.

“Very funny, professor,” Jim responded in a playful tone. “That's why I wanted to be a pilot. One of the guys on our team just joined up. He said it's just like the game, except you're really there, not just pretending.”

“I see,” the smirk had faded from professor's lips and her neutral gaze had returned. “What disciplines do you participate in?”

“Well, I actually qualify for the Renaissance Man competitions. I usually compete in all 3 events in the digital sports leagues. My specialty is Digital Decathlon, but that makes me good at Military Triathlon and the Fantastic Five as well. I'm the captain of our team. We're top 5 across all disciplines in the world,” Jim was trying to be modest, but the pride was hard to hide in his face.

“You'll have to excuse me, I'm only passingly familiar with the scene. What do the events entail?” The professor truly was a master of the unmoving face. If not for the smirk, Jim would have sworn her face was cut from stone.

“Well, there are only about a dozen truly competitive games in the world. Most of the rest are either too simple or too complicated to be worthy of play. Think of chess. It's not mired with a lot of rules, but it also isn't tic-tac-toe. There's enough variance to make it easy to grasp, but hard to master.

“Military Triathlon simulates what a high-ranking soldier would encounter if he stayed on through Service as a Lifer. There's a run-and-gun event where you're in first-person simulating a soldier. Then there's the tactical event where you have to plan out armies and attack plans. And lastly there's the vehicle simulations. You have to pilot the various military vehicles through different missions,” Jim was getting very animated. He loved talking about his sport.

“In the Fantastic Five, you participate in 5 fantasy-orientated games, but they play on 5 common tropes. There's gladiator combat where each of you pick a fighter, and then duke it out in a series of rounds. In similar vein, there's the battle arena, where you and your team pick champions and wade through hordes of monsters to destroy their main headquarters. There's a platformer, where you have a linear level you have to navigate through on a time-trial; a siege defender, where you have a group of monsters march through a path, and you have to set up defensive structures to defeat them before they make it to base, and you receive a score based on how efficiently you did it; and finally a puzzler, where pieces move along a track and you have to fit them together in a constrained space. When you get the right fit, the shapes eliminate and you get points. As you complete shapes, the track moves faster. High score wins.

“Digital Decathlon is all of those plus a rhythm game where you have to synchronize movements and button presses with music, and a resource management event where you are given a set amount of time and starting resources, and you have to meet specific city-building objectives. The person who has progressed the farthest with the most resources at the end of the time frame wins,” Jim was leaning forward, his elbows on the table.

The professor jumped on the brief pause and interjected, “Jim,” she leaned back and put her hands flat on the table, “or should I say Daybreaker.”

Jim leaned back suddenly, his mouth agape, eyes wide, “You know my handle,” he gasped out.

“What do you know about the CORE project, Jim?”

It took Jim a bit to recover. “Uhh...CORE project. Same thing everyone else does, no doubt. Secret military program. Cutting edge military weapons. Secret projects. All very hush-hush. They order parts from my dad's plant from time to time. Actuators and big steel plates, mostly. No one really knows what it's all for. I'm guessing vehicles or missiles or something. The news has it on good authority that the reason that math prodigy from Gymnasium dropped out was to join CORE.”

“You shouldn't trust the news, Jim.” A big, beaming smile had crossed the professor's face.

“Word also has it that the folks across the pond have their own CORE program going along, as well. And that you guys are scared that they won't be as judicious as you will with whatever it is.”

The smile left the professor's face. “To put it simply, Mr. Ross, the CORE program is the most interesting and exciting thing our nation has going for it. I want you to join it.”

“Join it? Who are you to it?” Jim looked very confused now. “How do you know my handle? What's going on here?”

“I work for the CORE program in talent acquisition. My job is to locate, track, and vet possible candidates for the CORE program. We've been following you for a while, now, actually. About 5 years, actually.”

“You've been tracking me since I was 13?” Jim was still pressed to the back of his chair, arms on the table, eyes wide. He relaxed slightly, “Since I won Gold at the Global Digital Games in Military Triathlon.”

“And placed in the top ten out of two thousand in Digital Decathlon,” the professor finished. The smile had receded, but only slightly. “We watch the games very closely. We've been watching you very closely. When you started taking my science classes, we became more interested. When declared intent toward Service, instead of Gymnasium, we became more interested, still. When you applied for the pilot's program at central recruiting, we knew we'd found our man. It's hard work. It'll push your limits, both physically and mentally. If you question whether you'll be up to it, you probably aren't. Jim, you strike me as someone who wouldn't be content in engineering. Living a normal, boring life. We want you on the team, Jim.”

“Slow down. Do I need to choose now? Can I think about it? You're kind of rocking my world here, professor. It's a lot to take in.” Jim shook his head, trying to knock the thoughts into place.

“I get that a lot,” she said with a wink as the smile grew across her cheeks, “You have to have a final declaration of intent into Central Office before you graduate. I can wait until then. Mull it over Jim, but I implore you. Don't pass this opportunity up.” With that, the professor stood up and closed her laptop. She shuffled it and her datapad into her briefcase. She laid a card down on the table in front of Jim, “Don't be a stranger.” Jim folded his hands in his lap and stared down at the card. The Professor put her hand on his shoulder, and then walked away.

“General Carol Cecilia, Covert Recruiting, Special Forces Division,” Jim read aloud, picking the card up and twirling it in his hand. “General?” he mused.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

“Will he do it, you think?” Standish reached out and grabbed Carol's bicep. “Ross. Do you think he'll do it?” The train was just pulling into dock. Standish was leaning against an exposed steel girder under the platform.

“Hard to say. You don't get where you are without being competitive, but he's quiet. Keeps to himself. No one really knows him very well, even his friends and teammates.” Standish released Carol's arm. She brushed her sleeve straight and turned around to face him. “Trench coat? Scarf? And a fedora? Really, Eli? You're supposed to be discrete. You look like an ancient movie villain.”

“He didn't seem to notice me,” Standish said, standing straight and smoothing out his trench coat.

“I did. And so did half the people in the coffee shop. You looked like a bloody rapist, Eli. They're kids; they don't get your 'retro classic sense of style.'” She scoffed at him and turned around to face the train. “And yes, I think he'll do it.” The doors to the train opened. Carol stepped inside, turning to face Standish again. A smile crept across her face again, “You really should take that fedora off. You really do look like an idiot.”

“You used to like my 'retro classic sense of style.” Standish took a few steps forward and removed the fedora.

“I also used to like cats,” Carol said, the smile beaming cheek to cheek, a touch of sneer running across her lips.

“Cold, Carol. Cold,” Eli said, putting the fedora back on. “Good night, 'professor.'”

“Good night, Eli,” she chuckled as the train’s doors closed.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

The weeks slipped by quickly. Finals kept Jim busy, but training was also picking pace. Next week, the day before his commencement, was a major tournament on the circuit. Qualifiers for this year's big national competition. If he wanted a shot at next year's Digital Olympics, his team would have to earn some serious circuit points at nationals. Jim usually did a good job of carrying the team through Decathlon, but most competitions weren't multi-disciplinary. Next week was team strategy. That meant he and two others from his team, Shamz and Deka, needed to score in at least the top three to make it. Shamz and Jim were strong in strategy, but Deka, one of their Fan-Fivers, was subbing for their other primary TriMil guys, Guns. Getting Deka up to speed had eaten up just about every waking free hour, and some hours that shouldn't have been waking.

“Dek, make up some heavies, I need you to flank the ping with air support as well. Shamz, manage base D and build up some ubers. I'm going to sweep the mat deposit.” Jim swiveled his head left and right. He had on a set of Heads-Up Display glasses, various game statistics populating the outer rims. A yellow reticule tracked his eye motion on screen, highlighting what he eventually rested his gaze on, giving him on-demand stats. There were 4 displays, three forming a semi-circle around him, and a 4th, transparent display that he could reposition as an overlay. With deft hand gestures, the stats from the HUD glasses would fly onto the overlay. With the twist of his head, the overlay would rest atop one of the screens. His right hand was home to a button-covered mouse. People had been proclaiming the “death of the mouse” for centuries, but it never seemed to happen. His left hand housed a hand-shaped keypad with various switches, dials, wheels and buttons. Though most things were speech- or gesture-controlled, sometimes nothing could beat the fine control of a dial or the quickness a macro could afford.

“Break, recon is showing scouts about to approach your sweep. You may want to pull back and keep them dark,” Dek's deep voice calmly advised from the surround-sound speaker system.

“Good call. We dropped a recon beacon. I bet they make a play for the deposit,” Jim made a few more clicks on his mouse and his unit, represented in the top-down 3rd person view by various clusters of gun-toting soldiers and mobile weapon platforms, hid just out of sight from the now-incoming scout.
Just as Jim had expected, the scout was tailed by a small contingent of troops. Jim ambushed the detachment. With furious mouse-clicks, he selected various troops and commanded them to attack the enemies. He specifically micro-managed his troops to make sure that they attacked the units that they were strong against, and danced away lower-health units and units being struck by attackers they were particularly vulnerable to. With lightning-quick, precise and well-rehearsed motions, his units obeyed every order, and his ambush executed perfectly, not even one unit lost. “Expanding onto the deposit,” Jim narrated to his teammates. With a flick of the wrist here, a head twitch there, his worker units descended onto the deposit and began constructing transport facilities and extracting the materials.

“Break, I'm in trouble,” Shamz voice tweeted. “They've got a horde slamming our base.” A quick peek at the campaign map showed a big red blob colliding with their central base.

“Recon out. That's their primary force, Break. It's a Hail Mary.” Deka's voice boomed through.

“I'm going to make a play, guys. There's a canyon with a choke that looks like it feeds right into their base. Deka, back up Shamz.” Jim began moving his troops along the back canyon. As expected, the geological choke point was blanketed in turrets and anti-air installments. Jim repositioned his anti-siege troops and mobile weapon platforms, and with some careful bombardments and controlled rushes, was able to clear them out. Deka and Shamz were doing a great job of baiting and rebuffing the enemy. By keeping them just enticed enough, the enemy army was committing to the fight, but with skillful dancing and unit positioning, the two were keeping casualties to a minimum while still keeping them at bay.

“Better make it quick, Break, we can't stall them forever.” Deka hailed.

“I just entered their base. Game over.” Jim's forces crossed the threshold of the canyon and filled the central sanctuary. He began by eliminating resupply stations and unit production facilities, hamstringing their ability to create defensive units. Next on the agenda, Jim began systematically dismantling their internal defensive structures.

“They're retreating. AA gone?”

With a few clicks and a few flicks, Jim's anti-siege units took out the last remaining anti-air turrets. “You're all clear, Deka.”

Deka's flotilla cut across the campaign map. The big red blob was pulling back toward their sanctuary, with Shamz' troops in hot pursuit. It was too late, however, as once Deka's aircraft arrived, they brought swift fiery death in their wake. As the last structure crumbled and burnt to the ground, the surrounding screens cleared and a big blue box flashed in the center of Jim's displays, “Victory!”

“Good job, Deka. Way to keep your head on a swivel.” Jim took his HUD glasses off and dragged his palms along his face. “If you keep that up, we may make it to Nationals.”

“Well, we will. You'll be shipping off to the top-secret CORE project, to, I don't know, club baby squirrels and develop weaponized salsa,” Shamz squeaky voice pestered through his speakers.

Jim chuckled loudly. “Burn you greasy Devil! Die a tomato-filled death, yarrr!”

“Seriously though, Day. Are you gonna follow up?” the sub-woofer made Deka's voice rattle his room.

“I haven't decided yet. I don't even know what I'll be doing. For all I know I really will be clubbing squirrels and trying to make tomatoes into bombs.” Jim thumbed his nose and rubbed his eyes.

“Just do it, man. How many times do you think an offer like that will come along? And trust me, clubbing baby squirrels still beats the hell out of Basic.” Deka was the oldest on the team. “I've been off Charter for almost a decade now, but not a day goes by that I don't remember that drill sergeant screaming at me to do more push-ups. Hell, if I hadn'tve met Cross my second week in, I don't think I could've made it.”

“Heh, something about the thought of you doing push-ups, Deka, is hard to believe,” Shamz prodded.

“Hey, I may be carrying around a little extra weight now, but it's just because I was too strong before and needed a challenge.”

“Good one, Deka,” Jim quipped. “But guys, I'm going to get some sleep. I have my last class tomorrow. Don't want to be late.”

After a chorus of “Goodnights,” Jim slipped out of his chair.