“Yeah, I can see that.” He raised an eyebrow, looking around at our spanking new ship.
“Did I hear the FSU here tastes like real food? 'Cos that’s the only reason we came,” Gus said. They were essentially the first words he'd spoken.
The three of us started laughing our asses off at him. He may have had Asperger’s once, but that should’ve been healed. I was beginning to think that perhaps Asperger’s wasn’t a disability at all, just a different way of being. “It's awesome, Gus,” I replied. “Only first go and see Acclo for your rooms. There’s bigger ones for couples, so let them know.” I pointed towards the industrious Acclo.
“Will do, Captain. Pleasure to be aboard.” Gus saluted, and Mick gave his usual chilled grin. They toddled off, then I went through a procession of greeting the 50 or so new inhabitants of Uprising.
It was odd to be among humans again, and I thought I should make an effort with everyone this time around. I wanted a close-knit crew, with no fuckheads fucking things up, like Roger. Despite the flowery words, I'd be watching that motherfucker like a hawk. By the time the meet and greet was done, I found myself oddly exhausted. In the last ship from the Thoth came Elyek and Astrid.
It had only been a few days, but boy was I glad to have Elyek back. I was more excited to see them than I was Astrid. After Ember, Elyek was the solid rock in the Uprising that held me up. Although to be fair, Acclo was quickly ingratiating themselves into an important position. I didn’t mind; in fact, I was very impressed with them. I would have to speak to Elyek about their role, I didn’t want them to step on Elyek’s toes.
Group hug, round two ensued. “Elyek! It's so good to get you back,” I cheered. “Once you’re settled, I’ll need to cover some things with you. First, we just have a few things to go over with Astrid and Rufus first.”
“Sure, I'll be around. Just give me a shout on my comm when you’re finished. Astrid’s great by the way, I really like her. I thought all humans would be like you two, but none of them are. In fact, I would say you two are real anomalies in your race.”
“Yeah. Well, Shaun is a serious fucking anomaly, to be honest,” Ember laughed.
“Ha! And Ember’s a sharp-tongued shithead.”
Elyek grinned. “I love how you're different. Who would have thought it was possible to make insults the language of love?”
“It's a strange skill Ember has; I'll give you that.”
Ember punched me on the arm.
Next, we made our way over to Astrid and Rufus, who were waiting expectantly. I thought about a hug, but then decided against it; we weren't on that friendly of terms. Astrid and Ember hugged, and that was enough. “Right, you two,” I greeted them, “welcome to the Uprising.”
“Thanks for having us over,” Astrid replied, smiling. I definitely sensed nerves from her: she must have been worried about the whole transcendence carry-on. She continued, “We’ve brought uniforms for everyone on the Uprising. The Torax uniforms, so I’ve been told, have exponentially more fireproof fibers woven into them. Gerome believes their suits will be able to withstand the heat they create. Any damage should self-heal, too.”
“That’s some great work. Will you thank Gerome for us?” Ember said.
“Yeah. He's done good,” I added.
“Of course I will. He’ll enjoy the praise, I’ve no doubt.”
I noticed Rufus looking a bit forlorn. “You okay, dude?” I asked.
“Yeah. It's a beautiful ship. How did you come buy it?”
“We bought it,” I answered flatly. We had already covered this story during our first meeting. Rufus could be a doofus at times. “Come on. Let's get settled in the office and we can go through this whole transcending business.”
“I can’t actually believe you're going to help us transcend,” Astrid said, excitedly.
“It's a piece of cake, really, I don't know why Ogun held you all back so much,” Ember answered.
“He seemed to view the whole process with great reverence. Maybe it was a cultural thing he couldn’t let go of,” Astrid replied.
“I think he was full of shit to be honest. But never mind, we’re going to fix that now,” I added.
We entered the captain's office from the main corridor. It was great not having to go through the bridge, and I imagine crew members wanting to visit the captain would prefer not having to trudge through a load of people at their workstations.
“Alright guys, take a seat,” Ember began. “Shaun will talk you through everything.”
“I will?”
“Sure Shaun. You pulled me through, didn't you?”
“Well, yeah. Except, you've got like 63% wisdom, compared to my poxy 34%, and you always tell me I can't do everything by myself. We’re a team, right?”
“Fair enough,” Ember said with a smile, then turned to the two seated captains.
“Okay. So both me and Shaun felt like there was a curtain of darkness over us when we entered our minds. Do you know what I mean by this?” Ember asked.
“I do, indeed,” Astrid said.
Rufus nodded in agreement.
“Well, let's lift that veil. I’m gonna enter your head, Astrid. Your mental representation will be sitting in a chair in your Control Room with its eyes closed. I’m gonna go in and take your hand, then I’ll ask you to open your eyes. You need to concentrate on my hand; that’s your link to the Mindscape. Don't let go. Don't even think about letting go. If you do, I can't promise you we’ll ever recover your mind.” She stared at Astrid intensely, who returned the look with a worried but determined expression.
“I can do that, although I’ve a natural fear. Can you both come in and take a hand each? I don't know why, but I'd feel better about the whole thing.”
“Sure we can,” I replied.
“Okay then,” Astrid said, exhaling deeply, “do it.”
Ember and I both entered Astrid’s Control Room, and there she was, sitting calmly.
“Hey, Astrid. We’re both here. We're going to take a hand each now. It’ll feel weird, but just focus on it being our hands,” Ember said as we both took a hand.
“I can feel it,” Astrid gasped, “but it feels nothing like hands.”
“Yeah, that's where your imagination comes in, Astrid,” Ember said a little abruptly, I thought.
“I don't really know what you mean, but I'll try.”
“Well, that’s it. That’s all I've got for you. You can either imagine the sensation being our hands, or not. If you can't, then I don't know how to help you,” Ember replied.
Astrid fell silent. After a while she spoke again, almost pleadingly. “I just can't do it, guys. Is there another way?”
“No. This is the only way we know,” Ember said, but I had a different idea.
“Raaaar!” I shouted at the absolute top of my voice and squeezed Astrid’s hand as I did it. The result was dramatic; Ember jumped out of her skin and immediately started shouting and screaming at me for being an absolute prick. Astrid opened her eyes, blinking rapidly in panic. I stayed calm and held her hand firm. Ember quickly grabbed her other hand again, still cursing at me, while Astrid began flickering. Just like Ember had before.
“Okay, Astrid. Stay calm. You’re in your Mindscape and everything is fine,” I said, soothingly.
“Yeah, Astrid. We’re here to help you. Come on,” Ember added.
The flickering intensified, and we both held her tighter in our group hug, until finally she began to settle down. “Wow! That was insane!” she said, exhausted.
“You did it, though. You transcended, thanks to this absolute ass,” she turned to me. “You could’ve warned me. I nearly jumped out of my bloody skin.”
“That's kinda the point, Ember. Anyway, it worked, and we’ve another thing we can try going forward.”
“Oh, guys! This is amazing. It's all I've wanted since I came out of Anatoli. I've finally leveled up.”
“Do you know already?” I asked puzzled.
“Know what?”
<
br /> “About the stats,” I stated.
“What stats? What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Come on, back out of your Mindscape and we'll go and transcend Rufus.”
“I want to explore,” she said almost petulantly.
“No,'' I said, firmly. “We need to get moving. I don't want to explain everything twice. Rufus first, then we’ll show you everything you need to know – that we know, at least. Obviously there’s lots we don't know yet, but Ogun drip fed us information when it could have all been so much easier. Now let's go.”
We all entered our normal state and looked to Rufus like a pack of wolves staring at a deer. “Okay, Rufus.” I eyeballed him with mock seriousness. “You’re up! Astrid is done.”
“Excellent. Hit me with it.”
“You okay if Astrid comes in? We need to walk you both through a few things, and it’ll be better to only do it once.”
“Why not? The more the merrier. My mind is gonna be like party central.”
“Yeah, man. It's going to be great!” I said, before turning to the others. “Now, the same script as before. Yeah?”
“Sure,” both women said, grins stretching across their faces. With a nod from me, we all entered Rufus’s Mindscape, meeting Astrid in the corridor. “Wow! What is with the corridor?” she asked.
“It holds all the rooms in your mind. Once you're a bit more experienced, you can appear directly in the room you want to be in,” Ember answered.
“That’s amazing, and interesting. I can’t wait to study this place.”
“Yup, it is. But shall we go and wake Rufus up?” Ember said.
“Of course we should. Lead the way.” Astrid said, still looking around in wonder.
Rufus broke through the barrier to transcend pretty quickly: probably because I brought my shock tactic into play a lot earlier in the proceedings. He also stabilized quicker, and the general consensus was that it was down to having three people involved. Worth thinking about for people in the future.
“Okay, Rufus. Any dark secrets I need to know about?”
“Uh, not since therapy, no,” he chuckled, and looked uncomfortable.
“So, are you okay if we use your mind as a walkthrough?”
“Yeah, sure, why not?”
“Ember, would you like to do the honors?” I asked her.
“Might as well. Okay, guys. This is your Cognition Room. This is where you operate from, when you’re outside your body. That screen next to the chair displays all the thought images you process. You can use it as a lie detector. It's cool.”
“How?” Astrid asked.
“Simple. If a person says one thing and thinks another, lie. Boom! Simple. You'll work it out. Just as long as you know the basics, which we never did, for far too long. Come on. Next room,” she said, abruptly.
As we walked out into the corridor, Astrid and Rufus looked around, awe-struck. It was hard to remember just how awesome these places were when you had spent so much time in them. “Okay. While we're in the corridor, you should know there’s a bad juju room; it's essentially death to enter. It's filled with all your despair and self-doubt. Don't go in,” I said with finality.
“Really? You're taking the piss, right?” Rufus scoffed.
“No, not at all. You’ll know what I mean when you come to it, but I’m just letting you know. It isn’t hiding the land of milk and honey. It’s genuinely bad, according to Ogun. Right, here we are, the Interface Room. Come on in, guys. This is where things get very interesting.”
We all piled into Rufus’s room. “Okay, guys,” said Ember, taking the lead again. “That big screen allows you to navigate and use your telepathy. We were led to believe by Ogun that you had to reach a certain level of ability and Mental Clarity to be able to compartmentalize your mind. This would, in turn, allow you to work from without and within.
“However, Shaun and I very recently discovered you can apparently attain a visual upgrade. We don't exactly know if our increased Mental Clarity allowed for it to happen, but it’s something we’ll show you how to do once you get your bearings. The most interesting thing about this upgrade is that Ogun evidently didn't know about it. In fact, a large percentage of Fystr didn't know about it.”
“You’re saying you two just happened to stumble upon this amazing secret that hardly any of the Fystr knew about? How would you even know that? It seems more likely Ogun just hadn’t told you yet,” Astrid said.
“Ogun only told us how he navigated the Mindscape, which was by his ability to devote part of his mind to the Mindscape while still functioning in normal state. It was Havok who told us that Jotun did it differently and that he’d got the information from one of the Fystr ruling class. Evidently they like to control access to power and knowledge, even for their own people,” Ember said, smugly.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Rufus jumped in. “That was a lot of information. My main questions are, who is Havok? And who is Jotun?”
Astrid spoke next. “I know of no Havok, but I’ve heard Jotun’s name mentioned before. Was he one of the Fystr? A famous one at that, and you killed him on the supply station?”
“That he was,” Ember replied.
“So, who is Havok?” she asked.
“Havok is my axe,” I smiled.
“Ah! That was Jotun’s axe. Am I correct? Is it alive then?”
“He identifies as male, and he is very much alive, with a very distinct personality of his own. That actually reminds me. Do you have any music from Earth? We really need some.”
They both looked at me like I had gone insane. “Yeah,” Rufus finally answered, “we’ve a load of entertainment, so does the Thoth. Music, movies, eBooks, audio books. You name it, we’ve got it. There's even a few of them that are similar to what we’re going through now, believe it or not. I'm reading a fantastic series at the minute called Cond…”
“Rufus! Stop prattling on. We need to get on with your Mindscape tour,” Ember snapped.
“Okay,” Rufus said, holding his hands out in a conciliatory gesture. “I can send copies of everything over to you.”
“Sounds good. I look forward to it,” I said, taking some of the heat off Rufus, before continuing about Havok. “So, yeah. Havok doesn't necessarily know a lot, because he freely admits the Fystr are boring and he didn’t listen to them too much. But he did know enough to point us in the right direction to get our visual upgrade. It’s my thinking that there must be more forcible upgrades like that. We need to keep our minds open to opportunities. There’s so much to learn.”
“Thank you, Shaun,” Ember said, curtly. “Are you ok if I move on with the tour you asked me to do?”
“Yeah, of course. Crack on with it,” I smiled.
“There are other things you can do here, but what we’ve discussed covers the main things. Even if you can’t do the visual upgrade yet, it’ll be good for you both to practice here. Now, if you have a look over at that screen, I think you’re gonna be a little surprised.”
As one, they turned and looked toward Rufus’s stat screen. They moved quickly to moon over it. “Is this for real?” Rufus asked. “This is amazing!”
“It's for real,” I replied. “Let's have a look at whatcha got, then.”
Name: Rufus Camacho
Age: 35 GY
Transcendence Level: 58
Strength: 80/1000
Agility: 71/1000
Speed: 70/1000
Intelligence: 35/1000
Constitution: 70/1000
Wisdom: 45/1000
Mental Resilience: 40/1000
Mental Clarity: 16%
Potential: 80%
I couldn't deny I was impressed with Rufus's stats. They weren't as good as Ember’s or mine, which was possibly a little unfair considering how long he’d been training. I wasn't complaining that I was at a much higher level. I secretly hoped that Astrid would be a lower level, too. I know that it was a petty thought, but… well… nope. I've got nothing. I wanted to be stronger than t
hem.
“Right, you guys. You can moon over your stats later. We must move onward. We’ve the most important room to go to, and it’s the absolute fucking pits. Let’s go!” Ember shouted.
We all piled out of the Interface Room, and I had a realization that I was so used to this now that I genuinely felt like I was in some random building, rather than in some random mind.
We arrived at the shit-tip room. I knew it wouldn't be great, because Rufus only had a Clarity of 16%. And to be honest, upon entering, the room looked similar to how it appeared in my mind at first.
“Okay, guys. I'm not gonna beat around the bush. This room is key to your ability to progress and develop in so many areas,” Ember said.
“Basically, you’ve got to clear all this shit up. That's what Ogun told us,” I said.
“With the experience of hindsight though, we’ve found a relatively efficient way to clear it.”
“But you won't have Havok’s sweet tunes,” I chuckled.
“Ignore him and listen closely. Make a path through the junk to those shelves over there. Once there, you need to just start putting things on the shelves as quickly as possible. Once you fill a shelf, it disappears. Keep going until the room is empty.”
They looked at us like we were mad. I was about to explain in more detail, but Ember stopped me.
“Look everyone, we need to keep moving. Astrid, Rufus, follow our instructions and you’ll do better than we did for the first few months, or do whatever you want and waste your time,” she said.
She wasn’t wrong. We had given them far more advice than Ogun had given us, and would continue to support them, “Ember’s right, guys. Get stuck in. Learn the ropes and we’ll talk about it again soon. If you find new and better ways to do things, then pass that information along. We need to work together on this. The Uprising needs to rise up quickly.”
They both nodded at me, respectfully.
“Thank you so much for showing us this. We’ve a few people who did very well in Anatoli, so we’ll try to bring them through to the Mindscape soon. Hopefully, we can become a true force to be reckoned with,” Astrid said.
Condition Evolution 3: A LitRPG / Gamelit Adventure Page 15
