Lair

by Carl Stubblefield

  In the meantime, Gus went to the beach and practiced Basic Flight. It was probably an influence of the Nth, but Gus felt compelled to be constantly busy, not wasting any of his time without developing something.

  The feel of what he needed to do was becoming familiar, but he had to get in the repetition to reinforce it and level the skill. As he practiced, he saw a squadron of six drones fly out over the water. They had a net stretched between them. They got in position and skittered around the water for a bit. After hovering in one spot for a while, they suddenly burst up in the air. Raising up, they drifted closer, creating a basket out of the net. Gus saw they had caught six fish. They sped back to the manor with their prize. Gus’ mouth began to water a bit at the thought of a real dinner instead of protein bars. Not having to work for a couple hours to fish and cook wasn’t bad either.

  Besides the distraction of the fishing drones, it was difficult to concentrate on flying. Gus’ mind would wander to every possible subject. He wondered how much time was left in the queue, what recipe the bots would use on the fish, or recall a certain stage of his katas, and the ability would wink away. He wondered if this would ever become an unconscious ability that didn’t require so much of his mental real estate.

  “Good things are seldom cheap, and cheap things are seldom good…” Nick said.

  Gus mentally agreed and set again to forcing out distractions. As he did, his mind started to wander, again, this time thinking about the palm frond weaving he had done when first on the island. Playing with this idea, he thought about the fish net and his mind began to weave the pulls of ether and fashioned them into a small basket of sorts, and then interposed this basket under himself.

  Suddenly, Gus had to exert no effort to maintain hovering in place two feet above the ground. Twisting, he spun around in place like a child in a bucket swing, fully supported in midair. A chime sounded:

  You have just upgraded the skill Basket Weaving into Ether Weaving!

  Ether Weaving (Level 1)

  You can manipulate refined matter to access basic translocation effects. Weaves must be unraveled to remove effects.

  Requirements: 50 MP/second during weaving. Stable effects require no MP to maintain.

  100 XP awarded

  200 FP awarded

  You have leveled up the skill: Basic Flight to Level 5!

  50 XP awarded

  100 FP awarded

  “Wow. I think that one deserves an achievement to pop or something. You’re probably one of the only humans to actually use basket weaving for something useful. I guess aside from people who need baskets, that is,” Nick said.

  “I’m as surprised as you!” Gus replied, swinging suspended in the air, twisting in place and enjoying the feeling of free floating. When Gus attempted an ether pull, he thought he would move in that direction, but instead he swung like a pendulum just as if he were doing something similar in a real swing.

  Gus looked above to see if he could see anything mysteriously supporting him above. He could not visualize the ether far away from him, but tendrils seemed to extend upward in that direction. Gus tried to pull himself straight upward, in an attempt to get closer to the anchor point and see if he could influence it to move, but could not achieve a sufficient vertical movement to get close enough to visualize anything.

  Gus tried different tethering methods. The first using two tendrils to pull himself in a specific direction and hold himself there. Another using two lateral tendrils to swing in a wide arc. Another at off angles to pull himself into a spin by pulsing how he pulled on each tether.

  “It’s time to check on the sensors, if you want to finish placing them today,” Nick advised. Gus had been so engrossed in playing around with how the tendrils moved that he had lost track of time. Mentally envisioning his basket, he placed virtual fingers between the folds in the center and pressed outward, undoing the overlaps and folds of ether until he dropped to the soft sand.

  Gus headed back to the Foundry and found he had the same problem with figuring out how to carry all the sensors. “How did I forget to deal with this?! I just had this issue!”

  Gus tried his basket idea again, making it larger and deeper. Loading the sensors inside, he found the square shape made them easy to stack and he fit all of them inside. He found he could attach the basket’s focus point to his spear and move the whole basket instead of having it be attached to a fixed point.

  Using the naginata, he directed the large load through doorways and out of the manor. He felt like a mime, since the basket was only visible in his display as a transparent construct. He continued the task of placing sensors.

  During the mindless task, he questioned Nick if he had any more ideas about his transformation at level ten, but Nick had nothing more that would illuminate what had happened. A stat boost of ten per stat except twenty for luck was huge!

  “Nick, I remember you mentioning something about luck a while back, could you explain a bit more?” He grunted a bit as he wiggled a sensor past some roots and vegetation until it drove a spike into the ground, securing it.

  “Gus, big explanations aren’t really my jam. I differ from the old man in that way, but I guess I can give it a go. But I’m only going to explain this once, so pay attention. Got it?”

  “Sure, shoot,” Gus agreed, sitting back on his heels to listen without distraction.

  “Ok, I’m going to ask you a riddle. What loses its head in the morning and gains it again after it gets dark?”

  “Hmm, a flower?” Gus guessed.

  “No,” Nick said without emotion.

  “Give me a hint.”

  “That’s not how riddles work, Gus. You have to work it out in your mind. I can answer yes and no, but I’m not going to give you the answer. Trust me, it’s much more gratifying when you figure it out yourself.”

  “Is it something that’s alive?” Gus moved down the path to find another sensor site.

  “This isn’t twenty questions, Gus!” Nick taunted, obviously enjoying Gus’ difficulty.

  “The sun?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hmm, some kind of animal?” Gus asked hopefully.

  Nick just remained silent. Gus’ mind kept returning to think of different kinds of flowers, that maybe opened their petals when the sun came out and then curled up again after it went down.

  “So what are you thinking right now?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about flowers.”

  “Exactly! That’s precisely how the luck stat works.” Nick finished grandly, as if he had just elucidated the world’s biggest mystery.

  “Huh? That makes no sense at all.”

  “Well, despite years of Nth trying to influence human culture, they couldn’t remove the superstition related to luck from the collective consciousness. So we modified part of the interpretation of luck and applied it to useful metrics.”

  “So what’s up with the riddle?” Gus wondered aloud.

  “You know how once you started thinking about a single thing, your mind kept wanting to go there, even though you knew it wasn’t the right answer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, in a similar way, most humans have a certain expectation about reality and what can and should happen. Some people are positive, some negative. By and large, this belief influences what actually happens in reality. There are a lot of possibilities that can happen with your choices. Will things turn out? Or fail? Utilizing this aspect humans consider luck, one can actively select a future reality that is more pleasant.

  “This control over quantum chance is not something that Nth can control or augment. Just because someone has a great capability to change their reality does not mean they automatically will. And often due to their emotions, people with great capacity squander this ability. There are vast shifts in probabilities as optimism and hope or pessimism and despair increase or reduce which reality actually comes into existence.

  “So I could be a lot more lucky than my stats say I am,” Gus said w
ith excitement.

  “That’s not what I said. It’s not the size of your luck, it’s what you do with it.”

  “That’s what—”

  “No, it’s not. It’s never what anyone says, and you know it. I will say that ether can be influenced by thought. Just as ether is a form of matter that humans can’t physically measure yet, thought is a form of energy that hasn’t been detected and quantified as an energy source among humans. It functions in the same way electricity powers all sorts of electronics. Thought energy can be used in a variety of ways by a trained mind. Humans actually have been using it for centuries before Nth even appeared to influence humankind. Stew on that for a while and surprise me, kid.” Nick’s tone indicated he was done discussing the subject.

  Gus’ thoughts kept returning to the unlikely probabilities that made it possible for him to reach the island, the concentration of coincidences that aligned so that he could be where he was, doing what he was doing. Was that his doing? Or someone elses?

  He wondered if being unconscious was crucial so he wouldn’t sabotage himself. Deep down at his core, he knew he had always wanted to have powers and to be accepted by his family. He hated admitting that, but it was true. The desire to show his father and brother that he wasn’t just a waste of space was there, always lurking in the shadows. Until Gus’ powers had arrived, he had never thought about consciously changing his destiny. The old adage, be careful what you wish for, was apparently true. His father’s words reverberated in his mind. Think what you’ve always thought and you’ll get what you’ve always got.

  Gus got a mental break as he saw he was nearing the end of his supply of sensors. The path widened as the jungle canopy retreated. At the end of the path, a large mountain extended up from the canopy and Gus could see it was the foot of the volcano. The hardened magma had split in two, resembling the Scream mask as a cave entrance yawned into the darkness.

  Gus felt uneasy being this close to the cave opening, and the likely lair of the zombies. There were still a few birds and other jungle sounds, but a trickle of sweat rolled down his back and he licked his lips at the sight of it. Trying to make as little noise as possible, Gus finished pressing the top of the last sensor and made his way back down the trail. He ran all the way back, spamming Dash once he was far enough away not to make too much noise.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Doomsday

  Day 9 7:39 AM

  1:15:31 remaining

  Gus awoke with a start, feeling a growing sensation of dread. Checking his minimap he saw nothing wrong, although he noticed he could change the scale by a factor of two times and three times magnification.

  Did I have a nightmare? He took some deep breaths to slow his racing heart. His display also had a new tab that allowed him to highlight things in motion, probably due to his recent jump in perception stats on hitting level ten. That definitely would be helpful to notice things skulking in the jungle, and enemies trying to flank him. With that and the assistance of the scanning pylons increasing the feedback he had, it would be much more difficult for them to take him by surprise. He berated himself once again for not taking the time to figure out how his stat increases affected his abilities.

  Focusing again, the minimap zoomed out, the map shrinking to show more of an overview look. He saw a flickering band of color on the edge of the far reaches of the minimap. Zooming in on this section, he saw multiple dots; yellow, orange and red. So many colors were overlapping that the minimap was solid in some areas. All moving toward the manor from the west. Gus scrambled to get some water and scarf an energy bar—it was going to be a long day. Bursting into the Foundry, he ran down to where finished items were dispensed. The turrets resembled huge footballs with a ring stand. Retractable spikes could be extended from the ring to anchor them.

  The upper half of the football appeared to be able to rotate three-hundred-sixty degrees to engage enemies from any direction. Gus froze for a second, trying to figure out how to move the bulky contraptions. Using an ether weave again, he fashioned a smaller basket as he had the day before with higher sides and placed the first turret inside.

  It worked! The weave stretched a little and seemed to accommodate the shape of the turret. Encouraged, Gus made five similar cradles out of ether. With a little experimentation, he found that he could move the focus where the basket hung by attaching it to another ether leash. He made short lines and tied the leashes to the blade guard on his naginata and pulled them carefully up and out of the Foundry. Hurrying as fast as he could, he agonized at the time it took to navigate doorways, manage the elevator, and make it outside.

  Gus feared damaging the turrets as they clanged against each other like large metal balloons. They also made a loud obnoxious hollow gong noise that got old all too quick when they drifted and hit each other.

  Gus racked his brain to decide where the best place would be to station the turrets. As a defense in front of the manor? At the edge of the forest? Spread throughout the trail? He worried if he scattered them, they would be too easy to overwhelm and destroy. He decided to place them as far into the forest as he could manage, all together so that they would protect each other. Checking his display, he estimated that he could make it about a third of the way down the trail, near where he was ambushed before. He hoped he had time to set everything up.

  Exiting the manor at last, he attempted a short dash. The cacophony of clanging turrets hitting each other stopped him from making another attempt. He ran as fast as he could, removing the leashes from the naginata and holding three tethers in each hand in an attempt to fan them out and keep them from slamming together. This didn’t work as well as he thought, until he came upon the idea of connecting them in a long centipede-esque train. The resulting silence was a balm on his weary ears. He found with this configuration he could even use Dash again. Constantly checking his minimap, he rapidly approached where he would make his stand.

  He was grateful he had the foresight of clearing out the encroaching foliage from the path or he could have been caught up multiple times on his flight. At last, he was there and he began removing the turrets and setting them up, fumbling a bit in his haste. One in the middle of the trail, two more ahead and to the side. Gus spread the turrets six feet apart. He ended up with two staggered rows, hoping the close proximity would allow the turrets to protect each other.

  Gus activated the first one; three anchors shot into the ground and secured it. A small display was visible on a tiny panel, along with a red light that winked to green, just as the sensors had. Once green, Gus was accepted as a friendly, and using the display, he dragged a box to designate the attack zone for the turrets.

  They would target anything entering that zone, and numerous multicolored lights were fast approaching the area on the minimap. Confirming his choice, the turrets spun to life. Out of the top of the football, two panels slid down, revealing two gun barrels. Everything was happening too fast. He needed more time! Gus wondered what kind of ammunition the turrets used, and how long they would last in the coming onslaught.

  Gus again tried to strategize where he would best be placed in relation to the turrets to maximize his efficacy. Was behind better, letting the turrets do most of the work, then he could support them if one, in particular, was attacked? Or was it better to be in front, since the turrets recognized him as friendly and he could take down the less dangerous Shamblers so ammunition would not be wasted on them?

  “Nick, can you configure the turrets to aim at heads only and not waste ammunition on other body parts?”

  “On it…” Nick said dutifully, “…and done.”

  “What about selectively focusing on Mantids unless there are Shamblers that get within a certain distance, say, ten feet?”

  “Easy peasy.”

  Gus decided he would head forward, keeping his minimap at its widest scan range. That was probably how the Mantids ambushed him that one time; they circled around from outside the range of his minimap, and then closed in until it wa
s too late. There was a large contingent of yellow dots leading the pack mixed with other colors. He decided to thin the herd a bit and make a calculated retreat to the turrets. He dashed forward and saw the first of the Shamblers, ordering Nick to start one of his fight playlists.

  Ass Kicker’s Haircut by The Saturday Knights. Success Rates x 1. (Chain anchor, no bonus)

  Gus readied his spear and decapitated two of the lead Shamblers. He spun and thrust into the eye of another. Taking a step back, he repositioned using Sweep the Leg on another. “Cobra Kai style!” Gus yelled, sinking the spear into the eye of the downed zombie.

  Gus wished he could have squeezed in another training session. He used this new weapon like his old spears, but those techniques ignored the large blade edge fashioned from Razorback. Even still, he felt like he was really getting into the flow of fighting with polearms. The katas made a big difference in positioning and firing some of his counter skills and activated more chain attacks. Oddly, the majority of these first line attackers were Shamblers.

  The naginata hummed as it cut through the zombies’ flesh with ease. Gus caught a twitch from his perception and noticed Mantids in the trees. He backed up closer to the turrets to get a little coverage behind him.

  Bad Seed Rising by Bad Seed Rising. Success Rates x 2. Damage doubled.

  Gus stabbed another zombie and felt the jolt of Wreck-tums activate. He spun into a Chained Attack, decapitating a Mantid in midair. As he fought, he still could manage the Mantids and Shamblers without too much difficulty, thanks to the turrets assisting him. There were just so many! He saw the Mantids spreading out, avoiding the turrets by leaping from tree to tree. They were trying to disable the turrets from behind while they were focused on the oncoming horde!