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Chapter 9: Numbers Man

  A funny thing about humanity is that we never overcame our need for amusement, earth-bound or not. Even within the slums, where despair reigned and people died on the daily, we would always find some way to entertain ourselves. Drugs, bullying, and worse: anything to break the dreaded chains of boredom.

  So, it’s only natural that games had followed us into the stars. And, once it became possible, they invaded every aspect of our daily lives, too.

  Stats enabled by the Reality EnhancementTM software were a perfect example of this. Monkey brain sees numbers go up, monkey brain feels good!

  It didn’t really matter that most people could only ever squeeze out a few extra 0.1s out of the experience, at least without replacing parts of their body with cybernetics or delving into genetic enhancements. Even those miniscule tenth-by-tenth gains were only possible because of how the stats were set up. ‘1’ was the average level of physical fitness that a healthy adult was expected to reach, ‘average’ in the sense that the data was collected from all the different users of the app.

  Following that logic, with my stat of 0.6 strength, I was only worth about half an adult. Again, not a shocker. My daily meals were… lacking. I avoided buying anything from the slums whenever I could, and instead used one of the many vending machines in the outer district as my main source of nutrition.

  These meal packs didn’t taste very good, and they definitely didn’t provide everything a growing body needed. Take, for example, the meal I’d grabbed on my way to Catill’s shop that morning. It was marketed as a chicken wrap with salad dressing, but all the various ‘ingredients’ that went into the unholy creation tasted mostly like cardboard with some subtle seasoning. The nutritional value of the meal just about matched the expectations set by its taste.

  Still, the vending machine meals weren’t as likely to give you cancer or long-term health complications as the slum cuisine was. And at two credits per meal pack, I couldn’t argue with the price.

  So, yeah. I was unlikely to ever be as healthy or as fit as I should have been at sixteen years of age, as long as I continued these fine dining habits. Thankfully, I now had the credits to work on the issue, at least in the short term. That was one piece of good news.

  But the odd stats were still bothering me.

  The app was upfront about what it tracked and what it could offer advice on. The physical stats were clearly listed in the little description section of the store, with more information available in a single click.

  Strength indicated physical might and muscular performance. Reflexes were, well, exactly what the word implied: your ability to react quickly and with stability. Acuity used to be the bane of my existence, since it referred to the quality of a person’s eyesight and perception. From there, you had the trifecta of stats: Physique, Recovery, and Stamina. They indicated physical toughness and ability to withstand various forms of labor, ability to recover from wounds, and how long as well as how vigorously a person could exert themselves.

  Each stat could be accessed for a more in-depth breakdown. Strength, for example, included extra information like your presumed maximum dead lift or bench press. I had zero intention of looking there, because I didn’t need to be bombarded by a variety of depressingly low numbers.

  Absolutely none of this explained what a stat called ‘Soul’ would cover. There was no accessible breakdown for Adaptability, Tolerance, Cognition, or Essence.

  Mind Synchronicity was the most alarming. What was ‘Minor Instability’ supposed to mean in the context of Mind Synchronicity? Nothing good, I’d imagine.

  Yet, no matter how much I tried to extract an explanation from the app, the stupid thing refused to cooperate.

  Did I download a virus by mistake?

  The app page looked so official, though! They couldn’t have faked all the reviews, either. No way in hell would they pay a shill to leave a review whining about how the app’s recommended workout schedule was too much of a pain to follow.

  Well, if the app itself wasn’t going to give me what I needed, I’d simply take full advantage of the net instead. Or I was about to, until muttered curses and a whack to the back of my head reminded me I needed to keep my hands moving.

  “Fool boy! Wat do I pay you for? Get back to work. It’s not lunch break yet.”

  I did, and with gusto. Not just because Catill was not a man to mess with, but because he deserved at least that much from me. I didn’t think amusing myself while I worked was wrong, but letting myself get distracted enough to stop working altogether? I was ashamed of myself for slipping that much.

  It was only several hours later, when Catill gave me his blessing and I was shoving cardboard chicken down my throat, that I could take time for some research.

  Things refused to go my way from the start.

  I began by looking through all the stat listings from other apps. They were pretty damn universal, with only a few using different words for the same things. Those who offered a stat breakdown followed my chosen app to the T.

  In the same vein, no matter how many times I looked things up or how differently I worded my request, the stat lists available on the net corroborated the app descriptions. There was no such thing as the stats my new app had foisted on me.

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  So, I was forced to get a little more specific.

  ‘Soul’ naturally brought up nothing but gibberish. Religion hadn’t really been a thing for a long, long while, and only a few people here and there even bothered with that stuff anymore. Oh, there were obviously whispers from time to time about horrible things and even worse fates, but the monsters they featured were very real.

  ‘Adaptability’ just hit me with the dictionary definition of the word, like I was too stupid to know it. ‘Tolerance’ too, though I also got a bunch of history texts, along with some articles about tension between Terrans and alien species and all sorts of fucked up politics.

  ‘Cognition’ was a doozy. I even went down a rabbit hole of psychic nonsense for a hot minute. Pretty soon, though, I got frustrated and ditched that inquiry as well.

  ‘Essence’… well, Essence was almost as bad as Soul and Cognition. But it also veered into a few different sites offering, eh, ‘alternative’ methods of insemination and cross-breeding with alien species, complete with informative pictures I wished I could scrub from my brain.

  Why did I click that? Why? Maybe getting stabbed woulda been preferable.

  The search for ‘Mind Synchronicity’, at last, yielded a bit of info. Not at first, obviously. First I had to dig through psychology garbage and self-help websites and guidebooks, which… yeah, not something that was ever gonna help me. Can’t ‘Deal with my traumas in a healthy manner’ while living in the slums. Or living on Kadar at all, really, let alone the lovely city of Zanos.

  Underneath all that, though, I found a couple forums. Kind of shoddy-looking and archaic, but there were actual people there looking for help. Lots of questions about how to maintain their Mind Synchronicity stat, and worried comments about their condition worsening.

  I was intrigued at first, but the longer I read, the more I became convinced this was a wash as well. What the hell was I supposed to do with ‘You need to center yourself and mind the energy you’re absorbing’, or ‘A bit of purification is preferable even if the source you found is pure’?

  Absolutely nothing, that’s what.

  Still, there was another entry that confused me: ‘I know how hard it is to get your hands on Essence, but it’s better to be careful in the long run.’

  The forum contributor had used that word, ‘Essence’, like it was something that could be discovered and maybe even used directly. Logically speaking, that should preclude it from referring to a stat on my screen. Right?

  And yet… if two of the keywords I was so desperately searching for were mentioned together, wasn’t that a hint of its own?

  I groaned, then forced myself to get back to work. My meager meal was long gone. I didn’t want to let Catill catch me slacking off twice in one day.

  Lifting a box, I caught sight of my grouchy boss and paused.

  Catill.

  Now there was a thought. He was old, or at least he looked old, and he was into all sorts of odd and esoteric stuff. Maybe he’d be able to enlighten me on what I was dealing with.

  How to be subtle about this, though?

  Subtlety wasn’t my greatest virtue. I could be careful, even downright sneaky, but that was a different thing than managing your words around someone. That, I failed at more often than not. Mostly on account of not having a lot of friends or any experience with interpersonal relationships.

  I needed an angle.

  Thankfully, it wasn’t long before I had an inkling of a plan. When Catill wandered over to inspect one of the shelves I’d just rearranged, I took the chance to execute it.

  “Um, I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a question?” I ventured carefully.

  When Catill turned a gimlet eye on me but didn’t immediately cut me off, I took that as encouragement enough to go on.

  “Heard Jason bragging about something the other day. He said he got a premium Reality Enhancement app, and that he’s going to be able to raise his ‘Essence’ and ‘Mind Synchronicity’ stats soon, but… those aren’t a thing, right? I looked up some of the apps, and none of them have those.”

  I’d kept my eyes carefully fixed on the items I was moving, because a part of me was convinced Catill would see straight through my bullshit. However, that just meant I missed the moment the man’s puke-green skin turned almost stark white.

  I was forced to notice the change when he suddenly gripped my wrist with crushing strength and forcibly turned me to face him. I yelped, but the sound died in my throat as he fixed me in place with his stare. His eyes were… frightened? Aghast? Dare I say it… even deranged?

  “Stay away from that boy, do you ‘ear me? Stay away and never go near ’im again. I swear, if you so much as think about approaching ’im again, I’m going to throw your ass out on the streets, and I don’t care wat you’ll do to survive then!”

  Catill’s grip on my wrist tightened as he kept ranting. It was like he wasn’t really looking at me, though. His eyes were locked on mine, but they seemed to be staring at something or someone far beyond me.

  “O-Okay, I get it! I get it!” I stammered. “I don’t exactly like Jason, anyway. He’s a fucking rat.”

  “Good. Good.” Catill’s eyes properly focused on me again, and he grimaced. “I don’t like those eyes of yours. I don’t care if they’re cheap crap, you shouldn’ta bought somethin’ that unsettlin’. Git to it, boy! Back to work! If your mama coulda ’eard you, she woulda taken your ass off.”

  I froze, but my boss didn’t notice, still ranting in his odd accent as he walked away.

  My mother. He’d mentioned my mother. And yet, I’d only met him after she… disappeared.

  I was looking for work on one of the main outer district streets, and he’d happened to come across me. Heard me arguing with a shopkeeper that said I’d be useless to him even if he hired me.

  I’d always thought that was it. A moment of chance, when the blasted city actually did something kind for me, for once. But he’d mentioned my mother, and I was now too shaken to go after him and ask why.

  His reaction wasn’t normal. ‘Calm’ and ‘collected’ were at the top of my list of adjectives for the man. Maybe even ‘cold.’ Catill was many things, but he never lost it like that. He just didn’t.

  My mood didn’t improve for the rest of the day. I was on edge, constantly stealing glances at my boss. Or trying to, at least. Catill had suddenly proven himself to be elusive. He did have an office in the back where I usually did the paperwork, but he didn’t like to spend time there himself. He was usually all too happy to ‘supervise’ my work. Now, I almost thought he was hiding from me.

  It was only when I finished for the day and headed out that another thought occurred to me. If Catill had reacted that badly, and if he was visibly terrified just to hear me mention those words, how were people just openly discussing it on the net?

  Maybe it was silly of me, but with everything that had happened recently, a cold pit of worry settled in my gut. What if the forums weren’t meant to help at all? What if they were supposed to serve as bait for whoever was dumb enough to engage with them?

  More importantly, was I now on some kind of watch list, just because I’d opened those forums?

  Common sense said no. My paranoia screamed YES.

  I could almost swear I heard mocking laughter echo in my ears, and for just a moment, a black silhouette with a disturbingly crooked grin flashed past the corner of my eye.

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