Interlude: Attaboy

The first time Attaboy saw the pictures in front of his eyes was just after his second death.

How he had returned to life, he wasn’t entirely sure, but he knew that dying had changed him forever. Even before he opened his eyes to the dull sky, the pictures were there. He didn’t know what most of them were, but he could tell that there was an eye, an ear and a nose. There was also a star with eight points and a little stick figure, like he and Lilijoy used to draw in the mud with sticks when they told stories to each other.

Grabby had told him that he would die, when they talked for the last time.

“Don’t be scared little one,” she had said. “You will be reborn, and everything will change. You have died before, so don’t worry.”

He remembered it, even though at the time his chest was burning and he couldn’t see very well. It was the most Grabby had ever said, and his voice had sounded strange, not like the usually speaking of the tribe. Since Attaboy was dying, he didn’t have the energy to wonder about it until later.

“There is nothing for you here anymore,” Grabby had continued. “Someday you will understand, and when the time comes, you might return. But that will be many years from now.”

With that, Grabby had left him where he lay on the cold ground. Attaboy had watched the large hunched shoulders stumble into the distance. Then he died.

He wasn’t sure how long he died for, but when he saw the pictures in his eyes as he returned to consciousness, he knew that he was different from before. The stick figure was yellow when he woke, but as he rested for several hours, it slowly turned green, and he felt energy returning to his limbs. He had the feeling that the stick figure was a picture of his body.

By the time the sun was setting, his body felt pretty good. The damage from the toxic air of the Piles seemed to have healed, and he could see better than before, even with the pictures in his eyes. He climbed to his feet and began to walk.

Chapter 8: Golem

No one knows exactly how it happened, how a major Mexican drug cartel became a purveyor of the new nano-machine brain interface systems (NBIS). Somehow, someone with uncanny foresight in their leadership took it on themselves to invest in the new technologies before they were widely available. Perhaps it was related to the standing practice of sending their best and brightest young people to earn chemistry degrees from universities around the world? (Thanks Breaking Bad!)

Those young people were indebted, expected to return home and begin cooking up compounds for their patrons, and we can only imagine they brought with them more than the latest techniques for making better methamphetamine. Perhaps they returned with a sense of where this exciting new field of nanochemistry was headed, and enough knowledge to guide the cartel into the future.

It didn't hurt that many of the major industrial and chemical manufacturing complexes of the Americas fell under Sinaloa's control as they steadily annexed more and more power from the weak Mexican government.

What is well known is that the aftermath of the first warming war of 2038 allowed Sinaloa to formally capture much of Western Mexico, and turn their attention to developing better and better maquinitas (lit. little machines). Their early efforts were simple, able to stimulate a handful of neurochemicals in a largely uncontrolled manner, not much different in effect from the pure chemistry of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. But with each generation they grew more sophisticated, eventually including rudimentary interfaces so that the user could control the intensity and duration of the high.

Meanwhile, Sinaloa continued the practice of sending students to universities, only now they would go on to become employees of the major corporations involved in the development of NBIS, providing Sinaloa with a steady stream of cutting edge research stolen from their employers. This allowed Sinaloa to integrate more and more sensory integration to their maquinitas , culminating in the development of the Suenos (Dream) System, a full sensory immersion system that followed hot on the heels of Tesla's pioneering Primer System.

The great irony is that Sinaloa was largely spared by Guardian during its early suppression, due to the fact that they were actively disinterested in self-replication research, focused as they were on building product with a limited lifespan. Of course, this meant that millions of people with black market Suenos bugs had to pay repeatedly to maintain their blissful existence, and were uniquely vulnerable during the tribulation. Nevertheless, Sinaloa's distrust of networked systems and insular culture rendered them one of the strongest forces in the early years after Guardian's rise.

Lilijoy finished her latest reading of the Sinaloa section from Renaissance’s tract Comments on the Clans. She had lost track of how many times she had read it by this time, but it was at least once a day.

Once a day since she had discovered they were holding Attaboy.

It reminded her why she had to get stronger. For the thousandth time, she questioned her strategy, wondered if she was escaping her problems by training Inside. She looked at her system stats to reassure herself her latest round of cultivation had been all it could be.

STATUS: INITIATE Nanobody count 345,091 Power Ratio 72% Stage One Integration 79% Stage Two Integration .02% Secondary/Support

4 detected, 3 identified

Medical Bugs: .672 Billion, 10% assigned

Rank 4 (Blood): .045 Billion, 10% assigned

Rank 5 (Skin): .015 Billion, 10% assigned

Sensor and Infiltration: 0, 0% assigned

Communications Stealth Mode Sensors Passive Active Interventions 0 Personal Quantification Ranking Display Options | Logs | Data | Reference | Menu

Lilijoy was hard up against her cultivation limit. Twenty thousand flowers per hour, or about twenty million bugs, seemed like a huge number.

Until it wasn’t.

She cultivated for over six hours and could have continued indefinitely if she hadn’t reached the end of her endurance. She had reached the point at which her system could gather resources faster than she could use them.

On the bright side, her system had reached the ‘Initiate’ level. It didn’t mean much to her, but it sure was nice to have a change from seeing ‘Unrated’ every time she opened her system status.

This latest cultivation she had decided to assign a portion of her resources to the other support systems she had acquired, blood and skin. At just ten percent each, she didn’t expect changes in her body anytime soon, but it was nice to get started on the long road of upgrading her body. She pulled up her Tao System Ranking display to see if she could get an idea of how long it would take.

Tao System Ranking Display Current System Potential Notes Rank 1: Senses 8 10 There are unutilized sensory skills currently accessible. More training required. See Details. Rank 2: Brain 5 10 Choose pain levels, hunger levels. Set basic mood. Boost. Focus. Non-Tao Systems are primitive in this area. You have far greater capabilities – see Rank 11: Brain II. More training required in emotional modulation, specific somatic feedback dampening Rank 3: Reflexes 4 10 Peripheral nervous system integration and myelin replacement. Continue ‘Flash’ training to challenge somatic integration Rank 4: Blood .0006 2 Current support system adequate up to level two. Rank 5: Skin .0005 10 Excellent support system up to level 10 Rank 6: Bone 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 7: Circulatory system 0 0 Requires secondary system. Prioritize these. Rank 8: Muscles 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 9: Nerves 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 10: Organs 0 0 Requires secondary system Rank 11: Brain II ? ? Enhanced neural structures. Tighter coupling with external information sources Medical 0 3

Grade 4 Med bots present for cultivation/improvement.

Sufficient quantities for wound repair, background tissue remediation

With significant research and customization there is a possibility they could be re-purposed to improve Ranks 5 to 10 (requires Tao Stage 2)

Other

Infiltration sensor bugs. Tao system will far surpass these in time, but they may have a role in the near term.

Rank 1: Sense Details (8/10) Vision 9 Work on: Integrated visual information (targeting), peripheral awareness, expanded visible wavelengths Hearing 9 Work on improving spatial mapping, widening audible spectrum Smell/Taste 6

Develop spatial sense, better chemical and gradient analysis, larger library of identifications. Suggest training with no sight or hearing.

Touch 6 Train greater sensitivity in detail, air currents, focus on hair follicles Proprioception 5 Take what you learned from Emily’s piano and apply it to many movement-based skills, particularly acrobatics and martial arts. Practice mirroring – translating sight to movement Synergy 8 With experience, begin using senses together much more. Spatial map can be based on all senses simultaneously and can contain near complete information about your local environment.

Well… that was unspectacular, she thought. The numbers were disappointing. She ran a quick calculation in her head. If she cultivated for six hours a day, every day, it would take her over five years for her skin to reach Anda’s level. The blood bugs weren’t much better.

“Jiannu, what should I do? I don’t think it’s even worth it to cultivate support systems. Except the med bugs.”

“It would be best to focus on Stage One for now. You are close to being able to cultivate Stage Two, which will change many things. Get to half a million flowers and we will be able to begin in earnest; everything to this point has been preamble.”

“Okay. While I’m thinking of it, assign our next cultivation rate of twenty percent to med bugs, and the rest to a good mix of vines and flowers.”

With that taken care of, she decided to train for the few hours remaining before dawn. She spent an hour with all her senses except touch turned off, wandering around on the field near the arenas. She learned to sense when she entered the arena’s ‘shadow’ by the subtle changes to the little breezes caressing her skin, and only ran into solid objects a few times, even as she challenged herself to move faster and faster.

Her mental map was able to show the buildings, at least until she ran faster than the air currents. She could feel the tiny persistent updraft from the ground at her feet, which changed slightly as she moved over areas that had been shaded by the end of the day. Her feet were the most helpful, and she focused on feeling fine details in the texture and composition of the surfaces as she walked.

Helpful as it was, it was also a little scary and boring. She knew though, that she was laying a foundation for using the skill in combat and stuck with it for a while before adding smell. This close to the arena a huge variety of new scents came to her nose. She didn’t have a context for many of them, nor did her system, but she deduced they must be from animals or different types of people. She did her best to file them away in her memory.

By the time morning came, she was moving in Flash while using all her senses except sight, though as slowly as she could manage. Her echolocation was beginning to adapt to faster movement on her part, and she challenged herself to weave around the various arenas, going over, under and around the bleachers and exploring the buildings next to the largest two arenas. She was pretty sure she knew what nervous humans smelled like after entering the chamber immediately next to an opening onto the dirt floor of the largest structure. This must be where they wait before fighting, she thought.

All in all it was a relaxed session and she felt reinvigorated and ready for the day when she turned her sight back on.

Time for stances, she thought, and shuddered.

***

The first training session of the morning was a little different than she had expected. They were in the courtyard, the rocks were piled up against the wall. First, Rosemallow took her through the twenty stances she had learned previously. She had Lilijoy squat walking with a red stone in each hand, and then barked out the stance in the abbreviated form she had asked Lilijoy to memorize.

“Versus blade reach!”

This meant the stance for countering a sword bearing opponent who was bigger than her. Which was pretty much anyone she would ever encounter.

“Two staff!” pause “Two blade!” pause “Many unarmed!”

Lilijoy flowed flawlessly through the stances. It was really very easy for her, because her body remembered what each form felt like when correct with absolute certainty. The rocks she carried were a little tricky, as some stances called for open hands, but she soon figured out that Rosemallow expected her to drop them when necessary. When her trainer tried to throw her off with nonsense commands, or by changing stances extremely rapidly, Lilijoy moved into Flash.

She had discovered her thoughts were increasing in speed the more time she spent in Flash. She knew it was her system helping to accommodate the trait, and she almost felt a little guilty about how easy it was for her. However, that sense of guilt quickly turned to glee as she was able to parse Rosemallow’s barked instructions no matter how quickly her trainer spoke. Finally, Rosemallow gave a great sigh of disgust.

“This is no fun at all! You’re supposed to be screwing up and tripping over your own feet. How am I going to teach you humility if you won’t screw up?” She looked skyward, pretending to ponder the situation. “Oh, I know. It’s time to actually fight!” A huge grin grew across her face. “Get ready, Three Bites!”

At first Lilijoy faced Rosemallow, expecting to fight her trainer for the two seconds it would take before utter obliteration. Instead, her trainer uttered a phrase under her breath and a loud grinding noise came from the pile of rocks behind her. She spun and witnessed rocks of every color rising and rolling over one another, forming a rough humanoid figure about six feet tall. Gray and black rocks stacked as its torso, strings of white stones its arms and legs, with red rocks at the knees and elbows. Mounted on the yellow stone head were two small red rocks for eyes.

“It’s a rock golem. Knock off all the red, win the fight,” her trainer explained as the rock creature began to stride slowly toward Lilijoy. She noticed more red stones stuck onto the torso, representing other vital areas.

The golem’s component stones creaked and ground together, setting Lilijoy’s teeth on edge. She observed it carefully, suspicious of its slow and ponderous presentation. It would be just like Rosemallow to lure her in with a slow enemy, only for it to burst into a series of fast movements. But the creature showed no signs of speed as it approached and raised its arms into the first combat stance.

Might as well take the plunge, she decided. She activated Flash and dodged around its first strike.

The golem’s arm lashed out with great force, but Lilijoy could see it coming easily.

I don’t even need Flash for this.

She ducked under the outstretched arm and grabbed a red knee-rock, trying to pull it out. No luck. The rock was wedged firmly, and her effort only caused the entire leg to wiggle slightly. As she was tugging, the other arm swept down, and she moved her head just in time, still sustaining a scrape on her forehead that knocked her off balance. Disoriented, she scrambled to create distance, and the creature did not pursue.

So that’s how its going to be. This guy’s slow, but tough.

She went in again, this time aiming for the 'knee' with a palm strike that struck solidly and sent a shock of impact stinging up her arm. Shaking out her hand, she retreated once again. The stone had moved just a fraction of an inch.

Crap. This is going to hurt, she thought imagining what a full knuckle strike would do to her poor hand.

Wait. Rocks! She ran to the pile and picked up a red rock.

“Sorry, Three Bites,” her trainer called. “No weapons for you.”

Double crap.

***

What followed was every bit the exercise in humility her trainer had desired. Lilijoy tried everything she could think of, pulling, twisting, breaking her knuckles on the hard rocks, even climbing up the golem’s back to try to yank one of the eyes off. Nothing worked.

“What’s the matter, Three Bites?” her trainer asked. “That’s the slowest, weakest golem I can make. You aren’t giving up already?”

Lilijoy glared at her from the edge of the courtyard. “This is impossible. I’m not strong enough to knock off a rock even if it stood still and let me try!”

Rosemallow scoffed. “This isn’t strength building, kid. This is combat. I make these golems work like human bodies, so you can train properly. It’s not about size or strength, it’s about knowledge and leverage. They move slowly so you have time to be a beginner, not an idiot.”

She shrugged. “Fine. Let me show you.”

She assumed a seated position on the ground and held up the smallest finger of her left hand, her other hand held behind her back. Lilijoy watched as the golem oriented on her trainer and moved to attack from its customary stance. It punched out at her with full force.

Rosemallow moved her head to the side casually to avoid the blow, and reached over as the golem’s fist went past, covering it with her finger and guiding it over her shoulder with just enough force to bring the golem forward in its stance. Then she whipped the same hand behind its back knee and pulled it toward her, again with just one finger, forcing it to bend sharply.

With all its weight now on the front foot the creature pulled its arms back to its center of gravity as Rosemallow continued the motion behind its back knee, pulling it toward her in one fluid motion. The golem went with the movement, driving its knee toward her chest, but she simply pivoted and allowed it to pass.

She reached her finger over to the now straight front leg and knocked the red stone sharply from the side. The stone popped loose, and the creature’s leg crumbled. The momentum of its attack carried it over to fall heavily on its back.

“Move fast once you have them down. Grappling is never going to be an ideal situation for you,” her trainer said clinically, as she casually used her little finger to remove more red stones with precise applications of force, totally in control of the golem’s body. It was an almost pathetic scene to watch; Rosemallow manipulated the golem’s movements like a physical chess master. At times it appeared as if the creature was actively cooperating in its own dismantling.

“Disable limbs first when you can. Knees and elbows are weak points in any creature with a skeleton. Fingers and hands too, when we get to that point. Those will always be the closest targets.”

She casually began popping stones off the torso; the golem was completely helpless without any working limbs.

“Of course, spell casters cause a few wrinkles. They only need their voice,” she said removing the red stone tucked under the golem’s ‘chin’. “But you rarely end up in a close combat situation with specialists unless you run them down, and you will usually be able to strike faster than they can speak.”

She popped off the final stone and stood, brushing her hands together.

Lilijoy stood spellbound by the display. Was this some kind of magic? She tried to wrap her head around what she had seen, around the possibilities this physical understanding presented. It seemed so simple; just learn how an opponent’s body worked and move faster than they could react. Of course, she knew it wasn’t that easy; the golem was designed to be slow and predictable, and real enemies would know how to defend their weaknesses far more effectively. Still… this was a revelation.

“Thank you Master Rosemallow,” she said. “Can I try again?”