The first thing I noticed in the morning was that I hadn’t set up anything regarding ore delivery and classification. So my crazy awesome “make-money-in-your-sleep” setup had failed because the software did not contact the hauler after the flagged mandatory delivery. So the next thing for me was setting up 1000 ore to be delivered for my contract and the other 1250 went to be traded. As they say, you live, you learn. I had a tasty food bar (yeah, I started imagining them having flavors, this one was chocolate chip) and let the 200 square sequence run its course. That put my account at a healthy 3417 ICU but I still had 6500 units to go.

I was tempted to syphon off more money in the beginning but while the money was enticing, I also felt the need to get out of here before I go crazy. I changed the setting I had just put in and let all the ore go towards the contract completion. Considering the automated speed, I could be out of here in a little over three days. I trusted myself enough to figure it out from there. One a side note I also noted my mining skill was up to 12. Skill grinding while sleeping for the win.

Mining finally sorted, I started exploring what the survey module and skill could do for me. The first thing I noticed when I tried accessing the survey module via the cockpit controls was an error message:

Unable to conduct survey without neural-link connection.

This led to me racking my brain and searching for an answer to this question in the interface. Since none presented itself I investigated the module. And lo and behold I found switch titled NL sync. Remembering the comment about directly linking with things in game I pressed the button.

For a second nothing happened and then I screamed. It felt like a knife was slicing through my brain. My vision flickered, I couldn’t hear anything anymore. My whole body twitched and spasmed but I hardly felt it. I did not function anymore or I would have turned of this cursed module. But the thought didn’t even occur to me.

Some immeasurable time later it stopped. My hearing returned, I could feel my body again and everything else was a bit of a headache. Everything seemed a little distant though.

You have initialized your first neural-link sync with a module.

Module: Surveyor 1

Sync Process: 3%

As long as you are in range, you can access the module through your interface.

Until the sync is 100% you might experience limited results.

“Don’t worry, it get’s easier.”

I wanted to laugh at the comment below the message but I wasn’t feeling in a very humorous mood. Damn that shit hurt. Some sick developer sense of humor to make stuff that painful. I assumed they wanted to discourage people from linking too much like this. But then again a warning would be good. I hope they got the message.

From my previous gaming experience I knew that the things that were hard usually came with decent rewards. Swim across the lava lake to get a treasure chest, jump off a 4 story building to get to a secret weapon, etc.

“Still no reason to put me through this shit. I hope that it’s worth it or I am going to sue Lirium’s collective asses.” I grumbled to myself. “And then I get told that I signed away my right to live in some shitty ass waiver.”

I looked at my interface and saw a new button titled: “NL connected modules”. There I found the “Surveyor 1” connection. I activated it and felt like I was looking through a camera that was quickly zooming out.

I saw myself sitting in the cockpit, then I saw the ship - which even from the outside looked like a pile of junk, then I saw the ship hanging between a few giant asteroids and finally a whole section of the belt. That’s when my vision changed too. Suddenly everything was tinted blue. I saw a light blue outline of the asteroids slowly moving in space. Blackness between them and shades of blue from dark to light on the surface. And certain spots were nearly blinding in their brightness, often towards the middle of the space rocks.

“Yeah baby, x-ray vision!” I wished for a moment I would have had that back when I was in high school.

“Okay.” I cracked my fingers. “Let’s figure this out.”

At first I tried zooming back in to find my ship again but the vision skewed and slanted weirdly and I nearly puked all over myself. Seasick without a sea. Great start. I disabled the interface module and found myself back in the cockpit chair. Battling the feeling of being sick, I breathed for a minute or two and let my guts settle. Then I reconnected and reminded myself to take it slow this time around.

I figured that the surveyor is a module that has a radius around the ship. So I strictly focused on the center of my vision, trying hard not to get distracted by all the glowing dots and slowly zoomed in. This time I got a lot closer. Until something at the edge of my vision caught my attention and the previous experience repeated.

I cussed to myself. Controlling tech with your mind wasn’t easy. Mental note: Meditate every day to reach some form of zen state to make that process easier.

Third try is a charm. By then the module sync was up to 10% and I hoped that would make things easier as well. Activate module, focus, slow zoom. Yeah, the increased sync made the reaction noticeably smoother. My vision passed by and even through some asteroids. And then finally I was back to the ship.

The edges were framed in shimmering blue lines and the rest was basically invisible except for the ore container that held the mined ore. It showed in a subdued blue color. I slowly shifted focus to the asteroid I was mining and noticed that its surface was covered in the same shade of blue.

Zooming in further to the surface I noticed slight differences in shade but nothing major stood out. A red frame suddenly appeared around the area of focus.

Endrite Deposit. Density 7.5%.