It was dark and I could only hear things moving around me. I couldn’t feel my body or even speak. I had tried using my Prime Speed Control but without sight, I wouldn’t have known if it was working. Maybe the sound pitch would have been lower but I couldn’t tell any difference. I tried calling up menus or anything to break the darkness but it all didn’t matter if I couldn’t see. I had never been afraid of the dark when I was younger so this wasn’t too terrifying. As long as it ended soon. It had to end soon.

I started to count in my head to pass the time and to keep a grip on how much was passing by. I was just past a minute and a half of Mississippi's when vision returned.

I was hovering in the air above what looked like a silver dinner plate covered in Celtic knots. No, not Celtic knots, those were depictions of chains. I seemed to be smaller somehow, possibly because the prison plate that was holding me was on some sort of waist-high platform. A block of text hovered in front of me.

-Per Detainee Law ^6^18 detail 13-

Individuals, pets, or any mentally viable being shall not be separated from visual, auditory, and other required senses for longer than 10 minutes while being held without access to VR.

10 minutes of real-time have passed. Restoring visual access.

-Unknown Error-

-Unknown Error-

-Unknown Error-

“The shroud is gone!” I heard a male voice say out of view behind me. I tried willing my vision to rotate in place and to my surprise, it worked. I found myself facing two entities. They were both humanoid, to some slight degree. They both leaned over like hairless gorillas yet I found the sizing to all be wrong in that regard. Neither of them appeared to be overly muscular and their legs and hands seemed to have too many joints. These extra leg joints seemed to allow them to sit while standing. They were odd creatures to watch.

The one on the right chuckled and said “Esteemed Magus, can you close the blinds on your pet tanks? He won't recognize me in this form.”

Right away, even without his form changing, I already knew who this smug and self-righteous loser was. Sure enough, the area around us changed, the walls off in the distance, see-through a moment before, changed to an opaque tint as Regeth soon stood before me. I would never admit it to him but it was the coolest thing to watch how his whole body morphed into the human Regeth I knew. It was like watching RT-1000 from the Terminator except there was no silver liquid stage. His body became whatever form he wanted it to be in moments. Muscles, skin, and clothes formed so fast that it was hard to make out if it was all at once or in stages.

A stunning realization hit me as well, the text that I had seen in front of my eyes had said that I was in real-time right now. So all of this happening before me was real and not a simulation.

Regeth, Elaya’s dad, smiled a cruel smile down at me the whole time his body quickly flowed into him standing there as a dark-haired human man in a dark suit.

He leaned closer to peer down at me which made me wonder what he was seeing since I didn’t have a body.

“Ah, I had forgotten about that Detainee clause. That is why the shroud was removed from his containment case.” Regeth said as he stood back up, keeping his eyes on me with a smug smile.

“Yes, but I thought you said that this alien had hacked my System and force-generated an Avatar with it.” The other alien, apparently Magus the 2nd, said as he looked off to the side at a wall of continually flowing data. “Everything seems to be in order… solar gravity repulsion is perfect, cr mining is on track, power is stable, and all systems are running perfectly.”

“Ha! This alien would want you to believe that. Look at these last three lines on record after the shroud was removed. It appears that this alien is already trying to hack your containment case.” Regeth said, crossing his arms.

“Three unknown errors in a row.” I heard the Magus mutter while text sprang up around me. “Nothing seems to have happened. I don’t like having this thing on my Core though Regeth. Those recordings you showed me were very unpleasant. Our cr technology is impervious to damage and this alien is trying to make us all fear for our lives. To make me fearful of losing my wealth. Are you sure that this alien isn’t a virus? I have never seen firewalls or AI barriers fall so fast before.” Magus said as he studied the data around me. I could tell that he was studying data that was recorded while I was dreaming.

This was so frustrating to me. I couldn’t say anything to defend myself or to influence the outcome. I was just being held here while Regeth fed this guy half-lies and misinformation.

“So where is this Avatar that you showed me in your recording?” Magus asked as he leaned back on his doubled legs to look through the massive amounts of data.

“I think that he deleted it, sir. Probably right before I notified you of his existence.”

“Ahhh… it looks like you are right. I see a massive chunk of data just disappear from existence right before you use your key. Truly massive, yet it doesn’t seem to have affected any system parameters…. How odd.”

A long warbling wail sounded off in the distance along with the sounds of several large splashing noises. Neither of the two paid the noise any mind however as Magus seemed to sit there as though lost in thought.

“Data and....” Regeth started to say as he opened a window to display a live video feed to Magus, making sure to keep the viewing angle in line so I could see what he was showing off. “Look at all the CR he has acquired from your System and Core in the very short while he has been here.” He said as my habitat was clearly on display as it orbited around the Core.

“But how? That is a Habitat!?! A seed for a Citizen to move off and build their own Core. How was he able to purchase the Remote key? Those things are priceless!”

“Hacking your property I am sure. That is the only way I can see it happening. He didn’t even spend a cr to obtain the key, your compromised System gave it to him right after he hacked your resident’s homes.” Regeth said as he brought up records to prove that what he said was true.

I wanted to shout at them to leave my stuff alone. I could see the greed manifest in Magus’s eyes the more he looked at my habitat and the listings of how much CR I had earned.

“Block the sound,” Magus told Regeth as he turned away and walked off into the distance, his screens following him. Regeth reached down and touched something on the side of the plate, causing the chains to change color, showing that they were all on and powered. He nodded before walking away, his form quickly morphing back into the slender multi-jointed being that he was before.

The funny thing was, I could still hear everything clearly. Whatever he did to the containment plate hadn’t taken effect. I wanted to laugh aloud. Something was messing with their stuff. It really made me wonder if it was Silver or System messing with things. Maybe he could get me out of here.

The walls became clear again, losing their opaque tint in a matter of moments. A huge eye peered through the glass not three feet away from where Magus had stopped.

The eye wasn’t looking at anything, just staring at a fixed spot in the distance. “Let us conclude this soon, I need to get back into my other body to continue to feed my pets,” Magus said as he reached out and touched the glass, his body shining for a few moments while the massive eye through the glass twitched and suddenly gazed down at the two of them. A massive something, not quite a tentacle and not quite a rigid arm reached over the wall and into a tank, I hadn’t yet noticed to the right. It lifted several squirming black and purple masses out before launching them off into the distance. I heard several loud squeals followed by thrashing noises as the live bait hit the water in the distance.

Magus’s body stopped glowing as he lowered his hand from the glass. The huge eye on the other side had regained its thousand-yard stare into the distance. If I had hair, it would have been standing on the back of my neck right then. That eye, attached to a massive body stretching out of view, was not one of Magus’s pets. It was another body for him to inhabit when he needed to feed his pets somewhere off in the distance.

“That should appease them for a little while,” Magus said as he moved away from the glass and to the right, heading towards a dark area of wall space.

“How is the taming process going?” Regeth asked while following.

“Don’t ask, it is a sore subject with me. I am missing something vital that would allow me to command them as an Alpha would.” Magus replied before dropping into a moody silence.

I tracked them both, rotating in place above my little prison. They walked to an open area before Magus sat down, forming structures up out of the ground that formed to his oddly bent legs and allowing him to stretch his limbs out in front of him. Regeth did not sit, instead, he stood to the side as though he was a butler.

The dark wall slowly changed to let light in. Beyond the glass was a raging sun. I swallowed... or would have if I had a throat to do so. I could see massive solar flares bursting upwards and licking the inner sides of the glass that we were peering through.

We were looking out at the surface of a caged sun.

How they managed to construct something around a sun was beyond my knowledge. It was terrifying and awesome at the same time to behold. I lost focus for a few moments, simply lost in the raging power seen through the window. Screens popping up into view interrupted my admiration and showed me that these two individuals thought nothing of the wonder happening right outside the window.

“So. I will claim all of his CR as mine, put the habitat up for auction, and wipe his VR home. That should take care of those loose ends. He has a Guest account, whatever that means…” Magus said as he went through options and menus in rapid succession. “It isn’t allowing me to revoke it. It keeps coming up with a System and Core wide Guest account. It appears to be linked to all the other Cores.” Magus said as his limbs tapped a beat while he sat in thought.

“Was there something else I was missing? Oh, right, the relic book that is more than halfway to his habitat. Best to direct it to return now.” He said as he brought up another screen that held a tiny image of an object racing towards my habitat. He tapped a “Return” command and sat back with a smile.

“Now to take the CR and the…” He started to say as a window opened over the window of the command that he had just given to have the package return to the Core. “Command Denied? What does that mean?” He said as he went back to the original screen and pressed the “Return” button again.

“That shouldn’t be possible. Hmm…. might be because the habitat is still registered.” He said as he brought up screens with info on the ownership, current CR balance, and status of AI present.

I was livid. I could feel my rage building up and overflowing inside me with every offhand remark and button press that he was making, bringing him closer and closer to taking everything I possessed.

“First to deregister the habitat.” He said as Regeth watched closely.

He clicked a few things and removed my name from the ownership logs. I watched it happen the moment he clicked the “Accept” button.

“And done. Next, move all that CR to my account.” He said as the ownership panel of the habitat changed from a vibrant green to a soft gray color.

He brought up a listing of my total CR and after a few button presses, I could see my balance begin to go down. “He had a bit so it will take a few moments to have it all removed and brought here.” He said with a smile before turning to open panels with the faces of George and Tutor on display.

“George huh? Not any more…” He said as his hand started to move towards the wipe command.

“STOP!” I screamed out in my mind with all of my willpower. “STOP STOP STOP!!!”

His finger froze, hovering a bare space above the button but not moving any closer.

“YOU WILL NOT TOUCH MY FRIENDS! YOU WILL NOT TAKE FROM ME! YOU WILL NOT DO THIS ANYMORE!!!” I raged without a voice at the universe and the space around me.

It was clear that I had frozen time by using my Prime Speed Control key. I was so angry and felt so powerless. What if this was all I had, this ability to stave off my two AI from getting deleted by staying here in accelerated time. Giving them every moment that I could. I was fearful that if I let this control go that I would have to witness them getting wiped from existence. So I sat there and stayed in time so fast that the rest of the universe stood still.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, a little entity hovering over a prison plate.

It was just me and time. Frozen time. I couldn’t go anywhere, do anything, or say anything. All I could do was control time.

I stayed there for hours, possibly days. I stayed there for as long as I mentally could. The unmoving surroundings began to weigh on me, pressing in on my mind. I slowly began to realize that it didn’t matter how long I stayed here. I was not doing anything to get past this moment.

So I promised vengeance if he went through and touched that button.

Then I released Prime Speed Control, letting time flow back to normal speed and accepting what was about to happen, yet making promises to grow stronger at all cost so that this couldn’t happen again.

His finger pressed down on the button and George remained.

Several changes to the windows in front of him happened the moment he pressed the button.

A large text block appeared in front of all the other windows.

-Unknown Error-

The light grey frame of my habitat turned bright green again.

The downward spiral of my CR seemed to jog or lag for a second before my eyes, yet after a moment it kept moving downwards.

“What just happened?” Magus asked as he swiped away the error message and brought up the now green frame of my habitat. “Someone claimed the habitat and changed its name to “Where are you Kevin?”

Magus and Regeth looked over their shoulders at my prison, making sure that the chains were still glowing before turning back around and focusing once again on the displays in front of them.

“Someone seems to be aiding the alien. Who has he been in contact with while here?”

“Xa the 3rd and Hxerdinand the 9th.”

“Ah… Xa might end up being a trouble if she takes this to the news. But no matter, her Authority does not stretch over mine in my very Core and a 9th generation is nothing. I will just state the facts that my personal System data was stolen and deal with the alien as you suggested.” Magus said as he tried repeatedly to unregister my habitat again. It always came back with an unknown error. He grew frustrated and eventually gave up.

“The AI named George was never deleted as well.” He mused as he looked at the screens.

“The relic book has been delivered,” Regeth said as he noticed the tracking feed end once it arrived at my habitat. “And there goes the habitat.”

They both watched as my habitat turned in place before darting off away from the Core.

“It doesn’t matter. I have tracking cr placed on it…” Regeth said before three screens turned dark to his right. “That shouldn’t be possible. My trackers just stopped sending data.”

The room was quiet as both Magus and Regeth messed with their panels.

“I have a theory if you are willing to listen to it,” Regeth said after he had been still for a long time.

“Go ahead.”

“I think we are being played. Someone, a thief or hacker, is clearly just trying to rob your Core. I believe an exploit has been discovered, perhaps by another Core owner and He or She is testing it out on you. Seeing how much they can gain from a vulnerable System before being discovered.”

“Where do you draw these conclusions from?”

“The entity George, for one, couldn’t be deleted. That leads me to think that he is really the hacker and a Citizen, hiding behind this puppet, this alien named Kevin. I believe that George is now and has always been in control of the habitat. AI can’t fly habitats, so that leaves a Citizen.”

“So what about this alien?”

“He is just a youngling from a species of aliens called Humans with zero programming knowledge. That makes me believe even stronger that we are being played. It must have been something to do with causing the System to create a Guest account.”

“So why steal System data from my Core?”

“Probably to hide how extensive the hacking had to be from prying eyes is my guess. All of that System Simulation usage that was used up during “the event”. It didn’t make sense to me at the time how a small-minded alien could do that. It would make more sense if it was a Tela hacker with a gimmick to use the processing power of the Core against itself.”

“So what now?”

“Well, they managed to get away with a habitat and a relic book. They are probably heading to another Core to try this again. I would suggest alerting all neighboring Cores of the potential threat.”

“Ha! And miss the chance at watching my competitors getting robbed? Not likely. Besides, look at how much CR I gained from all of this.” He said as he gestured to the side where a ball of CR began forming from the floor. It was my complete amount of currency, all of it was there. The bowling ball sized amount looked a little bit bigger than the last time I had seen it and it made me wonder what had made me gain more. I couldn’t open my notifications to check so it didn’t matter.

“Just over 3 million CR. Very nice.” Regeth said as he admired the amount with no lack of hunger in his eyes.

“Bring the alien over here so I can talk to it before I toss it into prison. I like your idea of adding him to the cr mining detainee workforce. It will keep it out of my hair for thousands of years until I find a buyer to sell it off to. Imagine, the only known Guest account for study. That will be worth a lot.”

Regeth came over to me and picked up the plate in his huge four-fingered hand. His hand didn’t have fingernails, just bony sections at the joints of his fingers.

I slowed time down to a crawl, making every movement and step that Regeth took seem like he was moving at a snail's pace. I needed time to think of what I would say to this Magus guy. I realized that I didn’t want to give away that I could hear them this whole time. Slowing time down was soothing and really gave me the feeling that I had at least some kind of control over my destiny.

I mentally coached myself over and over again as Regeth inched closer to where Magus was sitting. “Ok… so basically just act like a pissed-off teenager who just arrived as a Guest in the Core. Be rude to Regeth and act a little bit fearful of Magus. Crooks like him love it when people are afraid of their power. Ok, you got this Kevin. Here we go!”

I relaxed my control of my Prime Speed Key and watched from my perch as Regeth seemed to speed up and lumber over to stand in front of Magus. As a last thought, I decided to turn myself away from both of them to pretend as though I didn’t know how to will myself to face in different directions.

I watched as Magus nodded to Regeth who reached down with his other hand to tap on one of the chains, turning its internal light off.

“Ahhhhhhhh!!!!” I screamed as loudly as I could right before Regeth’s finger touched the button, causing both men to jump a little at the sound of me screaming between them.

“Hey! Shut up alien! Hey! Stop that!” Magus said as he waved his hand in the air in front of the plate. I could see this and internally smiled as I played my part, pretending to be facing the other way.

“What? I can speak? I can hear you? Regeth! You dirty rotten hobo! What the heck is this? What is going on?!? Why can’t I move and why are you making me stare at your crotch? You are a sick man! Sick sick sick!” I rambled on as Regeth tried to turn the plate around so that I was facing away from his chest and waist. “Stop spinning me! You are going to make me vomit!” I cried in mock horror before deciding that I had played enough and shut up.

Magus seemed to shudder in clear displeasure and annoyance from hearing me speak. He leaned forward towards the plate and I could start to see his neck muscles twitching. “Hey! Alien! Can you hear me?” He nearly shouted at me.

“Yes, and my name is Kevin, not alien.”

“Irrelevant. You are not Tela so you don’t matter. Look, I want to know who you are working for and how they hacked my System.”

“Look man, you got the wrong guy, I was never in the Library with the candlestick.”

“What? What does that have to do with anything?”

“I will give you a clue mate, then I will tell you if you are getting warmer or colder.”

“What? Regeth, was he always like this?” Magus asked.

“Yes, while I was in his VR home he practically ignored me the entire time. I think it is because he is a youngling.” Regeth said before muttering to himself “What did Elaya see in this guy?”

“So, I have a question.” I decide to ask, butting into their conversation.

“Oh? What would that be?” Magus asked.

“How did you catch me?”

“So there is a little bit of intelligence in there.” He said as he leaned back and spread his arms out, causing more supports to rise from the floor to support his arms.

“Well, you see. I have Authority over everything in my Core. What I did wa”

“What is Authority?” I asked, interrupting him mid-sentence.

This interruption was like throwing cold water on a cat, Magus struggled to remain calm, his arms twitching and his hands clenching as he tried to get back into his previously powerful mindset.

“Authority is how you rank in the queue of System processes. I am the Owner of this Core so everything that I want to happen comes first. Only the System has priority in the queue. I am at the to”

“How did you catch me?”

“Look, schlub, I was getting to that but you keep interrupting me.”

“Ok, fine, I will stop, please continue,” I said, trying not to laugh. I had clearly set this guy off and hopefully, he wouldn’t be thinking clearly as he once again tried to display his power over me.

“I…” He paused as though waiting for me to interrupt again. When I didn’t he settled back in his chair and spoke again, trying to regain his feeling of superiority that he had just moments before. “When Regeth notified me of the crimes you were a part of inside my Core he also told me that there was a high chance that you were still present inside VR space. Your stealing a relic was proof enough of that. I set up a command to intercept and contain anyone trying to leave my Core locally inside of a prison module.”

“It is on loan actually.”

“What?”

“Yes, Inesena let me borrow the book when I visited his bookstore.”

“What???” Magus clearly hadn’t been told who I had obtained the book from and it was clear to me that Inesena was rather famous in his own right. For some reason, Magus’s skin color changed from a slick green color to a slight bluish tinge. I wondered what emotion that signified.

Regeth all of a sudden seemed very intent on studying some panels of text to his right, fortunately facing away from our interactions.

“Delete that he said that from your records,” Magus said to Regeth before he leaned forward to reenable all of the chains on the plate.

“We can’t have the record-holders finding out that I was a part of this. If that happens I will never hear the end of it.” He said as he stood up and walked over towards the ball of stolen CR that was hovering in the air near the window.

For some reason, a thought must have entered into Magus’s head because he started laughing. It sounded like a wet chuffing noise, more like a dog barking than real laughter.

“Regeth, would you like to know what I find so funny?” Magus asked and continued without hearing Regeth’s reply.

“In a couple thousand years when this convict surfaces again Inesena will probably be long gone.” He said as he started to form something out of the CR hanging in the air.

I could tell something was off about the CR the moment he started willing it to form into something. There was a part of the swirling mass that didn’t obey Magus. It was my darker CR.

The thing that Magus was creating in the air quickly started to take shape. It began as a frame that quickly turned out to be an eight-armed robot with an octagon body barely larger than the prison plate I was hovering over. There was even a slot in the side for the plate. Each side had an arm attached to it, just a bare line that was quickly filling in with cr.

I hadn’t yet had time to practice what little I had read about manipulating cr so I froze time to try to remember. I looked around, only to find that while I was studying what was happening with the cr, Magus had already turned around, leaving me resting on something I couldn’t see. So, he wasn’t the one creating the robot, it was all the Systems preprogrammed creation.

I knew I had very little time to practice here so I reached out my senses towards the ball of slowly shrinking mixture of cr. I felt something immediately resonate within the ball. Parts of it seemed to be happy to feel my presence while the bulk of it remained inert and outside of my control. So Magus had only managed to delete ownership rights on the cr that wasn’t the gift from the ant in my dream. Then why did this strange cr come to Magus? I tried something, willing the cr that responded to me to never take orders from another being besides me again. A fraction of a second after I tried to will that message across I received a clear agreement and acknowledgment from the strange cr. It had worked!