Leigh landed in the SIM holding her breath with her eyes closed. She’d been in enough underwater SIMs to have a full lung of air at her disposal going in. Luckily, AC513 wasn’t one of the aquatic nightmares; she already had enough cards stacked against her to deal with. Following its preset Tofus, Leigh’s CHIP presented her with a full diagnostic rundown of the environment; all of the surveyed factors fell within the green or yellow parameters for human survivability. Leigh wouldn’t have to worry about them; yellow parameters only posed a threat at prolonged exposures. She didn’t plan to be in there for that long.

While the CHIP ran the diagnostics, Leigh changed the Countdown to six minutes and fifty two seconds - the time she had to beat the Best Overall Completion Time - and looked into the SIMs objective.

Mission: Your location is Point A. Get to Point B.

It was a standard objective, but standard did not mean easy. After the CHIP gave the all-clear, Leigh opened her eyes and started breathing again. Looking around, she directed her CHIP to bring up all available schematics of the SIM on the overlay as she surveyed her surroundings. Unlike the majority of SIMs, this wasn’t what you’d call a ‘realistic’ scenario. She was on top of a floating platform made up of broken, patched up rubble; her overlay marked it as Point A. It was surrounded by similar floating platforms of all shapes, sizes and compositions. Some platforms were made up of all manner of debris all mashed together and looked a lot like the one she had started out on while others had plants and even trees growing on them; she thought she even saw a pond on one of them.

Unfortunately, her CHIP let her know that less than 3% of the platforms were stationary or even moving at a sedate pace. The vast majority was moving at or above 15km/h in patterns she couldn’t immediately recognize. This was where the Pattern Recognition skill came in; Leigh immediately directed one of the Tofus she’d spent years perfecting to find the patterns and calculate the platform trajectories. It took less than two seconds for it to calculate 92% of the patterns, but Leigh was already on the move. The moment her CHIP had identified the location of Point B less than 500m away, she had taken a running leap and jumped onto the nearest platform in that direction. The platform was only two meters higher than the first, but Leigh still had to scramble to make it on top of it; she could see how Height might be an advantageous attribute for the SIM.

One jump was, however, enough to tell her that she would need to come up with a better plan than jumping from platform to platform. She was already sporting a bruised rib and a significant three second loss because of the time it took to pull herself over the side of the platform, and that was only one jump. By the CHIPs calculations there were at least another two hundred jumps, and that wasn’t even if she took the best-time path which, because of the patterned movements, included an additional thirty jumps or so. Platform to platform was most straightforward strategy, but it would take her at least twenty-five minutes if she followed through with it. And seeing as the BOCT was less than a third of that, there was a strategy she hadn’t considered yet. Going by how the Average Completion Time’s range was all over the place, Leigh guessed that most people hadn’t bothered to consider another strategy; it was a luxury she didn’t share. This was her only shot and she couldn’t fail.

[06:42.11]

Leigh had already wasted eleven valuable seconds with barely any progress to show for it; she was still only on the third platform. She needed to come up with a strategy, fast. As she thought of how best to approach the problem, Leigh continued to head towards Point B, only targeting platforms that increased her elevation. Point B was 237m above her starting location and although some of the platforms were very attractive with their easy and low access - it was a lot harder to go down than up - Leigh knew she’d only have to make the height back up later and continued on her predominantly vertical course. By her CHIP’s most efficient climbing route’s estimates; she would be on par with Point B’s elevation in eight minutes, that wasn’t going to cut it.

Leigh refused to panic and instead focused on her breathing and muscle movements. She monitored her vitals and brought up her body’s diagram. As much as she wanted to just sprint ahead to the finish line, she knew better. She needed to keep an eye on her progress and find the best rhythm with which to get through the SIM. Run, breathe, jump, climb, repeat. Leigh kept an eye on her heart rate; getting a side stitch now would be counterproductive.

Outside of the SIM her CHIP the SIMsuit’s nanites mimicked all of the sensory inputs of the virtual environment. Unfortunately it also meant that she felt every impact in its bone-rattling intensity; each platform added a bruise she would be nursing later. Even though the hard surface platforms made out of concrete, cobblestones or gravel were rougher to land and grab a hold of, Leigh preferred them to the soft surface platforms made out of grass, earth or grass that had no purchase for her jumps. It had been one of the variables that her CHIP hadn’t taken into consideration and she’d almost missed one of the larger jumps because of it. Taking the new variable into consideration her CHIP recalculated the route: nine minutes and twenty eight seconds. She couldn’t keep doing this, not only was she not going fast enough, but her body couldn’t keep taking the beating.

[06:37.02]

By the time Leigh reached the seventh platform, she was sweating profusely, her hear rate was elevated, her breathing 12% sub-optimal and every muscle in her body was on fire. Every time she jumped to the next platform she ended up banging parts of her body against its side before she managed to pull herself up. By the eight she knew she couldn’t keep going like this; she was wasting time. She needed the aid of a tool of some kind if she wanted to clear the height of two or three meters cleanly. She was lucky with the ninth platform; it had vines or pipes trailing after it that allowed her to quickly climb up its side. She needed something that would repeatedly allow her to do that.

Platform nine had given her no new bruises, she’d managed to recuperate her stats by 2% and she’d even managed to come up with an acceptable answer to a A4 Galactic Quill Politics Cog that had been bothering her since platform seven. It was one of the few subjects she struggled with, most humans did. The Quill were an inherently different species and having to understand their politics meant understanding their culture, but even having been surrounded with it all her life, Leigh still struggled to understand the Quill’s line of reasoning. Luckily higher difficulty rating Cogs like A4 tended to have a higher concentration in the scientific and generally arithmetic fields that Leigh specialized in; her parents were scientists after all.

Moving onto the next Cog, Leigh decided it was time to invest some points into an item. The prices were exorbitant and if you weren’t careful you could easily come out of a SIM with an overall point deduction, but if you chose your items right it could be more than worth it, significantly reducing the time it took to complete the SIM. Each item had a different cost; Leigh just needed to find the one with the most return on investment. As she continued to climb Leigh quickly perused through the items. Her overlay was now split into multiple sections allowing her to continue working through the A4 Cogs, keep an eye on her vitals and monitor her progress along the climb her CHIP had mapped out for her.

By the time she reached the tenth platform she’d discarded various stairs because they were all either too flimsy, heavy or expensive. By the eleventh she’d discarded ropes entirely because they were useless individually - 1000 points - and the 100% mark-up of the second item, like a grappling hook - 800 credits -, that she’d be forced to buy along with it. She needed something cheap, yet serviceable. Leigh couldn’t afford to spend more on items acquisition than absolutely necessary. If she spent too much, it would literally derail the rest of her life.

Reaching the twelfth platform, Leigh was handed one on the Aerodynamics of Hoverflight. Taking a moment to read over the question, she took a running leap, jumping as high as she could to grab the dangling vines from one of the surrounding platforms as it flew by. She missed the vine she’d aimed at initially, but was luckily able to grab onto the one next to it. Unluckily, she’d forgotten to factor in the rope burns and fought to keep her hold instead of instinctively letting go of the source of pain.

Shrugging it off, Leigh climbed the vine as quickly as she could. She’d struggled with ropes in her early teens, but unwilling to have any weaknesses that could be exploited, she’d turned it into one of her strengths with months of practice and forceful SIM practice. It had served her well over the years and continued to do so now. Right then, Leigh was going to need that rope, but she was unwilling to spend the extra 1600 on the grappling hook, and without it, the rope was pretty much useless.

Scrolling through the other possibilities, Leigh calculated the gravity and atmosphere ratios for Tulon, the planet being used in the Hoverflight question. She sighed when she saw its low gravity, wishing she was dealing with a similar scenario. In low gravity, she’d simply be able to hop from platform to platform, maybe even glide a little. Leigh answered the question, pulled herself over the edge of the thirteenth platform and froze.

Glide.

That was it! She would have to glide her way to Point B.