Bec woke up in a bed she hadn't fallen asleep in and she had an odd device strapped to her head that kept clicking every few seconds.

“Weird.” She pulled it off with a suction cup pop and ‘looked’ around the room. There was a desk and a nightstand and a closet. She was impressed with how clear the picture of her surroundings was getting, like a polygon mesh, she saw the world in flat, general terms. The fight really helped her solidify this type of vision. She was even capable of determining colors, sort of. She could tell, with a little focus, that the desk was a brown and that that brown was the same type as the nightstand. She couldn’t pick out the knots on the wardrobe, that was a detail far too fine, but she could tell that there was a glossy reflective panel on the desk which might be a screen. When she opened up her closet, she found a handful of shirts, just like the Mountain’s Border uniforms. She knew as she held the soft, airy garb that it was gray. She changed out her shirt which was clean but covered in tiny holes. This outfit new outfit suited her well. Bec always wanted to wear billowing clothes, but, if she were being honest, she lacked the confidence to shirk fashion conventions too far.

“I feel like I’ve been showered already!” It was bizarre to wake up feeling cleaner than the way she fell asleep. Well, actually passed out. “I could get used to it, for sure.”

Just as she said that there was a knock on her door. When she opened it, she was greeted by Ms. Scarlet. Despite the savage beating, both physical and emotional, Bec felt relieved to see her. Bec smiled and asked, “Did you know when I’d be up?”

“Well, I was notified that you had awoken. I intended to wake you up now anyways.”

Bec’s face tightened just a little. She didn’t like that Ms. Scarlet would invade her privacy like that, but it seems like privacy is barely a thing people consider these days. Still gave me a private room though, so I have that going for me.

“We have lots of practice to do!”

“Food?”

“Yes, yes, you’ll need a lot of energy for our next session.”

Bec had an amazing English breakfast pulled from a tray in its entirety, while Ms. Scarlet had a breakfast bagel sandwich… well, that’s what it started out as. Bec devoted a lot of effort to decipher the content of the sandwiches. Small detail work was beyond her at this moment. After the meal, Scarlet led Bec out into the hallway.

“Come on Bec, follow me!” Scarlet laughed as she started jogging down the hallway after breakfast. Bec was stuffed and didn’t like the pace that Ms. Scarlet was setting. It had taken over 20 minutes to walk from the cell to the training room, but this time? It had been 40 minutes.

“Hey, Scarlet! When are we gonna get there?”

“Get where?”

Uh oh. “We’re just jogging, aren’t we?”

“Oh yes, Bec. On foot, stamina is absolutely key.” She took on a lecturing tone. “You see, Bec. Or should I call you Gray now? Anyways, Gray, we humans are frail, meek creatures all things considered. When we used to hunt animals back prehistory, what made us special?”

“Our teamwork?”

“No, wolves can coordinate much better than we do. Too much ego, and individualism.”

“Tools?” Bec was huffing and puffing, limiting her words for fear she wouldn’t be able to breathe enough to recuperate afterward.

“Who needs tools when you have claws and teeth? The real answer was cardio!”

You’re kidding, cardio? Over tools?”

“Well, having a spear and bow is nice, sure. But can you confidently say you can kill an antelope on the spot? No! Humans ruled the animal kingdom in one key physical attribute. Stamina.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sure animals are faster and hit harder, but humans could follow that antelope for days at a jog, chasing it until it collapsed from exhaustion. Bec, if you are going to deal with the animals of this world, you will have to learn to leverage that. When I mean animals, I mean humans as well. You will inevitably hit upon an intractable fight and you will need to outlast your opponent physically.”

“I thought Words don’t use stamina.”

“They don’t. People do.”

Bec and Ms. Scarlet jogged the halls for what felt like hours. Bec needed to find some way to keep it entertaining because the current plan to learn the layout of the base was not working well.

“Bec, I just don’t get it. According to my math, you should be walking right through a broom closet we passed by 10 minutes ago. I even tried non-Euclidean mapping methods and, frankly, I’m stumped.” Al said with an air of frustration.

“Why would you be built with non-Euclidean mapping software by default to begin with?”

“Must be important.”

Ms. Scarlet interrupted the conversation. “You two lovebirds talking about the base? The boys call it ‘the labyrinth’ because it’s an absolute maze. Most buildings in the city have spacial expanding properties, but since we’re desperately trying to protect this base, we’ve opted for a bit more. We’ve got a special, proprietary space expander invented by Mr. Green.” Scarlet paused for a moment, making a face that vanished before Bec could really understand it. “It makes moving around the base nearly impossible for the untrained.”

“How do you get around?”

“Everyone here has tier 2 Fabric sense, one way or another. We follow the flavors to the places we need.”

“You can tell the “flavor” of Fabric?”

“Yes, it’s hard to describe but talented folk can even tell the kind of Word tech that is pulling the energy in.”

“Huh. How?”

“Familiarizing yourself with the flavor that it has. You just get a feel for it after a while. The Fabric gets woven into threads and passed along down hallways which conveniently allow us to track utilities. The main threads here are the cuisine, the plumbing, the cleaning, the traversal, and the main power thread. Both the last two point toward the FAB, and the exit.”

“I see. How long does it take to familiarize yourself with threads.” Bec wasn’t enthusiastic about the prospects.”

“For a person’s first foray into threads, it could take a while to have a breakthrough. Do you feel the way the air moves past you?”

“Yeah, I figured out that you can feel the presence of the Fabric when you move through it.”

“Good Bec, that’s great! One step ahead already! Let me break it down into stages for you so you see the true hurdles you face!” Ms. Scarlet started speeding up as she counted on her fingers aloud, “First, you feel the Fabric. Second, you feel the flow of the Fabric. Third, you visualize the flow. Fourth, you learn to identify the flavors of the flow first by learning the flavor of the ambient Fabric, typically through better understanding your Word. For example, I have to look at the flow and see subtle hints to it, the way it swirls is a little wispy, the color is just a tinge of orange, the flow glints like a diamond. I’ve learned to quickly catalog the little hints so I can track a thread at a glance. You see the problem here.

“I can’t see.” Bec wheezed. This jog was evolving into a run as Ms. Scarlet talked.

“Yes, you will have to interact with the Fabric, in some way, with your Word and learn to read it in a way only you can.”

“Any pointers?”

“Learn to feel the Fabric flow around you. There pretty much isn’t a better place than a hallway at the Mountain’s Border to feel the flow of the Fabric. We move as much Fabric here as a vent down in the City... Well not that much but close, and these hallways are narrow compare to those.”

“Fabric… flows… down hallways?” Bec’s legs were turning to jelly. Her second and third wind were way behind her by now. She tried to focus on Ms. Scarlet’s words to distract her. It felt like hours and hours of running by now and Ms. Scarlet wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

“Yes, Fabric dislikes flowing through solid objects. It can, but it doesn’t like it. It will avoid passing through solid, particularly well-aligned matter as a general rule of thumb. Particularly wealthy people have been known to wear diamond body armor since Fabric outright refuses to pass through it… and it’s very pretty. We at the Mountain’s Border don’t have a budget to give that sort of stuff out to a baby dropped on our doorstep but everyone here gets a fantastic, high thread-count shirt to deflect some hits. You’ll find cloth armor to be the norm, pretty much everywhere you go… which is also why firearms are so popular.”

Bec was done. Her legs gave out and she slid across the floor, coming to a stop with a very scraped palm and knees. “Ow. I’m so sorry… I can’t go on.”

Ms. Scarlet stopped on a dime and sat down. “That’s fine Bec, 45 kilometers isn’t bad. I’ve met kids who never worked their nanites through real cardio who couldn’t manage that. My family wouldn’t allow me to shirk on training. I did my first marathon at 8… Slower than my parents would have preferred.”

Bec wheezed and coughed. Her legs were mush. Of course, they were, Bec thought to herself. I couldn’t have run a marathon some 2 weeks ago. Had it been 2 weeks yet? I really need to find out how long I’ve been unconscious lately. Al, you’re the real hero, you’ve been upping my cardio in my sleep. “Are we done?”

“We’ve just started. Like I said, Bec, you need to learn how to move in here on your own. We’re sitting in a hall so rest up and focus on feeling the flow.”

Bec sat in the center of the hall. She sat there, trying to steady her breath when she felt Ms. Scarlet walking around her. “Pay attention to the changes in the currents of the Fabric. Am I blocking the path or not? This will change as I step into and out of the path that the Fabric flows. Do you feel it? The changes? If you can, tell me which direction the current goes?” Ms. Scarlet stood over Bec, walking perfectly silently.

“Hmmm. That way?” Bec pointed down the hallway.

“Yes, there was a 50% chance of that being right. Say it with confidence! We won’t be abandoning this training until you get 100/100 correct immediately after running a marathon.”

“Understood.” Bec focused. How am I going to get it wrong? The hallway isn’t changing. “It’s forward.” Bec pointed down the long, nondescript hallway, the same direction as before.

“Wrong. You didn’t notice that I swapped your direction.”

Bec cursed. Right. She can move me without me feeling it… Actually, if I felt the flow, I would have been feeling it. Ms. Scarlet gestured at Bec to get up. “Come now, let’s get to it.”

“To bed? Food?”

“No, you can get food when I dismiss you. We’re going on a run.”

“You’re joking.”

“I assure you that I’m not.” Ms. Scarlet pulled Bec up to her feet, “Come on! Come on!”

~~~

Bec didn’t remember anything else before she was dropped at the door to her room. She saw her bed on the opposite side of her room. If Bec was to describe what happened next, she’d have said she slid, suspended like a marionette, feet dragging until her strings broke and she collapsed like a rag doll onto the mattress. Al would have described it as the world flickering into static. When the world came back into focus, Bec was a crumpled heap on the bed.

~~~

“Bec, Beeeec. Get up.” Bec slept like a dream for endless hours. She felt clean, refreshed, well-rested. “Urgh, I’m up.” The thing was on her head again. What is this damn thing?

“I don’t know. When you wear it, I feel like thinking about focus.”

“I’ll ask Ms. Scarlet.” She donned another gray shirt and hung the old one back in the closet.

"Ask me about what?

“This thing that keeps ending up on my head.”

“Oh. That… that is my proprietary device. Using my Word, I can give you a psychological boost. Subliminal messaging telling you to focus. I am going make sooo much LC if this works!”

“What? That’s… you’re using me as a guinea pig.”

“You owe me! For training you! I hope to one day be able to refine it so that I can implant whole ideas into people’s heads.” Ms. Scarlet’s eyes widened. “Maybe even while they’re awake!”

“Horrifying.”

“You sound like Black.” Scarlet pouted.

“Bec, I think I will catch if she’s genuinely trying to subvert your psyche. I’m pretty sure I can tell when she’s making you submit. Maybe this will be good practice against other mental manipulations.”

“Al likes you doing it, so I’m going to let you keep going with the whole brainwashing thing,” Bec said to Scarlet.

“Good! Good.”

~~~

Bec spent the next week running what she estimated was 2 marathons a day. Turns out that there are 6 days to a week, 5 weeks to a month, 55 weeks a year. Winters and Summers were longer than Spring and Fall by about 2 weeks. It was hitting Summer, not that Bec could tell since she’d been indoors for ages. Bec knew she would only get a few chances to guess the flow of the Fabric each day. Sitting there almost meditating, she was getting better at guessing but the moment she started getting close to 100 correct guesses in a row, Ms. Scarlet told her she would now expect Bec to guess the flow 100 consecutive times right in 20 min or less. Bec was taking over an hour to do her guesses and usually took the first 20 minutes to collect herself and recover before she could focus enough. Focus. Feel the flow. Feel the Fabric crashing over me. The Fabric is a wave that washes over me.

Bec felt the currents flow over her. The small eddies around her spiraled and whirled. The way that it passed over her was disorienting and hard to grasp. She was feeling it clearer and stronger now than ever, but it was like being lost at sea. Any direction could be land. The sound of rushing water in a shell is the blood flowing inside my ear.

She focused and apparently, it worked. Bec didn’t feel like she knew for sure, but she found her gut reactions to the flow of the Fabric were often right.

“Front. Back. Back. Back. Front. Back. Front. Back.” Bec gave her guesses as fast as she could. No second guesses. No doubts. She was cultivating instinct. “Back. Front. Back. Front. Front.”

“Wrong.”

Bec hissed and started running after Ms. Scarlet. This is how the weeks went on. It had been running, guessing, sleeping, and infrequent begging of random Border members to help her find the cafeteria. She was far from tracking the cafeteria on her own. Bec had free time if she wasn’t utterly exhausted after a day of running double, then triple marathons. Her pace was improving but she was a mess every time. Ms. Scarlet pushed herself just as hard and looked perfect, much to Bec’s dismay. Every once in a while, Robert would show up to give a guess on Bec’s Word.

“Magnetism.”

“No. Concept?”

“No.”

So far, over the three weeks of Bec’s training, his guesses were ‘magnetism,’ ‘light,’ ‘rad/radiant.’ Bec personally thought that last one would have been really cool to have. Bec had eliminated, ‘concept,’ ‘examine,’ ‘study.’ Bec got that lux meter and practiced in her room. While Bec had started by feeling that it was impossible to manipulate two aspects at once, she was starting to get a grasp on dimming the light and limiting the wavelength. Embarrassingly enough, she startled Ms. Scarlet when she wanted to show off that she had stopped glowing only to be told by Ms. Scarlet that she was a disturbingly black silhouette. Bec realized that she shouldn’t be aiming for zero on the lux meter and maybe she’d have to practice matching the ambient light of the room to look normal… maybe forever. Bec wished she could say that her body hummed with power specifically, but she was happy to say that it did indeed hum. Just that it turned out to be a way for her to feel the light around her in a new way.

She had started to feel color from its hum and found that she could reach out with her fingers to actually ‘feel’ the colors as it ran through her hand. She asked Al to give her an improvised eye exam by showing large letters on the Timelet while she had to guess what they were. Bec wanted to start reading again, desperately.

Progress was slow and steady. On the last day of Bec’s fifth week, she finally made 100 guesses correctly. I guess they aren’t guesses. Huhuhuhue. Bec chuckled to herself as she finally passed the second big hurdle placed before her… only to find an even bigger hurdle. The moment she passed; Ms. Scarlet treated Bec to a rare cafeteria break. This worried Bec mightily because Ms. Scarlet made every task harder just as Bec had started to get the original challenge.

“Bec, you’re, uh, staring at me. You’ve hardly touched your poi.”

Bec poked at the mash on her plate. “I’m wondering what you’re going to do to me next.”

“Bec, I’m shocked. You’re acting like I’m brutalizing you.”

“No, no. I know you aren’t. I’m just seeing no light at the end of this training tunnel right now. Will it really take me a hundred years to stand with the best?”

Ms. Scarlet put her toasted rye on the plate and sighed. “I know how you’re feeling. It’s not endless training though, per se. I like to think that every moment is a learning moment. Once you get the fundamentals, you can try to live the life you want. If you find that you can’t, learn more, be better, until you can!”

“Why are you training me?”

“I said I was using my subliminal trainer on you, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but why are you spending your time with me?”

“There are a lot of reasons. You seem to think that I’m shirking my duties? I’m getting paid to train you, so those are my duties… mostly.”

“What? Robert is paying you to train me?”

“Nothing of the sort! I announced that I was teaching someone under the age of thirty in a message to the core. Once I validate it in the City, I will get a stipend for the duration of the training. It’s a fantastic program instituted seventy years ago to encourage people to share secrets. We were stagnating worse than ever back in the day. Master Wordsmiths were dying with their secrets lost forever because the structure of information trading encouraged hoarding information that could be used to make profit. We also get paid for time outside of the City as a reward for not holding up in there forever. When the world outside of the City is so dangerous, people needed a hefty bribe to start exploring. The FAB is the start of something wonderful, you see. With the FAB, we will be able to open up new settlements out in the wilderness with the same capabilities and amenities as inside the City. Nkosi famously said, ‘Go! Spread humanity to the far reaches of Dust! This is our ultimate imperative!’”

“Why is making new settlement so important?”

“It’s all about the exploration economy. There are only a few tens of thousands of humans known to the City. There are millions of animals, plants, minerals out there. The animals have powers we can harness, the plants pose new opportunities for cultivars and innovations, and, if there is one thing the City and humanity needs, it is raw minerals. Sure, we can use the Fabric to make mundane ores but we’re a long way away from making Fabric imbued minerals using the Fabric. For all we know, it’s impossible.”

“Imbued minerals?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty simple. Fabric rushes into the caves of Dust. People theorize that the core of the planet has maintained its heat by synergistically drawing Fabric into its depths. It’s why Dust is such a Fabric rich planet. The deeper you go, the more Fabric rich the environment becomes and, eventually, you’ll find crystals and ores that are imbued with Fabric. They’re used as storage devices and the denser they’ve been imbued, the better the battery they become. The animals and plants that live in the caves are very dangerous though. It’s so video-gamey that people took to calling the miners of these caves ‘dungeoneers’ and the ‘dungeon economy.’ Not to get your hopes up, there are no +2 swords down there. Just bizarre biomes and awful animals. I guess I could summarize all this into 4 categories. The surface/subterranean exploration economy, the information hunting/gathering economy, the entrepreneurial economy, and the service economy. Most LC is made by jobs in those 4 categories. Me teaching you is a highly sought-after service, so I will generate money from doing it.”

“Ah.” Bec ate two fingers of poi. “I’m glad to know I am not being such a burden to you.”

“You’re so young, Gray. This is a seed worth planting. I need allies in my line of work more than anything. I’m not going to pretend to be your mother, but I’d like to think we will work a lot together and trust each other like a family. That’s worth more than any LC I could earn… The LC I earn is just a bonus.” Ms. Scarlet smiled at that last remark.

“You’ve started calling me Gray now. Is it to protect my name from people who would buy info on me?”

“Yes and no. It’s a good habit, and I’d recommend you start getting into the habit of calling Robert, Mr. Black. You don’t have any records, which presents a unique opportunity to cultivate multiple identities.”

“Ms. Gray is my alter-ego? My secret identity?”

“Yes. Perfect way to think about it. This, Bec, is one of the things that makes me so excited. Imagine you breaking up an illegal hunting gang over a few days. They see a lady in gray wearing a mask. With the extra cost to them, they could figure out about Ms. Gray. They sell to the core all the things they’ve seen you do and buy up a list of your skills. When you bust them up, you will appreciate them not knowing Bec, the frontier girl, or worse, the earthling, is the same person or you’ll find a hitman coming to get you. They only know Ms. Gray. Of course, grudges are held for a long time and, eventually, someone will tie Ms. Gray to Bec from the frontier as you utilize both personas more. Until then, you have a leg up on the competition.”

“Let’s hope I can keep a secret.”