Bec pulled herself from the ground with a smile on her face and offered a hand to O’Malley.

“So, did I impress you?”

This man, probably over 200 years old, did a roll backward to back spring up and onto his feet. “Oh, my dear, you thoroughly impressed me. As I was, you could have killed me dead. I am fairly certain that opportunities like that do not come around often for me.”

“You seem awful happy about your brush with death.”

His dense beard parted wide to let out a massive laugh. “I like people who don’t take life too seriously. You!” He pointed at her masked face. “I like you. Smart, strong, fun. I see why Scarlet adopted you.”

“Adopted me?” Bec feigned offense.

“Please, do not try to convince me that you are older than maybe thirty. I can just tell. I am awfully curious about why your records have only started recently, however. I was almost convinced that Lauds sent a student to the Hass in hopes to have me killed.”

Bec looked very serious. “I work for Lauds. They do not control me, and, if they try to, I will quit.”

The man stroked his beard. “You don’t exactly believe everything you just said. No matter! I cannot wait to start your training.”

“What do you know?”

“Only what my paltry pockets could allow. I know you are new to the city. The rumor mill is that you taught Ludo Telstar a lesson with a mean right hook.”

“That’s more than I’d like people to be able to find out about me. Can we talk somewhere private? I hope you’ll agree to keep my secrets, as I would rather not have any eyes on me right now.”

“It is good to be cautious. This is true. What is also true is, as of right now, I am verbally accepting you as a student. This demands high-level confidentiality.” He handed her back her rulebook. “Read about Tutor-Student confidentiality in here. I expect you to have read every section of this book. There will be a test.”

“Yessir.”

“Formal. I like that, too.” He guided Bec towards one of the buildings they stood by. “Come now, this is my apartment on this floor. We can talk in there.”

Bec’s smile dropped. “Wait, this building has your apartment in it? Did it just happen that way that we ended up here or…?”

He shot her a knowing smile, and Bec knew that there truly were no coincidences in O’Malley’s world.

~~~

The apartment was a mess of books, screens, and tons and tons of random crap. Well, at least it looked like random crap to Bec, but she gave her new master the benefit of the doubt. Bec knew she should pay him some deference as he was a master of…

Bec watched as O’Malley kicked some bags of stuff away from the couch and lounged on it. He let out a deep self-satisfied sigh and started to snore.

Okay. Maybe not. Bec sat at the cluttered table in the middle of the room. Bec started leafing through the rulebook when it started to vibrate. Bec swiped the text saying she was receiving a page, thinking that it was a new page for the rulebook, but a face popped up.

“Gray? Gray?” A familiar face fish-eyed on-screen, warping oddly as she looked for the camera.

“Anillo, heeeey.” Bec wiggled her fingers at the screen in a weak attempt at a hand wave. She hated video calls and tugged on her mask in anxiety.

“Please call me Ani… Anyways, apparently, this thing allows us to page other contestants and teachers. Look at the student and faculty rosters and you can just dial ‘em up. How cool is that?”

“Wicked cool…” Bec mumbled.

Ani snorted. “Forsooth! Fine lady of gray. Doth thou haveth thine tutor yet?” She bobbed her head like she was curtsying.

Bec winced. “Yeah, he’s currently snoring on the couch.” She lifted the paper-thin paperback book-sized device up angling it to show O’Malley’s bare feet poking over the couch armrest.

“Oh wow, he seems like a charmer. My tutor showed me around her place, it’s sooo cool. She has like, lab stuff and even an arena in the back full of cool combat stuff.

“Sounds swanky.” Bec kicked a can under the table. “My master, er, tutor is obviously skilled. We played in the streets of Metro and I felt like I was doing well, but he was like two steps ahead of me the whole time.”

“What’s his name?”

“Tempe O’Malley. You’ve heard of him?”

“Not at all.” Ani shrugged. “So, figured out your classes yet? I was thinking of Intro to Botany, Improvisational Close Quarters Combat, Modeling, and I dunno, maybe Music Theory?”

“No, I was hoping to get my tutor’s thoughts. Why those classes? Modeling, what like wearing fancy clothes?” Bec could get used to fashion. She really never had the luxury to wear things for fun before but maybe now she could—

“No! 3D modeling, you know for printers? Jeez, Gray, where did Lauds find you? Under a rock? I cannot believe you are still wearing your mask!”

“I can’t afford people to find out who I am outside of the Gray persona. Sorry.”

Ani snorted. “You do know facial recognition is banned, right? You can’t index anyone by their face inside the city. Only AmiGo is allowed to do that.”

“I did not. I am not saying I don’t believe you buuuut,” Bec turned to the wall, “Hey, AmiGo, what are the laws regarding facial recognition?”

A neon green bird perched itself on an umbrella leaning by the door. “It’s mostly fairly safe for you to take that mask off. No one will be able to track the real you down using just that. Hass participants get an extra layer of protection. No biometric recording or indexing at all until the end of the competition. We’ve had some issues with stalking in the past.”

Bec didn’t wait for a single second longer to rip off the gray mask. “Phew, I am pretty relieved about that.”

“Dust damn, you are pretty cute, Gray. I guess I have competition for the cute one in the group.”

“Group?”

“You didn’t think I wouldn’t reach out to other students? This is our heyday! We would be idiots not to cavort.”

“Did the deathmatch kids of older Hass do that?” Bec rolled her eyes.

“You think people didn’t make friends during those? Bec, you don’t kill someone over and over again without learning a thing or two about one another. I’m sure some people ended up real close by the end.”

Bec thought that was the stupidest sounding thing ever. Who would want to buddy up with a person who murdered them, simulation or not?

Al cleared his digital throat. “Have you forgotten the fact that your half-brother killed you a few times back when you met.”

“That doesn’t count, Al.”

“Doesn’t count for what?” Ani asked head cocked to one side.

“Erm, nothing I was just talking to myself.”

“Sounds like you were talking to a boy. You holding out on me?”

“I...”

“Oh my Founder’s fuck, you DO have a boyfriend. I can tell on your face!”

Bec turned red in fury. The moment she took her mask off, Ani thought she could read Bec like a book. She had no clue. “Al is NOT my boyfriend. I…” Bec tried to think of words, any words that could explain away this moment, but she ended up just blurting out, “It’s complicated!”

Her own unmitigated stupidity truly awed her. Saying ‘it’s complicated,’ did nothing but empower Ani as she giggled and squealed on the other line for what felt like a straight minute.

“Look, Ani. Al is none of your business. He’s my… coordinator. We will be communicating frequently, even on the battlefield. You may feel free to consider Al and I an item in so far that our lives are entangled for the foreseeable future and that we are one unit. We are not in a romantic relationship. I would describe what we are …” Bec nearly said one. That would be fairly accurate, since they were two life forms sharing a body, but no, that was going to be a descriptor with a lot of unintentional implied meaning. She tried to think of the words. “I don’t have the words to describe what we are. Maybe the best way to say it is that we are platonic, PLATONIC, life partners.”

Ani nodded to contemplate what likely was her first time encountering such a couple. She immediately failed to let it sink in. “When are you going to ask him out?”

“Ani… please shut up.” She was being far too presumptuous for Bec’s liking. Whose to say she wasn’t gay or, as the truth had it, she was bound physiologically to a free-thinking mutated AI?

“We should have lunch tomorrow, I’ll send you the details. We can talk all about him then. Buh bye!” Ani winked and hung up. Bec briefly considered just telling her what Al really was. This was one of the many moments that made Bec hate secrets. It was verging on actual agony having to keep Al secret. Bec wanted to keep a fairly low profile due to her numerous anomalies, and she was doing an absolutely shit job at it. The only thing low profile about her was apparently the man drooling on the couch.

“Who are you?” Bec whispered to herself as she looked at his feet poking out from the side of the couch.

Bec helped herself to a comfy recliner and read the rulebook until she fell asleep.

~~~

“Good moooorning.”

Bec woke up to the smell of something cooking. It smelled delicious. She opened her bleary eyes to see O'Malley whipping up some food in the kitchen which had a counter separating the living room and kitchen. Bec knew there was a word for that kind of floor plan but she couldn’t bring herself to remember those kinds of details when such a smell wafted through the air.

Bec wandered over and leaned on the counter and noticed that the kitchen was remarkably clean. Spotless in fact, compared to the mess that the living room was in. She watched as O’Malley meticulously prepared the most novel of breakfasts. He was flipping two pans full of eggs, causing them to pirouette through the air and land perfectly back in the pan. There was what Bec believe to be pork bacon on the counter on a rack. He whirled and started dicing tomato, green onion, and shredding a block of cheese. Suddenly, his hand jutted in the instant before toast launched from the toaster, catching them and laying them on a plate.

A quick flip of the egg with all the cheese and greens in the center caused them to all get sandwiched between the gooey egg encasing them within the folded omelet. He slathered some butter on the toast, flipped the eggs onto two plates with three slices of bacon on each, and laid the bread to the side. He slid the plate towards Bec who caught it and gawked at the food on the plate. The meal looked comically picturesque, like a drawing of a breakfast in a textbook or something.

“Eat up. You will cook dinner. House Rule: We will only eat created food on weekends. Do you understand?”

Bec nodded. “I love cooking. I don’t mind. How exactly do we get ingredients though?”

“A young kid like you? Fine with cooking? Boy, I can’t tell you how many of my students would fight me on that rule. Glad to see you have a face under that mask, by the way.”

They sat at the dining room table. Bec kicked the books out from under her leg so she could make room to lay her feet.

“This is why I need confidentiality with you. I would love to tell you all about me, but I need to know you will not sell my personal data to the first person who asks.”

“I know. I know.” O’Malley wiggled his fingers dismissively. “I’m sure you have some kind of deep dark secret that you couldn’t bear to let anyone know about. I hear it all the time. You have my word as an educator and the laws that bind me that nothing you say to me will come out, barring secrets that directly lead to injury or death of you or another.”

“Well, that’s an issue. One moment. AmiGoooo?”

A neon green horse stampeded into the dining room wall and neighed angrily, “Bec, please don’t use me to just answer random questions, and, before you ask, yes.” AmiGo clopped his hooves in annoyance, “O’Malley is under contract in a manner that protects your particular circumstances.”

“Particular circumstances, eh? Maybe she does have a secret worth keeping.” O’Malley chucked, stroking his black and white beard.

“Yeah, one or two,” AmiGo remarked with a verbal eye-roll and evaporated with a poot sound.

Bec had not seen AmiGo exit like that before. Bec bet that AmiGo’s entrances were entirely a continuity thing and could be whatever AmiGo wanted it to be. Bec still didn’t exactly know what pronoun to use for AmiGo since the voice didn’t strike her as either male or female. Bec decided AmiGo from now on was going to be a they.

Bec clapped her hands. “So! Now that all that is squared away… let me tell you my story by telling you this. I am a 19-year-old from Earth.”

O’Malley leaned back in his chair. “You’re from Earth? That’s what you’re starting with?”

Bec nodded. An awkward silence lingered for a moment. Bec hated those. So she just laid it all out on the table over the next thirty minutes. O’Malley seemed no longer capable of expressing that low-end surprise that he’d been using, as his face grew increasingly shocked then progressed into blank-faced seriousness. By the end, his expression was flat, and he seemed to lack the energy to feel any sort of feeling whatsoever.

“— and so then my step-father Samuel helped me join the Hass so that I may one day find a way to pay of that ludicrous debt. Here we are! What do you think?”

“I think you have way too many secrets. Huge secrets. Kids shouldn’t have to bear such a burden at your age, yet here you are. You are like a bubble ready to burst, leaking all your issues into the world.”

“And, so what? What does that mean?”

“It means you are the perfect student for me. I hope I can be the perfect tutor to you. All this brings me to my last issue. So, you say your Word is wave, yes? What has Ms. Scarlet taught you about the scope of your Word.”

“There is near skin uses and distant uses. I was told that Words were only limited by one’s limited creativity. I mean, what else is there?”

“Have you ever heard the famous curse, ‘May you live in interesting times.’” Bec shrugged. “It’s supposed to imply that interesting times are not something a person would want to live through, that ‘interesting’ means chaos, danger, hardships. Buuut, I’m getting sidetracked.”

O’Malley, leaning back in his chair, looked at the ceiling to ponder for a moment.

“My point is, Bec, that a Word is more than just a superpower like in the comic books of Earth. It affects the Fabric of reality. You bend everything to your will whether you realize it or not. What if I said that you have a Word so powerful that I can’t even begin to comprehend the massive ways your presence would change literally any activity? This last part is a pet theory of mine, but I believe Words affect everything about a person. They attract people to things relevant to their Word. Previously, I thought that a Word guided people to find new revelations about their Word, but, suddenly, I find myself thinking it might even be broader than that.”

Bec stared at him blankly, so he continued. “Bec, do you know what it means to make waves? I believe your Word has either attracted you to, destined you to be a part of, or lead you to cause, well, waves. You are, by your very nature, a stone causing a ripple of effects across Dust and beyond. I believe your power may very well be dooming you to live in those proverbial ‘interesting times’. I found it particularly odd that Nkosi woke up Project Mix-up a year before year 350. Surely, they would have a predetermined time to do so, or maybe it was yet another one of his outlandish fancies again.

What are the chances that some random girl could convince a three-hundred-fifty-year-old AI to rework his entire ethics system? Or spawn a new life form out of an odd interaction with your brain chip? I am certain that your Word played a role in all of them. Bec, I believe that, should you try hid away in a cave out in the middle of nowhere, trouble would still find you. In essence, I am concerned you are cursed not just to live in interesting times, but to cause them.”

“Oh.” Bec really couldn’t say much more than that. She poked at her omelet in thought. She’d been kind of swamped in life lately. It wasn’t exactly a peaceful year. What that really her Word? Was she reworking the threads of fate around her? Could her Word bring the concept of fate into reality to begin with? Her stomach felt like she’d been swallowing rocks.

O’Malley grimaced. “I’m so sorry, Bec. I mean it. Before you accuse me of throwing my life away, I am going to tell you something serious. I will say right now that I do not want to live forever. I do not want to die now or soon, but I do want to pass on eventually. Are you prepared for an interesting life? A very, very, very long one?”

Bec shuffled her food around. She inhaled. She exhaled. She wondered about how many more of those she would have. Suddenly, the fear wasn’t that there would be too few, but that there would be too many. She shut her senses off, closing her figurative eye, and turned out her mental lights.

Sitting there in the void, no sound, no light, no anything but her feelings, she just thought. Her existential dread whirled around her, encompassing her senses and filling her whole consciousness. What do I do, Al? This life? It is not just mine, but yours. Please, tell me what to think.

“I won’t, Bec. I know what I think. I know what I want. I won’t tell you what you want.” Al said in a hushed yet adamant whisper.

Bec floated there in an endless sea of darkness for a long time. She wanted to say that she knew the answer to whatever it was that was the question she was scared of, but she knew that life didn’t like neat answers or obvious questions. It didn’t like peace. Everything ended either in chaos or it lingered until there was nothing left.

Bec returned to the real world, feeling her resolve wavering one last time. She looked down at her food. Half-eaten, cold, gray. She touched the plate and thought just a small thought. The food warmed as she wrapped her curse into it, color spreading into it and into her. She took a forkful of food and chewed.

She gave O’Malley a sharp look and let a smile work its way onto her face.

“You know, I guess I can live with ‘interesting’ for a little while. I can revisit this issue in few hundred years. We’ll see how long I can ride my wave.”