It was the fourth and last of the orientation days, centered around Harmonics. Rune had arrived at the first lecture just ten minutes prior, just to be yanked out of it as soon as the lecturing instructor had gotten to the interesting information. Rune was currently standing outside of the lecture room, staring at the instructor who had pulled him out of the lecture with crossed arms and a vaguely annoyed look on his face, wondering what the man needed from him.

“You said here that you have four neural linkages.” The instructor stared at the hologram for another second before his eyes flicked up from the data table to regard Rune. “You also marked the box for not having any implanted neural linkages.” He stared at Rune for another couple seconds, letting the silence fill the room. “Are you sure that you didn’t,” the man waved his hand in a circular fashion, “you know, make a mistake or something.”

Rune fidgeted, a frown flickering across his face. “Uh, yeah. I have four. I just spa—I mean, got integrated. I’m a synth. Maybe they installed one in me? I have no idea. That’s just what my character sheet, or whatever it is, says.”

The instructor massaged his temples, letting the hologram hover in the air in front of him. He let out a gusty sigh. “Alright, well, it appears that we’re going to have to get you tested. Any claims of above two neural linkages have to be tested. It’s protocol.”

Rune shifted, glancing back towards the classroom where the rest of the trainees were getting a breakdown on what exactly they’d be doing if they signed up for harmonics. He turned back to his instructor, sticking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the entrance to the classroom. “But I’m missing the lesson. Shouldn’t I know this stuff?”

The instructor just shrugged. “It’s not that important. I can give you the breakdown as we walk if you want. Anything you miss you’ll quickly pick up if you sign on to Harmonics.” He looked down at the hologram. “And if you actually have four neural linkages you’d be an idiot not to.”

Rune frowned, a little peeved that the instructor didn’t trust his word, but not surprised. If having this many neural linkages was as rare as Jamis had told him it was, then the instructor’s disbelief and doubt weren’t unwarranted.

The instructor marked a couple things on his hologram before dismissing it with a wave of his hand and turning away from Rune to walk down the corridor, beckoning him to follow. “Follow me. The testing room is in the Enclave. If we hurry there and hurry back, we should be back a few minutes before the lecture ends.” The man accordingly stepped up his pace, and Rune hurried to catch up with him.

After a couple brief seconds of briskly walking down the corridor towards the central spire of the Atrium, Rune felt his curiosity overwhelm his embarrassment at being so clueless and spoke up. “So, anyway, both you and my friend are acting like having a fourth neural linkage is a big deal. He told me that one in every ten people have at least one, but that for linkage after the first it was a hundred times rarer. I can get that it’s super rare but why would that actually matter? Doesn’t that just mean I can pilot more machines that require integration? That’s what instructor Pauling told us.”

The man turned to give Rune an incredulous look. “Wow, you really don’t know anything, do you?” He shook his head. “Nah, kid, having more neural linkages does a lot more than give you the ability to pilot a few more drones.” He frowned and looked up, a serious look on his face as if he was trying to decide how to best explain things to Rune. After a few seconds of contemplation, he let out a gusty sigh before his eyes turned back to Rune.

“There are a lot of reasons you want to have more neural linkages. You know that each neural linkage allows you to connect to another machine that requires integration, right?” Rune nodded. It had been one of the first things the instructor back in the lecture room had said. The instructor he was talking to nodded and continued. “Well, there are several advantages to that. Along with being more… convenient, one person piloting multiple drones is always better than multiple people piloting multiple drones.” The man looked like he was going to continue, but Rune interjected.

“Wait, but, how does that make any sense? Shouldn’t multitasking be harder?”

The instructor frowned at him. “Yeah, I was just about to get there. Anyway, the reason that a single user with the same amount of training will always be more coordinated than a group. In one instance, the information goes to four different people who may all process it differently. With just one person, strategies will be executed flawlessly. There’s no communication error, only user error. The coordination that can take years of training for several 100 rated single integration pilots can take mere days to learn for a person with a 100 rating at multiple integrations. One person in control makes every smoother. History has its fair share of examples of groups of ace single integration pilots being taken down by a single talented multiple integrator. You’ll learn about these fights, sometime.”

Rune interjected. “That sounds like a nice benefit, but nothing really game changing.” Rune was slightly disappointed. He’d been hoping for more of an advantage from something that was described as being so rare.

The instructor gave him a measured look. “Well, you’re not wrong, and better control really doesn’t amount to much in the larger space battles when you’ve got hundreds of drones fighting. In smaller operations with only a few drones, a multiple integrator is very useful, but anything low stakes enough to need less than a dozen pilots isn’t going to be too important.”

The instructor shook his head. “No, being able to to do multiple integrations to multiple drones is useful, but not game-changing, like you said. What really makes having more neural linkages such a game changer is that some machinery requires multiple integrations to operate. And there’s a lot of really important tech that requires multiple integrations. Pretty much all starships with weapons systems are flown by multiple integrators. Even Star Destroyers.”

The instructor then proceeded to launch into a lengthy discussion of career paths and why there were so many more options for people who had more neural linkages. It turned out there was a lot of stuff that needed operating that required multiple integrations. Ranging from UIS Battlecruisers to tank-like Mobile Armored Command Centers, or MACCs as the instructor called them, to specialized mining systems or even warp gate control, you needed people who could integrate multiple times. As long as you had some amount of proficiency, someone somewhere would want to hire you. Towards the end of their walk to the Enclave, the instructor finally got around to explaining why specifically four neural linkages was so important.

“Yeah, though, four neural linkages is a sort of the bare minimum for a number of neural linkages to really be impactful. Two or three, not too rare and nice to have but not too important. No, you become a really big deal when you have four naturally occurring neural linkages.”

Rune frowned. “What? Why? Is there something special that requires four?”

The instructor shook his head. “No, it’s not four that’s special, it’s six.”

Rune shrugged. “Why six?”

“Star Destroyers.” The instructor said the words firmly as if they were an explanation for everything.

Rune just frowned, shook his head, and shrugged before saying with confusion, “What the hell even is a Star Destroyer, you mentioned it earlier, I think.”

The instructor’s eyebrows shot up. “Earthsoul, you really don’t know anything, do you? How long have you been integrated? Have you heard of the End War?”

Rune responded in a slightly aggrieved tone of voice, “I’ve only been integrated for two days, and yes, I have heard of the End War, I read about it online. What does that have anything to do with a Star Destroyer?”

The instructor threw his hands out to the sides like there was something obvious that Rune was missing. “You know how the End War ended? With the death of a star? What do you think destroyed that star?”

Rune’s mouth flapped open, then closed. “Wait. Are you saying that I could pilot something that could destroy a star? Holy fucking shit. That’s…”

Rune trailed off, and the instructor nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. You’ve got a shot at piloting a Star Destroyer. You need six neural linkages to do it, but you’ve still got the chance, and it’s not that remote.”

Rune nodded, recalling his research from the night before. Apparently, getting neural linkages installed was a pretty common thing. The first operation had a 95% chance of success with the second dropping to 40% and the third an abysmal 5% success rate. The operation was dangerous as well. A solid half of people the operation failed for were left with some form of mental damage, with the other half straight up dying. While getting a fifth then a sixth installed was dangerous, it was well within the realm of possibility.

The instructor kept speaking. “But, there’s more to it than that. Operating a Star Destroyer is one of the most difficult things you can do. The only simulators are owned by governments, and it takes several years of training to reach the proficiency level you need to operate one. You have to master all the subroutines of the massive ship, and there are tens of thousands of them. Besides, they’re powerhouses and titanically important political pieces. Every single government currently in existence is only allowed because they control at least one Star Destroyer. It’s the only higher tech that everybody knows everything about. Do you know about the Fairhand rebellion?”

The instructor gave Rune a questioning look. Rune just shook his head. They were in the Enclave now. They had just walked through the main room and turned onto the corridor where Ajax’s office was.

The instructor glanced down the hallway before looking back to Rune, a slightly apologetic look coming over his face. “Well, our synapse testing lab is right there,” the instructor said the words as he pointed to a doorway a short way down the hall in front of them. “I’d love to tell you all about the Fairhand rebellion, but you’ll probably learn about it soon enough and we’re already at the testing lab.” As the instructor finished speaking, he arrived at the door he’d pointed to, and after a second it slid open. The instructor entered the room and ushered Rune in after him.

Once in the lab, a bored looking, stick thin, middle-aged man with spectacles on and a white lab coat swiveled in his chair to face them. As soon as he saw who had entered the room, a wide smile slid its way onto his face and he got up out of his chair, holding his hand out for the instructor to shake. “Instructor Hendrickson,” the man said, his voice full of warmth, “how good to see you!” The man glanced at Rune. “And I’ll expect that this young man needs his neural capacity tested?”

The man held out his hand for Rune to shake. “I’m Dr. Kaufman. I’m one of the professors for Attunement. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Rune extended his hand to firmly grasp and shake Dr. Kaufman’s. “A pleasure to meet you as well.”

It was about here that instructor Hendrickson interjected. “It’s nice to see you too, Phillip, but we need to get this kid tested so that we can send him back to class. If we could get it done fast so we can send him back as soon as possible it would be nice.”

Dr. Kaufman nodded and turned to walk towards a large, humming machine. He opened one of the panels towards the top, and form it removed what almost looked like a helmet, with several large cables running from the helmet-shaped device back to the machine. He handed it to rune and then gestured towards a vacant chair, which Rune promptly plunked down in. After feeling around the back of his head for a half second, Dr. Kaufman reached into the machine and grabbed a wire before plugging it into a port in the back of his head, and starting to tap at the air in front of him.

“Configuring it should take me a couple minutes. Do not take the helmet off while I’m doing it, or it might screw up the reading.”

Rune nodded, and then the trio sat around in relative silence for a couple minutes while Kaufman muttered to himself and continued to swipe away. After a solid ten or so minutes had elapsed, a smile crossed his face and he nodded before speaking in a pleased tone of voice, “Alright, I finished the calibrations. I just need to quickly run diagnostics on the interfacing, and then we’ll be ready for the testing.”

Dr. Kaufman tapped the air a couple more times before smiling and nodding. “Everything’s set. I’m going to start the test now…” He trailed off, looking to Rune for permission. Rune nodded at him, and Dr. Kaufman made one final tap before the test started.

It felt like cold water was running through his brain. Rune shivered and did his best to stay still in his chair as the test went on. After about a minute the sensation slowly faded and Dr. Kaufman nodded and smiled.

“Everything seems to have gone well,” he said the words happily with a warm smile on his face, before peering at the air in front of him more closely. “It says here that you have…” His eyes bugged out, and he adjusted his glasses before he spluttered the words, “four naturally occurring neural linkages? Earthsoul above!” He looked at Rune and instructor Hendrickson as if expecting them to be as surprised as he was.

Hendrickson just rolled his eyes. “We came to get him tested, not evaluated. Regulations as I’m sure you understand. Anyone claiming to have more than three has to be tested.”

Dr. Kaufman stared at him for a second longer before a smile broke through the surprise on his face and he let out a genuine laugh. “Imagine that! A quad linker from our quaint little backwater asteroid. What’re the odds!” He unplugged the cable from the back of his head, and walked over to Rune, holding his hand out for yet another shake. “What good fortune for me to meet you, young man, if I could convince you to come back to my lab at a later time, I would love to have to opportunity to study—”

Instructor Hendrickson cut in, his voice firm. “Not now, Kaufman. The kid has to get back to class. You exchange G-Web addresses and message him later.”

Dr. Kaufman gave instructor Hendrickson a frustrated look before a smile came over his face and he took a step back. “Yes, where are my manners.” A distracted look crossed over his face for a half second before he nodded and said, “there, I sent you my G-Web address and a request for your own.”

Sure enough, Rune heard Paine speaking in his head. Would you like to accept Philip Kaufman’s G-Web address and his request for yours?

Rune responded with an ok, and a couple seconds later Kaufman’s face lit up with a wide smile. He once again stepped forwards holding out his for Rune to shake before speaking, “thank you so much. I’ll message you after Harmonics orientation is done. If—”

Instructor Hendrickson broke in. “Alright, alright, enough with trying to get him to come to your lab. We need to get him back to orientation. C’mon kid, let’s go.”

Rune looked between Hendrickson and Dr. Kaufman once before nodding, taking off the helmet, and handing it to Dr. Kaufman who gave him an apologetic smile. “I’ll see you later.” The eager words followed Rune and instructor Hendrickson out of the room as they walked away.

Once the doors had closed behind them, Hendrickson snorted. “Dr. Phillips isn’t a bad sort, but research types like him can get really caught up in what they’re doing. Sorry about that.”

Rune just shrugged. “No, it’s fine. I don’t mind it too much. It is pretty weird though, being the center of attention.”

Hendrickson chuckled. “Well, you’ll have to deal with it for the rest of your life. There are only three-thousand five hundred or so other people registered with governments who have four naturally occurring neural linkages. Wherever you go, whatever you do in life, people will know.”

Rune frowned. He’d always been the sort that had preferred to fade into the background. Sticking out in the megaslums only ended in one of two ways, and neither of them was good. Who knew though? It was a different life and a different world.

The walk back to the Atrium was mostly quiet. Rune had a lot to think about, and it seemed that the instructor did as well as he didn’t attempt to strike up a conversation. When they finally got back to the classroom instructor Hendrickson ushered him through the door after wishing him luck in his tests, and Rune covertly snuck around the room and back to his seat on the leftmost side of the room.

It seemed he’d come back at the very tail end of the lecture. The instructor was telling kids that no matter how many neural linkages they had as long they worked hard and raised their ratings, they’d be able to get hired somewhere for a high paying job. Over and over he repeated that these things were not guaranteed for other disciplines. Rune tuned out most of the rest of instructor Pauling’s rhetoric. He’d heard all he needed to hear to know that he was going to train in Harmonics. He’d utterly failed yesterday’s Attunement tests and the first day’s tech tests, and while he was pretty sure he’d done well in combat, he was also pretty sure of the two Harmonics was the more profitable one and also the one he’d be better at.

Eventually, the lecture drew to a close. Instructor Pauling stepped down from the podium where he was speaking to the class, walked up the center aisle, and told the students that they would be continuing to a mental applications test where they would solve a series of advanced puzzles designed to gauge the flexibility and reactivity of the brains of the aspiring Harmonics students. Rune and all the other students got up and followed him out of the room.

Instructor Pauling didn’t have to go far before he finally reached his destination, a set of sliding steel doors on the left side of the hallway. He crossed through them before letting the rest of the students enter past him to flow into the room. Rune was about halfway through the group. As soon as he stepped into the room, he looked around, taking in the comfy chairs filling the room. It seemed like a lounge, or maybe a library or study center of some sort. He eyed a chair but didn’t sit down. Better to wait for instructions.

Once everyone had entered and the doors closed shut behind the last couple students, instructor Pauling stepped forwards and addressed the group. “This is the lounge. I imagine that in your future you’ll spend a lot of time here with your colleagues. For now, each and every one of you is advised to take a seat while you take this test. As soon as you sit down, your seat will deliver you a chip. Please insert it into the port on your uniform.”

Rune looked around and shrugged before sitting in the nearest seat available seat next to a tall, reasonably pretty girl with freckles. He would’ve introduced himself, but she was already taking the chip out of a robotic arm proffering the object to her. Rune only had to wait a second before the robotic arm got to him and held out a chip for him to take. He took it before glancing at the girl who seemed to have a much better idea of what to do than him.

She took the chip, folded back a section on the sleeve, and plugged the chip into a port. Then she leaned back on the circular couch, her eyes staring off into space and flickering back and forth as if she was watching something moving. Rune quickly followed suit, finding the section of his uniform he needed to peel back and plugging the chip in. After a couple seconds, a large blue screen filled his vision, and he leaned back on the circular sofa to steady himself.

A second passed, and the word ‘Welcome’ blinked onto the screen, soon replaced by, ‘This test is a mandatory exercise to gauge your mental capacity for problem-solving, multitasking, decision making, and motor control. Whenever you would like to begin, please select one of the below options.’ Below those words were a green and red, ‘YES/NO’.

Rune tapped the yes and the words disappeared for a half second, leaving his vision unimpeded before two screens popped up. On one of them was a series of linked square platforms floating in space with a sphere placed on one of them, and in the other was a bunch of blue text, at the top of which was the word ‘Directions’ in large font. They read, ‘Use your finger to guide the ball through the red hole.’ And then below that, ‘0/50’.

Rune looked between the puzzle and the directions. This seemed a little too easy. He traced from the ball across the tiles to the red hole, and the ball fell through. Easy. He’d won. Then, the screen shifted, and a new arrangement shifted onto the screen.

This time there was a gap between the platform the ball was on and the platform the red hole was on. One of the tiles near the ball was glowing yellow, however. Rune looked at the directions which read, ‘Passing over the yellow tile Will allow you to generate a tile space where there wasn’t one. Guide the ball to the red hole.’

Rune nodded after reading the instructions. Still pretty simple. The second level, and then the third after that, and fourth, and so on were all pretty simple. But they got harder. Each of the first six levels introduced a new mechanic, and after those levels to introduce testers to the difficulty of the test, the levels began to progressively get harder. Rune took it slow, thinking through each level before attempting it. He wasn’t quite sure how scoring would work, but he managed to get through thirty-four of the levels before he finally died. Luckily, it turned out he had three lives, and he managed to push on to the forty-first before losing his last.

Rune barely had the time to celebrate his success before he was thrust into the next test. This time he was solving puzzles, with the clock serving as a sort of scoring for him. A couple were normal puzzles, some were interlocking twisted metal shapes that needed to be undone, a few others were matching games, and many, many more. He did decently well on these tests.

The test after that seemed to be an attempt to gauge his fine motor skills and reaction times. In one test he needed to tap certain colored asteroid as they flew past him. In another, he needed to stack as many incongruous objects with each other as he could before they fell over. And in yet another test, he needed to continuously lay down piping so that the sludge oozing through the pipes didn’t flow out and also form a series of patterns and connect to outflows on the walls of the passage he was laying the pipe in. The tests seemed endless, with nearly every variation imaginable. Rune did the best he could, failing some and doing well on others.

Eventually, Rune finished one of the tests and instead of putting him into a new test, his screen blinked away and disappeared, replaced by the words, ‘Congratulations, you have completed the problem solving, multitasking, decision making, and motor control test. Please return the chip to the robotic servant.’

Rune waved the words away and immediately spotted the same robotic claw that had given him the chip extended in the air in front of him with an open palm. He flipped back his sleeve, pulled out the chip, and placed it into the claw of the device which promptly closed and withdrew into the chair.

Rune glanced around the room to see that the vast majority of students had blurry but visible holograms hovering in front of them, meaning that they were done with whatever simulated reality that the chip induced.

This was something that Rune had learned about recently. There were two different ways to project things, either you could project it in the air in front of you like a hologram, commonly known as holographic projection, or you could project it onto your eyes almost like contacts, commonly known as visual projection. For the obvious reasons, the visual projection was more private and always the means for testing as Rune had discovered during the Technology and Attunement days of orientation.

Rune quickly did a rough head count of who seemed to still be testing and who wasn’t. As far as he could tell, roughly seventy to eighty percent of the class had finished before he had. That seemed to be a good thing, as lasting longer in the tests presumably meant that you’d passed more levels than everyone else around him. Lasting longer than more than most of the class meant that he’d probably scored pretty well.

After completing his scan of the room Rune glanced at the girl next to him and spotted that she was still waving her hands in the air and manipulating invisible objects. He gave her a nod of respect, even if she probably couldn’t see it. The tests were hard. He was sure that several here had trained for them, but still, Rune had spent plenty of time in arcades with his friends and had a good amount of experience in similar activities. He knew how hard these tests could be and a good performance was commendable.

Bored after staring for a couple seconds, Rune turned away before asking Paine to connect him to the G-Web and open up a holographic computer on his lap for him to use. Paine quickly obliged, and Rune went straight to Newtube, eager to continue catching up on all of the social media that he’d missed over the past few centuries.

About fifteen or so minutes had elapsed and he’d gotten through one video talking about space-travel and had moved on to the more entertaining gifs of the 27th century when all of a sudden, a snort came from his right.

Twisting around, Rune turned to spot the girl sitting next to him staring at him with a smirk on her face. Rune gave her an askance look as if to ask her what her problem was.

The girl nodded towards his holographic computer, pointing at it. “Either you’re a hardcore history geek or you’re a synth. Nobody uses one of those in this day and age.”

Rune glanced between her and his hologram, not quite understanding. He shot her a confused frown. “What do you mean? It’s a computer. Everybody has one.”

She gave him a look like she understood. “No, they don’t. The only computers around today are the ones in museums, kid. That sort of tech is beyond outdated. Most people don’t even know what computers are. But I guess that decides it. You're a synth. Only been integrated a few weeks, or maybe even days?”

Rune flushed red as he processed her words. “Oh shit,” he said, slightly embarrassed, “I didn’t even think about it that way. Computers were just… everywhere, you know?” He paused awkwardly and then started speaking again. “Yes to your question though, I am a synth.” He held out his hand, and let a small smile stretch across his face, deciding to move past the embarrassment. “I’m Rune Yahui.”

The girl smiled and took his hand, giving it a surprisingly firm shake. “I’m Teira Sheinfeld. I guess from all your glances that you’ve never done anything like this? How long have you been integrated?”

Rune’s reply came quickly. “Just six days. I’ve never done anything like this.”

Her eyebrows went up before she spoke in a slightly surprised tone of voice. “Oh, shit, so then you were literally only in town for two days before the BFS snapped you up and sent you here.” She snorted. “No wonder you know nothing. If you want to get a job—any job, really, you need to get rated. It’s not quite the same testing process, and it’s considerably shorter, but if you’d tried to get a job, you would’ve had to go through it.” She waved a hand around the room, gesturing at the rest of the trainees. “I’d guess that all of these guys here have been rated.”

Rune looked around thoughtfully. “Huh, I guess I’m—”

Rune was cut off when instructor Pauling’s clarion voice rang through the room. “Alright, it appears that the last of you have finished their test, so we can move on to the next phase of evaluation.” The instructor stood up from the comfy sofa on which he’d been sitting before walking to the entrance to the room, speaking as he walked. “Follow me to the Simulation Lounge so that we can finish up your testing.” Rune stood up to follow the instructor. He shot a glance at Teira and noticed she had a wide smile across her face.

As they walked out of the room together Rune quirked an eyebrow and nodded towards her. “What’s with the excitement?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “This is the hardest section of all the tests offered here. It is the most reflective of what a real rating test would be like. Nobody attending the TEF has ever scored above a sixty-three on their first trial. I’ve been training for this moment for years. I’m sure that I can score at least a fifty.”

Rune frowned. Nobody ever scored above a sixty-three? Huh. On the first day of orientation and testing the tech instructors had told him that he wouldn’t receive his test scores until after all four days of orientation had finished, so he didn’t know how well he’d done. He thought that he would’ve scored decently, but it seemed that tests weren’t evaluated on quite the same zero to one-hundred scale that they been before. Rune shrugged. He’d just have to wait and see like everyone else.

As they walked, Rune shot a glance at Teira. It hadn’t slipped his notice that the instructor had called for the group to leave the room where they’d tested mere minutes after she’d finished. “So,” he drew the word out, letting it hang in the air, “I noticed that you were one of the last, if not the last person to finish with the test. You must’ve done pretty well. Did you train for it or something.”

She shot him a sideways look and smirked. “Of course I did.” She stared at him a couple more seconds before sighing and rolling her eyes. “God, you really don’t know anything, do you. I’m what all the steel-slinkers here would call a ‘highborn’.”

Rune’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Uh, huh. I didn’t realize.”

Now that she mentioned it, Rune could vaguely remember someone else making a comment about highborns earlier. As far as he could tell from the term it meant that she was effectively nobility of some sort, and Rune could definitely say that her appearance fit the claim. She was tall, blond haired, blue eyed, in good shape, and had a distinctively refined bearing and posture. Now that he knew, he wasn’t really that surprised.

Teira chuckled bitterly. “That’s why we were the only two trainees sitting at that table. None of these steel-slinkers would want to sit next to a highborn.”

The candid and bitter comment shocked Rune into silence. By the time he’d recovered, instructor Pauling had reached the door to the Simulation Lounge and passed through it.

“Alright you lot of steel-slinkers,” the instructor clapped his hands together before shouting, “it’s time to put your rocks in your railguns.”