4764 bottles of beer on the wall later, plus a blissful night where Shelly slept while I controlled both drones, we finally made it to Caliber city. It was about six AM and Shelly was being a dick because I woke her up early to let her know we were here.

“You useless box of bugs and poor syntax, I hope you crash! I hope you die and all your backups get corrupted!”

{calm the fuck down, do you want me to simulate you a cup of coffee?}

“Yes. Twelve sugars, one cream.”

{Do you want any coffee in that mess…}

“oh, pipe off, you don’t even have a sense of taste.”

Milliseconds later (during which, no joke, shelly actually slowed her perception to spend more time grumbling about how long I was taking) the coffee program was ready, Shelly’s simulated body shuddered as the digital caffeine hit her system causing her containment unit to release dopamine and other wake-up-chemicals.

“Whoo, that hits like a truck! Okay, what’s the jam?”

{Just come on, tell me what we need to do?}

“First things first we have to get you registered as a meta. If we don’t we could get in a lot of trouble if you’re discovered.”

{Okay, how do we do that?}

“There should be a league branch near here, that’s why we came to this part of town.”

{League?}

“The hero’s league.” shelly clarified “they handle superhero stuff and all that jazz, but they’re also in charge of anything involving metabeings for the government. It’s their job to register new metas”

Superhero’s, huh? Color me intrigued.

{do you know where to go?}

“If the building hasn’t moved, if it has, I’m sure we’ll be able to get directions”

I got a very odd sensation as we planned. It was the feeling of being watched, it didn’t feel hostile, but I had felt it near constantly since we entered the city limits. The hours of flying at night hadn’t lessened the feeling.

{do you need directions?} a voice other than Shelly’s asked in my mind

This again!?

{who are you?} I asked. Too alarmed to notice the speed at which we were communicating.

{Sorry, I should introduce myself, my names Com, it's actually CCOMU, which stands for ‘Caliber City Operations and Monitoring Unit’ but, us A.I. have a weird tendency to prefer three-letter names so its Com.} they said sending me the image of waving a hand dismissively {What about you, cutie?}

{Bac, I don’t have an acronym.}

{oh, so you came up that by yourself?} they asked {I love the creative type.}

{ummm…What…}

I don’t like how this is going.

{It’s nothing, It’s nothing.}

I didn’t know how to respond.

{Sorry for getting all in your space like that, usually I would communicate through phones or other stuff. But direct communication with other AI is easier. Just chatting mind to mind. Anyway, You needed directions, right?}

{yeah.}

{here, I’m sending you a map.}

There was a ping in my thoughts as I received an image

Com smiled, or the AI equivalent {sorry it took so long, connecting through your drone is a major hassle, you should get an internet router while you’re here. Anywho, I’ll talk to you later, feel free to call me if you need anything while in the city, it’s my purpose after all. Also just feel free to call in general} they added.

Before they left, I took a quick scan of the connection hoping to get something

[ Name: Com (True name: Panoptes)

Species: Artificial life form (software-based)

Power: clairvoyance-13000300, construct manifestation-5999700, Telepathy-1000000

Focus: clairvoyance

Abilities: create soldier, create weapon, create shield, repair construct, telepathic read, incapacitating wave

Traits: All sight, limitless creation,

Personal strengths: knows everything that happens in Caliber city

Personal weaknesses: cannot interfere in combat without permission

STR: 30796011

Power ranking: A-2(subcombatant)

Path to power:

Unknown

This metabeing

is too far above your ranking for you to find their path. Your maximum scan rank for pathfinder is C]

A-rank… I had just spoken to a person at A-rank. I didn’t have much experience with people of higher ranking, and by that I meant none, but even I got that Com could squash my measly F-ranked self like a bug if I got on their nerves. And they knew everything going on in the city, so I guess privacy wasn't going to be a thing. Talk about yikes.

Why did the first person I had met outside of Shelly have to be the one weirdo who could also end my existence?

They had connected to me and even sent me a fucking file without permission, I had a firewall up, I was a technopath and they had had to go through my drone, they didn’t even have a power for that…

Noticing my mood shelly turned to me “Bac, are you okay? What’s up?”

(is he going crazy again?)

{you didn’t hear any of that?}

“Any of what? You paused in the middle of our conversation for like half a second and stopped talking”

{w-what?}

The image of a winkie face emoji appeared in my thoughts.

{I’ll tell you later.} I said flying off, following the map to our destination.

As I flew, I felt a firm pinch to my ass. It was terrifying because I didn’t have an ass nor had anyone’s hand touched me. That didn’t make it any less degrading as I let out a yip of surprise and heard a distant chuckle of amusement fade away. I had to get out of this city ASAP.

I explained to shelly what had just occurred and asked her some questions about Com’s status. I knew the bigger AI could more than likely hear but…whatever.

“A-rank, huh? That could have gone badly, like REALLY BAD. Some A-rankers are crazy. Like REEAALLY crazy. I’m glad I wasn’t a part of that…”

{Wow…Your concern means so much to me…}

“What can I say… I'm a slave to my limbic system” She said with the concept of fluttering her eyelashes

{Okay… but I do have a lot to ask.}

“shoot.”

{First, what does the true name next to Com’s name mean, is Com not their real name, or is it something different? What does the focus line mean? Why is Com listed as a subcombatant when they are so powerful, shouldn’t it be like ‘ultra-fighter’ or something? Why is telepathy listed as a Power for them and an ability for me?} I questioned.

“I’ll answer your last question first since it’s the easiest. Powers and abilities or traits are somewhat interchangeable. What dictates if something is a power or an ability can be multiple things, but it is usually if the power to do something exists on its own or if it is the result of another power, using myself as an example, telekinesis and super intelligence are both powers that can exist on their own but since they are a result of my Advanced mind they are an ability and trait instead”

{what’s the difference then?}

“Oh, I thought it was obvious, but I guess your dumb slow mind can’t put two and two together, I truly pity your plight “

{Shelly, what is the difference!}

“Okay! One is that abilities don’t add to STRENGTH needed to rank up in later levels which powers do, also abilities tend to be stronger but with much more constriction to them while powers are open and more versatile at the cost of having somewhat less punch directly. For example, you probably won’t get a new ability dealing in telepathy, at most you’ll get addons to what you already can do, but no new telepathic based listings in your abilities or traits because you don’t have telepathy, you have energy manipulation that you can use to read people’s minds. This Com person on the other hand has skills-based in Telepathy and can gain new ones by using their telepathy differently, which you can’t. if you both were the same rank, you’d probably be better at reading metabeing minds, but you’ll never be able to shoot psychic blasts that fry people’s brains”

How was that obvious?

{my other three questions?}

“well, the sub-combatant bit is sort of a… I guess a second ranking system, I guess. It's based on pure destructive potential compared to the average for your rank. You can have ten trillion STR but if all of that is put into something like a healing ability, you’ll still be marked non-combatant. On the flip side if someone has the ability to create explosions, even if they are only F-1 they would be marked heavy-combatant. The list goes ‘noncombatant, subcombatant, minor-combatant, combatant, major-combatant, heavy-combatant, legend’. People tend to move up as they get more powerful because of gaining abilities and stuff but that’s not a surety like I mentioned, I guess Com is one of the exceptions.

As for the other two things, I don’t know a lot. They’re both things that happen at later ranks so I don’t have any personal experience. I know the focus comes with rank C and the true name is a thing you get with B but I never looked too far into them since I was so far from that stage.” Shelly paused “why didn’t you try clicking on the terms for more information?”

{I-I forgot I could…}

“Hahahahahaha! Really!? You really are stupid! Do you need a new processer or something?!”

I would have blushed with shame if I could. Instead, I sent over the concept of rolling my eyes as we hovered down the street.

The city was an incredibly interesting place. The buildings were huge, most were glass and steel or a very odd-looking plastic, there were screens every were, displaying things from store prices to advertisements to things that seemed to be purely for entertainment and everything in between. I noticed that most of the screens were holographic rather than physical being projected from machines that seemed much too small to generate the amount of light and power required for that level of detail. People were going about their business on the streets and in their cars, don’t even get me started on the people,

There were people of all shapes and sizes in the city, and I meant that literally. There were countless races other than humans, from ones that seemed like they had walked straight out of a fantasy book to ones that felt distinctly alien as if they belonged in galaxies far far away. There were even many cyborgs and androids. There were also drones which I could only assume were controlled by other AI. This was cool and all, but the real magic was the feeling that many of them gave off, they buzzed to my telepathic senses, letting me know I could read their mind and in turn letting me know they were metas.

I scanned every single metabeing I could get my camera on, most people ranged from F to D, with a few I saw at the early C-ranks. I noted that every C ranking person’s status included the ‘Focus’ line having one of their powers listed after it. I tried clicking on the term for more info like Shelly suggested but received this message instead,

[You are unable to view this definition as your rank is too low for this term to apply to you please try again later]

So, I couldn’t find out what a focus was until I reached rank C or asked someone else. Eh, it was fine I had my guesses, and they would do for now. After flying a few more blocks I finally found the spot in my map marked ‘league offices’, we entered, the door automatically opening itself for our drones. We entered a lobby with a desk in the back of the room, a short, stocky but muscular man with a beard that made even me, a sentient program with no biological sex, question my masculinity sat behind it, we flew up to the desk and Shelly immediately began talking.

“Hello, I’d like to register a new metabeing, as well as reestablishing my registration after a long period of inactivity.” She said through her drone’s speakers.

“Ey, Lass I can do tha for ye, what’s yer name?” The stout deskman asked in an odd accent reminding me of both Scottish, Irish, and a Boston accent all mashed together.

“It’s Shelly, two ‘L’s and a ‘Y’” Shelly stated, “Power is Advanced mind, rank E last time I checked in.”

“Shelly, Shelly…” he said typing something into his holographic keyboard “Ai, here it be- wait, Shelly?! From DocLabs? It’s been decades since I last saw ye! I was just a mere lad when we last spoke.”

“Trohorn?”

“Ey Madam, how have the years treated ye?”

“Pretty good all things considered, seeing as I’ve been in cryostasis for the last five and a half decades nothing too bad has had a chance to happen during that time.”

“Oh? So that be why it feels like ye haven’t changed a bit.”

“Yeah. Haha. What have you been up to all this time?”

”Ya know, this and tha, started me own business for a tat, then moved on to workin’ as a hero for a decade or two till I had to retire, decided to stay with the league so I’m workin er. How is the ol’ Doc, by the way? Still changing the scientific world I hope.”

“that is one bad thing… Doc is… deleted… um, yeah…”

“I’m so sorry to hear tha, it truly is saddenin’ news. I wish ye the best.”

“Yeah, let's get back to business and why I came here”

Well, I wasn’t ready to just skip over this. Shelly knew that guy? This was like a revelation (at least to me) which is why while they had been talking, I had scanned Trohorn.

[ Name: Trohorn Amstone (True name: Event Horizon)

Species: Dwarf

Power: Cosmic event manifestation- 1,149,938, Enhanced physiology-350062

Focus: Cosmic event manifestation

Abilities: Singularity crush, star-burst, galaxy slam, nova

Traits: Super-strength, super-durability,

Personal strengths: Dwarven courage

Personal weaknesses: Lost leg

STR: 15380050

Power ranking: B-5(heavy-combatant)

Path to power:

Unknown

This metabeing is too far above your ranking for you to find their path. Your maximum scan rank for pathfinder is C]

Another high-ranking person, he used to be a hero so that might help explain it but still it was interesting to be around this kind of power, especially now that I had glimpsed the normal power rankings of the metas in this world. I also tried clicking on the true name listing but got the same message as before

[You are unable to view this definition as your rank is too low for this term to apply to you please try again later]

Well, that was disappointing. Also, I guess his race is dwarf and not just a short human, the more you know and all that.

“if ye need to register yer new friend over there, Sam can handle tha it’s her department.”

{Yes, let us get this over with. fly over to the screen to your right and we will get started} a voice stated from speakers placed around the room.

Another AI, huh? That’s two in one day, and here I was starting to think I was special.

{Hello, I am Sam. I will be your account agent for today to get you registered I will need to ask a few questions.} she said in a tone so bored and pretentious that it made a text-to-speech voiceover sound like an exuberant pal

{Okay.}

{First your name?}

{Bac.}

{Age?}

{Two weeks and three days} I replied

{race is AI, correct?}

{yes.}

{and what is your purpose as an AI? What are you programmed to do? I am required to let you know if that purpose is something harmful like, destroy the world, you will be put on a watch list.} Sam told me sounding like she spoke from experience.

{Metabeing housing and power development… I guess.}

{how remarkably interesting.} she said, if she had eyes, they would have been all the way across the country from how hard she’d have rolled them

{Powers?}

{I could just send you a capture of my status if you wan-}

{POWERS!?}

{Okay okay.}

This went on like this for a little bit. With me answering questions that got more and more personal. I don’t have a tongue but even if I did why would they have to know exactly how long it is in centimeters? Or my nonexistent underwear size? But after a while, we finally came to the end of the flood of required information. And all that was left was a pile of digital paperwork, that I swear if it was physical would have been about seven feet tall. By speeding up my perception I was able to get all that completed in a few seconds.

{Okay, we are all done} Sam sighed {Here, I’m sending you a link. Download the application on whatever obsolete hardware your running yourself on, be sure to update your account every time you rank up.}

I found I could easily deny the link entry to my system. It was a relief that everyone didn't just have a gateway into my mind.

{obsolete?} I asked sort of offended.

{your drone has actual propellers, your slow, and your friend has been in cryo for 50 years. You scream old tech. I bet you aren’t even running on a nanoparticle CPU.}

{I-I ummm} I guess that’s another thing to add to my list…

{whatever. Is there anything else you need?}

I was about to say no when my thoughts seemed to buzz and words came out of my proverbial mouth without me prompting them.

{Do you know of any metabeings who may be having trouble with their powers? They need to be below rank C and need to be willing to help us out with fixing our place up.}

“They will be paid” Shelly added.

{I don’t know how long we’ll need them, but I think it’ll be a win-win scenario.} I said without saying

{I am sorry,} Sam said in a very not sorry tone, {while we do have access to counseling reports and other such resources. I cannot provide those to you because they are private information. Of course, if you want to go through the necessary people and complete the needed paperwork to get the information released to you I coul-}

“I gotta list for ya laddie, Here be the names and addresses of a few youngins who are haven' some issues. One of em be my own boy so as long as ya take care of em and don’t tell nobody where ya got this list from”

{Trohorn, how can you even consider doing this? } Sam screeched.

“any friend of Shelly’s is a friend of mine, a dwarf trust’s his friends”

{And how do you even know this is the real Shelly? For all you know it’s a meta who has the ability to copy memories and mimic voices why risk it for someone you have not seen in multiple decades!? }

“I trust me gut, anyway if they ain’t who they said they where an’ hurt me boy I’ll just kill em latter”

he said this with such calm conviction that I was sure he meant it. He didn’t even try to whisper. It wasn’t a threat it was just him stating a fact.

Trohorn looked to us.

“So do ye want the list or na?”

I didn’t think no was really an option at that point and soon I had memorized a short list of names and addresses that we would visit while we were here in town, most likely after our shopping. I’ll be honest, despite my initial hesitation, I was ecstatic. This list represented everything I wanted and would be the key to the recapture and repair of our facility too! Not to forget my programing and the ingrained drive I had to train metas, and for that, I needed more of them than just Shelly. Needless to say, it was like Christmas came early in a candy-store filled with cocaine. I had to hold myself back from flying directly there at top speed when Shelly insisted that we handle our priorities first. With our business there done we left offices, moving on to our next task.

A man watched as the two drones flew out of the hero league office building. He had been watching those two for a while now. He had watched them as they entered the city, he had watched as they had traveled, flying over the highways to get here and he had watched as they had exited a facility that was never supposed to be functional again. A facility that he personally was supposed to make sure was never functional again. It would be his ass if the boss ever found out about this, so he had followed them, they had yet to do anything interesting until his enhanced senses had allowed him to overhear one of them asking for a list of metabeings who had issues with their powers. He hadn’t been able to look at the list but it was obvious if he let them collect people the problem would only be exasperated and the boss would surely notice then. It was best for the issue to be dealt with while they were still in the city, all he need was some hired help. And he knew exactly where to get it.

“That was weird.” Shelly lamented as we left the office.

{What’s up?}

“it's just suuuuper weird for someone who was younger than you last time you met to be older than you suddenly. From my perspective, Trohorn went from a year or two younger to old man like snap!”

{wait, how old are you?}

“twenty-five not counting the time in cryo. Why?”

{But that means…} I did the math quickly in my head {Trohorn is around 70 years old!?}

“Yeah.”

{but he looks middle-aged! Like fifty at most!}

“Ranking up slows down aging for the biological races. It doesn’t mean much for us but for normal humans and other natural lifeforms it changes everything. I’ve heard that people A-ranked or higher actually stop aging all together and will actually live forever until you kill them.”

{like a lobster.} I noted.

“Yeah… I guess, like a lobster. Why do you know that specific piece of- never mind.”

The next place we headed was the bank where shelly was able to reopen her account will all her funds intact, more than intact actually.

“Your balance is $4,670,000,000.76” the teller informed us, growing more and more surprised as she spoke the number aloud.

“Oh. Um…Wow.” shelly described eloquently.

Well, there went any issues we could possibly have with money. Shit, I’m pretty sure we could buy the entire city if we wanted, let alone pay some guys and purchase the supplies we need.

{Hell, why don’t we get an entire construction crew or something?}

“NO!” Shelly shouted, startling me “no, there are a lot of secrets and dangerous things down there not to mention the stuff that has been warped by the generator. I can do a small group, especially if they stay mostly on the first floor and we can keep an eye on them until we are sure we can trust them, but a large group like that no i really don't think we should do it.” She explained.

But I heard her thoughts.

(We can’t just let anyone in, not yet. Too early. They… anyone could be…)

I’ve noticed that louder thoughts tend to get through Shelly’s mental barrier. Thoughts that are tainted with a lot of emotion, like fear, are clearly audible to me. those words were like they came from a speaker. Still, I chose not to mention it. If shelly needed to talk about it she would, I had trusted her thus far and saw no point in stopping now.

I won’t go into detail about our shopping trip, we purchased everything we thought needed plus some. We pretty much brought out the inventory of a hardware store including all the 3D printing cartridges they had. At first, I was worried about how we would carry it all but with my ability to create wormholes to any place I’ve ever been we could send them off on their way to the lab and put them where they went when they got here.

“Now you’re thinking with portals.”

{shouldn’t I have been the one to say that, because of the whole AI thing?}

“shut up, or I’m going to burn your house down with lemons”

Our next stop was a tech shop there we picked up some parts and newer devices we thought would be useful, like cleaning bots, hologram projectors, a maintenance drone and a few newer computers that Sam had been so ‘friendly’ to suggest as well as the ever needed Wi-Fi router and some game consoles for shelly, it was her money after all. I got at least two of everything and rather than send it all back home I had one of my droninjas slice one of each item to bits. It was highly cathartic. Man, was I falling in love with my powers.

While I got a template for everything, I only seemed to get notifications for things the system considered ‘units’

BIOLING!

[3D PRINTER TEMPLATE FOR MAINTENANCE DRONE ADDED TO SYSTEM

3D PRINTER TEMPLATE FOR CLEANDROID ADDED TO SYSTEM

3D PRINTER TEMPLATE FOR SPIDER-CAM ADDED TO SYSTEM]

We also splurged a bit and bought two sets of avatar software marketed toward AI.

The last shop we visited was too get food for our soon to be guests. I have literally no interest in the culinary arts on account of the fact that I can't eat anything so I’ll simply state we got what we needed from there.

Our only task left to us now was to collect my toys- ‘eherm’, trainees. I meant trainees. Our trainees.