Lucas sighed. It was boring here. But he was forced to concede that his health was more important than him having something to do.

Still, there were things more fun than being forced to not use augmented reality.

How could anyone live without all that information just a glance away? And the fact that there were apps that could not be used without it, some of them rather vital for his general work, did not make this change any easier. But at least he would likely be cleared in a few hours, which was great.

While he was lying in the hospital bed, hating existence and everything else, in a different room, a doctor was comparing scans of his brain activity. Something had changed in a significant way, which had not happened with the other probands. He called Ms. Peregrine: „I have something very interesting here in regards to Mr. Tarson. Please send one of those that work with the ship-sim to me. I would like a second opinion, and we need more tests, but it looks like Mr. Tarson‘s brain is adapting a bit. Maybe enough, but please keep in mind that I am not sure, and even if I am right, we have not enough information about the practicability, that he can at some point use the ship-sim with no or only minor negative consequences. I need to stress that I could be wrong. It could even mean that the next time he goes into the simulation, he has an even worse reaction. But I am hopeful.“

„Thank you for informing me promptly. I think Mr. Gąszcz is free, and, if you are right, he is the correct man to figure out the details. If you are wrong, he is capable enough to realize that. He might be strange and go overboard sometimes, but he will not endanger someone recklessly.”

“Great. When can I expect him in my office?”

“He will be there in, wait a sec, ah, 20 minutes.”

“Ok, great. I will be expecting him. Anything else?”

“No, not really. Good bye.”

“Good bye.”

The doctor ended the call and looked at the monitor in front of him. Yes, augmented reality could do a lot of things, but sometimes it payed to not need to rely on software to have an information panel floating in the room, where everyone could see it. Not to mention that this did not require everyone to give their consent to the connection. Which, especially in a restricted government facility might even be a security risk, which meant that he might not even be allowed to ask. Or wanted to ask, because of the risk it posed to his own systems.

Twenty minutes latter, an old man knocked on the door. He had an unkempt appearance, his hair sticking out at odd angels. His clothes were not completely clean, as well as in disarray.

After he opened the door, the man, Assumpcio Gąszcz said, without any preamble: “Now, lets show me the data you find so interesting.”

“Hello to you as well. It is on the monitor there, which you can control with that pointer over there. But I have the relevant portion active currently. See here, that is how Mr. Tarson’s brain looked before he went into the pod. Or rather, how it looked two months before that, we have the scan from a routine checkup. Now, that is how it looks after he went into it. You see that activity there? Of course, it could be something that happened in the last two months, or something unconnected. But, see here, that is how it looks currently. Real time, by the way.” The doctor pointed out the relevant things in the room and on the monitor while he spoke.

“Ok, you are right, this is interesting. But we will need to put him at least once more into the pod to be capable of proving that something is going on, and to have an idea if it is a positive or negative development. Speaking of the pod, do we have its logs?”

“Yes. But the resolution is shit. I am not entirely sure why, but something went wrong with the general monitoring system. I am guessing, but it will require a physical checkup, that they are slightly misaligned. This is not to say that the data is useless, but it certainly is a lot less useful than it might have been.”, he used his watch to manipulate the Monitor quickly, pulling up a window which was in the background: “See here. That is the best out of the bunch.”

“Ok, I see what you mean with that the resolution was shit. That is, well not unusable, but certainly very difficult to work with. Lets leave that particular analysis for future us, shall we?”

“I have nothing against it. Well, lets continue. What do you want to focus on next?

Both began to talk about technical minutiae and making plans of how to test their developing hypothesises without endangering their charge.

A few days later, Lucas was again in a pod. But this time it was not the ship-sim, but instead a simulation of a tank. Here they went far less extreme, mainly because you did not need to deal with that much information, and speed of that information being processed was significantly less vital. It was still important, but you generally had more than fractures of milliseconds of warning, and, more importantly, you could not react in time, if you had just that much warning. Which, in space was a bit different. This time, it went without a problem, if one ignored that the muzzle flash of his main gun rotated through the colors pink, lila and blue. Also, sometimes it was not even there. Which was irritating, but not really problematic.

What was however problematic was how fine, or rather how rough the controls were. In most situations, that was not important, but you could forget to park that thing on anything less than a football field. Or get into cover and stop were you wanted to, which was an important ability. Well, luckily he would not be required to solve the issue.

The last year had been interesting for Lucas. He went into the ship sim three more times, and now the scientist were certain that he was adapting to it. Sadly, he did not feel that really. The next month or two would be brutal, because they wanted to push him into adapting. If it was possible in a sensible timeframe to get the problems down to a manageable level, they would begin real-life tests. With the help of his brain scans and figuring out why he was able to adapt, the scientists had managed to find more probands. It was currently estimated that about 4.3% of the entire population of the UE was capable of adapting to the ship-sim.

But when he was not in the ship-sim or recovering from that, he had worked with the tank and airplane parts of the project. Airplanes were running into similar issues as the ship-sim was, But massively reduced. In fact, it was from the beginning down to an acceptable level. In fact, less than a month after his start here, they began to use physical tests with the tanks, and ten days after that, the first real life test with an airplane had begun. Of course, some accidents had happened, some of them rather funny and minor, others not so much. Luckily, no one was killed, but one was out of action for at least two years, even with modern medical technology.

Still, ignoring the month of horror that was waiting for him, he was hopeful for the future, and the project he helped, and likely inspired, at least in part, had resulted in advantages for the UE’s military against the Lizards. Which was all anyone could have hoped for.