Carly sat on her bed contemplating the fact that she was nowhere near as tired as she would normally be from regular days training. 'I should have had a hard training session maybe? Then at least I could have passed out from exhaustion, instead of sitting here with an overactive mind. Stupid brain, you inconvenient piece of shit,' she flopped back into the bed and looked at her clock. It read 9.08pm and 5.31am and sighed. Two and a half hours before the competition started she really wanted to get a minimum 8, preferably 10 hours sleep before then. She had 13 hours before she absolutely must be out of her TME and heading to the stadium. She sighed again. 'I love time dilation but sometimes it has its drawbacks.'

“I really should have trained harder today,” she said to the ceiling. Carly liked training, she had to, as part of PURG's Martial Development Program (MDP). Laying back she let her mind wander over her present life.

Ross Melos, the person behind Carly getting into the program had informed her about PURG's plans and offered to 'sneak' Carly in. It was a big risk for Ross and his select few trusted companions in the clandestine operation. Fortunately, being someone with a one percent ownership of the most powerful corporation in the world. Ross had enough internal clout, that he and his crew were able to get in on the early equipment installation days when security wasn't quite so ridiculously tight at the black site.

Ross was one of the three people most responsible for the development of the early neural dive system. Further, he was the only one who had stayed on throughout corporate take-overs and restructuring. He would have eventually been brought into the development process anyway, so he got a head-start on the exciting new project.

Carly admired his willingness to risk and sacrifice himself for his younger self's naivete in developing the technology without considering the human consequences. The shortsightedness of genius, seeing the wonderful benefits from a narrow perspective without considering how humans love to pervert the shit out of absolutely everything.

So, Ross got Carly into 'the site' under the guise of 'historical data mappings and reference guides to neural mapping for the dive process.' She was told by Ross 'the site' was a retired coal mine. The site itself was massive, the 10,000 square meters allocated to the development team a drop in a bucket. It was to become the hub of the working titled Powered1 in Northern, North America.

Unfortunately, not even the development team got to see the scale of the full implementation. It was fully automated and still physically expanding even now less than two months from launch. The robots were still hauling out materials along with building and maintaining what would very soon become the live infrastructure. Taking in only raw materials and turning them into additional 3D printers, mining equipment, robots, diamond fibre structural supports and walls, hermetically sealed doorways, quantum processors, memory riser boards, fibre cable and so much more. Dynamically scalable infrastructure, it was simply put an automated underground megastructure. One, if it was to be believed of 11 such sites, PURG was going big with its idea and no one on the development staff knew the full details.

Carly, apprised of such goings on by Ross, considered what the PURG bastards could be up to. From what Ross and his group and come up with the structure was many times larger in size than necessary. Clearly, it was a plan on a grand scale, which now, so close to launch, had the support of nearly all the worlds governments. Ross had heard whispers that for each individual that went into a transference capsule, their residing country of that individual had to pay $600,000 USD if under the age of 30, with the cost reducing by an internationally agreed upon sliding scale as age increases. If those numbers were true, along with the reported number of people who had already entered a transference capsule, then PURG had already received somewhere between 8 and 10 trillion USD without even delivering on a product yet, quite obscene.

Yet, this was the company that used its gaming immersive environment to revolutionise a global prison system. Taking the overpopulated nightmare experienced by all countries globally. Short-term prison sentences which on average cost governments $22,000 USD per year. PURG reduced that cost down to the cost of the dive system of $40,000 and $15,000 per year. Life sentences, well, that was where the real savings could be found. The system captivated the hearts and minds of the debt-laden governments globally. There was one minor negative that the politicians chose to ignore, almost 30 million prison guards, who found themselves out of work over a two year period.

With a successful proof of concept with prisoners, PURG could call $600,000 a cheap way of alleviating both overpopulation and debt crisis. Food costs and power costs both being incredibly expensive. With most people simply unemployable due to near total robotics workforce. Governments had no answers except to bleed money in a spiraling deficit vacuum that came with the provisioning of basic human rights to water, food, and shelter for the masses.

Not to mention, PURG's record for delivering exceptionally high-quality immersive environments across its various game genres using the dive platform. No, PURG definitely had the runs on the board when it came to proof of delivering a quality an end product.

So, what was the purpose of creating 11 mega-complexes several orders of magnitude larger than was actually needed. Carly had absolutely no idea, neither did Ross or anyone else on 'the site' developing Powered1. Carly thought the board and high capital investors would probably know, certainly Richard Isaccs Shrodastower, CEO and the driving force behind PURG and it's success, would know the full details of the project. They were very successfully keeping those details locked up tight.

Getting back on track, Carly thought back to what she had been told by Ross about being 'snuck' into 'the site'. Eventually, she was upgraded from an ancient monstrosity that was her old TME to the baseline all users would operate under, a 160 qubit-based quantum processor and memory platform. With so few states, the processor and riser memory boards were cheap to manufacture yet far above the minimum requirement for a seamless transference into an immersive environment with sensory stimuli as real, heightened even, to the organic world.

The MDP trainees had been selected from among the various countries that signed up early in support of the 'next big thing' offered by PURG. The people selected were castoffs, no resources, family or other parties that cared about them. They were all living with mental, physical or a combination impairments. Readily accessible meat for the experiment wagon, most definitely. The PURG board negotiated with the early signees to create an additional starting shard just for its own employees and investors. Everyone else signing on would start within their countries own specific start zone. The only deviation, which was optional, being small countries within close proximity to one another. They could combine to populate a single shard, focus towards chains of islands for the most part.

Carly berated her mind again for branching onto tangents and not shutting down so she could get some damn sleep. Unfortunately, it kept right on thinking away at things.

The trainees of the MDP experiment were not required since what PURG was trying to show was already proved way back in the Digital Dive Reality's early experimental days. Ross had helped develop the tech, Carly a coma patient at the edge of termination, and others like her had been used as test cases for proof of technology. Unlike then, the MDP was just an excuse for PURG to get their hands on a viable, controllable, pre-trained slave-force in Carly's opinion. It's purpose on launch to set the groundwork in the PURG shard start zone, making life easier for the 'important' people when they eventually undergo transference.

As a martial trainee, Carly's days had been consumed by the harsh rigors imposed by the hundreds of experts PURG employed as instructors for the 60,000 people selected for the program. An exceptionally wide scope of professional instruction was provided, yet only unarmed combat was allowed. A limitation imposed by the sign on countries that considered it too advantageous on launch if PURG had so many already highly skilled in the use of historical or fantasy styled weaponry.

Roughly two years into the MDP that eventually would last for almost six years, another project more than a decade in the making came to fruition. Termed, Artificial Extant, it was basically an AI based around emulating human brain mapping and decision making. Using the brain scans from millions of Dive clients, these AI are a new design capable of far surpassing the touring test and capable of being emotional, inspirational and fallible.

With some effort, Ross had managed to get his hands on two AE embryos and offered them to Carly for some additional assistance and companionship. Trusting Ross, she accepted them into her TME after setting their incredibly advanced parameters, they came to life as an old farming couple named Roy and Anne. The pair were cliché but so what, hard-working, always kind and considerate, just a joy to have around. Carly received other benefits from adding the pair, they came with their own processors which added to her TME. With the massive increase in processing capability, she was able to increase the time dilation in from 1.2 times to 4 times. Which was great for her to extensively use her expansive TME as a training ground.

After the third year in the MDP, and the addition of a new facility called The Loop, along with a continuous dueling competition that had a ladder ranking system was implemented. The trainees were provided far more flexibility with self-directed training programs. No longer were they required to train 10 hours minimum per day, six days a week. Instead, as long as they were inside the top 40,000 trainees on the ladder their only mandatory requirement was to meet a minimum of 20 hours of training and fight at least two duels per week.

Carly made it her purpose to stay under the radar with the whole duel ladder ranking stuff, she bounced around in the 30,000's for three years. Instead, using her unique TME situation of having full customisation access capabilities. She made her own advanced training facility, with a running track, gymnastics, parkour, plum blossom pole arena, and loop facility. The rest of the MDP trainees as far as she knew had TME's that were the internals of an apartment and came with basic customisation capability. Limited to changing wall colour, flooring or furniture only. By comparison, Carly's TME was a farm with livestock and crops prior to joining MDP. She counted herself fortunate, her sixteen square kilometer TME carried over.

Six years after the MDP started, Powered1 was less than two months away from going live, the scheduled launch set for the 01/01/2121. While the rest of the trainees had worked hard for those six years, Carly figured she had worked as hard or harder than them for somewhere between 12 and 13 years duration thanks to the power of time dilation. On top of that, with her advantage as someone who had been a ringer for various sports at University. Who focused on biomechanics, a field of study that seemed to align well with her natural talent in movement. As a child, compared to other students, she grasped movement in sports much quicker than others children. With age, she developed a love for understanding movement and it generally became more important to her than achievement in a sport itself. Not that she didn't want to win, she was very competitive back then and she absolutely hated loosing in any sport. Back then, she always just considered that achieving as close as possible to perfect movement, was an important component to achieving victory. This love of movement carried over to the MDP, where she again picked up the movements demonstrated by the martial masters far quicker and with more precision the those around her. All this culminated in Carly feeling she was well ahead of the curve and would definitely be successful in the first stage of the competition tomorrow. Which was why, laying on her bed looking up at the ceiling, it was kind of pissing her off she had too much nervous energy and could not get to sleep.

Sighing, she once again looked at her clock, it read 9.26pm and 5.35am, she decided to pull up the general message she had received along with every other trainee three non-dilated days ago.

General Announcement: Free-For-All

All martial development trainees will be expected at the Hub Main Stadium, prior to 8:00am, Monday 04/11/2120.

There you will stay until called to participate in a gender-specific Free-For-All battle against 5 other trainees. Only one in each group will leave victorious and move forward to the second event.

The second event will order the victorious martial trainees and all beta testers into performance order, using the Loop for the event. This performance order will become your Unique Identification Number (UIN) when Powered1 launches.

Further, the winning performance will receive a special prize, top performers will receive valuable Life Points and Personal Boosts.

All other martial participants eliminated during the Free-For-All will receive their UIN based on their position in the dueling ladder.

Do your best, you definitely want the advantage of the winning or top prizes offered.

PURG Liaison Team

November 4th, for her, she was most of a day into it and it was a little over two and a half hours before she would need to be at the stadium ready to partake of the first of these two events that would culminate in ordering the UIN's for the top 10,000 martial trainees and all beta participants. Those prizes, Life Points and Personal Boosts, Ross didn't even know any precise details about them.

She figured it was just one more way PURG was flexing its might over the various international governments. The CEO and board apparently did not like it when they banded together and imposed an oversight committee on the project including the MDP, to ensure the equality of treatment for all people in the program and acceptable capability bonuses received by the PURG population within this new world. Carly was glad the oversight committee was formed, why shouldn't they ensure their investment is monitored, these bastards at PURG wield far too power throughout the world.

Gazing at the message again for a minute with a blank mind, finally, Carly broke the moment and read through it once more. 'I wonder what the top prize could be,' Carly knew it was based on the fantasy genre and so had tried out several games to build her experience. 'Maybe some incredible magic item that will carry the top placed person through the world with ease,' she scoffed at such a thought. 'Bah, dream on fool, that sort of stupid over-powered crap ain't gonna happen. Personal boosts sound good but will be disappointing if they turn out to be temporary. Life Points, sounds like you get extra health, is it a fixed thing, temporary thing, damage healing, who the hell knows? Bullshit vagary at its best, roping everyone into their sales pitch and playing the plebeians for fools.

Well, that is about all the rejects for martial trainees could expect really. Impoverished, physically or mentally impaired scum that no government in the world wants to keep wasting vital resources on, supporting and caring for them.

Most of the fools buy into the 'better life' and 'new future' crap, they will learn when they get thrown to the wolves. I would almost feel sorry for the poor bastards, except I am one of them. Aah, but I am, but I am, I bought the sales pitch long ago and I am still here eating their shit, so I guess I am the biggest, maybe luckiest fool of them all. Who can blame the discards for taking a chance and wanting more, wanting better, a chance? I do, they do, everyone wants a better life, wants more for themselves. Even the obscenely rich with more than most of the world population combined, still want more. It's human nature, more, more, more. I wonder if or when really, Richard Isaccs Shrodastower will join us in the new world. Billionaire Ross is going to join on the first wave, the old bugger just wants to avoid the bone wagon.'

Carly's mind skipped subjects. 'At least Ross didn't discard his test subjects like the others involved back then. I may be the last one nearly sane and functional from those days but we all got time. Hell, he is even still trying to get the others into the world. Drop those loons into big arse monsters and see how much mayhem ensues. Hah, those poor saps would probably dig a hole and bury themselves in it, cocoon up and drool away.

Anyway, enough of that dreamy crap, I need a good nights sleep, I need to put all these junk thoughts out of my head.'

"Time to meditate," she said to the room.

Sitting up with her legs crossed, back straight, she flexed her head to the right and left a couple of times each way, stretching and cracking her neck then performing a couple of shoulder shrugs to relax them. She closed her eyes and starts focusing on her breath, breathing in slower, deeper. A minute into this routine she could feel the wandering thoughts begin to reduce as she concentrated on the act of breathing while beginning to internally recite her mantra.

'I am a smooth river rock in a gentle, flowing brook, smooth, passive, the water cooling me while the sun warms me. I am the rock and the rock is passive. I am calm, I am calm, I am calm.'

Maintaining focus on her breathing and her mantra all her worries and fits of anger gradually dissipated to the routine of meditation. Almost an hour later she was satisfied with her efforts and opened her eyes once more. She quickly checked her clock, it read 10.17pm and 5.43am, her alarm was set for 8.00am and 7.20am. Plenty of time for breakfast and getting ready before she had to leave with half an hour up her sleeve to be at the stadium at 8.00am.

Relaxed and calm, satisfied in the work and preparation she had spent training her butt off, she was confident she would be victorious in the first event. Confident she would be victorious without revealing her true skills, she had kept them well hidden for a while now, no need for the competition to see what she had until it was too late and she crushed them. She drifted off peacefully while enjoying the thought of brutalising anyone who got in her way, pounding fists into faces, dislocating joints, and snapping necks. The faintest hint of a smile appeared on her peacefully sleeping face.