Having endured and, at the end of the day, even enjoyed his nightly conversation with Mario, Roberto closed his eyes with a mixture of conflicting expectations. A part of him wanted a good rest, cuddled by the warmth of the fire and the blankets, in order to wash away the stress. On the other hand, however, he had by no means forgotten about his personal Skill [Mental Training].

In the previous hours, especially after having enjoyed his dinner, he tried to make logical sense of the first of its two effects. As for the second one, it was quite clear to him from the beginning that he didn't understand a fucking thing. It was impossible to know whether it was, in fact, a bullshit similar to the Palace of Spirit and Time or one of those magical spaces very similar to a standard web novel, made only to make the protagonist stronger than the others.

The first effect, on the contrary, seemed a little more reasonable, at least in appearance. Roberto had never joined a boxing gym or a dojo of any martial art, but he had learned from comics and movies the idea behind the practice defined, in jargon, as shadow boxing, namely the kind of training that consisted in imagining an opponent in front of you to try your moves or dodge the imaginary ones of the invisible opponent.

Frankly speaking, the whole thing sounded strange and unconvincing to the boy. Obviously, the ability to visualize how a punch would impact the enemy's guard or how an opponent would respond under certain conditions must have been an advantage, or perhaps better said, a tangible talent. But even that had practical limits, at least according to Roberto.

The first one, improves the imagination of the user, allowing him to simulate an opponent in his mind with greater precision and effectiveness... Well, if these skills are given at random then it's one thing, otherwise if they are calibrated in some way on the players I must have read too much Baki.

He thought while the tiredness was slowly getting the better of him, preventing him with more and more strength to build an argument worthy of this name. It actually wasn't a bad feeling, but the fact that he hadn't understood anything more than in the afternoon had left a bitter taste in his mouth. When it came to secondary matters from time to time it could happen that his perfectionist side showed up, but it came out for nothing that was related to school unfortunately.

Before he could find that thought amusing, however, the noises around him became more and more distant and his consciousness slipped into a peaceful sleep where the crackling of the fire seemed to have become the only guardians of that momentary peace.

Unfortunately for him, his tranquility was extremely brief; almost as short-lived as his first, and very sad, time. Poor star, I could have avoided this detail.

[Execute support program... Support program executed. Addiction search... Addiction downloaded. Compilation in progress... Compilation in progress... Compilation finished. GUI installation in progress... Installation finished. Startx execution... Execution failed. Executing startx with administrative privileges...]

Ah... this is new to me. Since when would you need sudo for such command? Roberto commented without understanding if he was awake or not while a robotic voice, different from the one he had heard in the morning or in the afternoon, repeated a series of commands that in some cases seemed to come from a terminal shell. Although it probably had to be a coincidence.

When the series of commands was over, a sort of nostalgic noise reached his ears that he could not immediately identify. On the contrary, it remained permanently on the tip of his tongue. Nothing to be surprised about, however, for his age 56k was indeed a relic of a past not too old but already well forgotten.

[Loading default settings... Loading completed. Welcome Root.] A strange being told him in a nice voice as soon as the lights came on. Roberto had to use most of his common sense and lack of will to think to accept the strangeness of that place and of his new little friend, a subspecies of penguin just taller than his knees with a strange colored crest on his head.

That being, bless him, was not even the strangest factor. That strange place he'd just woken up in... Now that was raising several existential questions. And nothing as simple and trivial as "Where am I?" or "How did I end up here?", but rather questions of a legal nature such as "Did they pay for the rights to the Tekken training arena?" since he had certainly already seen that big white room divided by geometric patterns back in his PSP days.

In any case, moving on from that nonsense, the boy took a deep breath and then stopped looking around. Even without asking, he knew there was no way to complain to the administrators about the embarrassing quality of their work. So, skipping past that, he turned to the friendly penguin and asked, "May I know what's going on?" in a relatively cordial manner.

The animal seemed pleased to be asked, even too much I dare say but I don't tend to judge cute little animals, flapping its wings against its own fat and soft body a couple of times.[Your loss of consciousness activated the second effect of your Personal Skill, Root user]. He answered right back, opening and closing his beak to mimic humans but failing to perfectly sync his movements with his speech. [This space is part of the graphical environment available to the Root user, please use it as you wish. I, on the other hand, am the virtual assistant of the Root user, the name chosen at the time of installation was Pen Pen. Would you like to change it?], he then continued asking Roberto as the tip of his wings started to move again.

"Ah... Well, that was also a penguin actually and now that I think about it I never realized what happened to it..." Blurted Roberto in response, caring more about the quote than about common sense. Appreciating however, for once, the tastes of the developers who, praying to God, would also agree that the Rebuild never existed and was always just a mass illusion. So, he avoided changing the name of the penguin.

"No, I like it the way it is." He told Pen Pen without paying too much attention. Nonetheless, he was faced with an overly joyful and playful reaction from the little animal. Needless to say, whoever had programmed it must have had a few screws loose.

" Since you are my assistant, you can tell me how I should or could use my Skill, right? Or should I figure things out on my own like in a video game? And maybe retrieve some floppy disks to unlock additional features?" It was then Roberto's turn to ask another question, marking the end of the Penguin's celebration.

[Why would the Root user do such things?] Pen Pen asked back, tilting his head slightly in a quite human manner. [We are inside User Root's Imaginary World. In this place the Root user has full permission to use every known function within the program. Please rephrase the question in such a way that I can understand it], he then said, bringing his 'hands' together as if he were a child about to apologize.

"Ah... Good to know." Roberto breathed a sigh of relief, ignoring the penguin's gestures and 'expression'. At the very least, whatever he had unlocked with this second effect would not require grinding of any kind. Positive news having never been of the breed capable of accepting pointless side quests, without purpose or soul, just for an upgrade.

"Then could you give me an introduction to the features available? And maybe even a very quick tutorial on how to best use them?" He continued while his mood was improving.

[Certainly, user Root!] Pen Pen said, raising his voice and moving one wing upward in a subspecies of old-fashioned military salute. Fortunately ancient Rome took precedence over the modern age, otherwise there might have been ethical problems on the horizon. Oh, and Roberto also ignored this gesture out of sheer laziness; he also found that if a penguin or a pug playing the part of a man with a funny moustache could be seen as dangerous or offensive, then the world needed an asteroid and not anti-fascist movements.

[The Root user within the Imaginary World has the possibility to recreate any object or person that is part of his memory or imagination, or he has the possibility to create a new object or person based on the information in his possession. In both cases the Root user will have to order an analysis of the necessary components, a search for dependencies and finally a compilation of the generated code. The time needed to complete the operation depends on the complexity of the request. Within the Imaginary World; variables such as temperature, climate, terrain, physical tiredness, mental tiredness, pain and death can be managed from the administration panel. As a default setting all these variables are active and ready to be changed on command].

The endless explanation of the pet certainly could have been done better or, at the very least, could have been much shorter. However, that presentation had been the first thing since the beginning of the whole disgrace that resembled a tutorial, and Roberto was delighted. For once, he wouldn't have to press random buttons or speculate on how or why. A dramatic improvement.

"So it's possible for me to create anything here? How about a knife for example? One like the kitchen ones I picked up this afternoon." He asked contentedly a few seconds after clenching his fist and holding back a tear, making Pen Pen feel quite pleased among other things.

[Certainly, Root user.] The penguin replied immediately, adding immediately afterwards: [Would you like to start the search and compilation program?].

Roberto nodded and rubbed his hands together, interested in the matter.

[Request received. Root user please wait...] continued the penguin, bringing up in front of him an old-fashioned desk with a big old-looking computer on top of it, connected to a cathode ray tube monitor that took up most of the available space on the desk. Pen Pen, although not having real fingers, used the tip of the wing to press buttons on the keyboard equipped with a modern ps2 connector, writing on the spot a long and tedious series of commands and activating key combinations to move from one terminal to another.

Some time later, while Roberto stood behind him to observe the whole thing, the little animal finished his work and said without taking his eyes off the four thirds screen: [Preparations completed. Requirements analysis completed. Dependencies obtained and analyzed. Does the Root user wish to proceed with the compilation of the source code? Current estimated time is five minutes and twenty-three seconds].

Interested and genuinely surprised by the simplicity with which everything was going, he patted Pen's shoulder and jokingly said, "Go! Go!", sending the poor penguin into a tizzy for a moment. Once that feeling was over, however, the little animal nodded and lowered its beak, and resumed pressing keys on the keyboard like a madman, increasing after a variable amount of interactions the bar of completely appeared at the top of the screen.

Watching him in action was quite amusing for Roberto, enjoying the endless cascade of codes and alphanumeric strings with obscure meanings. It was a bit like watching the classic hacker idea that could be found in any movie on the subject; a set of obviously unrealistic actions that in the real world wouldn't make sense but if it was a talking penguin doing them so it was okay. Yeah, that kind of boorish science fiction.

[Compilation complete. User Root has obtained a new program. Current name: Knife.] Said Pen Pen once the work was done, wiping the sweat from his forehead and sighing like a good office worker with a few extra pounds.

"Oh... and how am I supposed to call it up? Do I need a file manager or a search function?" Roberto asked him, looking forward to testing his new experiment. However, Pen Pen shook his head, accompanying his gesture with a kind of squeak, later saying: [The Root user only needs to wish for the desired program to start. Dolphins are not absolutely necessary in this place].

The joke took a while to get through to the boy, given how out of context it was. "I've always been an XFCE guy, I personally find KDE Plama too complex. I dropped Windows so I wouldn't have to set my PC on fire every time it crashed, if I have to shoot myself in the foot so much I might as well not bother downloading Linux," he then told the penguin reciprocating the joke.

[I agree, user Root! Agreed! Agreed!] was the excited and happy reply of the little creature, while he fluttered his wings around like a child would do with his arms.

"Well, well... I'd say it would be better to stop wasting time," murmured Roberto after briefly taking a breath, leaving the penguin in his own little world and concentrating on important matters. In fact, if he had now just 'created' an object but it hadn't appeared anywhere most likely it meant that he would have to initialize an instance of it. Now, he didn't know much about databases or object-oriented programming, but for better or worse the logic there should have been similar. So, at least he hoped, things should be fine.

And, indeed, as soon as he pronounced the word, "Knife," keeping in mind the object he wished to bring to light; a kitchen knife, the kind used for fish, appeared in his right hand in a cloud of light.

"Oh... This is cool, this is very cool..." He commented then as he studied his new creation, finding no oddity in its weight or blade. The handle was quite... Generic, now maybe that was the correct word, because it seemed to be composed of a single piece of very solid black plastic without any writing, date of manufacture or branding.

Pen noticed the effort his master was putting into that meticulous study, so he got brave and decided to interrupt him to explain a handful of details he hadn't had time to tell him yet.

[Root User! Root User!] He then called out to him to get his attention, only resuming after Roberto's eyes began to lift from the knife. [Current computational capacity is not sufficient to generate perfect copies. Not even the help of all his memories related to the topic at hand could make a difference. Pen Pen is sorry...] He paused for a moment bringing the tips of his wings closer together while lowering his beak downward. Concluding then with a sorry tone: [At the moment the compilation is limited both by the amount of RAM available and by the computing capacity. With the current resources it is not possible to create a perfect job…]

Roberto took some time to respond, remaining mostly silent and thinking by himself. By now, in fact, he already had a decent idea of the purpose of that place, and as long as the rest of the objects he could create were of a similar quality to the knife he was holding then he would have nothing to complain about. Certainly, calling a kitchen knife a pointy blade with only one sharp side and a black plastic handle was very generous by today's standards, but screw the aesthetics; as long as things worked they were more than fine.

Not for nothing did I always appreciate XFCE. He thought at that point with a hint of irony, later closing his eyes to decide on his next move. At the moment... He resumed thinking. At the moment I could try to practice throwing these bastards. With a never ending supply and enough time even I could get good at throwing them. But... I should still have a day, at least if I trust System's voice. So this I could do it tomorrow. Right now I'd rather...

"Pen Pen!" He called suddenly, causing the animal's little heart to take a hit. "Earlier, you said that in addition to objects, it would also be possible to create people, right? Could you produce an opponent for me? I'd like to see how rusty I become."