“So you want to participate in Engineering Society?” Loci Parametric reached beneath his workbench and took out a form, “If that is the case, would you mind filling out this sign up form?”

“I’ll need to think about it first,” Tann peeked at Rosy, as demonstrated from Tann’s field of view, Rosy’s ‘passionate factor’ was really high, “I think it is very likely. However, I still don’t know what do you guys do exactly.”

Loci were about to speak up, but Rosy blinked at him, as a resulted, Loci gestured Tann towards Rosy.

“This club is mainly for…” Rosy started, she attempted to summarise nervously, “for Engineering undergraduates to complete their course work. Like, you know the ‘Further Project Qualification’, they need to come up with their designs for a specific task…”

“Who cares about the FPQ?” Loci shouted, from nowhere, he dragged a huge protective suitcase onto his workbench, “this is the real deal.”

“Wait Loci!”

Before Rosy could stop him, Loci unlocked the fingerprint lock on top of the case, with a few mechanical clicks and the sound of a motor, the box unlocked. Tann raised an eyebrow, it was something she wasn’t expecting. Pretending to be strong, Loci lifted the full steel object from the case. He took a deep breath after pulling out a pin that allowed the four lags of the object to shot out quickly and extended all the way to the ground. The centre part of the object gave out a low pitched buzz followed by the cracks made by the gears.

“This is the T13” Loci smiled brightly while patting the long barrels of the turret, “simple as it sounds, one 500 watts D.C motor, one coolant chamber, one shell dispenser, eight 5.56 mm barrels with barrel lines made by myself.”

Knowing that the tea had already spelt, Rosy explained, “You won’t be doing it yet, only the Year 4s or anyone who has finished their Masters can work in the Automated Turret Project.”

“I’m just curious,” Tann walked towards the turret, as she walked, the top of the turret rotated to aim at her head, “what is this project really about?”

Loci pressed the back of the turret lightly and the turret responded by stop tracking Tann, “I mean…it is just about building armed turrets for military use. It is established by the North Köloñ company, like a way to find potential future employees.” He switched off the turret by removing another key from the gun breech. Tann walked closer to the machine and laid her hands on the cold steel surface, then she moved her hand to the long ammo belt that was channelled from the gun breach to a nylon bag.

“Are these real?” Tann turned to Loci while feeling the sharp tips of the bullets.

“Of course they are!” Loci brought up a box of used ammo cartages, all labelled: Copper Tip Training Ammo. Then without Tann asking, Loci pulled out a card from behind off the air conditioner on his chest, “I bought them from Alucard’s Firearms, but you need a special license for the project to enable to obtain an automatic weapon, especially large calibre weapons. However, if you want to go there and buy a shot…”

“Here we go again,” Rosy shook her head and sighed, “I know you are a friend of the boss there, but stop advertising to new students about buying shotguns.”

“I’m not asking her to…I mean I am just telling her that if she goes there and buys a shotgun with my account name, she can get a 20% off discount,” Loci argued back and slid the card back behind his chest-air-conditioner.

“Does the discount also apply to other guns?” Tann asked suddenly while inspecting the turret.

“I think almost all guns?” Loci replied, “I’ll need to check with Small, but, what kind of guns do you want?”

“Just asking,” Tann brushed off the topic quickly, she petted the turret lightly and stepped aside, “that’s a cool project, to be honest, but I need to go shopping for a bit.”

———————

The shop keeper put down his graphic novel slowly as the blond girl dumped a few boxes of Red Bull and Monster onto the counter.

“Having a sports gala kid?” he asked the girl who was still searching in the freezer.

“Nope,” Tann replied with looking, she took out a plastic bag and filled it with a few lemon flavoured Gatorade, “personal uses.”

The shop keeper chuckled lightly by Tann’s comments, “Hell ya! Just make sure you don’t drink too much or you’ll get a heart attack!” However, his volumed lowered dramatically as he received the cold stare from Tann, “or maybe you want some coffee.”

Tann turned away, “No, I hate bitter stuff, but I just need caffeine.” Then, she put her bag of Gatorade on the boxes, “hope these can last night?”

“Watching the stars?” the shop keeper laughed, “That’s sure the work of Jesus.”

“Jesus?”

“Of course it is Jesus!” the shop keeper laughed even harder, “was reading this magazine this morning, and this dude forgot his name, Julian something, one of the nerds in Qchong claimed that this is similar to what happened at the birth of Jesus.” He scanned the bar codes on the drinks and brought up some duck tape to secure the boxes even more.

“That’s 696 dollars and 96,” he howled, “back to my point, if all the scientists, those Drs, if they don’t have a clue, then who should we believe? People need something to believe, if science sucks, then all we have is a god.”

“Thanks,” Tann him her pink credit card, she took out a foldable trolly and put the boxes into a nice stack onto the trolly, “I’ll come back for more later.” She exited through the glass doors and headed towards her login zone.

“I see, buying more drinks?” Phurder Puler’s annoying sound appeared across the radio again, “NICE, how did you manage to get that number?! Well, that’s probably why they selected you as the leader.”

“Shut up Phurder,” Tann snapped, she stopped her heels and took out a bottle of Gatorade. She twisted open the cap in a quick fashion and took a massive gulp down her throat, “Aaah!”

“Let me guess,” Phurder joked, “Is it G-Fuel?”

“No,” Tann replied, “I’ll need to order some online. That aside, what is the chaos factor?”

Phurder swiped his monitor and dragged out a few graphs, he stared at them for a bit and press the record button, “Some gradual increase at the moment, but the trend is pretty obvious, we’ll probably a major shift after Test no.2.”

“Should I do that today or tomorrow?” Tann asked while taking another drink, “Is Cotanian doing her role right?”

“Dr Cotanian?” Phurder giggled, “She went to fix the pipes with Bino, she almost beat Casio up this morning because he forgot to tidy up the tools. Yeah, I think you should do it tomorrow, so we can see a greater difference between the two Tests.”

“Sure,” Tann replied, “can I come back for tonight, I miss my caffeine injector.”

Phurder played with his injector, “You caffeine addict, imagine the government banning caffeine injection, you’ll end up in the jail within an hour…Hang on! What the…” Phurder voice was becoming increasing blurred causing Tann to stop once again.

“What's wrong Phurder?” She questions calmly, “I already had one of your pranks, not this time.”

“No…I…Minimap…”

The radio was off. Tann let out a sigh, “This guy sure can’t do things properly without a prank or two.” However, she checked her mini for the last time, and, she noticed something strange, right in front of her, inside the login site, was a red spot.

Red Spot: Whenever there is a section of the program that is malfunctioning due to lag or other factors, it will be indicated as a red dot on the minimap.

Tann let go of her trolly of drinks and walked towards the login house alone.

Suddenly she felt something was off, and her relaxes forced her to jump aside. Yet, it was too late: Tann felt a sudden shock in her right leg followed by intense pain as she landed on the ground.

She groaned and looked at her leg. A long metallic spike had pierced right through her mussels and stuck there with its tip and end exposing from either side of her leg. Dreamily, Tann reached for the spike and as her hand made contact with it, she let out a scream. Pain. The red coloured liquid was pouring out of her wound.

Damage: 10%

This is the first time Tann saw the damage value on her virtual display. Then she saw it.