I’d try to stop by and talk with Keith later about Irving. My first responsibility was to my own family, but Pointy wasn’t the only one uncomfortable about her fellow AI.

I'd talked to her a little more about her interactions with Irving. She had actually gotten quite a bit of useful information. Irving had different footage than Pointy, and he’d been laser-focused on ferreting out a list of different abilities and interactions. When his partner Keith had leveled up, he’d dutifully searched the interface based on Irving’s descriptions, so we even had names for these abilities.

We’d been thinking of taking Analyze for Cassie, to help Pointy out, but even Pointy had severe reservations about the ability in the hands of a three-year-old. Other than synergy, it was questionable whether Cassie would get any use from it at all. Would she even understand the information she was receiving? If she did, would she be able to communicate it to others? If Pointy had been able to do this for her, it would have been a different story… but Keith had Analyze, and Irving couldn’t access it directly at all.

Pointy had found a few alternatives for her. There was one called Combat Companion that made a somewhat-more-durable and capable assistant in the vein of Summon Seeker. The ability had downsides, though: the “companion” wasn’t that much more durable, and once it was destroyed there was a significant waiting period before it returned. On top of that, unless given specific orders, it would do nothing other than follow its creator. Nothing. Pointy had a heartbreaking piece of footage of an ambush of one of our froglike predecessors. For whatever reason, the frogperson didn’t give a command, and the combat companion sat nearby, doing nothing to intervene as a fairly innocuous-looking monster utterly savaged its master.

The ability was worth considering, but I agreed with Pointy’s top choice: an ability called Overlay. The ability’s description said “provides visual clarification and categorization to data provided by the user’s own senses.” Unlike Analyze, it wouldn’t tell Cassie anything she couldn’t technically figure out herself, but it would help her understand the world around her. Hostile monsters would be highlighted. If she heard a sound from behind her she didn’t recognize, an alert would call her attention to the edges of her vision, prompting her to turn around and assess the possible threat. If she heard a sound she ought to recognize as related to a monster, the alert would appear in a different color, drawing the connections her conscious mind hadn’t yet drawn. It even estimated safety for terrain, suggesting walking paths. It would favor open areas over routes that passed by a lot of bushes and other areas of concealment, and even integrate data from Cassie’s personal experience. For example, it would avoid areas where she'd previously witnessed monsters waiting in ambush, and temporarily mark areas as safe if she saw a human clear out the monsters there or pass through without being attacked.

The ability seemed likely to synergize well with Pointy and it would help fill the biggest gap in Cassie’s arsenal: judgment. Cassie had Summon Shell for defense and Summon Seeker for emergency attack, but knowing when to use those abilities was difficult for her.

Persuading Cassie to take it was a little more difficult than expected. She had apparently really enjoyed watching Micah make monsters do unintentional slip-and-slides during the rain a few days before and wanted to take “the icy thing.” Freeze wouldn’t have any synergy for Cassie, and it would be so easy for her to accidentally overuse the ability and leave herself exhausted.

At least she had waited to talk to us. Arnav, too young to really understand, had simply given in to his similar inclinations the last time he’d gathered enough points. Captivated by his father’s ability to make objects fly, Arnav had selected “Telekinesis” rather than the Summon Seeker ability Priya and George had tried to prepare him to take. The ability had almost no synergy with his other abilities, and it was difficult to use effectively in combat. Arnav had gotten stronger and tougher from choosing any ability at all, but that was the only positive.

Arnav was happy, though. Suddenly, no shelf was too high to reach.

It took an extended discussion with Cassie to convince her to take Overlay, and Pointy and I had to summon all our persuasive powers to convince her it would make the world “look like a game” and “have more colors.” We managed it, though, and all of Cassie’s resistance melted away the second the ability activated.

“Whoaaaaa!” Cassie’s eyes had never stretched so wide before, her little mouth hanging open. I couldn’t see a single thing she was staring at, making her apparent astonishment over nothing intensely comical. I bit my lower lip to keep from cracking up at her.

“Yes!” Pointy squeaked, her feet shuffling in a little dance. “Over 80% synergy! My word. That gives me about 30% more processing speed. Ohhh, you have no idea how good this feels!”

“Does that put you over 300%? Did you get anything?”

“Yes: improved sensors! I can hear well enough to detect shape via sound and my vision is exponentially improved.”

“Nice!”

When we'd discarded Analyze as an option for Cassie, I'd started considering taking it myself. Too many of my abilities, like Paralyze and Assisted Strike, relied on an understanding of alien biology to be truly effective. Even if I could talk to someone else with the ability, playing "telephone" like that ensured my information was imperfect. In addition, the aliens' propensity for yanking us away from home for Challenges and Trials meant that I was likely to encounter new monsters without the support network we'd built with Fort Autumn. I'd first fought bladetails in the Novelty Challenge that had led to Crystal's death, and there had been several new monsters in the Trial.

As far as numeric synergy, I thought it would have some. My build was in no way as optimized as Micah’s, or even Gavin’s, but… it was what I had to work with.

You have selected: Analyze: (active, channeled) gain insight into your target. Confirm choice?

“Confirm,” I said. Like every time I claimed an ability, I felt a strange sensation sweep through my body, likely a product of whatever augmentation the aliens were using to improve our strength and toughness. I opened and closed my hand experimentally, wondering how much I could lift now. Exact measurements were difficult, but I’d already been able to lift well over 200 pounds without strain before taking the ability, and close to three hundred if I strained myself.

I’d borrowed Micah’s book of world records, trying to get a baseline to compare our new strength against. It wasn’t completely fair, because our strength was different, no longer completely based on the muscles of our body. Most of the kids could utterly smash the world records for a standing jump for example. Still, even with those caveats, it was… interesting.

Apparently the women’s world record for the snatch, where they picked up a weight and lifted it above their heads for a few seconds, was a little over 300 pounds. I was getting close to being able to do that easily. It was a weird thought, that I could casually do what had been an immense strain for the strongest women who’d ever lived.

I consulted my interface, looking at how my choice fit into my suite of abilities.

Meghan Moretti

Novelty: 144 (144)

Abilities:

Draw Attention (325%)

Assisted Strike (325%)

Life Sense (300%)

Parry (241.6*%)

Paralyze (341.6*%)

Analyze (291.6*%)

Points: 4,617

Money: 1,182

Not bad! Better synergy than I’d hoped for, honestly. Assisted Strike, Paralyze, and Life Sense had gained another synergy bonus (possibly, I wasn’t sure how many bonuses were available for those abilities), and Analyze had one and was a breath away from a second! I closed my eyes, focusing on my Life Sense. If there was another synergy bonus, it wasn’t something obvious, so I was guessing there wasn’t one. Still, the ability had gotten significantly stronger, and I could already tell my range was much larger and what I could sense was much sharper and clearer. There was a group of people standing outside my home, and while they’d been a confusing bundle of “human” just moments before, I could now easily tell that there were seven of them. Actually… wait. Was that one person lifting their arms above their head? They were! I couldn’t make out enough detail to tell if the person was male or female, but I could get a rough idea of where their arms and legs were. That was new, and very, very useful. I mean, I didn’t need to know a stranger was stretching in front of my house, but knowing a monster behind me was reaching out a limb could be a lifesaver.

Yeah, even if Life Sense couldn’t get any more bonuses, I loved the ability. I couldn’t be dissatisfied in the slightest. I’d have to do some testing later with Paralyze and Assisted Strike to see what bonuses they’d gotten, if any.

Right now, though, I wanted to test Analyze. Here in the quiet upstairs of my house, the only living thing around was Cassie. I focused on her, thinking about activating the ability.

Immediately, I started to get a sense of how her musculature worked: which directions her limbs could bend in, how quickly she could move, and an intuitive sense of her enhanced strength. That was delightful, but as I continued to watch my daughter I started to get less innocuous information. It’s one thing to intellectually know humanity’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and another thing entirely to have something draw your attention to the back of your preschooler’s neck and let you know that a single cut on the back of the spine will leave her unable to control her arms and legs. I flinched, closing my eyes and standing up.

“Okay, I need to go outside to get a feel for Analyze. Will you two be alright up here?”

“Mmmhmm.” Cassie didn’t even look up from her page, where she was carefully and meticulously applying a stripe of each crayon in her box to a rocketship coloring page.

“If anything goes awry, I am certain I will be able to project my voice loudly enough to alert you, as long as you stay within the main fort. Cassie’s new ability gave me new utility, but it increased my capability with my old functionality as well.”

I smiled. “Thanks, Pointy. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”