3G: the Glowing Green Goo

“That! Was!”

“Unexpected.”

“AWESOME!” Aran proudly threw her fists in the air.

Zax’s falsely calm interjection was ignored by the panting but ecstatic girl.

“What… what was that?” SG queried from the side.

She too had seen what happened, but she couldn’t comprehend it. None of them did. It didn’t make sense. Zax reviewed his recordings of the event, trying to parse an explanation.

“For her nanites, I did… basically the opposite as yours. Impressing only the part of a pattern related to motor function, balance, that kind of thing. It was mostly hers, based on previous lessons, but compensated with yours. The idea was to improve a pattern she already had, to learn more easily.”

“Totally worked!” The tailed girl cheered. “I didn’t even know I could do that!”

“No, it was a failure.” Zax denied. “A very instructive one, with impressive results, but not at all I was aiming for.”

“I did a flying backward somersault! I just ran and grabbed the branch like usual, threw myself forward like usual, and did a full three sixty in the air like it was usual. And I even landed on my feet. How is that a failure? Even if I slipped and fell just after…” she awkwardly added the last part.

“Was that somersault what you wanted to do?”

“No?”

“That’s how. You did that by folding then opening your body, with perfect coordination and timing. Very different than any movement you trained so far. How? What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t, it just came naturally! I was bored and wondering when we’d get the exiting stuff and my body moved on its own.”

“… You still fall pretty often, you can rarely land close to your best shot, and you were bored anyway?” It wasn’t relevant for the experiment, but Zax wanted to make it clear.

“Er, it sounds bad when you say it like that…”

“Can you do it again?” He went back on topic.

“Of course!” Came the confident answer.

She couldn’t.

She was simply too excited to go back to the same mindset. Meditation was proposed and immediately rejected as ‘taking too long’. She quickly lost patience and tried to force it, but it only ended up with the two coaches proving their worth as parry. She would have been severely hurt if they didn’t catch her in time.

Worse, she didn’t grasp how harmful her behaviour was getting. Zax and SG jointly agreed to stop the lesson there for the day. She wouldn’t learn until she calmed down, and Zax already had a lot to work with. Failures taught more than successes and all that. She didn’t fancy that decision one bit, and she wasn’t shy about it.

“One more, I got it!”

“I almost had it!”

“I know I can do it!”

“Oh, come on!”

“I’m almost there!”

Against their best judgement, they gave her two more tries before stomping down.

Partway through their post-workout stretching, Zax received a notification. He mentally opened it, per habit, without pausing. The chuckle it tore from him forced him to explain what he could:

“Some clients are not happy with the results of their commission or my general attitude, so they refuse to pay more than the minimum they are contractually allowed to, and they left the worst review they can.”

“How’s that funny?” Aran was nonplussed.

“For starters, it’s an anonymous and confidential commission, so the review is hidden. No one else will see it until they make it public.”

“That does seem pointless.” She smiled.

“Is that…” SG attempted.

“Yes.” Zax laconically nodded. “And since the account is anonymous, and likely temporary, the one comically negative review from it would look more like trolling than an actual opinion, for anyone looking. It happens.”

“Now, that seems counterproductive.” The two girls chuckled.

“Also, they’ll need me in the future. No way around it, all their commissions so far made it crystal clear. I was clear about it too. If I was a betting man, I’d say they didn’t even look at my last report yet, they’re just being petty and cheap. So, when they come begging for my help, I can use it to my advantage. Since my results are so bad, they can’t be using them, right? So how come they are here? And if they insist – which they will, they’ll have no choice – they will have to pay way more than the initial maximum payment to get me to listen to them. And then some to get me to accept working for them. And then some for the actual work. It’ll be fun.”

His grin in the end sent a shiver down their spines. Even Aran’s; it was worse than the night they met, when he had played her like a fiddle. The two girls exchanged a worried glance, then back to him:

“Zax… are you… alright?” The foxy girl questioned.

“Of course.” He blinked. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Petty and cheap.” SG whispered.

“Yeah, that’s… you never struck me as the vindictive type.” Aran put it more diplomatically. “It’s not even lowering yourself to their level, at that point. It’s dragging things out and kicking when they are down.”

“Enjoying it.” SG completed. “Scary.”

“Sorry… They just hit a sore point, I guess.” He gave them the same excuse he gave himself. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. It’ll only happen like that if they are asking for it. Let’s talk about something else.”

Not exactly reassuring. The girls exchanged another glance, but didn’t pursue.

Later that night, when Zax compared their neural patterns from the lesson, he spotted interesting similarities, leading him to a theory about what had allowed Aran to move beyond her level. His next experiment would test it. If it worked, it would make things a lot smoother for this project. If not… well, back to theory-crafting. He was so engrossed in the preparation; he almost missed the alarm for his C-nanites study hour.

The next day, SG worked some more on combining basic adjustments. Zax gave her a simple, but actual order to work on as warm up and to refresh her mind, then gave her spare sheets for training and let her have her way with them.

“Let your creativity and your curiosity run wild.” He ordered.

The mass commissions from before had made the use of training sheets unnecessary for her basic training, but there was no avoiding it anymore. There were simply too many possible combinations, it was more effective to let her mess around and see the results. It was a popular training method. The safety rules were already drilled in her, she wouldn’t hurt herself without actively trying.

He could only hope the relation with his experiment wasn’t too obvious, and that she wouldn’t try to force something like Aran. He couldn’t do anything about it though, so he let what would happen, happen. He kept an eye on her brain readings, on the side of his HUD, as he worked on another order; a custom mod for a VR shooting game.

Ocular mutations were uncommon, and adapting software for a new depth perception was a lot trickier than it sounded. Zax was pondering if the shooting game he was modding could have led to the mutation he was modding for, when one of his alarms rang, signalling a potential match between SG’s current patterns and the previous night’s experiment.

He briefly turned to glance at her work from the side, but didn’t interrupt or make sudden moves. His attention was fully on her readings however, and they showed promising results. Outwardly, she was testing compatibilities and making connections way beyond her current level; working and refining his favourite combos. Internally, her brain was working through his patterns, moving from one to the other on their own, now that she had filled the missing part.

His bias influencing her development could be a pro or a con as a learning tool, but it was perfect as a proof of concept.

The brain truly is a strange organ.

Presenting it with sequentially more complex patterns, did let it fill the missing parts and extrapolate further steps. It wasn’t instant learning, but it made complex processes a lot easier to assimilate.

What kind of mutation would help the process? Hinder it? Could it be used to guide an activation? No... His main hobby wasn’t relevant here. Better not dwell on it.

But now that he thought about it… living and acting like you already had a mutation made it more likely to happen, or at least something similar, as did visualisation through virtual reality. His nanites were merely tricking the brain into thinking it did live a specific experience. It wouldn’t be strange to have the same effect on activation as actually living it.

He would have to mention it to his test subjects. He would never forgive himself if he changed their mutations on accident without consent.

Meanwhile, SG was admiring her last creation. It had taken a few tries, but she had done what she was aiming for.

“Very impressive.” Zax honestly commented.

He wouldn’t call it a masterpiece, but had he not known better, he would have thought it had been made by an expert, with years of experience fiddling with the adjusting machine for more than clothes.

At first glance, it seemed like a drawing of the current summer park. Or maybe a random sunny forest. Looking with an adjuster’s eye, one would notice it was actually three overlapping drawings; one made with printed coloured forms, one made with layered textures, and one with stitching of various shapes and thickness. Each worked well on its own, giving a clear but simplified version of the landscape. Together however, they enhanced each other seamlessly, bringing the whole to a new level of vibrancy.

It was also something he had never done on his own, so it was impossible it came from his patterns. She confirmed it when Zax had her explain her process. Her first failures let her fully assimilate the skills he had imprinted in her, and she had used those to build up on the parts he hadn’t included, with trial and error, mixing it with her own skills. Anticipating future needs wasn’t something he had insisted on, but it was an essential part of her thought process.

His conclusion; she had simply… integrated the neural patterns, and assimilated the skill. Made it her own, somehow, in a mere few hours. The programmer was starting to suspect she was uniquely compatible with this learning method, but he didn’t have enough statistics to compare to. It may not have been instant, but she had earned years of repetitive learning, in less than a day.

Explaining it all to her didn’t lead to a loss or rejection of the skill either. Her next works, albeit less complex, were not any less technical. Would she be able to use it for an actual order? They were sitting on the ground in front of the machine, looking for a commission requiring the level she had displayed, when an annoyingly familiar Resident stepped in the shop. Accompanied, this time.

In fact, it was Bathor who was accompanying the other. There was no mistaking the nervous glances she cast between the newcomer and him, or the withdrawn body language, or the half-step behind she maintained.

The newcomer was a Resident, but only her clothes, similar to her peer, displayed it. She was a tall and slender woman, with a wide heap of curly, rainbow-coloured hair and dark skin. She was certainly eye-catching, but the only feature that couldn’t be natural was her hair, and it could be from competent dye and styling. Had she pretended to be a dotter, only her lack of bracelet and her general cluelessness would have betrayed her.

Her sneer made her less approachable, but it was only her resting face. It was Zax’s second impression anyways, for she didn’t move a single facial muscle when her horned colleague pulled her back and hurriedly whispered something in her ear, when her eyes swept over the shop, or during the five steps it took her to reach him at the counter.

Once in front of him, she dissected him mentally as she had the shop prior. Only then did her expression change for a self-assured smile, somehow managing to not lose the sneer:

“Greetings, Zax. My name is Loozy, Kogito representative of the fourth branch of ‘Bumper Mediator Services’. I assume you heard of us already?”

“No, never.”

Zax took the wind out of her sails immediately, but she had properly introduced herself, on her own. It placed her a notch above Bathor, so he didn’t let her think he was just being difficult for no reason:

“We rarely get news from the Circles here, and when we do, they are usually outdated. I heard it was due to politics, or maybe mismanagement. Dunno. I never checked.” He continued conversationally, raising a shoulder at the end.

The implied slight against the Circle’s leadership was purely factual; it was as polite as he could be. He would still be unbending in his payment demands, but as long as she was acting like a decent being, so would he.

It shouldn’t last long, anyway.