Tunnel Rat Volume 1 will be be STUBBING on NOV. 1st!

Milo once again wished he knew who the illusive Dr. Jeremy Cooper had been before he became Rusty's only friend. He'd searched the Data Net and come up with nothing. Or rather, nothing helpful. There were hundreds of people with the name Dr. Jeremy Cooper. He focused his search on highly intelligent people with degrees in computer science, robotics, or any other subject that dealt with programming or A.I. and one by one investigated them. Some were alive, and of those that were already dead, he could find death certificates or new articles about them. Similarly, searching for Dan Gurgens, Dorian Radcliff, Bobby Benson, Taylor Markenson, Ravi Singh, Wilma Bernstein, and Istvan Turr turned up nothing. He had theories. The Data Net had been used mainly by A.I. in the early days, and then the decision was made to create a tool for learning and teaching. Only after Llama's destruction of the internet did the Data Net get opened up to more uses.

He had several theories. The first simply assumed that the data on these people was lost with the widespread destruction of information on the internet. That seemed wrong. This was a clean sweep. He thought it more likely that either the people employing this group had erased all traces of them to cover their tracks or the group themselves had done it to help them hide. Lastly, he thought Llama had done it. Llama had roamed the internet, and if he wanted something gone, it was. Was this part of protecting Rusty? Was he trying to give a group of humans a chance to save his brother? Milo felt that was a distinct possibility. Llama seemed to care about Rusty. Or maybe he just didn't want to lose his collection of cat memes. Guessing the motivation of a creature like Llama was difficult for Milo.

Rusty didn't want to talk about Jeremy, and always changed the subject, even when he was the person mentioning Jeremy. All Milo knew was he was a master of psychological torture. The tutorials he had devised to teach a human brain how to interface with Icarus and shut down Order 666 were ingenious. Milo found himself pushed to his limits and beyond. The program had him trying to do several things simultaneously, involving different senses and different types of problem-solving. Imagine someone asking you to pat your head and rub your belly simultaneously. You succeed, and they say, "Good, now write a dirty limerick of 20 stanzas while playing the Oboe." And things only got harder from there.

Milo worked through thirty lessons, everything designed for normal humans. The next set was the brain burners that required him to interface with Rusty. He'd lasted all of 5 seconds last time, but it had seemed like so much longer.

This time was different. His joining was smoother, and he didn't feel the intense pressure he had experienced before. The Fusion Tutorial began and focused on staying in control as he accomplished two tasks at once. Where before the problems had some relationship to the real world, these dealt with manipulating color, movement, and shapes into new configurations. It was slow, but he was getting the hang of this first problem. And then, it all snapped into place, and he finished easily, splitting his mind completely into two Milos, both working their own problem.

Rusty had been watching, of course. "How did you do that? That was great! Jeremy could barely finish this problem after a month of work!"

Milo felt like he was floating, detached from his body. "It's like I'm in the game and building multiple runic arrays at once when I cast spells. Once I thought of it that way, it felt like I slid further into your system, if that makes any sense."

"I need to know more about this game! Everyone talks about the game world like it's real, but I assumed it was like a very complex video and audio program interfacing with your senses. If it is more than that, and your minds are actually interfacing with the game system, then the game could be like these tutorials!"

Rusty was excited, but Milo felt calm. "You might be right about that in a weird way. It was created by A.I. and designed to give an experience that was as real as possible. Let's start working on the next. I have enough energy left to at least try it."

"Ok, but I want to play the game, too!"

Milo suddenly wasn't calm. "Please don't try anything, Rusty. Think about it. What if you do get into the game? How much of you goes? Can you still keep the other part of you from winning?"

"Oh! Right, that could be a bad thing. But now I'm sad. Everyone is going, and I have to stay here alone."

To reduce his anxiety, Milo tried to console the AI: "Then we need to finish these tutorials, win the game, and not have to worry about the fusion reactor killing us all. After all, we can't play if we die."

"That's true! That's a good way to look at things. When you die, you lose all the games forever. Let's not die so I can go into Genesis someday!"

Milo heartily agreed. "Let's get back to work then."

A few minutes later (hours, it seemed to Milo), he had to quit. He'd pushed as far as he could but didn't have the willpower for even a small addition problem. But he felt like he had made real progress. But when asked, Rusty wouldn't tell him how far he had to go.

"Jeremy said that was counterproductive, looking at progress and rating yourself. Counterproductive."

Again, Milo considered Jeremy to be a specialist in psychological torture. "Back at it tomorrow, then. I need a break."

"Um...maybe you could stay in your pod a little longer? You should rest up a little before getting out. We could talk about the game, play chess, or do anything you want. What would you like to do?"

Milo was tired of being in his pod, and the thought of a chess game or even tic-tac-toe made him nauseous. "We can do that when I'm out of my pod. I really need a break."

Opening up his pod and crawling out, he collapsed on the floor. His head was pounding so hard he was seeing double, and his arms were trembling. His pod had beeping red lights, and a mechanical voice repeated over and over. "Please seek medical aid. The patient is exhausted and in need of rest and recovery. The patient is dehydrated. The patient's stress levels indicated cognitive shut-down, cardiac arrest, and death. This unit's supplies need to be refilled. Unable to further aid the patient. We recommend signing up for SimTech's weekly service to ensure your Mark 7 medical pod works correctly. We'll refill the medications, do maintenance, and clean it inside and out."

The readings on his pod confirmed that his stress levels had been far past where a normal person would suffer a heart attack. Further confirmation of how far he was from a 'normal human.' Mama ran up to him with a glass of something yellow and a handful of pills. "Take these, and drink this. Rusty said you needed help."

"I may have pushed too hard."

"No, you worked for as long and hard as possible, and it looks like you went three rounds with an anaconda. Big Butch and his whole crew looked that way when he worked 18-hour shifts for Tesladyne when they had a factory in the hab twenty years back. You need sleep and not in that pod."

Milo pointed to one of the unused pods. "Help me over to that one, then." He suddenly realized that everyone else was still in their pods. "Wait, how long have I been working with Rusty."

"Not even an hour. Whatever you're doing in there pushed you to your limits in record time."

Once in the fresh pod, Milo thought about logging into the game for a moment but fell asleep almost immediately. He dreamed he was playing RRR, and the shadowy figure of Jeremy was chasing him, holding a textbook and shouting, "Just a little more!"

Somewhere above Milo, the rest of the Alphabet were having an emergency meeting. Tempers and frustrations were running high. They were used to taking on nearly impossible jobs and solving them with guile and superior intellect, but their current opponent fought back with entropy, rust, poor design choices, sloppy engineering, and the weight of years.

"Explain to me again why we chose to move into this place. It's falling apart around us." Algernon was compiling lists of the work to be done to repair the hab sections Rebus had acquired and worked out a critical path chart for the jobs that needed to be done. Their engineering firm was good, but not this good. They were generally aimed at much more specific jobs, where the work to be done was already defined, and the job proceeded at a normal pace. Not here, where something broke as soon as they fixed something else. Leaking pipes, overloaded wiring and circuit boards, collapsed floors, and non-functioning elevators were just the start.

Nina was working next to him, already frazzled. It drove them all crazy to see so many problems. "We based our assumptions on poor data. Their work in Section H was limited to what the client wanted to be done, and frankly, H is in a lot better shape than our sections."

"Yes...and H is next to E, and E is in amazing shape. I assume you see my conclusions."

"That Milo is in Section E, never left, and has been fixing it nonstop for two decades. Yes, I agree with you. But, holy shit, fixing all of this is enough to drive me insane."

Zander nodded sagely, which he did when he found two puzzle pieces that fit together. "Or keep you sane. We've wondered how Milo survived on his own without the constant interaction of his peers. We're all insanely driven and compete with each other on projects, and to find new projects. Milo doesn't have to do that; he has an entire habitat to work on and fix. He limited himself to Section E and, by maintaining the main engineering section, kept the rest of the habitat livable. But things are worse the further we are from him."

Algernon agreed, then looked horrified. "Milo spent 20 years getting Section E in shape. We have four sections and five of us. Are we looking at 16 years of work each? Even considering the money we have to throw at it, an engineering firm of our own, and all our other resources, I think we are looking at years of work!"

"So, cliché as it sounds, we have to work smarter, not harder." Zander prepared for their counter-assault; using a cliché in an argument was frowned upon. Instead, Nina was searching through industrial supply firms, and Algernon was bringing up a full-scale schematic of the habitat.

"We need to turn several floors into a massive warehouse to stockpile parts and supplies. Cut down delivery times by having everything here and more than we need."

"OMG, did you know Williamson Plumbing Supplies has new clog eaters? These things are amazing! I'm placing an order immediately and paying extra for a rush job. Drones? They make drones small enough to fit into air ducts! All the drones, repair units, and clog eaters communicate with each other and report back to a central station. It's an integrated system designed to maintain huge industrial plants! We have to get these!"

Ten minutes later, Bork appeared. "I've got a confirmation request from our main bank about the half-billion dollars you three just spent."

"Saving time."

"Saving sanity."

Bork smiled, "Just double-checking. What the hell good is money if you don't spend it? But, you three do realize that Rhyming Mimes day starts in just an hour?"

Zander yelled at his two siblings, "Quick! Spend money faster! I'm not losing points because we show up late!"