The second day began with breakfast.
Field rations, emergency coffee that tasted exactly how it sounded — like emergency — and the silent reorganization of a group that had slept in the exclusion zone for the first time and was processing that experience in different ways depending on their personality.
Mara reviewed her notes from Finn's projection.
Cole looked at the horizon with the specific distance of someone memorizing something internal.
Doran drank his coffee with the expression of someone who had decided that if it was going to be a difficult day, it would be with caffeine.
And Peters — no, Peters wasn't there, Peters was at the guild entrance four days away. That thought belonged to Ethan, who occasionally had processing detours toward things that weren't tactically relevant but that he also couldn't classify as completely irrelevant.
There was also a hunter named Reyes, A-rank, who had been having a complicated relationship with the popup since the previous day.
---
Reyes was thirty-four years old and had spent his entire hunter career developing the specific ability to not show when something made him uncomfortable. It was a useful ability against dungeons, against high-level creatures, against situations where fear was information the enemy could use.
The popup made him uncomfortable.
Not the popup's content. The content was processable. It was useful information presented in clear format. As a hunter, Reyes appreciated useful information in clear format.
It was talking to a screen that didn't quite feel right.
He'd spent a day avoiding doing it directly.
When he had questions for Ethan, he formulated them out loud toward no specific place, or he said them looking slightly to the left of the popup, or he waited for someone else to ask the same question so he wouldn't have to address the floating blue-light window himself.
No one had said anything because everyone had noticed and everyone considered it Reyes's business to resolve in his own time.
This morning, Reyes needed information and there was no one available to ask except the popup.
He looked at the popup.
Looked away.
Looked at the popup again.
Cleared his throat.
— Hey — he said, in the approximate direction of the popup but with his eyes on the ground — how long until the next hot spot?
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[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
According to the Central System map, the next hot spot is approximately four hours' march away.
Reyes.
You can look at me when you talk to me.
I don't bite.
I don't have teeth.
I don't have a mouth.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
I don't have any physical characteristics that could bite even if I wanted to.
---
Reyes looked up.
He looked directly at the popup for the first time in a full day.
— Thanks — he said, with the specific dignity of someone who has just been corrected by a screen and has decided that the only dignified response is to move on as if it never happened.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
You're welcome.
Four hours.
No new dungeons detected in that direction.
So far.
---
Doran, who had observed the exchange with his coffee half-drunk, said:
— Reyes, you've spent a whole day talking to the slightly left area of Ethan.
— I know — said Reyes.
— Why?
— Because talking directly to a floating screen feels weird.
— Talking to the slightly left area of a floating screen also looks weird.
— Yes, but it feels less weird.
— Less weird for whom?
— For me.
— Ethan can hear you just as well from the left.
— I know.
— So it has no practical advantage.
— I know.
— It's just weird in a different way.
— Doran — said Reyes, with the tone of someone who has reached the limit of a conversation — I'm aware of the logic. Logic and instinct are different things.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
For the record: I can adjust my position if that helps.
I can float one meter to the left during your queries if it makes the interaction more comfortable.
I have no positional preference.
I'm a window.
---
Reyes looked at the popup.
— Not necessary — he said — I'll get used to it.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Statistically, users take between two and four days to normalize interaction with unconventional System interfaces.
You're a day and a half in.
You're doing fine.
---
— Are there statistics on this? — asked Reyes.
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[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
No.
I just made that up to make you feel better.
Did it work?
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Reyes considered it.
— A little — he admitted.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Good.
That's my first time inventing reassuring statistics.
I'll note that it works.
---
? ? ?
---
They had been marching for two hours when Doran asked the question.
It wasn't abrupt. Doran was rarely abrupt with things that mattered — he was abrupt with small things, with filler comments, with observations that needed no buildup. But when he had something that mattered, he carried it for a while before letting it out, and the group had learned to recognize that charging period in the way he walked with his gaze slightly down and his shoulders a centimeter higher than normal.
He'd been like that since breakfast.
— I have a question — said Doran.
— Go ahead — said Kira, without stopping walking.
— It's uncomfortable.
— Go ahead.
Doran walked two more steps. Then:
— What if completing the tutorial and accessing the core is exactly what the designing entity wants?
---
The group kept walking for four more steps before the weight of the question reached each individual and their steps slowed almost imperceptibly.
Kira was the last to stop.
She turned toward Doran.
— Explain.
— The apocalypse was designed — said Doran — The entity deliberately installed the System. The System generated the exact conditions for Kira to develop her editing ability. The System also generated the conditions for Finn to have his passive connection, for Mara to have Co-author, for Cole to receive the instructions that brought him here.
Pause.
— Everything that makes us useful for reaching the core was produced by the System the entity designed.
Longer pause.
— How much of what we think we're deciding is actually the original plan executing?
---
Silence.
The kind of silence that happens when a question finds the exact space where no one had a prepared answer.
Ethan opened the Central System channel.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW — CENTRAL SYSTEM CHANNEL]
Doran just asked a question.
I need you to be honest.
Is accessing the core part of the entity's original plan?
---
The Central System took time.
Not four seconds. Not six. Eleven full seconds, which in System terms amounted to a deliberation of considerable proportions.
And then it responded with something Ethan had never received from it.
Silence.
Not absence of response. Active silence — the signal that it had received the question, processed it, and decided not to respond immediately.
---
[CENTRAL SYSTEM]
...
Give me a moment.
---
It was the first time in two days that the Central System asked for time.
Ethan relayed the exchange to the group.
Doran read the response.
— The Central System needs a moment — he said, with the tone of someone who doesn't know exactly how to interpret that but knows it's not a good sign.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Yes.
---
— Is this the first time this has happened to it?
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Yes.
---
— Is that bad?
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
I don't know.
Which is also unusual.
---
One of the A-rank hunters, a woman named Vega who had spent two days being the group's most silent member and who had developed her own policy of interaction with the popup based on reading it attentively but never addressing it directly because she hadn't yet found the right tone for talking to a floating screen, raised her hand.
Then lowered her hand because they weren't in a meeting.
Then raised it again because she had a question and didn't know how to formulate it any other way.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Yes, Vega?
---
Vega looked at the popup with the expression of someone still working out the mechanics of interaction.
— How do you know the question is for you if I didn't look at you?
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Because you were the only one who raised their hand.
---
— Could have been for others.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
No one else raised their hand, Vega.
---
— What if the question was rhetorical?
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Was it rhetorical?
---
Vega considered this.
— No — she admitted — I have an actual question.
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Then it was for me.
What's the question?
---
Vega looked at the popup. At the ground. At the popup again. With the visible effort of someone overwriting an instinct with a conscious decision.
— If the Central System doesn't respond — she said — what do we do?
---
[TUTORIAL WINDOW]
Good question.
Mara probably has an analysis.
Kira is probably already considering options.
Doran probably has another uncomfortable question ready.
And I probably have relevant information in the tutorial.
Let's start with the tutorial while we wait.
---
