INTERLUDE (II)
A Change in Your Scheduled Program
Asha Na’Keer looked on, a pensive frown crinkling her snout.
Reflected in her eyes was an unremarkable scene. One mirrored, to one degree or another, in the hundred odd screens she’d accumulated over the last half hour. An imposing wall of holo-monitors, each depicting a different clearing from a different angle. Live feeds from ongoing tutorials, not all of them acquired legally.
She’d only been given clearance to access a couple dozen after all, though the restrictions holding her to that selection were’t exactly what she’d call “air tight.” Heck, they weren’t even enforced. Seeing as the broadcast channel with every other livestream in existence wasn’t actually locked in any way. She’d just given the tab labeled “Livestreams,” a quick double tap and bam, full access.
If anything, this shockingly lax approach to security only proved Keshra’s point, that nobody really cared about these tutorials. Well, apart from the participants themselves, of course. She was sure they were far more invested in goings on.
And thus, her stint as a crackpot detective began. All of it in a bid to compare and contrast. Though, in reality, most of it was with the na?ve aim of convincing herself she hadn’t seen what she thought she’d seen. Or if she had, that it wasn’t that big a deal.
After all, what did she know? Perhaps all of this era’s newly initiated participants possessed mastery over the intricacies of mana manipulation and rune-work. Not so, it would seem. That much had been clear in the first few seconds. The resulting half hour had just been her coming to terms with it.
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Still…
Her eyes were once more drawn to the central screen—the very same that now took up nearly two thirds of the flickering blue wall. There, it seemed the participants were wrapping up their introductory event—a standard occurrence for tutorials of that challenge type—and would soon breeze past the final encounter, as had all the others.
Asha hesitated. Fingers straying toward the Master Interface. Yet another nifty little feature she’d been utterly dumbfounded to discover did not require three, two, or even one step verification to access. More specifically, she let her cursor hover over the encounter difficulty slider.
What are the odds anyone will notice? Clearly the powers that be couldn’t care less what happens in there. I also highly doubt anyone but me is even aware this particular tutorial exists.
Struggling with herself for a few seconds more, with a sharp decisiveness she didn’t entirely feel, Asha dragged the slider as high as it would go. Then she froze. Bracing herself for reprisals of some sort. For an alarm to go off. Blinking red lights to strobe with a sirens wailing.
Nothing happened.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Asha glanced down at her wrist device, confirmed that her vitals were only slightly elevated from usual—barely worth noting she assured herself—before she sat back and tried to enjoy the show. Perhaps it was a bit cruel, but if what she suspected was true, a challenge of this difficulty should be just enough for her target to once more play his hand, without actually placing them in harms way. It was imperative she be 100% certain of what she thought she saw.
Only then would she feel confident in uprooting her entire life to pursue this opportunity.
C’mon. I’m begging you. Please please please be what I think you are. You might just be my only chance to actually make something of myself in this miserable world.
