While Cale and his father ate their meal, Cale kept glancing at his scripts to see which one he wanted to try next, the one that kept grabbing his attention was Fire Storm Of Helioni. He had tried to open it in the editor, but no text would open and a little error full of words he didn’t know would pop up and all he could do was acknowledge it. Of all his scripts, this one, the script that errored when he captured it wouldn’t open in his config editor.

  “What are you thinking about so heavily?” his dad asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Trying to figure out which script I want to try next. Some I can tell what they do. Others, I am guessing.”

  His dad breathed in deeply and sat back with his hands behind his head as he stopped and pondered Cale’s dilemma.

  “Xavier,” he said after a full minute of silence, “You’ve kept your scripts very secret. Not even your mother knows the details. Why don’t you ask us for more advice on these?”

  Cale looked at his dad with a blank stare as he processed the words. He was very secretive, but was that not common? “I thought it wasn’t okay to talk about your own scripts, I thought it was a secret.” He responded. Not the full truth but he also didn’t hear others talking about them and assumed it was taboo.

  His dad started laughing at his response. “A secret?! HA! Ha! Ha! No, son. Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t ever hear people talking about them and you never asked. I thought it was supposed to be a secret.” He answered flatly, which caused Phil to stop giggling to himself.

  “Hmm… I suppose I didn’t ask any questions. I assumed you and your mother were taking care of it since it involves her work. As for the rest of the country… people usually need to list their scripts if they want to get hired, but they don’t give out all the details, and considering your age, you are nowhere near that type of scenario.” Phil got quiet after thinking for a moment.

  “Sorry for laughing at you when you threw up.”

  “It’s ok, dad. I wasn’t embarrassed about it. At least I killed my first boar and didn’t end up smelling like it.” Cale retorted.

  “Thank you! Wait… What? Oh, never mind.” Phil stammered out. “Now, if you are looking for some help, you could tell me a little about your scripts and maybe I’ve heard of them before or could give you some tips.” Phil offered; an obvious attempt at changing the subject.

  Cale didn’t mind though since he was ready to start training anyway. He had thought about this before training had started and since his dad would see him using his scripts anyway, he didn’t have a problem with going into details about his abilities.

  “Ok to start, I have one script that doesn’t look like it works, and it is called Raining Wind.”

  Phil’s eyebrows popped up at Cale’s words. “Raining Wind. I’ve never heard of it. What else do you have.”

  Cale didn’t bother dwelling on it and started to list off some more. “Dancing Body of the Tennarr, which I guess is for dancing. Fire Storm of Helioni, I assume is some fire script. There is also Air Steps, which I hope lets me walk on air, and lastly there is Earthen Flattening, which makes me think it’s a script meant for construction.”

  Cale looked at his dad waiting for words of guiding wisdom. After a full minute of silence Cale couldn’t help but speak up.

  “So, what do you think, dad? Which one should I try?”

  “Try? Oh, I have no idea! I was waiting on you!”

  “Waiting on me? I thought you asked to give me some advice!”

  “No, nothing like that. I’ve never heard of any of these before. I was just wondering how your mother decided on which scripts you should acquire.”

  “You don’t know? She never told you?”

  “I. Never asked...”

  “…..”

  “Did you ever ask?” His father shot back at him.

  “…..”

  “How about we both just move on and not talk about the fact that neither of us know the details? Not like we won’t find out while training.” Phil said waving his hand over the open area.

  Cale nodded his head in agreement and went back to looking at his scripts. They all looked fun to use but he had a good idea as to what they did based off their names, and the one that made his brain tickle the most was Fire Storm of Helioni.

  “I’m going to pick the fire storm one,” Cale announced to his father, “Any idea on what to expect?”

  “Let's see, since nobody in our family has a fire-based script, I am not the most versed in how they work. But I’ve seen Olter use his script a lot and it seems to function just like any other. I’d start by just trying to imagine a little ball of flame. Don’t forget that it will be HOT!”

  Cale’s thoughts immediately jumped to a little ball of flame, about the size of a marble hovering in his hand and barely producing any heat so as not to burn himself.

  “Dad, does your friend Olter get burned by his flames?” Cale asked as he imagined trying to control a little piece of fire.

  “Not anymore, but he has a lot of scars from when he was learning. He once told me it took him a long time to learn to not hurt himself, and he paid for that knowledge with burnt flesh.” Phil said calmly. A grimace flashed across Cale’s face when he heard that, he then changed his image of the flame so that it was up about a foot above his hand instead of a few inches.

  “Ok, I’m going to give it a try,” Cale said to his dad, “Maybe get some water ready?” he suggested as the idea of accidentally starting himself on fire crossed his mind.

  “… Good idea. Wait one moment while I get some water.” Phil said as he grabbed a bucket from somewhere and ran off into the woods.

  Once Phil was back with a full bucket, Cale went to the center of the training area so he wouldn’t set anything else on fire and prepared his mental state. Once he had his intent locked on the flaming marble, he activated the script and waited for it to start.

  Cale held the image of the marble sized flame in his mind until the script finally came to life. Unexpectedly instead of it moving along his arm, he felt energy from his core loop around his chest once and then go back into his core. Uh... What? Cale was not expecting this. He opened his interface and surprisingly saw a new prompt had appeared in the middle.

  “Dad,” he said apprehensively, “Have you ever seen a script ask you for confirmation?”

  “What do you mean?” Phil asked, clutching the bucket a little tighter than before.

  “I activated the script, but instead of what I was imagining, my interface has a new prompt and it's asking me if I am ready to continue.”

  “Odd. No, I have not. Can you stop it?”

  Cale looked at it and no, there was no other option other than to continue so he said, “I guess it doesn’t matter, there isn’t an option to stop,” he told his dad. “Hey dad, before I press this. Is your interface as broken as mine?”

  “Xavier, what did you just say?” his dad asked, his tone shifting low.

  “Your interface, do you find it a little hard to use? Maybe it is just me, but it seems slow.”

  “Xavier! SHH! Don’t say such things out loud!” His father hissed at him, suddenly eyeing the forest like they were being watched. “The divine give us what we can handle, to say anything else is to demean the divine! What you just said could get us in a lot of trouble with the church, and more importantly, your mom’s employer.”

  Cale’s eyes went wide at his dad's words. “Sorry. I didn’t know.” But he knew that wasn’t all he could say, for someone like his father (who never talked about religion) to suddenly say a warning like this, it meant he had crossed a terrible line and didn’t even know it.

  “Thank you for informing me.” He said, as he looked down at the ground, “I appreciate your guidance.” He was unaware that a simple question would be met with such a rebuttal. This was an eye opener to him since he hadn’t thought that people saw the interface any different from his point of view. He couldn’t expect them to have the same opinion of it as him.

  “Oh, Xavier,” His father’s tone suddenly got a lot gentler than before. “I’m sorry I got so upset, but you can’t say that type of thing out loud, ok?”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Before Cale could respond, his father continued, in another obvious attempt to change the subject, “Now if your interface is only giving you one option, then it means you must take it.”

  Cale didn’t say anything back but nodded his head. Into the fray, he thought. He activated the prompt, telling his interface, and himself, that he was ready. Soon he felt pressure building up in his body and it started to pulse.

  A few seconds passed after activating the script, and he had long stopped trying to hold the mental image of the ball of flame. Instead, and far outside of his control, waves of energy roamed through his body, like the ripples in a pond that are made when a large rock is thrown in the middle. The waves hit the edge of his being and would bounce back, crossing with other waves, strengthening, and then bouncing again.

  His insides felt uncomfortable as the energy echoed back and forth, slowly gaining strength. He felt like every bit of him was being measured, analyzed, and recorded. His body felt like it was being pressed up against his skin and then pulled back, in an endless loop. Thankfully the uncomfortable sensation soon dissipated as the energy was slowly sucked back into his core. Cale could feel that the script was still working but nothing else had come after the waves of energy.

  What is going on?! He thought as he was mildly starting to panic. Afraid to move an inch, he realized that his soul felt a little different than before. Not bad, just uncomfortable. With a very practiced motion, Cale opened what he called his Soul Vision to see if maybe he could find something happening there. He was getting pretty used to navigating in this view since he came here before bed almost every night to analyze his soul. Since he had been getting more scripts, he was easily able to see the changes whenever a new one was acquired – and he had been studying them, trying to gain secrets, but so far discovering none.

  He quickly focused on the area that held the script he had just activated. Previously, like all the other scripts, this one had looked like a computer chip placed randomly on the layer that hovered above his soul. He wondered if the placement was random or maybe they had some sort of requirement, like maybe a buffer between them was needed. He had never attempted – nor had the chance – to enter his soul vision while activating a script, he wasn’t sure what he would see, but he didn’t think it wasn’t supposed to be this.

  The normal sized computer chip was no longer alone like an island in a soul sea. From it sprouted flat wires that ran along the surface above the soul. He followed the wires to see that occasionally a wire would stop, expand and slowly start forming into another computer chip looking thing. He zoomed around his soul and watched in amazement – and nervousness – as the wires expanded until they covered the entirety of his soul in a web-like pattern. The pattern was not perfect since it had to accommodate and leave room for his existing chip looking things, but otherwise it looked very cool. He just hoped this wasn’t going to kill him.

  He exited his Soul Vision, expecting to find himself in pain, but instead he felt comfortable, warm, secure even. His eyes adjusted to the light, and he was surprised to find that he was in his dad's arms.

  “Are you alright, son?” Phil asked as he worriedly looked down at him.

  Cale was going to give up a thumbs up when he felt his consciousness suddenly start to fade. Fear hit him as he looked into his dad’s worrisome eyes “I... Don’t know…” was all he was able to say before passing out.

  Scout#005:

  Scout #005 had been working diligently setting up its spy network and preparing for the transfer. Now that there was a priority target involved, it had to use a tier 3 transfer circle instead of the tier 1 transfer circle it had originally planned on using. Tier 1’s were a much smaller, less sophisticated transfer method. It required a minimal amount of power and could be set up very quickly. It did have a few downfalls, the major one being that it had a chance to accidentally take a limb or two from someone during transfer. As long as it wasn’t the head, the person being transferred was fine and the missing part could be rebuilt. But that kind of risk was too big when it came to a priority individual.

  A tier 3 transfer circle did have the same risk but only if you were in the outer few feet. This circle was much larger and had more safety mechanisms built into it. It also took substantially more energy and was the primary reason that Scout#005 had been working so assiduously.

  The power generator used at the base was not large enough to handle the base's needs as well as power the Tier 3 transfer circle. The transfer circle needed immediate power and would quickly overload the base’s matter energy converter, making it pointless. Over the years it had explored every inch of this base with either its own arrays or some of its mobile drones it had managed to repair. Its internal matter converter was very quick and was only designed to be used in an emergency. Fixing a single drone could take months, and making just a few would take an entire year, so it only had a couple.

  Initially it had thought that it was in a technological stone age. But it was pleasantly surprised to find that the base was sitting above a treasure trove of technology. Below the base was the headquarters of the tech giant, Helioni. They had been a competitor to the corporation that owned him, but their technology was solid and sometime during the past war, the two entities had collaborated closely to help with the war front. Because of this, Scout#005 was easily able to communicate and use the old technology that had been buried by the eruption of the mountain hundreds of years ago, just as long as he got it working again. How it got to its current location was something it had pieced together shortly after it had fixed its last drone.

  Before it had been re-awoken, it was previously in the possession of a family of whom it was monitoring. One of the children had a rare script that would be a good candidate for its mission, and it had embedded itself within their home to verify the child's candidacy. It had been put in their vehicle, packed away with some towels when the family was planning to go on a little day trip and it was the entertainment.

  According to his memory banks, this had been a few decades after all the adults had died, and the world had descended into Chaos. Scout#005 had been following the same orders repeatedly, locked into the same mission ever since. At first it had a hard time finding candidates but was surprised to see how fast the children matured into adults and dove into their tasks trying to save their society. Throughout the decades, Scout#005 had fulfilled his mission over twenty times, his current target about to be number twenty-one. That is until one of the guardian ships fell out of orbit.

  Unknown to the planet's inhabitants, the guardian ship that orbited their planet had been damaged years ago but had continued its orbit. Until one day the orbit of the Guardian seemed to shift. The locals noticed it once its hull started to heat up as it started to come in contact with the atmosphere. Scount#005 was monitoring the local frequencies, and though they didn’t save everyone, it couldn’t help but commend them for their effort. They tried their best to evacuate their people, and some did get away, but with the loss of the adults, the amount of knowledge they could reclaim was limited. Which meant the people didn’t know how to stop what was happening, nor did they have the knowledge to predict what the results of the crash would be.

  What nobody alive had known or accounted for was that the planet's crust was very thin at this location. Scout#005 didn’t know this and only found out what happened from memory banks it was able to power and scan while it explored. Its last memories before it was re-awoken were of its spy network going dark and then being stuck in the vehicle with no external input.

  What it found out from the memory banks was that when the guardian ship crashed into the surface, it dove deep into the planet. Soon after crashing, its reactor exploded, throwing a mountain’s worth of dirt and rock into the air and unknowingly creating a long thin crack in the planet’s bedrock.

  The crack by itself was concerning, but when the ship’s reactor exploded, the long gash split wide open and revealed chaotic and powerful energies that were supposed to be hidden under the planet’s surface. The crack allowed the magma from the planet’s core a free path to wreak havoc above.

  With all the topsoil removed, the world erupted as the continent almost split in two! The eruptions continued along the seam, forcing the crack to peal open further until it reached one of the oceans. The force of this cataclysmic event created a new mountain range as it forced the solid rock to fold like putty, forming a solid wave of rock which had the fortunate effect of directing most of the lava, sealing the crack sooner than if it had formed from a natural volcano.

  Scout#005 was able to gather that after a few years of activity, the infantile volcano subsided as much of the pressure from the planet’s core had been alleviated and the cooling rock had created a thick seal, much thicker than the bedrock that was there before the blast. The surrounding area was no longer recognizable as it was covered in meters and meters of ash. Over the centuries, rockslides, and other events, ended up covering any signs of civilization and as it always does, nature soon took over.

  When Scout#005 had located the excavation site where it had been found. A mudslide had pushed it into a building a few kilometers away and it was stuck. Wedged into the rubble to where it couldn’t get itself out. After it first surveyed where it was found, its memory banks recalled going into hibernation mode and it noted the time and date when its power had finally run out.

  Using these past memories, Scout#005 was able to create a rough map of where the previous structures in the area had been. That’s when it realized that the building it had crashed into back then, was one of the campus buildings of the Helioni corporation. After a lot more recon, it found that the campus had its own matter generator deep below the surface, and there was a good chance it survived the changes to the environment as it was encased in extremely strong material and was buried deep underground.

  It had taken time to map, explore, and find a way through the buried buildings. The floors above the surface had been basically reduced to rubble. Many of the underground floors were fully intact and easily navigated, but the routes between the buildings were very damaged.

  Some floors had been flooded out, elevator shafts were no longer accessible, and sometimes the tunnels had been filled with solid rock. But like the machine it was, Scout#005 soon found a way to the Matter Energy Converter below the Helioni corporation’s complex and found that though it wasn’t running at full capacity, it would meet its need.

  Using its newfound energy source, Scout#005 revived a few pieces of construction equipment and was able to recharge the empty power cores that had long been dormant. It salvaged what it could from vehicles that were too badly damaged until it found enough cores to power the Tier 3 transfer circle as well as some extras for the next project.

  Scout#005 had not been given any new orders but was always following its subroutines; they kept it busy. With so much to do and only one body, Scout#005 prioritized setting up a communications network for monitoring equipment. As it salvaged materials, it also grabbed old communication networking devices like switches, cabling, repeaters – and repurposed them for its own use.

  It set up remote monitoring of the reactor and motion activated cameras at the closest places to where the base’s dig site was located. It needed to be prepared in case someone broke through a wall and found its subterranean activity. Currently the dig site was just going through surface rubble, they had yet to realize the treasure trove below their feet and Scout#005 was in no hurry to help them along.

  Originally it had been worried that its activities would be discovered, but over time it found that the people of this time were very backwards and the only monitoring equipment that was even remotely close to being able to discover him was the network traffic scanner that the research lab used to test crystals. As long as he didn’t have any wireless signals close to that unit when it was on, it would be ok. Just in case, it had run a wire to anything that was near the wireless network scanner so nobody would be suspicious.

  As it toiled along, its internal timer continued to tick downward. Soon its mission would be fulfilled, and the little scout couldn’t help but be pleased that it was about to once again fulfill its orders. The thought that what it was doing, if found, would be world changing, had never crossed its logic center.