Mind Mapping Extra Chapter: Skiffs and Rockets

Here is a little epilogue I wrote as part of an overhaul I'm working on for The Agency series(beginning can be accessed here). It's not incredibly important or exciting for the story, but I thought it a nice addition to the story nonetheless.

---

Steve tightened the screws on the gravity engine, feeling a strange lack of resistance. Being in a simulation where he could fine tune the rules made building prototypes far easier, as any materials he needed he could now simply spawn into existence. It had taken awhile to get all the small details he wanted for the simulation just right, as Drones did not always have the same terminology or standard practices as the apparently remotely observed and recreated alien world he was more accustomed to.

The first thing he changed was fatigue mechanics. Now, he could move as much as he wanted without growing tired, and very few things were physically impossible for him. He was warned this may cause major performance issues, but he simply had them also attach a permanent performance monitor to his lower right field of vision. The technicians he spoke to were even more baffled by this request, but they eventually complied.

Copper fell to her death.

Steve sighed, noticing a string of similar messages about Copper in the console log that he had also asked the technicians to include. “Copper, what the hell are you doing?”

Copper responded, as all voices within the customized simulation had been enabled to be audible over any distance. “I’m trying to jump between these two buildings… I’m certain I can make the jump if I get enough of a running start!”

“You can update your natural jump distance under settings. Your physical abilities aren’t actually related to your real world strength, so making a jump like that doesn’t mean anything.”

“No, I’m going to make it! I’m going to-”

Copper hit the ground too hard.

Steve brought up his own console, and entered some commands. Copper appeared right next to him, which when she noticed annoyed her. “Stop doing that! I was going to make it!”

“Copper, I just want you to stop filling up the log with you dying over and over. I don’t mind if you mess around, since they are performing maintenance on the Agent, but please don’t distract me. You could also help me with this, I’ve almost got the stabilizing wires sorted out so that-”

Steve found himself a thousand feet in the air, and immediately regretted giving Copper admin privileges in his simulation as well. He frantically tried and failed to issue a new command before he hit the ground.

Lyo didn’t bounce.

Steve loaded back in to his previous spot next to the engine, glaring at the cackling Copper. “Okay. Wow. Uncalled for… First off, did you change my designation?”

“Yeah! Bin told me he thought you should change your name to that, and I liked the sound of it! Why are you still going by Steve? It just sounds… boring.”

“Because it’s my name. Maybe I’m a boring person, and I think it fits?”

“Pfft, whatever. Maybe if you changed your name, you would be less boring?”

“Well, second, could you possibly not abuse your teleportation permissions? That is meant for ease of travel, not for messing with other people. I still haven’t figured out how to limit that ability just to yourself yet, so you need to exercise a bit of restraint.”

Jane joined the room.

“Steve? What is going on here? There are these messages that are always right in front of me, no matter where I look. This is the strangest simulation I’ve ever seen…”

“It’s my own customization. The overlay has some useful information in my opinion, but if you don’t like it you can go into settings and-”

Jane hit the ground too hard.

Lyo disabled Copper’s command privileges.

Copper was outraged. “HEY! Lyo, why did you-”

“It’s Steve, and you are abusing your access. Jane, are you back in?”

“I’m… back. What was that, exactly?”

“I have some special commands enabled, one of which is teleporting people around. I made the serious error of giving Copper access, and showing her how to use it.”

“Oh. Let me try it…”

Jane appeared next to Steve. “Wow. That’s convenient. So, how are things going?”

Steve stepped back from the large gravity engine he had been working on. It had multiple cylinders attached to a central mass of machinery, tubes and wires connected to a large central gravity crystal that functioned as a energy buffer. “Well, as well as can be expected I guess… I’m hoping to make something that can lift a larger gravity skiff while maintaining the adapted controls from Bin’s original design, but implementing an existing schematic with some tweaks is a lot harder than building from the ground up. After a few more tweaks, I’m going to try a test run.”

Steve finished the final changes as Copper stomped up to the engine. “What the rift, Lyo? I had to walk the whole way here!”

Jane was confused. “Lyo?”

Copper turned to Jane, a mischievous grin on her face. “That’s what Bin thinks he should change his name to, since his last name Lyon. I like it, too.”

Jane thought for a moment. “Lyo… it certainly sounds more like a Drone name, but I’m not a huge fan of the three letters either. I think Jane is just fine, and so is Steve.”

Steve backed up as he spawned in the appropriate size of gravity skiff for the engine, and began attaching the necessary cables. “Why, thank you, Jane. Good to hear at least one other person making sense. Now, let’s see if this works…”

Steve activated the engine, using a simulated feed of energy. The boat rose ever so slightly, then lurched completely into the air with the cables still dangling off, connected to the whirring gravity engine. “All right, so far so good… power is stable, engine performance is adequate. Looks like chamber five is suffering some degradation, though, so-”

The engine imploded, leaving a black hole as the world stretched and contorted around it. Steve sighed, spawning in a black hole extinguisher. As he sprayed the anti-grav material into the void to make sure it vanished entirely, he mused on what he believed went wrong. “Energy concentrations are still reaching critical mass too quickly for the counterweights to deal with. I’m starting to think a single engine just can’t do what I need it to do…”

Jane commented on the failure. “I know big engines like this one already exist, though. Why can’t you use those designs?”

“Because those depend on a gravity caster to manage these overflows of energy, as well as actually control the energy. It seems that, while smaller engines can handle the strain and be adapted for non-gravity caster based controls, bigger engines can’t. Which leads me to only one other option… I need multiple smaller engines for the same skiff.”

Jane frowned. “You say that like it’s a huge problem.”

Steve sighed, rubbing his forehead in slight agitation. “It is. More than one gravity engine on the same construct means a dozen other issues to deal with. You need to properly regulate power distribution between them, synchronize the propulsion so the skiff isn’t torn apart, in addition to all the nuances of two or more gravity centers interacting with each other. It’s abstracting the complexities of two gravity casters working together without actually having the two gravity casters to deal with the conflicting energy fields.”

“Sounds like you learned a few things about gravity casting.”

“I had to. With what I know now, I think this project is going to take months at the very least… ”

Copper scoffed. “Then don’t worry about it so much! Come on, Steve. Let’s just have some fun and then call it a day! I want to stop by the market and buy some more stuff before we get home.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “Home? Steve, care to explain?”

“Me and Copper are roommates, since she doesn’t like staying in the simulation without anyone else. I tried to explain that there isn’t much difference between sleeping outside the simulation and sleeping inside, but she just refuses to listen. And no, Copper, we can’t stop by the market.”

“Awww… why not?”

“Because last time you bought way too much produce. We haven’t come close to eating it all yet. Remind me again why you needed several pounds of peppers?”

“I like spicy food! It makes me feel all warm inside.”

“Than maybe you should actually eat all of what we already have.”

Jane just smirked. “You two sound just like an old married couple.”

While Steve was beyond flustered at the description, Copper just laughed. “I could see how you might think that, Jane… but I think you just don’t understand Draaconians. I don’t need to be romantically involved with Steve to be willing to serve him any way I can.”

“I thought you were going to be a free citizen? No master to speak of?”

“Draaconians always live in groups, and we have strong familial bonds. Steve vouched for me despite all the trouble I ended up causing him, so I owe him my life. He’s family now.”

Jane shot Copper a sly look. “You can’t date someone who’s family though. Are you sure that isn’t a problem for you?”

Steve could no longer take it, cutting off Copper before she could respond. “I am literally standing right here! Copper, I’ll re-enable your access so we can play our usual end of workday game, and then we are going home. All right?”

Bin joined the room.

Bin appeared right next to Jane. “Hmm? I joined just as you were saying that. What game are you talking about, exactly?”

Starting: Rocket War

Everyone reappeared in an arena with all kinds of walls and cover to hide behind. Steve quickly explained as a counter in everyone’s vision counted down. “Oh, sorry Bin. It’s a little game I put together with my current working knowledge of simulation construction. We all have a rocket launcher, and I suspend physics a bit so we can move faster and jump higher. All pain is disabled, naturally, just like elsewhere in my custom simulation. The goal is to hit each other and be the last one standing. Did you want to join in?”

Bin laughed. “Oh, definitely. I had no idea you made such a thing… perhaps I can talk with marketing about selling this.”

Copper let out a warcry. “Enough talking about boring stuff! You all are going down!”

Shortly after the game started, Steve locked onto an unaware Copper.

Copper has been hit by Lyo.

“WHAT! Steve, how could you?!”

“It’s just a game, Copper. You always get too into it to play it well. Unfortunately for you, you now have to wait until everyone else is knocked out before we can start a new game.”

Bin has been hit by Jane.

Bin was only slightly annoyed. “Hmm, it’s harder than it looks. Jane, you seem to have a better grasp of this game than I do.”

Jane laughed as she tried to corner Steve, who was proving far more elusive. “Hah! I’ve never played before, but I’m sure I can take out Ste-”

Jane has been hit by Copper.

Steve sighed. “Copper… you aren’t supposed to rejoin. That’s cheating.”

“What? What do you mean, cheating? I just teleported and shot someone, that’s all. I don’t think-”

Copper has been hit by Bin.

Bin chuckled. “If those are the rules we are playing by, then…”

Jane has been hit by Bin.

Bin has been hit by Lyo.

Jane yelled in frustration. “I just teleported in! That’s no fair!”

Steve was struggling to keep a lid on the situation. “Ok, I’ll need to switch to score based and fiddle with the spawn points, just give me a sec to-”

Steve has been hit by Copper.

---

After a lengthy session that left everyone laughing in tears as they continually fired and were hit by rockets, everyone left the simulation and headed back to their various residences. Steve and Copper walked quietly back to their home, as Steve started to feel unexpectedly melancholy.

“Hey, Copper…”

“What?”

“Can we really be sure our world is real? That we actually have a choice in anything we do?”

“I… don’t understand the question. We are not in a simulation right now, so of course things are real.”

“No, I mean… how can we be sure? You know we were entering a simulation, but not too long ago I was in one without knowing it. I was there for years.”

Copper frowned, unable to see the issue. “Okay, but you are out now. What’s the problem?”

“How do I know I really have a choice in anything? That some shadowy force isn’t puppeteering my every action?”

Copper grabbed Steve’s arm, surprising him slightly. “We are all at the mercy of forces beyond our control… this is something I firmly believe. But that doesn’t erase our free will. We can still make decisions, just like I chose to run away, and you chose to leave the simulation.”

“But what about-”

“No, Steve. Or maybe I should call you Lyo? I think I will, just to prove a point. I make my own decisions now, and so do you. What was that word? Oh, yeah; Agency. We have agency, Lyo. That’s what we both wanted, right? Not for the world to be perfect, or us to always be safe. But that we could make purposeful decisions, whatever the consequences might be.”

“Copper, don’t call me Lyo.”

Copper turned to him, smiling smugly. “S-St-Ste… Lyo. There. HAH! In you face!”

Steve smiled. Copper had already made significant strides in kicking her habit. “Very good, Copper. I guess I must concede, then. You may call me Lyo.”

Copper giggled as they continued their walk home. Steve Lyon sighed.

He silently wished he could one day be as carefree as Copper seemed to be.

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