“Me too, a few good pushes and we will be there. It’s not like there’s much else to do. Might as well make the most of it.” She clapped her hands, then zoned out. With a heavy sigh, I followed her into her Mindscape.
We worked for the rest of the day in Ember’s Mindscape, going well into the night, and stopping only for the evening meal. It was some kind of orange soup. While surprisingly tasty, it was still a pointless bowl of soup. I was thankful it came with plenty of bread. Elyek must have put in a word about not bringing us anything too weird. I couldn't complain, as long as I didn’t know what was in the soup – it could have been the produce from a space squid's penis, for all I knew.
It must have been near midnight when we finished up in Ember's Mindscape. There was only around ten percent of the room left to go. She had started at 48% Clarity, having gone up even more from the last time I'd seen it. She was obviously making a lot of effort in any downtime. I felt a little guilty because I wasn't doing the same. We had a quick check of her stats before we hit the hay, and were a little baffled that her Clarity was lower than we expected.
Name: Ember Davison
Age: 25 GY
Transcendence Level: 103
Strength: 81/1000
Agility: 110/1000
Speed: 100/1000
Intelligence: 45/1000
Constitution: 116/1000
Wisdom: 59/1000
Mental Resilience: 210/1000
Mental Clarity: 70%
Potential: 83%
“Seventy fucking percent! That’s pure pig-shit on a dinner plate. I should be around 90, for sure!”
“Clarity growth seems to be slowing down the more we clear,” I replied, just as equally concerned. “I thought mine looked lower than it should’ve been after our last stretch of work in there.”
“Oh, yeah. Now you mention it, I suppose it was a little off. Come on. Let's get some sleep and we can crack on with it in the morning. I want to try and get that last bit cleared to see what happens.”
“Totally. Mine too, when we can.”
“I’m fucking sure yours too! We also need to get your Wisdom up somehow; I just hope it doesn't affect whatever invisible Luck stat you have.”
I didn't reply, just laughed, and jumped into the bed.
When I woke, Ember was sitting in one of the chairs at the table, eyes closed. I supposed this meant we were getting back to it then. With a sigh, I lay back down and closed my eyes. “Havok, old pal. You gonna give us some tunes?” I said to Havok before I entered Ember’s Mindscape.
“Sure thing, Shaun! You should never work without blasting out some inspiring songs about obliterating the enemy like bugs!” he replied, happily.
“True that, dude. I really need to check if the Thoth or the Seshat have any banging Earth tunes. I love what you play, but I wouldn't mind mixing it up a bit with some of my old favorites. Bit of Zeppelin would be awesome!”
“I’ll listen to anything you want me to play, Shaun. I need some new songs in my repertoire. I'd be interested to hear what you listened to on Earth.”
“We’ll have to get a bit of Slipknot in there, too. I think that’ll be right up your street, though it might go down like a lead balloon with Ember,” I chuckled.
“I can't wait!” Havok said, before we both morphed into Ember’s Cognition Room.
“Bloody ‘ell. You've been busy!” I said, looking at her almost empty room.
Ember spun around in shock, then looked sheepish. “Oh, yeah. I woke up about two hours after I’d fallen asleep. I couldn't get back off, thinking how close I was. I need to know what the fuck happens next, Shaun.” I could hear the desperation in her voice.
I grinned at her, looking at what remained of her piles. “We should have this done in an hour, I'd say. Come on, Havok, Hit it! Something fast and upbeat.”
“You got it, guys.”
We both plowed back into Ember’s room, going faster than ever to get that shit done, once and for all. Less than an hour later, Ember stood reverently holding a broken tennis racquet, the last item in the room. A tear formed in the corner of her eye. “I'm not going to lie, this is a huge moment for me. So sorry for getting a little emotional.”
“You don't have to be sorry. This is a huge fucking deal!”
She walked over to the shelving unit and slammed it down happily. The shelves instantly disappearing to be replaced with a small, empty shelf and a screen hovering above it. We looked at each other briefly in surprise, before turning back to the screen. It displayed a file icon for each of the years of Ember's life on one side of the screen and on the other side was a list, the first item of which was a broken tennis racket. She opened up one of the file icons and 12 new files appeared, categorized by month this time. “Weird that it’s in months, I would have thought it would be some weird galactic measurement.”
“Could be just because it’s in your head, and it’s how you measure stuff.” I replied.
“Almost insightful, till you said ‘stuff’, Shaun, but you’re definitely getting there.” She said before turning to continue selecting file Icons. They reduced down to weeks, then days and finally hours. At the bottom of the page was a line of text.
Rebuild mind-database: 0% complete.
She groaned, “Well, this is about as overwhelming as a tsunami.”
“Yup. Looks about as much fun as shitting out bricks sideways.”
“Well, I’m not going to let it get me down. I'm still happy with what we've achieved. Let's go check my stats, huh?”
“Yeah, I’d be interested to know the result of all this,”
