“Wait, wait, wait,” Rufus jumped in. “That was a lot of information. My main questions are, who is Havok? And who is Jotun?”
Astrid spoke next. “I know of no Havok, but I’ve heard Jotun’s name mentioned before. Was he one of the Fystr? A famous one at that, and you killed him on the supply station?”
“That he was,” Ember replied.
“So, who is Havok?” she asked.
“Havok is my axe,” I smiled.
“Ah! That was Jotun’s axe. Am I correct? Is it alive then?”
“He identifies as male, and he is very much alive, with a very distinct personality of his own. That actually reminds me. Do you have any music from Earth? We really need some.”
They both looked at me like I had gone insane. “Yeah,” Rufus finally answered, “we’ve a load of entertainment, so does the Thoth. Music, movies, eBooks, audio books. You name it, we’ve got it. There's even a few of them that are similar to what we’re going through now, believe it or not. I'm reading a fantastic series at the minute called Cond…”
“Rufus! Stop prattling on. We need to get on with your Mindscape tour,” Ember snapped.
“Okay,” Rufus said, holding his hands out in a conciliatory gesture. “I can send copies of everything over to you.”
“Sounds good. I look forward to it,” I said, taking some of the heat off Rufus, before continuing about Havok. “So, yeah. Havok doesn't necessarily know a lot, because he freely admits the Fystr are boring and he didn’t listen to them too much. But he did know enough to point us in the right direction to get our visual upgrade. It’s my thinking that there must be more forcible upgrades like that. We need to keep our minds open to opportunities. There’s so much to learn.”
“Thank you, Shaun,” Ember said, curtly. “Are you ok if I move on with the tour you asked me to do?”
“Yeah, of course. Crack on with it,” I smiled.
“There are other things you can do here, but what we’ve discussed covers the main things. Even if you can’t do the visual upgrade yet, it’ll be good for you both to practice here. Now, if you have a look over at that screen, I think you’re gonna be a little surprised.”
As one, they turned and looked toward Rufus’s stat screen. They moved quickly to moon over it. “Is this for real?” Rufus asked. “This is amazing!”
“It's for real,” I replied. “Let's have a look at whatcha got, then.”
Name: Rufus Camacho
Age: 35 GY
Transcendence Level: 58
Strength: 80/1000
Agility: 71/1000
Speed: 70/1000
Intelligence: 35/1000
Constitution: 70/1000
Wisdom: 45/1000
Mental Resilience: 40/1000
Mental Clarity: 16%
Potential: 80%
I couldn't deny I was impressed with Rufus's stats. They weren't as good as Ember’s or mine, which was possibly a little unfair considering how long he’d been training. I wasn't complaining that I was at a much higher level. I secretly hoped that Astrid would be a lower level, too. I know that it was a petty thought, but… well… nope. I've got nothing. I wanted to be stronger than them.
“Right, you guys. You can moon over your stats later. We must move onward. We’ve the most important room to go to, and it’s the absolute fucking pits. Let’s go!” Ember shouted.
We all piled out of the Interface Room, and I had a realization that I was so used to this now that I genuinely felt like I was in some random building, rather than in some random mind.
We arrived at the shit-tip room. I knew it wouldn't be great, because Rufus only had a Clarity of 16%. And to be honest, upon entering, the room looked similar to how it appeared in my mind at first.
“Okay, guys. I'm not gonna beat around the bush. This room is key to your ability to progress and develop in so many areas,” Ember said.
“Basically, you’ve got to clear all this shit up. That's what Ogun told us,” I said.
“With the experience of hindsight though, we’ve found a relatively efficient way to clear it.”
“But you won't have Havok’s sweet tunes,” I chuckled.
“Ignore him and listen closely. Make a path through the junk to those shelves over there. Once there, you need to just start putting things on the shelves as quickly as possible. Once you fill a shelf, it disappears. Keep going until the room is empty.”
They looked at us like we were mad. I was about to explain in more detail, but Ember stopped me.
“Look everyone, we need to keep moving. Astrid, Rufus, follow our instructions and you’ll do better than we did for the first few months, or do whatever you want and waste your time,” she said.
She wasn’t wrong. We had given them far more advice than Ogun had given us, and would continue to support them, “Ember’s right, guys. Get stuck in. Learn the ropes and we’ll talk about it again soon. If you find new and better ways to do things, then pass that information along. We need to work together on this. The Uprising needs to rise up quickly.”
They both nodded at me, respectfully.
“Thank you so much for showing us this. We’ve a few people who did very well in Anatoli, so we’ll try to bring them through to the Mindscape soon. Hopefully, we can become a true force to be reckoned with,” Astrid said.
“Sounds good to us. Just one more thing before, well, before we go our separate ways. Astrid, I wanna see your stats, or you can just tell me them. We need to know where you're at.”
“Oh, right. Sure, just come over and see. I wanted to see them myself, like, an hour ago.”
“You know what to do, Rufus?” I asked.
“I think? Is it just the same as
