“The storm predictions are beyond what the equipment they sell can handle.”
Paul smirked. “Challenge accepted.”
“How can we augment the tent to survive this? Or should we deconstruct it and ride it out in our armor?”
“Neither,” he said, pulling the door open enough for him to step out into the wind. He walked a few steps to clear the way for Cal-com to follow, then he knelt down and placed his bare palm against the thin, soft sand beneath him.
Paul held still, but the sand did not, blowing every which way until the bits around his fingers began to pull in as if being sucked into a black hole. They almost disappeared beneath his hand, but his palm rose ever so slightly as the material built up beneath, eventually forming into a brick a few inches wide and as along as Paul’s forearm. When he was finished he grabbed it with his other hand and tossed it up to Cal-com, who caught the remarkably heavy construct in both hands as the weight surprised him into a short-lived fumble.
“What did you do?”
“Alchemy combined with Essence. The composition of the sand makes it easy. I shouldn’t know that without testing, but I can feel it. The molecules are almost beckoning to be remade.”
Cal-com used his armor to analyze the brick, with his total shock evident on his face when the results came in.
“This is a corovon alloy. How can you do that with no Corovon in the sand?”
“The building blocks are there for it. I can’t explain how, but I can feel them.”
“That’s subatomic, Paul. And something even our Mastertechs haven’t figured out how to do. Are you fatigued?”
“No. I didn’t have to deposit energy, just set up a natural chain reaction. Barely a touch of Essence was required, and my psionic use was moderate. I just gave it the necessary push and it realigned because it wanted to. It’s pathetically simple, but if I had to draw it out I’m not sure I could. The sense is fleeting, and if I try to think of it academically I’m afraid I’ll lose it.”
“Can you do more?”
“Many more, and it will allow my body to rest. Two problems solved with one task.”
“Can you do enough in time?” Cal-com asked, glancing at the approaching dust swirls that were eating up the horizon.
“One way to find out. I’ll forge, you engineer. Plan wisely. I can’t make this go any faster,” he said, starting to create another dirty white-colored brick slightly lighter in shade than the sand itself.
“Challenge accepted,” Cal-com echoed as he began reviewing possible structural designs to find one strong enough but with the least building material needed.
3
April 24, 154930
Solar System (Home One Kingdom)
Earth
Wilson stood in one of the many control centers for the training courses in Atlantis, linked into the biomonitors that all the trailblazers were wearing. When they weren’t going at it in team matches, he had them doing work on obstacles courses, mostly solo runs. The difference now was their Essence use. He had them split into groups, with one using Essence as normal. Another only using their own Essence and forgoing the Uriti-charged Magicite rings, with a third using no rings and pulling only from what was in their body currently.
The fourth and final group were forbidden from using Essence at all, and they hadn’t been thrilled about it. Every time a person used Essence it increased their total personal reservoir a tiny bit, and the trailblazers had gotten in the habit of using it all the time to take advantage of this aspect, but Wilson wanted to see what happened when they avoided it. He’d done similar experiments with lower ranking Archons, but none of them had the size of Essence wells as the trailblazers did, so he was hoping he’d get some useful results. All the other experiments seemed to reflect the same basic truth.
Essence use had no negative effects on the body or training unless you went so low to risk death.
Wilson crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Greg-073 jumping through a series of hoops spaced 16 meters apart and elevated 3 meters in the air. This course was a ‘no fly’ course, and the trailblazers didn’t have a problem restricting themselves from using certain psionics on the obstacle courses. It was in combat when they had an opponent that adjusted to them that they found it hard to hold back.
Greg leapt easily from floor to hoop to floor over and over again, making his way to a slide that carried him up via a reversed gravity column, then he was swinging from monkey bars across a disqualification chasm that didn’t prove any real threat to him. This run was about speed, for the course was familiar, and unless he really screwed up there was no chance of not making it to the finish.
They’d gone over this course hundreds of times each in the past, with dozens more on this group arrival to Atlantis, and as always they were trying to improve their times. That meant their marks were already pretty high to begin with, but they were chipping away here and there without any significant improvement. Without being able to use Essence or their Saiyan modes to boost their speed, all they had was their psionics, muscle, and rhythm to work with. And once you’d hammered that out, squeezing every advantage out of the course that you could, what did that leave?
No room for accidental advancement. If they were going to adapt and grow to it, it would show. If they did not, they would plateau at or near their current level. Wilson needed a wall like this to hammer them on in order to analyze the more subtle aspects of their fitness, and the results he was getting so
