NOVEL NEXT 2.20 Tanks for the Memories
"This is stupid," Salazar grumbled, again. He had turned the jitney around to face the uneven hill of rubble, and according to Tapper's plan he just had to wait for the signal. Which gave Salazar plenty of time to mutter about his mounting anxiety.
"Shut up, Sal," Phanya snapped back, again. She knew better than to question Tapper in how he pulls of his magical feats, though truthfully she did feel a bit silly acting like a robot's white noise machine.
"Come on guys, this is the process… I guess," Ricky said. He was always excited to see how his fellow spellcaster worked, but he doubted that anything here would transfer to his own class.
"Silence please, I am almost within the zone," Tapper said, his gentle tone muffled slightly by the metal floor. He lay sprawled face-down on the midpoint of the vehicle with every limb and spindle fanned out, all to maximize his contact surface area with the jitney. It probably wasn't required when the system messages said that spells with two words could cast at range, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. Phanya and Ricky sat on the jitney's long benches on either side of Tapper and slowly manipulated plastic bags over his head, and the gentle cascade of synthetic crinkling helped ease Tapper into a deep meditative trance.
If his associates would stop talking and breaking his concentration, that is. But after Tapper witnessed the profound difference between Ricky barely succeeding at spellcasting and the resounding success of his transmorgifier, Tapper was determined to use every available advantage for this attempt. While everyone else had recuperated and worked, Tapper had put considerable processing power into formulating both the spell circle and verbal component, aiming to create a spell with more intent than merely repurposing a random idiom.
He wanted to capture the concepts of rest and release. For a rare moment, this camping trip brought a camaraderie that filled Tapper with a sense of ease in body and mind. He didn't sleep, but he suspected this is how humans feel after eight hours in a bed with uninterrupted REM cycles. And Tapper appreciated that, but there was urgency in their need to escape. Now he just needed to carefully direct his mana through those emotions, shaped by the spell circle, and weave everything together.
"By demons and bugs thereof,
From below we rise above.
By mine glass eye, we are bade
Tricks of trade and merry made.
Transmorgify thine own jacks,
Sail, carriage, upon DRILL TRACKS!"
Silence.
"Whaaat the actual fuck," Salazar whispered.
"Shh!" Phanya hissed.
"Aww, I'm touched," Ricky cooed.
But Tapper was in too deep for distractions now. He felt the spell circle spin into a möbius of infinite possibility as heat bloomed in his chest, and without the panic of combat Tapper could fully sink into the sensation. Potential swelled and Tapper held on, guiding the energy to build up ever higher before he let it diffuse evenly from his body into the jitney. No rocketing down his limbs, no explosive bleeding off, every bit of mana had a purpose and the massive vehicle drank every drop. Reality pushed back, and Tapper calmly asserted that his willpower shall dictate this reality. Just this little pocket, and only for a little while.
Tapper pictured the change in his mind's eye as the wheels split and morphed, connecting together into two long caterpillar treads studded with small spinning drills. Everything rocked slightly as the jitney settled, and a faint but persistent grinding sound filtered through the chassis. "That would be the signal, Mister Salazar," Tapper announced into the floor.
"You heard him, Sal! Go go go!" Ricky bounced. His plastic bag floated to the ground, forgotten and abandoned, as Ricky scrambled to lean as far as he could out of the passenger side door. "Yoooo, we're like a freaking tank now!"
Salazar's tail snaked around Ricky's waist and yanked him inside. "That makes no sense, but if it gets us the hell out of here then everyone hold on!" He threw the car into low gear and rumbled forward, rocking the cabin as they mounted the first big lump.
Ricky's excitement evaporated before they were halfway up the hill. "Tapper, next time can you please try to include the shocks?" he whined. He still sat shotgun, with a white-knuckle grip on the seat as the turbulent ride threatened to summon any stew still in his stomach.
"I don't know, this is kinda fun. Maybe you just need to work on your balance?" Phanya taunted behind him. She casually held a wide stance in the cabin, hands in her pockets and riding the motion like a surfboard. Ricky turned around to fire back, instantly regretted taking his eyes off the road, and Phanya's smarmy smile broadened. Tapper missed the show, opting instead to maintain his position face-down on the floor to more easily maintain the spell. So long as nothing broke his concentration, Tapper's part of the plan would come through without a hitch.
"OH GOD MY EYES!"
"FUCK, IT'S SO BRIGHT!"
Tapper's spell dissipated into the aether along with his concentration. Something was hurting his friends! He scrambled to his feet, but the jitney leveled off with a massive lurch and sent him tumbling back down. Phanya and Ricky were right next to him, rolling on the floor and clutching at their faces. Tapper looked around for the source of the attack, but only found the endless expanse of tarmac and blue sky, and he mentally sighed. Humans and their organic eyes, so susceptible to sudden changes in luminosity.
Salazar chuckled from the driver's seat. "Man, I do love my goggles," he said to himself, and only flinched a little when Tapper sat down next to him.
"While I do agree with you regarding technological vision, Mister Salazar, might we pull over so our friends can adjust in comfort?"
"No can do, bot. Remember the rules? No stopping within the Glass Eye. Can't even reset the holographic maps now that I have service, I'm just feeding them directly to my goggles." Salazar hooked a thumb over his shoulder, drawing Tapper's attention to a boxy backpack. It was the computer terminal Salazar had originally detached from the workstation, but now a glowing blue cable attached it directly to his goggles. "Trust me, I'll stop as soon as I can so we can reset and you can put the wheels back on with whatever weirdness. Not much point to tank treads on flat tarmac, eh?"
Tapper didn't say anything back. He didn't feel Salazar would be satisfied if Tapper said that the treads should have already changed back into wheels once he stopped the spell.
"Welp, guess we have a tank now," Ricky said as he wiggled out from underneath the car. True to his word, the instant smoggy clouds blanketed the sky Salazar said they were out of the Glass Eye and he pulled to a stop. Now he fussed with his computers while Ricky crawled around the tank treads and the others watched. "They aren't glowing, so I'm pretty sure that means the treads are permanent. Shame the drill studs are gone, I wanted to see how they worked."
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"I was focusing rather intently on the treads not changing back into wheels while we were climbing the hill, it's possible that I accidentally crossed the threshold into making them permanent," Tapper explained. His hands kept fidgeting, and he felt a sour tang in his emotional center. Shame? "I apologize if this adds needless difficulty to our journey."
Ricky made a dismissive swipe in the air and said, "Phsaw Tapper, don't sweat it. It's better to do too much instead of too little, y'know?"
The vehicle shifted slightly as Salazar started throwing a fit inside the cabin. "You rat bastards, I knew I couldn't trust you!"
"Speaking of doing too much," Phanya mumbled. She plastered on a fake sing-song voice and continued, "Oh Salazar, buddy! Is everything good?"
Salazar kicked open the door and leveled a threatening finger at the trio. "Don't you 'buddy' me! Hacks! You hacked my software, the ONE thing I said was off-limits!"
Tapper stepped up with his hands out, always ready to placate a comrade. "Please, Mister Salazar, I assure you that no one has touched your software. What seems to have hacked you?"
The mercenary just growled and vanished within the car, which the others took as a sign to follow. Inside and towards the back, Salazar stood with his arms crossed and foot tapping, as if he were a parent impatiently waiting for their child to explain an unsightly mess on the carpet. "Well?" Salazar said, jabbing a finger at the computer workstation. "That isn't my program." Everyone crowded into the cramped space for a view. All the computer screens were black, save for one that was black with a sharp contrast of green text.
[Threshold passed for critical damage, death event recorded]
[Repairs recognized, rebooting...]
[Modifications installed without attuning, please resolve before continuing]
[ERROR!]
[Conflicting attributes from (2) sources detected
Integrating experience, please wait...]
No one said anything, but the three shared a pointed look. It was even the same color and font as the messages floating in their mind's eye. Ricky broke first, but all he could offer was a lame, "...Oh."
"Oh? OH!?" Salazar squawked, arms flapping as his emotions started to boil over. "What did you DO!? None of my inputs are working!"
"I might have an explanation," Tapper slowly said. His social programs were spinning at full speed, measuring what technical truths he could admit that wouldn't endanger his proprietors. "Ricky attempted to connect the onboard computers of our two vehicles purely so that technical readouts from Isabel could display on our computer screens without relying on holographic projections, correct?"
"Yep totally, just trying to help," Ricky nodded. Salazar's withering glare was starting to wear him down, and Ricky shuffled behind his robot for shelter.
Tapper continued, "However, it appears that he may have been too successful and instead created a two-way linkage. What you are seeing is, possibly, a program from our vehicle's computer that had been lying dormant until now."
"Possibly." The word oozed with suspicion from Salazar.
"Yes, possibly. We had been driving our vehicle in manual mode ever since I found it buried beneath the old garbage strata."
That really got Salazar's attention. "Beneath the old… you mean this heap is from before the tarmac?"
"Possibly hundreds of years before, yes. We honestly believed that there were no functioning programs left on its computers."
Salazar chewed his lip in thought, but Phanya spoke up first and drew everyone's attention. "New messages on the screen. Whoa, a lot of messages."
[Heracles Beetle level 6 defeated! +23 XP]
[Cannonbug level 2 defeated! +5 XP]
[Springheel Scout level 1 defeated! +1 XP]
And on and on. Phanya was already scrolling the wheel set into the workstation by the time everyone got a look under her shoulders. It detailed the swarm storm, the bounty hunters, and so, so many damage reports.
"Hit 'Control + End.' I said the 'Control' key and the 'End' key! Here scoot over, I'll do it." Salazar butted Phanya out of the way and tapped his keyboard, and after a few seconds of loading the last few lines scrolled across the screen.
[Desperate Water Scavenger level 1 defeated! +3 XP]
[Experience integration complete]
[Total XP = 2,415]
[XP tax required to complete integration = 87%]
[Reboot and complete integration sequence? Some feats may be automatically chosen as necessary Y/N]
Ricky whistled softly. "That's a lot of experience. Wonder how many levels…" his voice trailed off to humming as he started calculating numbers in his mind.
"Ah-ha!" Tapper almost laughed. "I may not know what this program is, Mister Salazar, but one thing I can say with absolute confidence is that this has never once been a decision I regretted." Salazar, Phanya, and Ricky all managed to utter one syllable of their confusion before Tapper reached over and poked Y on the keyboard. The computer responded with a deep rumbling that radiated out through the floor, walls, and every fixture of the vehicle's interior. Someone shouted a question, and their car answered by erasing all sensation of gravity in an instant of pure disorientation. An invisible wave carried the weightless occupants and tossed them out the door, depositing everyone on the tarmac like so much forgotten trash.
DING!
Tapper's audio processors crashed midway through the first 'ding,' but he felt the rest rattle his chassis. His organic compatriots were not so lucky and fell to their knees, squeezing their heads against the ringing, and Tapper hovered over them as if he could shield them from the percussive force with his body. Logically Tapper knew that he couldn't protect his friends his way, but logic held no explanation for what Tapper witnessed.
DING!
Their vehicle was melting, without collapsing. Edges softened and drooped in some sections while others bubbled out and creased into new angles; broken sensors disappeared entirely, only for a smaller number of different instruments to sprout like flowers in their place.
DING!
Wheel wells shifted to evenly distribute themselves along the length of the car, squares of paint fell like water to reveal new windows, and fresh seams split in the paneling to outline a new sliding door in the rear half.
DING!
After the final gong thundered across the tarmac everything fell still, and Tapper gawked. All evidence that Ricky had chained and welded two vehicles together was erased, as if a great thumb had reached down to erase a mistake and left only a smudge behind. The front and rear still carried their distinctive wedge and bell shapes, but the middle flowed seamlessly into characteristics of both designs. Even the paint job merged together, with the muted red from the front fading gradually into dark gray at the rear.
"Would someone please tell the robot to get off me," Salazar said, his grumble muffled by Tapper's torso. He hopped back from the accidental group hug and his friends straightened themselves, taking their own turns to gawk at the newly integrated vehicle.
Both Ricky and Salazar walked around the car, making various noises of disbelief and awe, while Phanya leaned in close to Tapper and whispered, "Are you positive you didn't do some weird system magic skrat to the car?"
"I assure you, Phanya, I only directly interfaced with the jitney one time when I first found it, and I never touched Mister Salazar's instruments as per his instructions." Tapper kept his tone quiet and even, but he did not feel much conviction behind his words.
"Hey, I believe you, but…" Phanya held up an open hand to present the evidence before them. "This is clearly some weird system magic skrat at work."
"Maybe it wasn't one thing, but a bunch of things together," Ricky said, stepping up to join them. His eyes never left the new and improved jitney, and the wide smile never left his face. "I mean, we've been working on it pretty much every chance we've had. Certainly put our blood, sweat, and tears into that jitney."
Tapper nodded along, his emotional center lifted by the prospect that this transformation was somehow not solely his fault. "Precisely, it must have been a team effort! Salazar's tears, your sweat, and I spilled a painful quantity of blood!"
"Yes you did, Tapper."