Psycher Chronicles

Chapter 22

Synchronizing

(Misha)

Patterns, routines, and above all trusting the known universal truths. These are the things that Misha had long ago accepted as the only way to progress and succeed in life.

In her past lives, she had been a cog in the wheel of consistent gradual improvements. As a Psycher there were known truths, and the most important was the standard and mostly predictable deviations of change.

Recently Misha has had this fundamental understanding questioned by the sheer growth and potential offered by the new insights she has gained into the Bakshee organo-tech.

Also, now after having seen the effects of her class in person, she understands what is at play. Evolution is chaotic and wild, allowing for multiple deviations that are unique and astounding to behold. While there are somethings that are specific to each class, the classes do offer a cross-pollination ability that allows for further growth and adaptability to each new situation.

Ultimately, she was beginning to have doubts about how superior her standard deviations and repetitive savings and altering base models was, when clearly her kind was losing the war.

In fact, given how small her fleet was at the end, and the fact that she ended up here likely meant that the main fleet was destroyed. Though such thoughts were counterproductive to her current status, and she figured that while she was here she might prepare a few things.

After yesterday, she felt she understood the system.

That was until she had accepted her Double Growth Rate.

Ever since that point, she has seen unexpected new parameters come to light. Her family, people that she had grown to care for, people that she had grown to accept as being completely incapable of becoming part of the organo-tech process now had options.

Target: Phil Tully

Compatibility Ratings:

Warrior: 0%

Worker: 55%

Ruler: 43%

Reset ratings and rework progression?

None of those percentages were particularly good. But there were options that Misha could instantly see were available.

In particular, there was the fact that now that she gained Double Growth Rate, that meant she was now able to enhance the probability of an awakening. Meaning she could take any or all of those probabilities and double them.

It would be a slow process, but there were certain things that Misha found interesting.

In particular, since she was part of a Reaper System, she could forever cut out the probability of future delineation of the target’s offspring. This seemed to already be the case as Granddad Phil, her mother, and she herself had all had a 0% compatibility with the Warrior trait.

By removing future variations from appearing in the next generations, she could artificially increase the chance of Phil or those of his lineage becoming a Worker, or a Ruler.

Then there was the fact that new sub-options were also available for her, if she created a forced awakening.

With her ability to double the chances of the organo-tech accepting the proposed changes, she could guarantee a hundred percent success rate for her aging grandfather to awaken as a Worker, and give an 86% chance of Phil transitioning as a Ruler class.

This was an interesting development, and one that Misha had only read through while trying to understand her new capabilities, when she realized that part of her new abilities meant that she could not only force an awakening, but also force the way this variant of an awakened being would mutate.

Warrior Class Mutation Paths Available:

Transcendent Attribute: Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Stamina.

Durability.

Regeneration.

This meant that the new species of warriors, or Werewolves as they were known on this planet would start off with one of the following evolutionary paths available, before reaching their First Tier. Meaning they would seemingly be twice as likely to succeed.

While Misha found the information to be interesting, she never thought it would be worth delving into in the slightest, until she saw what available for the Worker class.

Worker Class Mutation Paths Available:

Longevity.

Increased Cognitive Capabilities.

Relentless.

For a species whose baseline was measured in the timeline of a century at most, the fact that her grandfather Phil, and grandmother were both past the midway points of their maximum lifespans was not missed on Misha. Yet, this class seemed to make it so she could force both her grandmother and grandfather to be able to live for at least twice as long, if not longer depending on what eventual evolutionary paths they took once they increased their class Tier ratings.

Then there were the possibilities that were offered to her for converting her grandfather into a Ruler class.

Ruler Class Mutation Paths Available:

Omni-Elementalist

Double Elemental: Capacity/ Power / Control

Commanding Voice

The options available for the Ruling class were also amazing and terrifying. With this whole process, Misha could lock in bloodlines to produce powerful children that would always start off with a permanent guarantee of awakening as the chosen class upon the time of complete physical maturation, and also make it so deviations or merging of bloodlines would create even more powerful offspring in the future.

To make matters worse, after doubling the chances of successful awakening in a person, the organo-tech components that remained related to the other two classes available could be consumed by Misha. In fact, Misha even saw that if she chose, she could force her grandfather to take the 0% chance of awakening as a Warrior class, and ultimately reap the benefits of his relatively high ratings for becoming a Worker or a Ruler.

Honestly, the sheer audacity of such a class caused her to feel nauseous and make her hate the Bakshee that much more. The fact that this class made it so everyone was effectively nothing more than organic testing materials that could be used to streamline and alter planetary resources that would eventually be assimilated into the fleet made her feel nauseous inside.

The worst part about her class was the fact that despite everything she knew to be disgusting about the class itself, she couldn’t help but cling to the idea that if she wanted to, she could spend twice as long with her grandfather.

Then the true gravity of that situation would hit her, where she would force her grandfather to evolve into an instrument of the enemy. Where she would justify the loss of her conviction and morals to having a safer universe by allowing this one exception to her morality.

Of course, it would never stop with just one change, as she would likely do the same for her grandmother and mother as well. Then she knew that as time went on they might have others that they wish to bring in and alter as well.

No, it had to end here and now with her.

She still gained resources from reverting the warriors who had assimilated into the various sports teams available. That would be a start for her reaping, in addition, she found the idea of reaping from the other workers that were in school to be equally fair game, as she had long since declared a war against them in multiple past lifetimes.

Now she would just find better ways to deal with them.

Her true goals had not changed since her awakening of this seemingly obsolete class. Namely, she needed to sabotage the resource potential of this planet, while also reconnecting to the remnants of her main fleet.

These were the thoughts that went through Misha’s mind as she made her way through her first few classes of the day.

***

(Amoni Jacobs)

The new girl didn’t even look at Amoni throughout the entire Physics class. They even had a pop quiz that the girl somehow managed to pass while seeming to be in a daze of some kind.

Originally, Amoni wanted to stare daggers at the girl, to get her to look back in fear the way most people did when she sent her full attention on them, but this girl was different. She didn’t even flinch at the full focus of her Wolf-stare.

Oh, it was so on. Today after class, during practice, she would show this new girl who was top dog, and there was only one answer for that. Ever since Amoni joined this school, or any sports team there has only ever one top dog, her. This time would be no exception, her team clearly won yesterday and while Amoni admittedly had an off day herself going zero for three from the field and all but locked down defensively by the stranger, today would be different.

Today Amoni would focus on what the girl did and figure out ways to get past her stifling defense. Now, all she needed to do was to set the stage by intimidating her a bit and…

***

(James Rider)

The new redhead was intense, no, maybe focused? It was hard for James to figure out exactly why he kept getting drawn into her actions.

Honestly, she wasn’t doing anything other than just staring at the screen. At least that is what it looked like to James, who hadn’t been staring at her, though he was just curious how the new girl was adjusting.

Occasionally James thought it might be nice to go over and try to talk to her, but words and text flew across her screen.

This was odd, as it didn’t seem like she was moving her hands, nor clicking on anything in particular, yet the words and texts of the problems assigned were clearly being accomplished at a high rate of speed and accuracy if the flashing green checkmarks were anything to go by. But despite how quickly she worked through her programming aptitude tests, her focus never seemed to waver from the screen before her.

This was not the first time that he had noticed something odd about the girl. Ever since Darcy pointed her out to him, he couldn’t help but feel that there was some type of attraction to her.

Yet he had his set understanding of the world. High school romances never lasted. Also, he had apparently let Darcy claim dibs, even though Darcy as always was taking the long and arduously slow route of biding her time to ask out the target of her affections.

Chime.

Just as James was thinking about how quickly she was going through her class work, James heard the completion sounds.

“James another certificate?” Ms. Philips asked, coming over with a giant smile to greet James. Though her face quickly soured as she saw that James only had up a social media post up, as he had clearly been caught browsing the internet, versus working ahead in class.

“No,” James replied sheepishly, and then with a head gesture looked towards Misha who was already past the certificate, causing the box to minimize itself before continuing onto the next page.

With her hands on the keyboard, she would move her hands but nowhere nearly as fast as the text would appear on the screen before her. Seeing this, Ms. Philips immediately shouted, “are you cheating in my computer class?”

Misha for her part just appeared to stare straight forward not even paying attention to anyone as she stared forward at the screen, as more and more texts just scrolled past.

“Are you even listening to me?” Ms. Philips shouted as she went over to shake Misha.

Blinking.

Misha shook her head as if being pulled from a daze and asked. “What? What is wrong?”

“That all depends. Tell me how you were hacking in my class, and I might let you off with a warning.” Ms. Philips said, as she defiantly crossed her arms in front of her chest and stared at Misha.

Misha looked lost for a second, before she seemed to understand. Then she spoke to herself, “I guess I was getting distracted.”

“Yes, though I will tell you we have a harsh policy against cheating here.” Ms. Philips stated.

“You can’t prove that she cheated.” James felt himself saying, trying to come to the defense of the new girl.

Hearing that Ms. Philips just shook her head and spoke her mind, “I can as I saw her sitting there while someone else that she let remotely access her box was typing for her.”

James was about to argue, but then Ms. Philips continued, “I’d stop while I was ahead Mr. Rider, as you were my first choice for assisting her with cheating. Fortunately, you were clearly distracted, otherwise I would be sending you to detention as well.”

“Detention?” The new girl asked.

“Yes, along with all your records dropped, and you being kicked out of the computer class.” Ms. Philips said defiantly.

At that Misha just stood up.

“What? You aren’t going to deny it?” Ms. Philips asked.

“Not much point in arguing with someone who doesn’t even understand the fact that these computers are on a mock network that is constantly monitored for any signs of external or internal connection events. Meaning that if anything like you were suggesting did happen, you would have received an alert to your computer, your work phone, and your personal phone at your house.” Misha replied, getting up and walking out.

“Just how do you know that, and where are you going?” Ms. Philips asked, feeling indignant at the fact that this girl had spoken about her redundancy in tracking network activity, but still had not received an alert.

“I understand technology, and I am going to detention as you noted.” Misha said.

“Good, see that you do.” Ms. Philips said, trying to somehow regain some of her composure from this encounter that started off as a matter of praise, then to immediate signs of hacking, to now her wondering just what this girl had done to her network.

Then as soon as Misha left, Ms. Philips made a few quick notes that the new student would be getting detention. A feeling of joy washed over her as she was able to stick it to that annoying Ms. Green who thought she ruled the school.

Ping.

Once that email was sent off from her phone, Ms. Philips sat down and began doing immediate triage on her corrupted system, hoping that she would be able to find out what backdoor hacking program was used to breach her network. The first thing she did was disconnect the computer from the internet and begin pulling up all processes. It would take time, but this was not the first time she had sniffed out people using her classroom for malicious purposes, but it would be the first time she caught a sports athlete directly cheating while in her classroom, which made her smile and hum excitedly.

***

(Frank Grimes)

It wasn’t until the next morning when he woke up in the sanitized sheets of a Holiday Inn that Frank realized why his tired reflexes were all but screaming at him to pay attention to the hot MILF chauffeur he had last night.

“Andrea, her name was Andrea, she even had a daughter.” Frank said, his now much more coherent mind was finally able to piece together the puzzle pieces that had been sent to him last night. Still, there was the chance that the daughter wasn’t the same one. He often found Andreas, but rarely if ever did he find a Misha. That said, at the very least this gave him yet another reason to call the chauffeur back and set up another time to meet. At the very least, seeing her again would make this the best Jackson County he had come to visit.

Now all he needed to do was find his phone, which he did, only to find that the phone itself was dead, and that of course his charger and everything he owned was in that car that was still being worked on.

“This is going to be one of those days, isn’t it?” He said to himself, as he decided that there was no way the vehicle would be fixed immediately. Also, he still had to go through public records and while finding his way back to that garage would be tough, the name was fairly easy to recall. “The Dustdevil? Rustdevil? Something…” Frank pondered as he tried to remember something about last night.