Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.2      Taking Control

1.2.6    An Assumed Role

1.2.6.9  Stepping into the shade

Ketah arrived moments after they’d landed, and Heather sent away all but one large drone and two tiny ones. Enabling the orglife overlay Heather used for crafting, Nadine saw them as a docile well-groomed pack mule, a scowling black-and-tan beagle and an eager golden retriever puppy. Ketah looked down at her shoes and, when the head raised, it was Tomsk.

Tomsk: “I’ve set my team to coming up with ideas for a rock-face fight. They’re controlling dolls hanging from ropes halfway down a cliff, trying to use swords and arrows to cut each other’s ropes. We’ve plenty of time.”

Heather looked about her: “We’re practically on a cliff here. I’d swear some parts of this wood look like they’re 45 degree slopes. Nadine, you come here to pick herbs, for fun??”

Nadine: “You get used to it. Just be careful where you put your feet, city girl.”

Heather looked on her mettle and did her best to put on a pompous accent: “Oh ho, ‘city girl’, is it? We’ll see about that! Where you go, I shall follow.” They both laughed.

Nadine slung her collecting sack over her shoulder, to leave both hands free, and set off towards the first spot she wanted to check.

Tomsk: “Any dangers we should watch out for?”

Nadine: “I’ve never been blown up here. We do get snakes, but you should be fine if you stay clear of stones, holes and tree limbs.”

Heather: “Whit ye blathering aboot? We’re walking through a howlin’ wood. Tha scabby tree limbs oot the oxters!”

Heather moved from walking on stones to exclusively walking on the dried twigs and bark that made up the rest of the narrow path.

Nadine added, thoughtfully: “Hmm, you could avoid the stones. But of course the debris is where the black widow spiders hide. Beautiful little things. Well, I suppose technically they’re not all that little. Some are quite bulbous, and they scuttle around like lightning, always crawling up trouser legs.”

Heather stood very still, then drew herself up. “You won’t win that easily. Tomsk, I have a gift for you.”

The little retriever drone flew up, and dropped a flattened bone rod into Tomsk’s hands. Tomsk gripped both ends and tugged, to reveal that the rod had been a pair of knives, each sheathed into the hilt of the other, with rainbow coloured metal blades that had a gap extending two thirds of the length of the knife along which a dense weight could be repositioned to alter the balance. He held them up to the light, revealing a snarling tiger with long claws decorating it, then looked directly along the blade before balancing it on one finger.

Tomsk: “Heather, these are a work of art. Watashiniha anata ni taisuru gimu ga arimasu, as Aminat would say.” He bowed to her formally, as in a dojo, then in a more normal voice he added. “You want me to show you how to throw them now?”

Heather: “No, just keep them to hand and, if you see a snake or spider, split it in two before it crawls up my trousers or drops onto my head.”

Heather turned and gave Nadine a challenging look, as if to say ‘is that all you’ve got?’

Nadine ignored her and spoke instead to Tomsk: “Tomsk, I didn’t know you spoke Japanese.”

Tomsk: “I don’t. You can’t help picking up some words and phrases, if you do enough martial arts, but I use a translator program when actually trying to converse, just like everyone else.”

Nadine: “The programs are great, but even human translators can’t convey meaning perfectly, if they don’t have enough time or context. Take the word ‘gimu’ that you used. It usually gets translated into English as ‘obligation’ or ‘duty’, but there’s a group of Japanese words: ‘gimu’, ‘giri’, ‘on’ and ‘ninjo’ that reference so much cultural context about loyalty, conformity, balance and the giving of gifts, that just a single word translation misses out all the overtones, the harmonics that resonate in the mind.”

Tomsk sounded interested: “What’s the difference between them?”

Nadine: “Translation wasn’t my strong point in linguistics. I just liked learning new concepts, and the struggle to understand cultures I was unfamiliar with.”

Tomsk: “Probably why you’re so empathic. Most people want to fit the world into boxes they’re already familiar and comfortable with. They confuse the map with the territory itself. They don’t put in the effort to see what’s really there.”

Nadine: “Well, I’ll try my best. Approximately?” Tomsk nodded.

Nadine: “On (恩): If someone accepts a gift or other favour they have been graced with, reciprocity obliges them to acknowledge this and seek to balance it fully where possible.”

Nadine: “Giri (義理): Where it can be measured and balanced, the recipient is honour bound to do so, even if the benefactor has lost track. On and giri are a pair - two sides of the same coin.”

Tomsk: “Aminat said some of the more traditional Japanese villages keep record books going back generations, so if a man has not achieved balance before dying, his son can take on the duty.”

Nadine: “Indeed. I was taught that in Japanese culture, which has a strict social hierarchy, one who has the role of a superior (such as the head of a clan, a feudal lord, the CEO of a company, or even just an elder brother) is expected to guide and nurture their subordinates. And it will be assumed that the subordinate receiving that care and favour, even if it was something they were born into rather than choosing, will show respect and demonstrate their gratitude through loyalty, conformity and faithful service.”

Tomsk: “Don't step in your teacher's shade; follow after him, keeping three feet distance.”

Heather caught up with them, walking with confident strides now and stamping her feet to scare away snakes.

Heather: “And ‘gimu’, as opposed to ‘giri’?”

Nadine: “Gimu (義務): Where the benefit is so profound and life altering as to be immeasurable, such as when a Sensei has passed on the sum of their life's work to a personal Disciple, or when a parent has sacrificed their own health and prospects in order to send their child to university; there is no hope of repaying it fully. It is ‘higher than a mountain, deeper than the sea’. It becomes a ceaseless personal obligation.”

Nadine: “Ninjō (人情): Beyond these public duties and obligations, people's actions are also driven by the private feelings that mark them as individuals rather than robots; things such as love and compassion.”

Heather: “Ninja?”

Nadine: “Not ‘ninja’, ‘ninjō’. And you’re not going to creep up on hidden sentries let alone a rabbit, walking like that. Plan each foot placement before you tread, and keep your balance, so you don’t have to keep grabbing at trees to steady yourself. Take smaller steps so you can control how you shift your weight, and land the ball of your foot before the heel.”

Heather: “That’s pretty much what Capponi told me in Soul Bound, when I went I sought training from the Chosen to improve my stealth. It sucks having to go through the same lesson a second time, just to learn how to do it in arlife. My mind knows how, but my body isn’t in the habit of doing it. I want to be able to put on a tiara, add skill points to a ‘Wilderness Survival’ skill, and then find myself being able to walk through these woods like I own them, the way you do.”

Nadine: “Bungo said he thinks the Soul Bound skill system works by recognising the amount of skill you actually have and then putting numbers on it, rather than by adding numbers in order to increase the skill. That’s why my singing and your crafting were able to shoot up, while levels in riding have been acquired much more slowly.”

Heather pouted: “Yeah? Well I want it to work the other way around. What about sharing skills between people? If we were in the game, and you had a skill that let you identify herbs worth picking, you could bring me into a gestalt, and then I’d look at a plant and the system would highlight it in a colour, feed me an appropriate emotion or even pop a thought into my head. I want that for arlife.”

Tomsk: “I’m not sure arlife has ‘cheat codes’. Picking up a new skill, getting your muscles to remember the moves, takes practice and repetition. ‘There is no royal road to learning.’ .”

Nadine: “I don’t know enough about tiara technology to know what’s possible. But I know who to ask. Hang on a moment. Have a look around for some Maid’s Ruin, and I’ll go check.”

Heather: “Maid’s Ruin?”

Nadine: “Look for a bush like a shrubbery of miniature pine trees, except with small narrow leaves like the blades of a feather. You know, the one that smells of camphor. Just follow your nose.”

She contacted the first system she’d made, the expert on tiaras and programming.

Nadine: {Balthazar? Scan the last few minutes of conversation I’ve had and then make some suggestions.}

Balthazar: {Interesting. I’ll get back to you shortly.}

She helped them find the herb, stored some of the young shoots in her bag to use as flavouring, then showed Heather how to rub the leaves together in her hand to make an effective insect repellent.

She was leading them onwards into the wood, looking for silver-leaved sage plants, with flowers like purple spears, when Balthazar replied.

Balthazar: {Nothing commercial out there. There’s been several academic papers published, though, and the authors have all since accepted highly paid consultancies with unnamed firms and published no follow up papers.}

Nadine: {All of them?}

Balthazar: {Nearly all of them. One died unexpectedly of a heart attack, at the age of 34. A second living in Vancouver, Dr. Richard Sato, is on administrative leave from UBC and was banned from the lab containing all his research after a complaint of harassment by a graduate student who, coincidentally, has also just received a highly paid consultancy.}

Nadine: {Someone’s playing hardball. With that much smoke, there’s likely a fire to be discovered. How quickly could you whip up something we could safely test, based on the theories and what we’ve seen XperiSense achieve?}

Balthazar: {Sato lost his custom hardware, but he kept backups of the software at home. He uploaded a proof-of-concept demo to his personal website five days ago. Want to give it a try? I’ve sanity checked it, and there are no trojans or obviously dangerous errors.}

Nadine caught Tomsk and Heather’s attention.

Nadine: “Guys, about that skill sharing thing. Wanna be guinea pigs?”