After returning to the space yacht and having a nice little lunch I decided that it was about time that I got some combat training in. Surely my AI was smart enough to be able to teach me some useful bits of knowledge. At least, if I practiced for long enough, I might be able to understand how to use my Prime Speed Control efficiently during a fight. These thoughts led me to change into workout clothes and head down to my now commonly dubbed "floor of disillusionment" or rather my poor basement in the bottom of the yacht.
Off against the far wall, I still had the display case of my "first five cr coins" and next to it I had created a stand to show just how much CR I had managed to gather.
The last time I had messed with it I had left a baseball-sized sphere balancing perfectly in the center. Now when I noticed the stand it was holding a sphere the size of a bowling ball.
"What has happened here?" I said as I walked up to it. I willed my current CR balance up and was surprised when I saw that I had somehow made almost 2 more million CR somewhere.
Sure enough, when I opened up the relevant notification it was all summarized neatly on a list of all the firewalls, personal home intrusion deterrent systems, and company rewards for showing vulnerabilities in a company's product. It was all logged to have happened during my time dreaming.
"That must have been what Regeth was all upset about. So it really did happen, all those countless bubbles that I stepped on in my attempt to get away from the monster was me intruding into people's homes." I mused under my breath. I hoped all those people were ok and not traumatized. I would have to ask Exerdinand when next I saw him what the result was from all of that happening.
Those additions gave me 1,889,031.829 CR and a new balance of 2,919,412.829 CR.
As I read through the huge list of houses and security systems that I had broken into, my eyes caught something that stood out near the bottom of the list. I had gained a little over a million CR from an "Unknown source." In fact, the line had some mind-boggling additional details associated with it. It read:
1,003,064 CR gained from Unknown source.
CR is unregistered and incompatible with Tela systems. Error detected.
CR has bound and registered to Host Guest Kevin.
VR home is attempting to alert the System of Error.
VR home is unable to alert the System of Error.
VR home is attempting...
VR home is unable...
...
...
"No wonder the list was so long, it keeps trying to alert the System about this Error," I said as I looked at the bowling ball-sized amount of currency. Odd swirls in the ever-present metallic sheen that I had begun to associate with cr were now interlaced with other darker swirls that didn't mix with the lighter colors. "What are you from?" I asked it as my mind shifted back to the ant from my dream. It had lobbed a baseball-sized sphere of this stuff at me... and if I remembered my previous amount correctly a baseball was worth about a million CR. "No way... that doesn't make any sense," I mumbled as I stood there staring at it for a while.
Soft music from upstairs reminded me why I had come down into the basement of the ship earlier and after a couple final intense gazes at the odd ball of money/high tech micro-robots, I decided to see about getting a little training in after all.
YOU ARE READING
The Core: The First Guest
Science Fiction❖2021 Watty Awards Shortlist❖ Kevin was just a normal 10 year old kid until he saw a woman vanish right before his eyes. This made Kevin just a little bit different. He paid more attention to people now. Little did he know that this little differenc...
