The Core: The First Guest

32. The first ripple in the pond

I tried everything I could think of to get the leeches to condense around me again. I wanted to see if what I had done was something that would fade with time or would it turn out to be a constant thing. After a while of blasting the liquid fire around me with propulsion energy, it was enough to attract a mountain of leeches. When nothing happened I decided that it was a long-term solution.

"So, it would seem that the leeches are either connected somehow or a communal entity. Once one is harmed or killed the rest will not interfere with whoever harmed them again. I can't tell if they are still around me, just unwilling to condense and feed... or if they have fled this area altogether. I also don't have any way to know if what I did had affected other miners or if it is just me that the leeches will leave alone now. I will find out when I reach the south pole in a few hours." I said as I opened my map again and reset my destination marker before beginning to jet through the sun. I noticed something odd, a coloration that I would fly through if I chose to pick a straight path to my destination. I was in the middle of zooming in to check it out when Meditati's voice interrupted me.

"Kevin! Do you have any idea what you have just done?" She seemed to scream out at me from the surrounding fire.

"Put a bigger bullseye on my head?" I asked. It seemed that that was all I was doing recently. The more I learned about the Tela race, the less I felt that I was safe amongst them. Some, for whatever reason, seemed to almost be monsters in their thirst for power.

"Yes, sadly, you made what was just a novel interest into the focus of all Tena Citizens. You see, in the beginning, mining was a big thing. Similar to the gold rush your country experienced in the past. Once fatigue began, however, everything changed. Mining cr became something that most Citizens wouldn't spend their lives doing. They would rather stay in high-speed VR time than to have everyone that they cared about forget them while they worked away in real-time."

"Why didn't they have the cr mined by robots?" I asked.

"Oh, they tried to, but that was deemed illegal in a matter of moments once everyone realized that all of the wealth would stack onto the first person who was able to do it. With Citizen miners, the wealth would spread out. Additionally, a couple of stars were mined in that manner and it quickly made them have such high fatigue levels that no robot or citizen could enter or leave once inside the Chromosphere."

"So what is happening out there in the Tela Empire?" I asked as I was starting to get bored having nothing to see but a dotted line stating my progress towards my destination.

Bullseye? Bullseye.... Why does that word tickle my memory? Oh no! I forgot to drop off the tracking module! I quickly shot it off behind me and sped up, even more, to get away from its location.

"Well, the good news is, I have been transferring your achievements to display as if they are happening to my Core's sun. It has all been registered to an undisclosed citizen with nominal cr abilities. This has flooded miner guilds into my Core at record rates in the attempt to duplicate your findings. All Tela Citizens are watching this event to see if it will pan out. I really must say that the power output that your strange cr can put out far exceeds what ours can do. It is beginning to seem like it isn't cr at all, or at least not our nanobots that are driving yours."

"It isn't. Please keep this just for your simulation data and not for public records. When I received my cr it said that it was from an unknown source. Also, I think I remember it saying that it was incompatible with Tela systems."

"Why isn't there any record of that in my brother's archives?"

"Because my VR home was unable to alert the System of the Error. It seems that I can be the sole Authority in my personal habitat." I answered.