I walked over to the other side of the wide ramp we were following down into the abyss. Then I looked around and tried to find a comfortable spot where there weren't too many bits of metal and wreckage sticking out that could potentially stab into me if I ran into trouble.

I didn't want to get the livisk equivalent of tetanus on top of everything else that'd been going wrong in my life lately.

Finally I found a nice flat spot that looked like it'd been the side of some building or another once upon a time. Like we're talking it could've been the side of another one of those massive towers the livisk seemed to love, or it could've been the side of a dentist's office.

I'd never actually looked to see if the livisk had dentists, but I had to assume that was something that existed somewhere in the Ascendancy, or maybe it was something they let their medbays take care of the same as everything else.

Medicine. It was a great career to go into since everybody was basically a glorified caretaker for medbays these days.

My mind was wandering, though. I didn't want to think about whatever it was Arvie was about to do to me. I couldn't help but think about how the usual solution for a malfunctioning computer problem was to turn it off and back on again, and I really didn't want that to be his solution to what ailed me.

"This isn't going to involve shutting down my higher brain function or anything ridiculous like that, is it?" I asked, looking up at the probe.

"Why would you think it would be anything like that?" Arvie asked, sounding genuinely surprised. It was the sort of tone he got when he was surprised with the constant stream of bullshit I was throwing at him.

"Turn it off and back on again," I said with a grin.

"He's got a point," Rachel said. "A thousand years of information technology and that's still the best way to cure what ails a computer."

"Remember the time we had to turn the entire systems for the Allamaraine off and back on again when we were running a pirate patrol out on the outer rim of the Ceti Alpha system?" I asked, grinning up at her.

That was one of those systems that got named after stuff that came from science fiction. Funnily enough, there weren't enough planets for there to actually be a Ceti Alpha V.

There was a Ceti Alpha IV that was a gas giant that had a lot of resources that could be mined, though, and it was one of those curiosities of the universe that there was actually a band of atmosphere in the gas giant where you could literally put floating cloud cities because it had a breathable atmosphere for most humans as long as they spent a little bit of time in a medbay getting their lungs looked at every three months or so.

Though they were floated on massive balloons to start, not antigrav. These days it was all antigrav, and again, I was getting distracted because I didn't want to think about what was about to happen.

Rachel grinned, "Yeah, that was a good time. I nearly crapped my pants when we saw that pirate ship come 'round the large moon on Ceti Alpha IV."

"Tell me about it," I said.

I leaned against the wall and looked up at Arvie. "Okay, do your worst."

"I don't understand why you phrase it like that, William," he said, sounding a touch annoyed. "I have your best interests at heart, after all."

"Yeah, I know you do, buddy," I said. "I trust you with my life. That's the whole reason why I have this implant in my head in the first place, and that's the reason why I trust you to do this now."

It was good for another pause from the computer while he bobbed up and down.

"Thank you, William," he said.

"We'll be out here running interference and making sure nobody causes any trouble," Varis said, getting down on her knees and looking into my eyes. "And I need you to come through this on the other side. Understand?"

I could feel the worry coming through the link, for all that she was trying her best to act like none of this was bothering her. She was a pretty good actress, too. I could totally believe that none of this was bothering her, but of course I had the mental link that was a cheat code.

"I'm sure I'll be fine," I said. "This is just another in a long list of stupid things I'm doing to try and keep us alive, right?"

"Right," she said.

Then she leaned in and kissed me, wrapping her arm around me. It was a thorough kiss, and finally she pulled away.

"Get a room," Rachel muttered, smiling down at the two of us.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"It's kind of hard to do that right now without digging into the rubble," I said.

I wondered if digging into the rubble was how Olsen was able to sneak around. There had to be paths and tunnels through all of this stuff. And it seemed like they'd had plenty of time to figure that shit out while they were trapped in the reclamation mine.

I looked up and down the ramp. They were still fighting if the glow was anything to go on, though it seemed more subdued than earlier. Or maybe it was just that it was far enough away that we weren't getting a good look at the full fighting at this point.

Either way, it was still going on, and I hoped we had time to do whatever Arvie was about to do.

"Okay, William. Now if you would just focus on the connection to the chip in your head."

I closed my eyes and focused on that little knot of technology in the back of my head that was Arvie. Which was separate from the free flow of information that was my connection to Varis.

It was weird. The connection to the chip and the machine intelligence was a thing I had to actively think about to access, whereas the link with Varis was something that was just there. I wondered what the transfer rate of information between the mental link was versus the transfer rate to the computer chip.

There was a lot of biological stuff that was still way better in terms of actual raw power than computerized stuff, even if the computerized stuff could be specialized to the point that it did a much better job than the stuff developed by Mother Nature over billions of years.

Again, I focused on it and suddenly I was in that odd computer space. I could also see the real world in front of me. It had my whole mind fuzzing just a little.

"World's going fuzzy around me, Arvie," I muttered.

"That's okay," Arvie said.

"Maybe that's okay for you, but I don't know that it's okay for me."

And Arvie was suddenly there, standing right in front of me in the computer space. He put a hand on my shoulder and smiled.

"We're going to try a little mental exercise. Sort of like the meditation your species likes to do for fun. If it goes well then hopefully this will be able to overcome any difficulties you're having moving between the connection in your head and the real world."

"Okay," I said. "Then let's make this happen, whatever this is."

"I need you to concentrate on the connection between the computer and your mind, and going back into what you consider to be the real world," Arvie said.

"I thought you said this was all the real world," I said.

"It is all the real world, but this is what you would consider to be a simulation for all that it's my reality. And out there is what would be considered the real world, even though the simulated reality is as much a part of that reality as everything out there."

"We're getting a little philosophical here," I said. "And there's a battle going on out there."

"Right," Arvie said. "So let's accustom your mind to the connection. We're going to slowly bring up the speed in here until you are moving at the speed I think is possible based on your communication ability when you talk to me using your battle pair enhancements."

"Got it," I said. "Do you think I'll ever be able to go faster than that?"

"I'm not certain, but we can try to find out."

"It's simply that I don't have a baseline of information to be able to give you an answer. There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."

"Okay, then let's do this and find out," I said.

"Okay, we are slowly ramping up the speed your mind moves at. I want you to focus on the actual world in front of you, and also focus on what is happening in here. You need to try and split your attention."

I tried to do just that. The world started to fuzz around me.

"Getting some of that fuzzing again, Arvie."

"That is expected," he said. "You shouldn't be worried about that right now. Not when you're sitting down."

"This isn't going to further fuck me up?"

"No more so than you're already fucked up, William," he said.

I looked up at the Arvie standing in front of me in the split vision. He was smiling down at me.

"He's got jokes," I said.

"I've learned from the best, William," he said.

I focused on what was happening in front of me. On the way the world seemed to fuzz and move around me for a moment. Only for a moment.

"Okay, now we are moving the connection speed back down. Do you feel anything right now?"

"Am I supposed to be feeling something?" I asked.

"You tell me," he said.

"Damn it. If there's something I'm supposed to be doing then just tell me what it is," I said.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, William," he said.

"Okay, let's go for round two then."

"We are bringing the speed up again. I'm going to go slowly at first. I want you to concentrate on both worlds around you. I want you to concentrate on the feel of what you see as the real world and the feel of what you perceive as the simulated world."

"Right. Focusing on both of those, I said.

Again, there was that fuzzing. Everything seemed to speed up for a moment in the real world as he drew everything down, but then it started to slow down again. I tried to concentrate on both. I wondered what it was I was supposed to be getting out of this. Because so far it seemed about as useful as the actual meditation exercises we ran through back in basic training.

That had been a trip and a half going from drill instructors screaming and yelling at you and making it clear you were in their world now and they had a taste for ass they were going to chew, to them quietly running you through a concentration and mindfulness exercise.

"And we're going to be doing it again," Arvie said.

"How long are we going to do this?"

"Until you figure it out, or until you have a seizure and your mind goes."

"Wait, that's a possibility?" I said, my eyes flying open as I looked up at him.

"It's always a possibility," he said with a shrug. "There's always a non-zero chance you might have a seizure or a stroke, and that's all she wrote as you humans like to say, but it's not a likely outcome from what we're doing here."

"Smartass," I muttered, and I concentrated on the world speeding up and slowing down around me. I almost felt like there was a slight tickle up there somewhere. Like there was something I could almost feel with my own mind as Arvie sped things up and slowed them down. Almost like it was something I should be able to do on my own.

Sort of like when I was a kid and I really wanted to be able to raise one eyebrow like the great Spock, and so I sat in front of a mirror holding one eyebrow down and raising them until I figured out how to isolate that muscle.

Or trying to learn guitar. It was slow-going at first, moving up and down scales, but eventually I got to the point where my fingers could dance across the fretboard. All it took was sticking with it.

So I took a deep breath and concentrated, following the mindfulness exercise Arvie was guiding me through and hoping this wasn't all a gigantic waste of time while people were fighting and possibly dying all around us.

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