*** Patrick ***
Patrick set a goal of getting into the top ten percent on the global leaderboards. He had gotten a boost on the Endurance board from completing the challenge, so his plan was to use the challenges to climb the ranks. Before starting he reviewed the daily task list, and as usual everything had a marginal increase. The Endurance task was marked at challenge level one. Exploring the interface Patrick couldn’t find a way to decrease the challenge level, so the difficulty could only increase, never decrease. He had no reservation about accepting the Strength challenge. The new difficulty level added minimum weight amounts to each of the exercises. The new minimums were less than what Patrick had been doing, so he increased the difficulty again, which brought the minimums to slightly more than what he had done yesterday. After completing the exercises his Strength standing went to 64%.
Patrick didn’t feel confident enough in his micromovement skills, so he completed the Dexterity tasks without any change. The Concentration challenge added another icon type, a sun icon, to the mix. He took a while with the reference guide to get a feel for the new icon. Unfortunately the guide for the new icon had to be purchased as an upgrade. Going from four to five icons increased the time he took by 30 minutes.
Patrick took the rest of the time before the meeting to buy the Endurance guide and Intelligence references. The Intelligence references were especially useful in describing the rules for how the patterns evolved from one to another, and as a reference for the language he was learning. Supposedly this new language was Draconic Common.
The Endurance guide focused on visualizing your body and the state that you want it to be in. Patrick was skeptical about it, but figured he would try it as a way to break up the monotony of the treadmill. Perhaps it would also be useful to distract from the cold.
– neighborhood meeting –
“What happened to your hair?”, Erin asked Harvey. Harvey’s hair was now a muted shade of green hanging loose instead of the bleach blond pony tail he had yesterday.
“It was a little treat to celebrate my chess victory.”
“But what happened to it? How did it turn green?”
“It is an option under the apparel upgrades. I ordered the new style last night, and when I woke up this morning it had been taken care of,” Harvey replied.
Scott asked, “What level is your apparel at? I have level five and I have not seen anything like that.”
“Not sure when it unlocked, I think mine is at seven or so. Anyways, who needs me to go over the rules for Cosmic Encounter?”, Harvey answered.
Everyone except Marcel had shown up, so they started reviewing the rules. Only Harvey and Fred had played before, so there were a lot of questions before the game started. About half way through Erin asked, “Say Patrick, do you have any more hints? You are wiping the floor with the rest of us on the leaderboards.”
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“Speak for yourself, I am on top of Strength, and the other ones are lame,” Harvey interjected.
“Anyways, any advice?”
Patrick replied “Not really, I’m just spending all of my coins on the tutorials and such. A lot of it seems like weird voo-doo mumbo jumbo, but it seems to help.”
Scott said, “Could be a placebo effect.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. This whole place is weird, and it helps me to focus on something to distract myself.”
A round of agreement broke out about not wanting to think about where they were.
Harvey commented, “Still it would not hurt for you to share the leaderboards a bit more with everyone else.”
Patrick paused for a bit lost for words, “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not competing with any of you, I’m just trying to keep busy. If anything I would like to climb on the global leaderboards. I’m not sure who else is out there, but I’m below average so far on them.”
Caleb spoke up, “I have a hard time being motivated to work on these tasks. I was retired, and am not sure what the point of all of this is.”
Scott: “For me the point is that the very benevolent people who shrugged off a nuclear attack are giving me a chance at a job. It seems like the sort of offer that you can’t refuse.”
The conversation lulled a bit with nods and a sense of agreement.
Scott won the game for the night and ordered a glass of Merlot for everyone. The game had been dragging out a bit because of everyone’s inexperience. It ended relatively quickly when Harvey, who was in a strong second, spent his resources on attacking Patrick, who was roughly in third or fourth, rather than playing against Scott.
Retreating to his apartment, Patrick dove into his Draconic Common lessons to forget about the game. The game had gone a bit long and Patrick didn’t want to risk the added difficulty of another challenge tonight. Although the references called them geometric patterns, Patrick decided to start calling the patterns runes. There were so many arbitrary weird things about this place it seemed fitting to call the patterns runes. His work on memorizing how the runes evolved from one to another went well.
Patrick completed his Endurance work and then spent some time practicing with the Dexterity micromovements. He wanted to take on the Dexterity and Intelligence challenges tomorrow. Patrick called it a night at 12:10 and reviewed his position on the global boards before bed.
67% - Strength - level 3
39% - Endurance - level 2
55% - Dexterity - level 1
48% - Intelligence - level 1
27% - Concentration - level 2
50% - Overall
He had lost a little bit of ground on the Strength board during the course of the day. Overall he was pleased with his progress. It felt like he was regaining some small measure of control over his life.
