“Maggy, who do you think the next strongest baby is?” he asked using their new method of communication, one that let him talk silently to her if needed. He struggled with it a little as he had to hold the intent to speak to Maggy. He found that his body liked to take that intent and cause him to start mumbling to himself, and he didn’t want to be that crazy kid always talking to the air so he needed to practice.

  “Technically, all babies are since you are a teenager and therefore do not qualify,” she told him bluntly, “Which still makes no sense to me.”

  “Ok, I hear you…” he told her, “but hear me out, my real body, is out there and isn’t five yet. So technically… Out there… I am the strongest baby alive.”

  “Have you fought a baby?” she asked him curiously.

  “Uh… no... But that’s only because it wouldn’t be much of a fight and I don’t want to fight a baby.” He went on defensively.

  “Then, how can you be the strongest baby if you’ve never fought another one?”

  “Name a baby who could fight the Red Terror,” he challenged smugly.

  Maggy took a second to respond. "I re-marked it as complete, but made a note that you are only the strongest due to a technicality since nobody alive has fought a real Red Terror having gone extinct long ago.”

  “Fine,” Cale said bitterly as he watched the item get dated and crossed off his to do list.

  Over the last week he had been hard at work, and by extension, so had Maggy. The user manual they had found was for a version of the interface two major updates behind the one he had. At first he had been majorly disappointed, but that changed as he read through it. A lot, if not almost all of the general built in system commands still worked. Using what he learned, he was able to summon a console to completely customize his soul lounge, but thanks to the major modifications Maggy had made, most of those options were no longer applicable and were greyed out.

  One thing he could modify, without messing up his soul lounge too badly, was the ability to add rooms. He didn’t need sleeping quarters or anything like that, but he did have rooms he wanted. One of these rooms he had set up had been a statistics counter. When he selected the room, he didn’t feel anything, but he saw a pulse of light, about the size of a basketball, burst from his soul and collide with something above him on the roof of the room.

  After the pulse of light hit the room, the section of wall he had selected pushed outward until a little cubby formed on one side with a large display board on the other. He walked up to it and a little barrier formed in front of the room, stopping him, and then a little pedestal popped up on the floor revealing he had some options to pick. He found he could change things from the wallpaper to the accessories and clothing that the statistics bot wore. He spent a lot more time than he expected going over the options and picking out the design.

  When he was done he settled on some simple golden brown wallpaper for the room that matched the wooden counter and chose a green open topped baseball cap for the statistics bot to wear. He was going for a look between an accountant and a bookie and he thought he did an alright job. If he was connected to the greater network, then he could potentially find more accessories for his bots. But for now he would have to deal with the default choices or design his own, which was something he wasn’t keen on doing at the moment.

  He stepped back and admired the little statistics nook as he finalized the design. The bot sat behind the counter to his right watching different monitors and making marks on a notepad, some of the screens had scenes he recognized from earlier in the day. On the right side was a display board with scrolling stats, but most of them were just set to zero.

  The default statistics package was pretty in depth but it refused to show some of the stats – like how many hairs were on his head – unless he upgraded his license. That wasn’t an option with the greater network being offline so the basic stats package would have to do. Fortunately, basic stats like the current temperature his body was feeling and how often he used his scripts came default with his interface. He categorized those stats into his favorites list and laughed when he saw that his newest script had a section labeled “training casualties,” and a picture of the wrecked table from his mom’s office appeared.

  “Wrecked tables are put in the training casualties section?” He asked Maggy as she walked over to admire his new work.

  “Only when in a non-combat situation.” She stated, “If you were to wreck one while in a fight, it would be moved to the ‘battle casualties,’ section, which is currently hidden as no recorded fights have occurred.”

  “What about the fight with those invaders?” Cale disputed.

  “That was marked as a security threat and can be found under the section you labeled as ‘Cybersecurity items.’” She recited.

  “Oh, sweet! You got that setup already?” He asked her with excitement. “I want to see it!”

  After the attack on his soul, and being painfully reminded about safe data practices, he had been concerned about what else could invade him, especially when it came to his greater connection. After the attack as they studied the manual, Cale and Maggy found the default security items and of course they were only set to the basic, as any real time security updates required licensing.

  Since he couldn’t get real time security updates, he decided to handle security threats a little differently, especially since he had Maggy. He followed her to a section of wall where she did some fancy hand circling and soon the window had a three dimensional simulation of his local connection being used.

  “Here is how things worked in the past,” she said as she pointed to the connecting point. “When a connection is made, a bot handles the connection and gives instructions on where to go, but they do not stick around once the connection is made.” Cale nodded along as Maggy continued.

  “Like what happened with us, when the default security is offline, you were attacked and the intruders went about doing whatever they wanted. However, after doing some simulations, these intruders would have also beaten the default protection, even if it was active.” She revealed.

  “Can you show me?” he asked her, his eyes glued to the three dimensional image being projected from the window.

  “The default policy is two standard security bots. With the intruders utilizing a dual core functionality, the standard bots would have delayed them, but eventually they would have been destroyed.” Maggy explained as a simulated battle between the gross intruders and his valiant, but unprepared, security bots played out in front of him.

  “Ok, so now what about the changes we made?”

  “Yes, those…”, Maggy said slowly before she made a scrubbing motion with her hand that removed the projection. She then moved her fingers back and forth before a new view was in front of him that showed rows of security bots lined up at attention with the Red Terror standing in front of them wearing a white admiral’s hat.

  “Using your idea of importing the repaired Red Terror and having it train the default bots has had unexpected results.” Maggy reported.

  “Like what? Did they form a union and want better pay already?”

  “No, they did not marry and ask for an allowance,” Maggy said flatly, “The code we couldn’t cleanse from the Red Terror, the parts you somehow left behind in it, have started to slowly modify the security bots beyond the default parameters.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Ok… What are you trying to tell me Maggy? Am I missing something? Is it bad?” Cale asked, a bit concerned now that he might have to fight a team of bots of his own making.

  “The bots’ ability to handle the threats has tripled.”

  “TRIPLED! That is amazing!” he bursted out and grabbed the view of the bots and the Red Terror, zooming in on the bots.

  “It is amazing. Only now I have lost partial control to them and they only accept commands from you or the Red Terror.” A trickle of annoyance seeped into her tone.

  “Oh, then I don’t see an issue,” Cale told her, “If you ever go rogue... I’ll have an army to stop you,” he told her playfully and punched her shoulder with loose fists, winking at her.

  “Yeah… You’ve said that before…” Maggy responded slowly, “Do you need me to shut down?” she suddenly asked him.

  Cale, taken by surprise at her question, put his hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “No, Maggy. I just have heard some stories about your kind… doing their own thing and hurting others. It was just a joke. I do not believe you will do that to me.” He reassured her.

  “Ok,” was all she said before pulling up a simulation of the new bots under the leadership of the Red Terror. “Here is one of the latest simulations showing the bots’ progression. This is the same bot that was in the previous simulation, which took four minutes before its defeat.” She said as she motioned to one of the bots.

  Cale watched as the screen in front of him simulated the previous intruders and he found himself clenching his fists as he watched the metallic jaws snap as it walked toward his security bot. He could immediately see a difference and he pulled up the old video next to the new one to see if his memory was correct.

  The old bot had a bowl hat helmet and a security vest, was two orbs tall with a body and a head, and a taser baton for a weapon. The same bot now wore a metal helmet that fully covered its face and was roughly shaped like the Red Terror’s head with a scale pattern on the front. The top of the helmet came to a flat forward peak, and glowed orange on the top. Instead of a vest it now wore metal armor and it was three orbs tall instead of two, its bottom orb being the smallest, but appearing to give it great mobility.

  Of all the things, the taser baton had changed the most. Before it looked like a security guard in a mall could have worn it at their waste and still seemed friendly. The new taser was more like an electrified blade. It was no longer round but was sharp on two edges and the other two had spikes going down the side.

  The battle started and Cale had to replay it three times to verify what he saw. The moment the battle started, the security bot swung its weapon sideways, launching eight of the spikes into a square pattern and created an electric looking cube, reminiscent of Cale’s first battle with the Red Terror.

  The cube formed around the invading bot, locking it in and keeping it from moving farther. “Quarantine procedure success,” the bot said as it walked up to the cube and pressed the taser against the barrier.

  “Scan complete, malicious entity verified in records. Standing orders are to eliminate threat. Logging start of elimination.”

  Cale heard a little chime from the center of the room and he turned to see a little light blinking on top of the counter.

  “That’s just letting you know that an intruder was found,” Maggy piped up before he could ask.

  “Why is it going off?” he asked her, “Isn’t this a simulation?”

  “Yes. But the intruders are real, after all what would be the point of not testing against the real thing?” she said nonchalantly.

  Not having a good response didn’t stop him from feeling weird that Maggy was just recreating those malicious things on a whim. But he was very curious as to how this would turn out.

  Focusing back on the display of the battle, he found with complete surprise that the security bot had dismantled the intruder and he only got to witness the main body of the intruder getting cut in two. The screen only showed the scene for a few more seconds to show the pieces disintegrating and the cage shrinking down around the bot as the spikes re-attached themselves to the security bot’s weapon. A red notch formed on the blade, signifying its kill.

  Cale re-wound the video to watch the few seconds worth of battle again and even had to pause it to see what had happened. The moment the bot had notified him of the intruder, in which he had turned his head to look at the alarm, the bot electrified the cage, causing the intruder to lock up for a second. Using that moment to its advantage, it breached the barrier before the intruder could recover and immediately cut off one of its limbs.

  The loss of the limb snapped the intruder out of its dazed state but it was too late, a few more swings and the rest of its pieces were lying around like day old laundry. One more swing and the battle was done. Over. The Red Terror had somehow completely reformed his security bots and Cale was in awe. Yesterday’s threat was today’s training dummy, and he loved it.

  “This is amazing! I must see this bot and the Red Terror, Maggy bring them to me.” Cale said with intensity.

  Maggy nodded and then walked over to the bar, reached behind it and opened a drawer, bringing out a red octagon shaped orb and a regular round one with a security badge printed on it. She threw them on the ground in front of Cale and the orbs unfolded, growing upward until the Red Terror and the security bot were their normal size.

  With familiarity, Cale walked up to the Red Terror and found that though he had battled it during his interface installation, he didn’t feel animosity toward it. He realized he actually felt grateful for the Red Terror and now that it was over, and the beast was in front of him again, he felt a little bad he had killed it.

  “You need a name,” he declared as he looked at the Red Terror.

  “I can’t have the leader of my security bots not having a name... Let’s see… We did have to stitch you back together so maybe Stitch?... No, that isn’t right… You fight for me, you have fought with me… You and me fight together, we succeed… What do you think of my late father’s name? Victor.” He finally landed on.

  “Cale, your father’s name is Phil,” Maggy whispered from the side.

  “Thank you, Maggy. Well, Victor… do you like it?” He asked the Red Terror.

  It looked at him, then its claws, then back to him and nodded its head, a grin on its scaly face. Or at least what looked to be.

  Cale smiled back. “Good. Victor, I am glad you are on the team. Thank you for helping me survive my installation.”

  Victor nodded and then Cale turned his attention to the bot. Up close it looked even more impressive than in the video. It was as a little taller than Cale and it looked imposing, especially with the weapon on its side.

  “Maggy, how many bots like this do we have? The ones that can easily dismantle those invader bots.”

  “A few hundred. You mentioned also wanting to protect the greater network so I wanted to make sure we had enough. Also, I hate to interrupt you but there is commotion in your house and you asked me to get your attention in case of noise.”

  “Thank you, Maggy. Before I leave I have a few instructions. Victor, make sure to keep training the bots. Have Maggy create you different creatures to kill,” He directed, “And make them larger, much larger. I would bet there are other things out there and I would like to be ready.” With a nod, Cale left his soul view to see what Maggy had alerted him to.

  He had his ear to the gap under his door and was listening intently. Over the past hour people had been running outside their apartment and many times his parents had whispered to people that stopped by their place. Soon he finally had an understanding of what was going on. The Moon’s Fury, it had appeared far out of schedule and way out of its usual path. It had appeared outside of his hometown a few days earlier, and it wasn’t going away.

  For the last few nights it had been driving hordes of monsters toward the town. Thankfully, the towns wall had held up, which meant his sister was ok, but the unfortunate news was that at the direction and frequency the Moon’s fury was happening, it was driving a horde of beasts toward them, and they would be arriving at the base in only a few days.

  When the noises outside finally settled down, he went back to bed but found that he couldn’t sleep. An intense wave of enraged animals were about to hit the base’s walls and he needed to make sure he did his part to keep these people safe. Many of them had gone above and beyond to keep him alive, and he was going to do his best to make sure they survived.

  ***

  The next morning he awoke to find himself laying in his mom’s office. She must have just brought him there after not being able to wake him. He had been up late into the night creating a 3D model of the base from the recording he had when he was taken to meet the Vice guy. He found that he had really enjoyed himself and half of the time he spent making the model was him playing with the program tool itself.

  He changed the walls to funny colors, made the main tower super tall and simulated it falling. Apparently the program had been designed for pioneers who had to make bridges and different things while out surveying new planets. Once you gave it the materials you were working with, it could simulate the planet’s physics and you could set different scenarios for it to test.

  Its attention to detail was also part of the problem. When he simulated the central tower, it had asked him thousands of different questions like the type of bolts used for the joint design on the flooring. He just picked “default,” for all of them and found that the simulated tower didn’t fall, which was good enough for him.

  He stood up from the pile of blankets and pillows his mom had set him in to find that he was alone. She had, however, been kind enough to leave him a note letting him know she was in a meeting and that she had left him breakfast in her desk drawer. With some food in him, he finally checked the time to find that it was early afternoon.

  When he made his model of the base the night before he didn’t have any dimensions to set the walls to, so he needed to go outside and measure the distance between a few places before he could correctly get his drawing to scale. However, before he did that, he wanted to play with Leo a little in case he got in trouble and they used his playtime as punishment. He quickly replied to the note his mother had written, letting her know he was going to go play, and with no one the wiser Cale left, his plan solidified to explore the base on his own.