That Friday Liza answered the door. Dave and Maria stood there. “Oh, hey, come on in. Kevin is running a bit late. He realized at the last moment that he was missing a few things for his trip tomorrow, so he was going to pick them up. He said we could start without him, though.”
Dave nodded and walked over to an Asian man who was sitting on the couch, playing a retro console game. “Hey, I’m Dave.” he said, holding out his hand. “Kevin’s ex roommate.”
The man took his hand and shook it. “Lee. Kevin and I went to a few classes together, and now I help on a few business things.”
“Like a consultant?” asked Dave.
“Yeah, kind of.” Lee answered before returning to his game. “So, ever play this one?” Dave watched him and they chatted occasionally, and Maria started a conversation with Liza.
A few minutes later the door buzzed a second time and Liza excused herself so that she could answer the door again. Gabriel and Deborah, two ex work colleagues of Liza, were there. She had decided to invite them as they had been friends of hers for several years and had worked with both her and Kevin when they were trapped under rubble. And now Gabriel was even working on their company website.
“Sorry we’re late.” said Deb, “I had to drop my daughter off at the babysitter’s and Gabe was stuck doing something with a website. Not sure what.”
“Payment section of the API crashed, so I had to fix it so that they could keep making sells. It was basically an emergency.”
“I understand.” said Liza. “We had a supply breakdown about two weeks ago and I had to work late figuring out why an overseas supplier couldn’t get the shipment out on time. Sometimes emergencies happen.” She introduced the two of them to Lee, as neither of them had met him before, and the men sat in the living room and talked while the women went elsewhere.
An hour later they ate, and Dave asked about Kevin. “Probably got caught up looking at something.” Liza said. “Happens sometimes.”
“Yeah, but this is his party.” Dave said.
Liza nodded. “Sure, but he’s doing something else. Trust me, by the time we are ready to cut the cake he’ll be here.”
Dave nodded and they kept eating. Thirty minutes later they were finished eating and Liza brought out the cake.
“Doesn’t look like Kev’s here.” said Dave. “Should I call him?”
Liza shook her head. “Actually, this is a bit of a party game we set up. All of you get to ask me a question about where he is, and we’ll see if you can guess it.”
“A party game, huh?” said Dave, “Fine then, where is he?”
“Well, I can’t just tell you. These are supposed to be me giving you clues, not answers.”
“Fine.” said Dave. “Is he still in the city?”
“Yes,” Liza responded.
“Is he within a kilometer of us?” asked Maria.
“Yes.”
“Is he in this house?” asked Gabriel.
“Yes,” responded Liza.
“Is he in the basement?” asked Deb.
“No.” said Liza.
They thought about it for a few seconds before looking at Lee. “Sorry, I already know the answer.” said Lee. “Can’t ask a question, because I might ruin the game.”
They discussed it for a few minutes. Assuming Liza had told them all the truth, Kevin was in the building with them, but not in the basement. That meant that they should have seen him already, as they had wondered to most of the rooms on this floor. Was he in the attic? A storage closet? After a minute Dave sighed. “Is he in the room with us right now?” Dave asked.
“That’s an extra question, but yes.”
Dave sighed. “Is Lee actually Kevin in disguise?”
I laughed. “Yes.” I said, pointing at Dave and no longer disguising my voice. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to figure it out.”
“Seriously?” Dave said, shaking his head. “I thought it was weird that a random friend I’d never heard of showed up, but didn’t want to jump to conclusions. I’d never met Gabe or Deb either.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I hoped you wouldn’t guess it due to that.”
“Did you get surgery?” asked Gabe, “or is this some kind of illusion?” Illusions that were this lifelike were hard to make work properly. There were devices to change your appearance with holograms, but they only allowed minor changes due to that difficulty and the ‘uncanny valley’ glitches the technology usually caused.
“Neither, actually. It’s called the Flesh sculpting technique.” I explained to them how the Ambassador I was escorting had given me the technique so that I could pass as one of the locals. It basically allowed one to cultivate their physical appearance, increasing or decreasing the amount of a certain type of cell in an area. Once I had learned it, I broke it down into its component parts, realizing that this technique had healing applications, but didn’t have the time to make a proper healing technique with it.
“Makes sense,” said Dave. “You’re way too pasty to pass as a local.”
“You wouldn’t fit in any better, but for the opposite reason.” I responded.
Dave nodded. “Yeah, I was wondering about that. Why do you think their aren’t any black people in that world? Shouldn’t they have re-evolved the skin tone from having darker skin people live near the equator after all of this time? Last I heard they branched off from us around eight thousand years ago. The darkest skin anyone’s seen though is just ‘deep tan’ level.”
“Not really my field of expertise.” I said, shrugging. “Maybe their world doesn’t get enough UV to need to darker tones as a trait? I heard that dark skin actually lowers vitamin D production. But I’m not a biologist.” I pointed at Maria. “Isn’t she one, though? Let’s ask her.”
Maria looked surprised at the question. “Sure, I had to take advanced biology last semester, but I’m an alchemist, not a biologist. Besides, evolutionary biology and anthropology are two entirely different things than the stuff I learned. My lessons focused more on non-humans anyway.”
“In that case,” said Deb, “Let’s change the subject to something you might know about. I heard people in France and China brought through spirit animals to try and create breeds of cultivating pets and livestock. Did they happen to explain how that works? How do animals cultivate when they don’t have the brain power to use proper techniques? I mean, I heard a group of researchers managed to teach a chimp, an orangutan, and a dolphin simple qi circulation techniques from twenty years ago, and are trying with other great apes, whales, and elephants, but they brought back bovines and wolves and chickens and small breed cats. Surely those can’t learn a proper technique?”
Maria shook her head. “No, they aren’t cultivating like that. Well, there is evidence that some of them learn to circulate qi to enhance their bodies at higher levels, and there are records of certain spirit beasts gaining roughly human level intelligence at some point, at which point some of them modify human cultivation techniques and use them, but for the most part it’s more like how spirit plants cultivate. Their bodies naturally draw in qi. There are several different ways they can do this, other than getting it from their food, but it basically boils down to them absorbing so much qi that their body upgrades to the point that they grow meridians automatically.
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Usually it’s blood meridians, but basically, somehow their body naturally gains pathways which can rapidly move qi around. This lets them automatically upgrade further until they naturally grow a dantian, etc. The process then continues until they die, usually of old age, as they are far stronger than most predators.”
“Must be nice to break through effortlessly and painlessly.” commented Deb. “I know no one else here has went through it yet, but when I grew my lower dantian it almost felt like I was giving birth again. Sure, I rushed the process a bit, so I wasn’t quite ready, and I had medical issues, which is why I needed to rush it, but I can’t imagine most animals being willing to torture themselves when they can’t comprehend that they will get future benefits.”
Liza nodded. “Yeah, most probably wouldn’t be. Of course, I doubt they get as far as we do. I mean, we’ve got hundreds of years of life left, and most of us are at Condensation. If they are doing it automatically it’s got to be a slow process. I’ve only heard of a few people who started with the earliest bracelets automatically breaking through to Gathering, and they’ve been automatically bringing in qi for over twenty years. Most animals don’t live that long. Sure, apes do, as do some reptiles and amphibians, and elephants, but most animals would never reach even the first level, where they get the first life extension.”
“Speaking of humans automatically bringing in qi,” added Gabe, “I heard that there were some that can do it without needing devices to do so. There have only been two cases of people breaking through to Gathering because of this, one of which was part of some anti-cultivation religious group and one old man that was too poor to afford a bracelet, so never bought one, even second hand. The second guy knew a few techniques though, and slowly started to look like he was in his sixties instead of his nineties by the time he advanced.”
Dave joined in. “Did you learn all of that from that documentary?” Gabe nodded. “I only caught a few minutes of it, but didn’t the program mention that they were caused by something the other world calls ‘physiques’? Basically rare genetic mutations?”
“Well,” corrected Maria, “physiques are a bit more complicated than that, and not all of them give you the ability to automatically absorb qi, but yes, all of the known human cases are caused by those physiques. There’s actually a scientific theory out there that humans have genetic traits which resist that absorption trait, essentially causing it to deactivate if someone gets it, which is why you need symbiotic groups of mutations, physiques, which alter something about the human body on a fundamental level in order to get that ability.”
“Strange that we would have genes that block such a useful trait.” Said Liza, and Maria shrugged.
“Could be a large downside to evolving the trait which we don’t yet know about, or some sort of external pressure.”
“You mean their might have been predators that hunted cultivators?” I asked, a bit confused.
“Or diseases that targeted them.” Maria replied.
We continued to discuss various bits of trivia about unusual methods of cultivation until the cake was gone, then Liza got up and returned with a box. “I know you didn’t really ask for presents, since you think you are too old for them, but since you are leaving tomorrow, think of them as supplies for your journey.” She handed me the box and I nodded, thanked her, then opened it.
Inside was a circular metal disk slightly too large to hold in my hand. There were five coins of different materials in small recesses in the top, and five small flags in the back. On the front of the item was a complex series of lines, a complex formation I couldn’t quite follow.
“In the other world this is called a seal plate. It’s basically a defensive formation on a plate. Put a bit of your qi into it and, as long as you stay within a few meters of the plate you can control it similar to how you would control a barrier bracelet, though with more complex options than just ‘on’ and ‘off’ and ‘battery status’. It is a Core level barrier device we made out of the same material that Core level bullets use, so it’s expensive and the only prototype Dave and I have made so far. We tested it under controlled circumstances, but not real world conditions. So I thought ‘what better way to test it than in the field than to let you take it with you?’” I smiled at the slight joke and she went on to explain the functions of the flags and coins. The flags could be put into the ground, roughly equidistant from each other and the coin, to extend the range of the defensive barrier. The barrier used the Five Elements concept to function, so one needed to put the flags of each element in the correct order, but it could let you protect a larger area if needed.
The coins were because it could use the spiritual root of the user to enhance some of the elements, thus decreasing qi use and therefore increasing the barrier’s strength. There was one coin for each element, made of as much of the element as possible, like a glass coin that contained water or a coin with hydrogen sealed within. If you gave one of these to a person with the corresponding root and they sent some qi into it to bond with it, the barrier would use their root instead of the controlling person’s, further increasing the barrier’s strength.
“The main issue with bringing this model to market is that it draws in far too little qi to power the barrier at Core level for more than the few seconds the stored qi can do, dropping to early Foundation after that. In the other world you might be able to keep the barrier up for thirty seconds or so at initial Core, as it can draw in qi 12 times faster there, but it still has some issues to work out. I know better collection formations exist, as the military uses them in some devices, I just haven’t found one we can really afford to test at the moment. R&D budget has been a bit tight, and we blew in on buying the special metal.”
“What if I feed it qi?” I asked. A core level barrier device would be really nice to have.
“You wouldn’t be able to feed it fast enough. And even if you could, the amount of qi that’s in a peak level 2 cultivator is minuscule, so you couldn’t even buy an extra second at your current level.” A rough estimate for qi energy is that it takes over a hundred people to equal one level higher. So one hundred level ones can support a level two barrier. That meant that I would need several hundred people at my level to make it work.
“What if I use spirit stones?”
“Pretty much the same energy density as a peak level two or weak level three. That disk holds more qi than the entire cultivation room in the basement. We did have an idea for tying it into a spirit stone mine to power the device, but don’t have one to try that at, so it’s theoretical at best.”
I nodded and started looking at the device when Gabe spoke up. “Well, we didn’t bring you anything, but maybe we can go out for beers some time.”
“That’s even better.” said Dave jokingly, and a few people laughed at his dumb joke.
“Well I guess that only leaves me.” said Maria, handing me a wooden box.
“Spirit wood?” I asked, and she nodded.
“The box actually has some pills in it that I made for you using spirit plants and a few other organic materials. Think of it like the other world’s version of a first aid kit.” she opened it and started pointing at things as she named them. “There are detox pills, qi recovery pills, and healing pills for the various body parts. Those are skin, muscles and tendons, bones, internal organs, sensory organs, and nerves. I didn’t have the stuff to make blood recovery pills, and they are all level one, since there aren’t many level two spirit herbs on Earth yet, but they should fit in well enough in the other world that no one will realize they aren’t from there.”
“I also brought something for everyone to try.” Maria said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a two liter soda bottle that was full of green pills about the size of a marble. “Take as many as you want, since I made way too many while practicing the pill making techniques of the other world. They are called Level One Body Tempering pills. Basically, they let you get a lot more out of physical training by stressing your body more during exercise. Every swing of a sword will feel like three to ten swings, depending on the quality. Sure, you have to recover from the workout, but it lets you do a complete workout in a fraction of the time. And you can combine them with recovery pills like the ones I gave Kevin to recover at a comparable rate, thereby improving your training speed by that same factor. The military is starting to use them for training troops, so the idea works. Of course, they stop working at somewhere around professional athlete levels, as they can only push you so far, but none of us are professional athletes.”
Everyone took a few pills to test. I put thirty of them in the magic bag I always wear so that I could use them in the other world, as she said we could have as many as we wanted. After the gifts were finished we ended up playing some trivia game where I had to answer questions about various celebrities. The only ones I knew much about were the actors from sci-fi and anime, and a few people that did things with qi, like Greg Lively, the CEO of Lively Pharmaceuticals. For some reason Dave almost looked annoyed that I knew the answer to that question, but I figured he just had a problem with the major pharmaceutical companies.
There was one question that I knew I should know, but almost couldn’t answer. “Name the seven Nascent Souls.” Maria read. The card version of this game asked for the five, but Maria had used the updated form from the website.
Liza buzzed in first. The way the game worked with questions that asked for a list of answers, one had to name all of them to get one point each, allowing them to rack up large numbers of points quickly. The challenge was that if you paused for more than three seconds someone else could buzz in and steal your points by naming the one you couldn’t. “Um, Charles Lindstrom, Jacob Adams, Liam McIntyre, The Monk, The Apprentice, uh…” she paused for a second. “Boris Tsiolkovsky and…” she racked her brain to try to come up with the answer, but after three seconds Maria looked at the rest of us and I buzzed in.
I hadn’t remembered it at first either, but when she was trying to remember Tsiolkovsky it came to me. Maria pointed at me and I answered. “Mohammad Al Sadiq.” I answered, and Liza nodded.
“I knew that.” she said.
“Sure,” I teased, “Just not when you needed to.” I added the seven points to my score card and we continued. Dave ended up winning that round, and Gabriel the next, but it was getting late, so we called the game off there and everyone flew home.
We had a few drinks while playing, but Maria, as the only one still at level one, was the only one that was still tipsy when they left. That would mean that she couldn’t drive, but luckily both of them had flown here, and it was much harder to crash while flying unless she went to sleep or passed out, and she wasn’t anywhere near that drunk.
Once everyone had left, Liza spent another hour telling me goodbye in a different way and we went to sleep. The next morning I set off for the base, arriving just before eight.
