Quantum Cultivation by Jace Kang (simple e reader TXT) 📕

Ryu straightened, hands covering his manhood. “I am—”

“Ryusuke Ishihara.” The man returned the salute. “I know.”

Of course he did. “May I know your name?”

“No.”

“Forgive my impertinence, Great Sage. Do you know my mission?”

The Transcendent’s expression betrayed nothing. “Tell me.”

Ryu looked sidelong at Ken. “The boy says we are being watched.”

Ken threw his hands up and waved his hands back and forth through the image.

Such disrespect. Ryu pulled him back. “You mustn’t!”

“It’s a hologram!” Ken pointed up at the ceiling again. “That’s one way people communicate from long distances!”

A hologram? Ryu scowled. “Just who are you?”

Chapter 6:

The Hacker

I n her excitement to return to the EtherCloud, Aya had cleared her lungs as quickly as she could and jacked back in.  So much could’ve happened in the few minutes she’d been coughing out all the phlegm!

Again donning a Sentinel Shell, she returned to the Peacekeeper EtherSpace and navigated the castle town until she came to an observatory. In truth, it was the surveillance partition of the EtherSpace, which controlled all the cameras throughout the Kyoto Central region. Level Three Operators, appearing as young Dwarves, turned gears representing the cameras’ operating code.  A million different telescopes pointed in different directions, though hundreds of human Avatars crowded around a single one.

That must be the one currently monitoring Ishihara.

Another telescope rotated into their view as Ishihara moved to a different surveillance zone. Aya created an observation app and attached it to one of the Avatars. It was simple, because after getting past Sentinels at the entrance to the Peacekeeper EtherSpace with biometric credentials, a real person’s Avatar code was unencrypted. In her SI perception, she affixed a collar, visible only to herself. Tethering it to her, she jumped over to the Communications partition.

The tether fed her the Avatar’s datastream. Watching the almost-naked Ishihara’s confrontation with Keiko had given her great pleasure. At the same time, her SI perceived the Communications partition as a hilltop where more tethered Avatars worked as drummers and flag signalers.

While Ishihara was rampaging through the medical unit, she took control of the holoprojectors by inserting code into their operating systems. In her SI, it appeared as if she’d added a cog to the gears of the holoprojectors’ virtual machinery. Only a Repairer of Level Five or above would even be able to find it.

She paused. To her surprise, the stranger had taken the Purebred, Kentaro, with him. After a few minutes observing the way Ishihara touched Kentaro, it became clear why: he was attracted to the boy.

Which was why when she hacked the holo-projectors, she chose the guise of a handsome young man. Ishihara became deferential, almost obsequious, believing her to be Transcendent.

Within a virtual shell inside her Operator Shell—a risky multi-tasking proposition given the limits of her brains perceptive capacity—Ai’s search through old archives revealed that Transcendent was an old religious term for someone who’d reached a spiritual pinnacle, unbound by life and death.

Such a strange superstition! Still, she’d planned to use it to win Ishihara’s trust.

Now, though, it looked like Aya was about to lose all the trust she’d started to gain. She bowed—or rather, the Transcendent’s hologram bowed—to Ishihara. “I can help you escape.”

“I’m not trying to escape.” Ishihara shook his head. “Not yet. I need my effects.”

Within the shell, Aya darted back to Ishihara’s file and opened it. A research team was in a high-security third-floor lab, examining all evidence from his fight with the Peacekeepers: a black robe, made from an extinct fiber known as hemp. A wooden staff, made from an extinct tree known as oak—though it seemed to have some mineral components embedded inside. And most curiously, several glowing marbles, made up of botanical and mineral compounds that emitted a bioenergetic radiation. Because of the latter, they’d invited science envoys from the Elestrae delegation in Kyoto to come examine the tiny spheres.

Another research team was studying damage to the Peacekeepers’ light armor, as well as the remains of the shocktrooper’s minigun. As was to be expected given the friction between the Ministry of Defense and the Peacekeepers, correspondence between governmental branches showed the MoD was demanding the weapon’s return, as well as access to Ishihara.

To save real time, she took a snapshot of the lab and recorded past video. Aya returned to Ishihara and Ken, half-expecting to see the two locked in a passionate kiss. Of course, only a split-second had passed in real time, and Ryu’s mouth was half open, while Kentaro frowned at her.

“—and why would you want to help me?”

Because she needed to know how to cure her lung disease, the one thing that kept her from staying in the EtherCloud indefinitely. Of course, she couldn’t tell him that, since people from the Age of Greed didn’t have an altruistic cell in their bodies. “I want to tell your story. It will make us both rich.”

Ishihara looked down at his pet, who half-shrugged, half-nodded, before turning back to her. “Just who are you? The truth, this time.”

The truth. That she was a genetic mistake. No, he wouldn’t take her seriously. “I’m a reporter with All News Network.”

“And you just appeared here?” Kentaro shook his head.

“I cover Peacekeeper affairs.”

“They wouldn’t let you use their projectors.” Kentaro waved a finger back and forth, pointing at the ceiling.

It was a time for a half-truth. “I’m a hacker, too.” One who, beyond these two’s sight, appeared as an Operator to the thousands of Avatars and Sentinels in the EtherSpace right now.

“Hacker?” Kentaro cocked his head, looking very much like a puppy.

“I remember those,” Ryusuke said. “They were able to take control of electronic devices.”

When did she start thinking of him