Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

even where to look. Your own intention to finish the quest activated your brain’s reticular activating system, or RAS, and made those items more noticeable in your environment. The interface is simply highlighting what your subconscious deems appropriate. Humans vastly underestimate their own subconscious and the power it has to take in information and process it in ways that the conscious mind is unaware exist. It would be impossible to concentrate with the data that is processed constantly.”

Gus played around with zooming in and out, but had to stop when the shift in perspectives started making him feel nauseated. Taking a minute for his head to clear, he inhaled deeply and closed his eyes until the feeling passed. He once again looked at the stream in the distance with a focused zoom. He also noticed stalks of bamboo growing around it, and other assorted trees which were also highlighted in a pale yellow color.

“Gotta love those nanobots!” Gus said. Taking a minute to figure out how to slowly revert his sight to normal with control, he shifted his direction, moving toward the stream.

After a half-hour of maneuvering and backtracking, he was able to make it to the bank of the stream. Occasionally he would run into a barrier of bushes and he noticed some were so miserable with thorns that he had to retreat to avoid them. Another area was crawling with small spiders, so he altered his approach again. He often had to stop to pull a thorn from his foot or take a break as his feet couldn’t withstand the hot sand. Continual messages of ‘-1HP’ or ‘-2HP’ peppered the right side of his display as the minor injuries occurred, healing almost as quickly as they appeared, as long as Gus kept the thorns out.

The trek also was sapping his stamina, which increased his need to stop as he jumped and ran across stretches of sand, much like playing the ‘hot lava’ game but not as fun. The sun was burning his unprotected shoulders and back, and Gus’ lips were chapped and dry. At last he reached the stream, and the nearby trees offered some welcome shade. Gus stared at the tempting water, leery of drinking the stream water due to possible parasites.

“In response to your unasked question, you can drink the water. One of the systems the nanobots have integrated with is the digestive tract. Bacterial, viral, protozoan, fungal, and other parasite contaminants will be virtually unable to affect you, as the nanobots there are able to quickly eradicate any signs of infection, resist their implantation, and neutralize the toxins these organisms might release. In fact, you benefited from this unknowingly when you ate your undercooked eggs and that clam,” Nick informed Gus.

He wasn’t totally comfortable with Nick reading his thoughts, but his thirst overcame his feelings about the violation of privacy. Gus dropped to his knees and greedily drank from the stream. The water was cool, but not glacial—which was nice. He decided to take a quick ‘splash bath,’ as the stream wasn’t large enough to fully immerse himself. He splashed cool water over his back, enjoying the rejuvenating feeling. Slicking his hair back over his head and panting, he noted a characteristic yellow glow shimmering under the water.

Reaching in, he pulled out a rounded stone with a flat edge. The yellow glow winked away as he touched the rock. The grain was tight and the surface smooth. He took his knife and the stone and moved to a place partly in the shade, where he plopped down on his foam seat pad and began to sharpen the blade.

When he was a kid, Gus had made popsicle-stick shivs with his friends by scraping the sticks back and forth on the concrete. He used the same tactic and tried to contour the serrated but blunt edge to a finer blade.

After half an hour of struggle, Gus could tell that he was making little headway. He had thought it would be easy to adjust the blade with how little effort it took to manipulate with his ability. He flipped the rectangle of metal and looked at the uncut section that was the straight edge of the plate. This side was much more regular and smoother, and he would get a more balanced and even cutting surface if he focused on this side, rather than the ragged perforated edge. He closed his eyes and tried to envision what it should look like, then opened them and looked down at the edge of the plate. After doing this a couple times, he felt like he could see just how angled the blade needed to be in order to cut efficiently but not be too thin or flimsy.

Hoping to finish more quickly, he tried adding his ability to help with fashioning the knife. First, he imagined using his Wreck-It-Gus skill on the small wedge of metal that would take the squarish edge of the blade to a triangular point, while simultaneously using Wreck-less on the finished form he wanted to retain in the blade. He attempted using the stone again, having to stop and reorient his concentration a couple times, but was able to see slow progress.

Gus expected to see shavings as the process progressed, but there was no residue as he worked. He wondered if the material was being condensed and the blade was becoming stronger along the edge somehow. He had seen a documentary on the smithing of Japanese swords and how the metal was fashioned, folded and treated to remove impurities. It had been a long time ago, but certain aspects were recalled with amazing clarity. The shape of the blade, and the different densities of the metal based on how the smith fashioned it. What he was doing felt intuitively correct, but was hard to conceptualize. He just kept working, letting instinct guide his efforts, and slowly saw his focus bear results as the blunt edge gradually became a point.

After an hour of concentration, peppered with a