Metamorphosis by Aer-ki Jyr (the two towers ebook .txt) 📕

Not if his gut feeling that Essence use held a disadvantage was true.

He was watching more than just Greg at the moment, with monitors on Kerrie-057, Ace-095, and Logan-036 off to the side, but they were all behind pace. Greg was flickering with a new record, so he’d brought him and his stats up center screen to see if there was anything different going on with him…especially since he was in the ‘no essence use’ group.

Many people mistook the trailblazers for slightly different looking clones of one another, but each of them had their own peculiarities and strengths, and Wilson had split the teams up as evenly as he could, with Kara and Davis thrown in as extras. Both broke the mold in different directions, but at this point he needed any and all data he could get, and so far he was totally dry in that regard. At least as far as any data suggesting his gut feeling was accurate.

Greg had no visual timer, which was meant to focus them on the feel of the run rather than let them calibrate to the clock. Normally that’s not how you worked a timed course, because you needed to see where you were gaining and losing in order to adapt, but Wilson wanted them blind on this, hoping that they’d stumble on something he’d missed. They were good at that, and throwing them at this was his last hope at the moment. He didn’t know where else to look, but he was sure there was something wrong with Essence use. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, his instincts told him to stay on this.

A barely audible ping sounded, but in the silence of the control room it was loud. Wilson’s eyes went to Greg’s biomonitor data, seeing the source of the notification. He raised an eyebrow, then focused on Greg’s motions as he moved with liquid grace through a series of tiny pillars that he had to step on very carefully to avoid falling…all below a short ceiling that kept him from jumping across them.

His coordination was impressive, but the ping was the result of something Wilson had discovered long before Essence. It was a state of concentration where one stopped thinking about past or future and became one with the moment. All movements were intuitive, almost as if you were not in control of yourself and moving so fast you didn’t know how you were doing what you were doing, but you just ran with it.

Some called it ‘in the zone,’ others had given it the moniker ‘liquid gold,’ but there was one type of phenomenon within the category that he had labeled ‘Ultra Instinct,’ and Greg had just slipped into it.

And as a result, his speed had increased ever so slightly…not due to his muscles pushing harder, but to his coordination and course chosen being smoothed out and more accurate, with less wasted movement. Wilson had felt this a number of times in his life, but could never do so on command. It just manifested at odd times, and he knew that when it did you just went with it. Thinking would undo it, for it was experience without planning, and often happened in new situations.

Doing so in familiar ones was very rare, but it did happen. And this was usually when records were broken that could never be gotten back to later…at least not without a lot of training advancement to close the gap.

Greg finished out the course within the next few minutes, all the while staying in ‘Ultra Instinct’ through the finish line. Then he took a few extra breathes and tilted his chin up slightly to address the monitoring equipment he knew was on.

“Sorry, Wilson. Took that one a little easier. Didn’t feel right pressing too hard, so I tried to smooth things out a bit. I’ll hit the next one harder.”

Wilson triggered the mic with a thought. “You just shaved 1.46 seconds off your record.”

Greg frowned. “No. There’s no way.”

“You did. And your biomonitor said you slipped into Ultra Instinct. How long has it been since you’ve done that?”

“Longer than I can remember,” Greg said, putting his hands on his hips as he paced around the finish area thinking. “Are you sure? I didn’t feel any different.”

“You can review the data later. Go through again, immediately. I need a comparison.”

“How hard?”

“Same effort. I want to see how much decline you get off fatigue.”

“Will do,” Greg said, hopping over a low barrier to the nearby start line, then he slapped the start button and took off as soon as it depressed.

“Could it be…” Wilson whispered to himself as several ideas hit him simultaneously as Greg again slipped into Ultra Instinct a few moments after he got into the obstacle course. Doing it twice in a row was unheard of, and while he didn’t stay in it constantly, he flickered in and out over the next few minutes.

Wilson suddenly smacked his hand against his forehead and groaned. “How could I be so stupid?” he said, knowing he’d have to get a lot more data to be sure, but he now had a working theory. After all this time, nobody had really asked what Essence was supposed to do. It was always what it could be used for. Connecting the Core to the Body was what was assumed, but Wilson never really explored that line of thought, probably because it couldn’t be seen or tested in any way other than going too far to the point of death, and Star Force would never do that kind of sick research.

“Fatigue from Essence use,” he mumbled to himself. “Why did I never see it? It’s not a control exertion, it’s coordination…or, actually, that is a control exertion, just of a different sort. And you guys are such beasts that you haven’t shown the diminishment.