Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

and Gus began to pace, cracking his knuckles in worry. Was it supposed to take this long? He doubted he could progress very quickly at all without Nick’s assistance. If he had somehow fried his circuits, Gus would have seriously stunted his future possible growth. He regretted being so flippant about Nick’s assimilation with the hybrid Nth.

Gus was never very patient at anything, and he would have pushed a reload or reset button if there had been one. He wanted to pick up the ball but worried that it would interfere with the uploading process and really ruin things. Finally, to avoid nervous pacing, he sat down on the metal gangway and waited. He tapped his heel nervously against the metal gangplank, making a *bumpbumpbump.* The metal ridges made the gangway uncomfortable to sit on, but the dread that was building in Gus’ core drowned out the physical discomfort. He simultaneously wanted to leave and do something, anything, but didn’t want to miss it if Nick suddenly came back online. It was maddening.

Nick had kept Gus going, and given him so much information that helped him level skills, and understand his new reality. Besides that, he had been a totally supportive companion. If he admitted it, he was probably one of the best friends he had ever had. One of his dad’s old maxims came back to him: ‘Good friends make you grow into your best self.’ Tempest usually said it disparagingly, wanting Gus to evaluate his life and see how his current friends were not pushing him to be better.

This had always sparked Gus’ rebellious streak and resistance. It made him want to stay just as he was. “They accept me for who I am, not who you want me to be,” Gus shouted to the empty air. Somehow Nick had motivated Gus without the shame and cajoling. He was tough at times too, but he managed to do it in a way that Gus could totally relate with, and realize and accept his faults.

Not wanting to be away from Nick when the process finally finished, Gus began working on his bag of holding again. He detached his chest plate from his armor and made a serviceable cushion on the hard metal. With his mind fresh, the process of ether weaving was easier this time around. He managed to complete the same weave that had taken him two hours in only about fifteen minutes. A chime sounded, but he barely noticed as time sank away. Gus got into a rhythm and became engrossed in the task. The pressure and worry from the siege faded as he became single-minded in his task.

There was definitely a pattern involved, and it was becoming more intuitive where he had to place his fingers to thread the ether, when to hold and tighten. The tightening step would pull the tiny knots together like beads on a string before the ether threads pulled tight together and interlocked the individual knots. This also condensed the weave incredibly, drastically reducing the finished length of the rim.

The cycle would continue again, forming another length of looser ties and knots, only tightening after reaching the fifth securing knot.

Was that another chime? No matter.

After reaching a length of three feet, he turned his attention to combining the ends together. Fortunately, the end of the weave contained a similar set of picots, or loops, and Gus threaded the last ends of ether through these. Before securing the edges of the rim, Gus pushed to enlarge the internal size of the bag until he felt a strong pushback. Maintaining pressure to keep the bag inflated, he pulled the knots tight.

Looking at the finished product, it resembled a thin loop of black shoelace. Usually, he could not visualize ether at all without the aid of his display, but perhaps due to its condensed nature it was brought into the visible spectrum.

Gus could see that the fifth knots had formed a tiny loop in the chain where the pocket dimension could be attached to a standard bag with a tiny ether knot. It appeared that he made a circle a foot in diameter. Not super large, but it could fit things like the sensors and turrets inside.

Gus reached inside and could put his arm inside up to the shoulder and he pressed against a rubbery stretchy wall on the interior. It was unsettling to see him ‘missing’ his arm as if he were an amputee. Waving it in front of him and even trying to touch his face, he sensed nothing as the hand failed to contact him as he moved it in the other dimension. He thought it would feel cold inside, but it felt the same as the ambient temperature. Remembering Nick’s warning about how living tissues behaved in the pocket dimension, he quickly pulled his arm out and inspected it, but it appeared to be no worse for the wear.

Gus got to his feet and he was achy all over.

How long have I been doing this? His knees popped and he shook his legs to get the circulation back. He did a couple more stretches to loosen up his upper body; he must have been hunched over for a really long time. He looked and saw no changes to the sphere of hybrid Nth on the conveyor belt. Looking at his watch, it was… 1:23 AM?! He had been working at it for hours, and did not notice at all. He didn’t know how he hadn’t run out of MP during the process, but he must have improved to the point that MP expenditure was less than his natural regeneration rate. And he didn’t feel tired at all, besides being sore and super hungry. He felt uneasy without the ability to ask Nick for instant status updates on what the zombies were doing. His minimap appeared to be the same, and he couldn’t keep running to main control to check the monitors constantly.

Gus wandered into the cafeteria, and the waiter robot