[Can’t Opt Out]

A collection of messages came through from Emilia, but Halen couldn’t risk even glancing at them. Really, were he a sensible man, he would have entirely turned off his ability to even see that she was sending him non-emergency messages, at least for the moment. Halen, however, had long ago accepted that when it came to Emilia, he would never be a sensible man—or was he still a boy? Sometimes, Halen felt impossibly old, hours spent within the time skew of the Virtuosi System adding up until he was, what? A decade? Maybe two? Three? Some number of decades older mentally than he was biologically. The fact that even he didn’t know how much time he had added on to his experience of life was something of an indicator of how much their class had abused the time skew.

There were government-mandated limits, of course. They had collectively decided those limits didn’t apply to them—and really, Doctor Vickers himself had agreed that research out of the Ridge Rind confirmed the government’s mandated Virtuosi Hour Limits were too low. It wasn’t public research; rather, it was research the government suppressed through laws because reasons.

Halen understood some of those reasons—he understood that it wasn’t fair that the average Baalphorian wouldn’t be capable of sustaining the levels of Virtuosi System use sub-30s, and low-devs in particular, were capable of.

Once, Halen had cared, all of those extra hours within the Virtuosi System—hours that none of their Censors could properly log, leaving them to have no clue as to how much time they’d eked out within the time skew—a little pain in his heart. Generally, he thought Emilia correct in her thoughts that, when it came to sub-30s, outside of war and specialized fields, D-Levels weren’t particularly indicative of success. The obsessive, curious nature of anyone could inspire those around them, and the fact that such traits were particularly common in low-devs meant that they had the power to inspire those around them.

It wasn’t the biggest deal, in the grand scheme of a world not at war.

Yet, here was this thing where being a low-dev did make a difference—a place where they could use their ability to spend so much time within the Virtuosi System to become experts in anything. With enough time, they could become experts in anything they chose—could master even those things they struggled to grasp. For the moment, their class had largely used their hacked Virtuosi Hours to learn about the things they loved. Simeon learned willbrandsmithing theory. He and Emilia coded. Baylor mastered languages so he could consume more myths from the Free Colonies without relying on the often flawed translations of their Censors.

Everyone had their interests, and for the most part, their hours within the time skew had stretched around those interests, as well as those of their friends. Some of those interests could be used to take them places, but really, they’d been going those places anyways.

Simeon would, one day, be a great willbrandsmith, Halen was sure. Hail had already been a small company, even when he was in compulsory schooling, and yes, Halen’s studies of business practices and marketing and coding had helped him emerge already knowing exactly how to make his company successful, but his path into the world through Hail wouldn’t have faltered without all those years spent studying. Emilia would have still been coding pranks as well because she had always been coding, even before having a Censor—and oh, how Halen wanted to get his hands on the code her young mind had written for her and her friends’ tablets, even Codeth’s filled with relics of her pre-Censor mind. Baylor would always end up with The Black Knot, likely as some sort of assassin, no matter where he interests took his mind.

They had a little bit of an edge, but even if all those decades—at least, Halen suspected it was decades for their more intense, low-dev members—didn’t make the biggest of differences, he had still felt guilt over the obvious difference between what a low-dev like himself could do and even what someone like Codeth could do at 11D.

They weren’t even that far apart in their D-Levels—a 2D and an 11D. It was so small, and yet, it made a difference in what Doctor Victors would allow them to do. The man had cited the study, which Emilia had gotten from Vrin Devano somehow—the man had apparently been rather cagey in his answer even to her, and Emilia suspected he’d hacked into the Ridge Rind and found it—when he had told them what sort of hacked Virtuosi Hour Limits he thought acceptable for each of them.

Those above 5D were given limits—although they were still much higher than the government’s limits—while those of them below 4D had been told to go for it.

“I doubt any of you will start living within the Virtuosi System,” the man had stated, turning back to where Levi had been placed on a table.

Despite the divide in their class, every one of them—even the more terrible of his own friends—had wanted to utilize the higher Virtuosi Hour Limits. So, they had all gone in together to get their doctor’s opinion on the research and his approval for hacking their limits higher. The research had been so good that there had never been any doubt he would approve—the man favoured actual research over government propaganda and laws that needed to be updated.

The man also wasn’t stupid.

If they hacked their Censors to do something like that without his approval, the man would have somehow known. After meeting Coral and learning about her abilities, they had sometimes joked that their doctor must have some sort of similar ability to feel out lies and untruths. It was a joke, but sometimes, Halen wondered if it really was.

Regardless, in a rare moment of class unity—something that always horrified the adults of their town, more so than even the insanity of their prank war did; too much strength in numbers, someone had once said—they had all gone in to his clinic together. For some reason, Levi hadn’t had shoes on. Then, he’d stumbled, toppled a beaker onto the floor. Then, he’d stepped in the shattered glass.

This had resulted in their conversation about safe Virtuosi Hour Limits occurring during an impromptu lesson on removing glass from feet—although the theory of it could be applied to any part of the body, Halen assumed. This was potentially very useful, but Halen’s mind was trying to distract him from the reality that he had suffered a rare moment of being a klutz and wound up with Doctor Vickers pulling shards of glass out of his hand.

Hands weren’t a good place to be injured, so their doctor was going slow. Due to the risk of damage, Halen was paying attention to his nerves and any odd flicks of pain while the man diligently pulled each little fleck of glass free.

Halen had Perfect Load Levels, though, so he could multitask. The multitasking had been leaning into panicking about losing the use of his hand. Hence, he was thinking back to when Doctor Vickers had told them they were troublemakers who were unlikely to start living within the Virtuosi System.

“With different children, I might worry you would use higher Virtuosi Hour Limits to tuck yourselves away from the world. You will, instead, use the extra hours to be the same, insanely bright and motivated children I know you to be. You will bring what you learn and discover back into this world, then blow things up, and wind up here, where I will chastise you while patching you up—and Levi, stop rolling about! You will live your lives out in this world when you can, because this is where you want to live and be. To you, the virtual world is nothing but a supplement to this one. Of course, if I start to see less of you out and about or in here, receiving care for insane injuries, I will revisit my understanding of your collective identity of insanely bright and motivated children,” he had said, pulling a rather large shard of glass from Levi’s foot. The boy hadn’t seemed to be in too much pain, but Darrian had still been there, holding one of his hands, while brushing his fingers of his other through his best friend’s hair and assuring him he would be okay.

Did Darrian and Levi think of each other as their best friend? Or was Leerin such a problem that they wouldn’t dare refer to each other as such?

As Leerin was currently moping in a corner with Janie, Halen pushed thoughts of her aside—he’d already had the horrifying thought earlier that, for one thing, he was almost positive Baylor wouldn’t have jumped after her, had she been pushed into the city rather than Darrian. Then, he had realized he wasn’t sure anyone would be that broken up if the girl died, save perhaps her cousin—and even then, Halen wasn’t sure. It was an unfortunate realization, to know there was someone in their group—and with his team, no less—whom no one would prioritize.

Was it fair, given Leerin was unlikely to prioritize anyone but herself and perhaps her cousin? Yes. It was still cold, and Halen didn’t much want to think about it; mostly, he didn’t want to think about it because, as their more-or-less group leader, he would be the one facing Emilia’s wrath if anything happened to Leerin.

He didn’t like that. No, he didn’t like that at all.

So, back to thinking about that trip to visit Doctor Vickers and Virtuosi Hour Limits, which was really a segue from the fact that there had been guilt there about those raised limits—had been until Emilia was charged.

How was it fair to treat low-devs as more criminally responsible in potentially deadly, high-stress situations, even when they had yet to fully reach adulthood, and yet to also expect them to behave as normal people in everything else? It was a horrible double standard, and the moment he had heard that Emilia as being charged for killing Zachariah Lumos, despite doing everything right when she had attempted to get herself and Lux away from him, all his guilt had vanished.

If these were the laws dictating what he could and couldn’t do, he didn’t much want to be beholden to them.

Of course, this entire thing had been a digression from the reality that, due to all those uncounted hours with the Virtuosi System, he wasn’t sure many of them actually knew how old they were anymore. The problem with hacking their way around the Virtuosi Hour Limits was their Censors couldn’t keep track of all those extra hours—if they did, it would create a record for someone to point to as evidence of their abuse of the time skew.

Would anyone ever bother accusing them of such things? Once, Halen had thought no. They might be breaking the law, but it really only affected them. The Black Knot knew what they were doing, and they didn’t give a shit—granted this was rather outside their jurisdiction, but if they cared, they could turn them over to SecOps. In theory, SecOps wouldn’t do much. Tell them to stop. Maybe get a court order for mandated therapy, or have their access to the Virtuosi System completely cut off for a period of time.

Nothing too insane, but again, why would they bother caring?

Now, Halen was glad they had allowed Emilia to insist their Censors keep no record of all the hours they had disappeared into the Virtuosi System for. If the Baalphorian government were willing to use the Low-Dev Responsibly Act to prosecute her like this, Halen wondered what else they were willing to do in order to… he didn’t even know.

Part of him thought the government was trying to punish Emilia with the charges. Another part of him thought it was some attempt to control her chaos. Another part, small and strange, thought it was something more insidious.

The last thought was a strange one, but one he had, nonetheless. Really, it wasn’t even a thought he could find the origins of. Instead, it was this vague thing, lingering in his mind, telling him that the Baalphorian government wanted something else out of these charges. Annoyingly, that something else, wasn’t something defined within the odd thought!

Instead, it were as though he had once seen or overheard something. Whatever it was, it hadn’t fully catalogued within his mind, but it still sat there—this liminal, unaccounted for space that was still connecting dots of everything else he knew until all he knew was something wasn’t right. There was a list of things he could think of that said something else could be, pulling together within his mind.

The government, wanting to break Emilia.

The government, wanting Emilia out of the way.

The government, wanting something from Emilia—her brain, her passion, her drive.

Just… something, and he had no idea if any of his ideas were correct, or if he were missing some bigger picture, impossible to see unless a thousand pieces were already placed perfectly together.

“How does that feel?” Doctor Vickers asked, popping Halen out of his meandering thoughts, the latter of which he had begun to catalogue into a file he was going to force onto Olivier.

The man might still be claiming he wasn’t going to be taking Emilia’s case, but Halen didn’t even think the lawyer believed his words. The thought of Olivier, alive out there, had Halen’s heart doing an uncharacteristic clench—usually, it only did that for his friends and Emilia. The aether Emilia had splattered over the non-dev lit up on Halen’s Censor and its attempts to create a map of the city from what Emilia and the clones knew, the contributions of the drop group and now Mikhail, as well as what their own group could see of the city below them. It all added up to a mess of lines, due to how many roads and alleyways the city had, many of them overlapping floors away from one another as the city rose and fell at random, stairways leading to parallel roads levels apart.

Glancing at his hand, Halen let his Censor assess it. Doctor Vickers had, of course, already assessed it with a number of skills, lest he miss something. Still, it was good to check, and Halen’s Censor pushed his awareness through his hand, focusing, focusing, looking for small little blips that would indicate small bits of glass still trapped within him, waiting to be pulled into his blood stream to shred his insides—there was a reason he had been trying to distract his mind, which had a tendency to catastrophize.

“I think it’s okay,” he replied, flexing his hand before flooding it with the hormones and chemicals that the function Doctor Vickers had helped design some years ago told him to. Enough pain relief to take the edge off, while leaving enough space for him to feel if something more than pain of having glass removed from his hand were wrong.

Halen’s eyes swept back to the non-emergency messages Emilia had sent him, not open, but blinking like the temptation they were, his heart fluttering with the reality that she was messaging him.

What a small thing to find joy in, the fact that the girl he liked was messaging him not with anger or wrath or threats, as had been their habit for almost half their life, but still something softer.

In the end, he supposed, all of them were still children—boys and girls—because they might be older within their minds, but the world was still something unknown to them. They had knowledge, yes, theoretical and stuffed into their minds, but they lacked experience, and knowledge was nothing, when compared to reality.

Knowledge could be a lie—could be the government showcasing studies and facts that had been skewed for their narrative. It was only by seeing the world and experiencing it that they could grow and become adults.

Opening Emilia’s messages as they began moving again, trying to sneak through one of the homes that were built into the city’s ceiling—it had been while breaking into the home that he had clumsily shattered a vase and injured his hand—Halen wondered if he would ever have enough experience to guess at what sort of messages the girl would be sending him next.