Opening Up

It was a bit after midnight, long after the others had gone off to bed, when John’s hand first touched on the newly finished door. Swinging it open revealed a very bare, very plain, and very much empty room, but there was a sense of pride all the same as he strolled inside. His boots echoed with each stride across the untarnished wood, and as he glanced around the room, he imagined what it would look like when it was so packed with alchemy equipment that there was scarcely room to weave one’s way between them.

John had continued training after the others grew tired, but he’d promised Sophia that he would stop as close to the stroke of midnight as possible. After that he’d busied himself with a few side projects for a while, organizing his inventory and all of the new reagents that they had gathered, checked up on Aclysia – who as it turned out had gotten herself thoroughly invested in the non-erotic texts that Yvara had prepared for her, as well as the more adult ones – and then gotten so invested in romping through his old computer games that he hadn’t even remembered that the building was about to be finished until well after it was done.

“Successful day of training, finished building, I made a potion without blowing myself up… not a bad day, all in all,” John thought happily as he spun in place, holding one hand high and conjuring a small ball of light in the palm of his hand with Elemental Infusion to lighten up the room. The Build had created the room itself, but not much more aside from the door and windows – lighting would have to be his first priority before they began doing sensitive alchemical work inside.

“Right, let’s get a queue going. Might as well get this place as ready as we can.”

John set to work filling the building’s interior up with all the things he could easily make on his own without too much difficulty. It started with tables and desks, working areas that they would need regardless of what equipment they were able to make. Then came the storage areas, several different shapes and sizes of them. The most important was another Abyssal Chest like the one in the main house, capable of holding all manner of various alchemical ingredients.

That alone would have been enough to hold all of John’s ingredients, but for the sake of convenience and to avoid bashing heads when working together with the others, John wanted a more at-hand system for room-stable items. Containers that could easily be opened and retrieved from without the menus, and that could be more spread out across the room.

So John created several wooden large bins that he placed in the corner of the room, lined up along the wall, effectively little more than large, air-tight wooden trashcans, with flip-open tops that could easily hold large quantities of small, granular items – he immediately filled the first three up with Arcane Dust, Dust of Undeath, and Sanctified Silt, though he only had enough of the third to get it about halfway full.

“Okay, and the infusion station’s going to be there, the attunement ritual stones are going to be on a table there, so I could put one between those, and another set against the other wall...”

A half-dozen small apothecary cabinets popped into existence, four of them on the floor in any place John could find that was out of the way and wouldn’t intersect with a future workstation, and another two on top of existing tables. The ones placed on their own, with long legs to boost them up to a usable height, were a bit larger and had almost fifty drawers each, all of varying sizes, with the largest being only around the size of his fist and the smallest being able to hold barely more than a pencil laying flat.

As a final touch, John created two massive cabinets that he filled with all the glassware he could, most if it already formed and the rest Crafted without an issue in a few moments. One cabinet remained relatively untouched once he loaded it up, merely using it to hold dozens of vials and flasks and beakers somewhere that they were accessible to someone other than him. In the other one, John crafted a series of cupholders, trays, and straps to secure as many of the containers in place as possible, then began to deposit more of his hard-won materials from dungeon grinding. Everything from fruit juices, to mysterious and occasionally unnamed substances, to Minicorn urine. John went one at a time, pouring them in and then capping them off or throwing a lid on them to make sure they didn’t contaminate each other… or stink up the lab.

Once he finished with the last of his non-perishables and threw the remaining materials into the Abyssal Chest for preserving, John stepped back to admire his work. It was still a very barren room, all things said – if it were a little bit more like a proper alchemist’s lab, it might have at least seemed cool to look at, but as things stood it felt more like the world’s saddest science fair.

“Maybe I should take care of the lighting. Brightening this place up could really brighten this place up,” John said, chuckling to himself. John was just starting to consider the best way to light the room when his inventory popped up a notification and his phone began to ring out, something unexpected enough to make him jump a little.

“John? Is the connection stable? I want to make sure it’s coming through on your end as well.”

There was no mistaking the monotone voice on the other side of the call as soon as he accepted it.

“Yeah! It must be working like a charm, thanks, Tricia. I knew you’d be able to pull it off. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble?”

*“Troublingly little. As I said, it is primarily the high-end encryption of my original connection that keeps you safe – once one has access to it, transmitting is relatively simple given my drone’s array of communication devices. I suppose that given we have yet to make contact with any other surviving Gorbachevs, and no one has attempted to hack this connection using Gorbachev technology or even tried using the stolen encryption keys from other systems, this system is as safe as one could ask for.”

“Yeah, you’ve always- wait, have they tried hacking into this connection without those things?” John murmured, a bit taken aback.

Tricia sighed audibly, sounding exasperated in spite of her sedated emotions. “Yes, John. You are one of the most famous, infamous, or at minimum interesting* individuals within the Abyss. I used to routinely log around twenty-six attempted connections to my network, though virtually none of those had the required technical or magical skill to get past a basic firewall, much less to find a way to break my encryption or transfer their requests across different channels of communication. Since meeting you – and especially since that drone was stolen from me – I see, on average, two-hundred and thirteen point seven five in the same timeframe. Some of them are frighteningly competent at times. One even managed to compromise thirty percent of one of my servers before I cut off their connection and began isolation and decontamination protocols.”

“Damn. How did they manage to crack the drone anyway, if all of this is encrypted?”

“The encryption I’m referring to is specialized for proprietary Gorbachev technology that is only used for long-distance communication of an extremely high importance. Secondary systems and subsystems rely on lesser methods, and even some low-grade Abyssal technology and software that is widely available. It’s the reason why my drones have never been turned against me, and it’s the reason why their channel to your world remains nearly impenetrable, even if I hadn’t set up a special network just for them so that they were insulated from any communications I make with the internet or Abyss networks.”

“So instead of hacking into your full system, they just cracked open the hard drive inside of it?”

“...If I say yes, will you never refer to breaking encryption as if you were opening a can of beer again?” Tricia murmured, and John could feel the grimace through the phone line. “But I believe you understand the concept now, yes. Truthfully, I should have been using more cautious protocols with such sensitive information, even back then – I should have had all data from analyzing your powers and creations transferred directly to my computers instead of remaining on the drone’s hardware. When you allowed me into your private world and went so far as to let me keep a drone there, I made sure that the connection from those drones back to my lab was as secure as I could possibly make it.”

“And I appreciate it,” John said earnestly. “Especially if you’ve really been dealing with all these people trying to spy on me. You’ve done a great job.”

“Your praise is unneeded. You trusted me with information and a way to contact you – it’s only natural that I would guard those closely. Are you sure you want me to leave these channels open? You have no requests on limitations? I could at least restrict the number of hours my drones function as relays, or limit the connection speeds.”

“I suppose you could make the internet a toggle that I can flick on or off using the interface on one of your drones. Nobody but me is going to be using it much anyway, at least not until I get some more electronics around here,” John mumbled, glancing out one of the newly finished windows toward the house. His computer and phone were the only things that could even interface with the internet, Abyssal or mundane. “But why? If you’ve got the connection encrypted, then what’s it matter?”

“My encryption protects anyone from using the connection I’ve set up or analyzing it and duplicating it. Or, at least, it does so long as it remains unbroken. But the data it sends still has to be decrypted into a usable format once it’s there. Right now, all that is handled on the drones I brought over to your end – and if it’s data from my laboratory, there isn’t much risk. As I said, I’ve isolated the drone control systems and all data storage from your world away from any of my equipment that has any possibility of contact with the rest of the Abyss. But if I start networking in phone and internet like this, even mundane ones...”

“Someone could slip in, what, a virus?” John hazarded a guess, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, that wouldn’t be great, but I don’t see how that’s crisis-level concern.”

“Technomancers can do very problematic things when they get a hold of a machine!” Tricia responded, her voice managing to convey just enough bite for John to know how annoyed she really was under the suit. “The least of which would be gaining access to my drone, using its cameras and forcing me to run a full system clear, not to mention compromising every encryption key that has been rotated through on that drone. In the worst case, some technomancers that are skilled enough could even transmit themselves over that connection!”

“Okay, wow. Actually didn’t consider that one. Wait, would they actually be here? Or is it sort of like the Matrix, where they-”

“I get the distinct impression you’re not taking this seriously right now.”

“No, no, I am. Sorry, geek side kicked in for a moment.”

Tricia sighed so deeply it was clearly audible over the call. “John, I was willing to spend the hours it took to make this as secure as possible. But there are never any guarantees. I don’t want you to misunderstand the potential risks you’re taking for this, especially if the primary benefit is simply not having to return to the manor’s yard a few times a week...”

“Yeah, I get that, I do. But this is something I probably should have set up a long time ago. And it’s not going to get any less risky as time goes on, right?” John shrugged instinctively, despite no one being around. “Truth be told, I’ve been thinking about ways to open this place up more anyway. Ways to let people in and out without me being there, and how to improve them from last time.”

“You… have?”

John smiled at the way Tricia’s voice wavered as she hesitated. Her emotions were too muted to tell which one was shining most strongly at the moment, but he could tell that had thrown her off.

“Yeah, I have. I know locking myself away like that for a whole year wasn’t exactly the healthiest way to handle things. And more importantly, I can’t keep all the others locked up here forever like Rapunzel or something. They deserve freedom, and… for my mental health, if nothing else, it would be good to **** myself to face that fear again. Plus, I miss you. It was fun having you drop by to do random inspections, believe it or not.”

“I most certainly do not. But thank you all the same. I...”

Tricia’s voice faltered, and John could hear the faint beeping of her suit in the background, administering Gaia-only knew what cocktail of depressants to control the mix of emotions she must have been experiencing.

“I will not question you on the business of your own sanctuary any further. I appreciate your attempts at assurances. If you need anything further, please call this line directly so that I can run further analysis on the data link. Goodbye.”

Like that, she was gone. John’s face fell at the completely dead tone her voice had taken at the end, and at the furious injections she’d endured for that one conversation. But there was nothing he could do about it for the moment, except vow to himself that he’d make sure that if he did make a way to access his world for others, she’d be the first to use it.

“Yeah… big if.”

What John had said wasn’t a lie. He had been thinking about ways to make something similar to the Portal Stone that wouldn’t have the same weaknesses. Enchanting it to only work for a single person and making it a fixed location were two of the most obvious, and there were plenty more that he could do to make it even more secure with a bit of effort, and yet…

Every time he actually imagined creating something, his heart started to pound and his head would spin. If not at the idea itself, then at the very least the idea of all the hours he’d spend checking on the place people arrived in his world.

How many hours would he lose setting up a whole gateway? Enchanting it, over and over again, until even he could barely use it. Inspecting it down to the last stone, each and every day, second-guessing every forgotten crevice that seemed to have shifted. Guarding it. Patrolling it. Setting up cameras, erecting a barricade, laying traps and-

-2 HP!

John didn’t notice how fast he was breathing until he was leaning against the wall for support, his chest heaving and his mind racing. One hand was clutched over his chest protectively, curled into a fist so tight it stung. For a moment the pressure in his chest grew strong enough to worry him, though he wasn’t even sure he could have a heart attack with Gamer’s Body in effect.

“Fuck, just like that? I thought I was getting better, I thought that-”

Even though your body might be magic, your mind definitely isn’t. You can get as strong or fast as you want, but we all still have to deal with the same bullshit when it comes to mental health.

Adantia’s words echoed in his head unbidden, but this time, he didn’t have whatever magic she’d used to help him calm himself down. He had to stand there, hunched against the wall and suddenly sweating like Lerianna after one of her runs, focusing everything he had on keeping his breathing under control.

“Shit. Shit. Is that all it takes? Trying to face my fears for two seconds?” John thought bitterly. “I killed everyone who intruded on my world. I made sure they could never come back, even if I do open another one. I was fine thinking about the phone and the internet getting patched through. I’m fine dealing with a war. How does this make sense?!”

No one gave him an answer. John wasn’t entirely sure there was one. All he could do was keep focusing on his breathing, and eventually, time took care of the issue. Slowly his body relaxed, loosened up muscles he hadn’t even been aware he was clenching. His head started to pound for a brief moment as the pressure released, until it either faded away on its own or Gamer’s Body finally recognized a symptom it could be of some use for.

John slowly unfurled his fingers and was startled when he saw a flash of blood. It faded in an instant, cleaned and healed by Gamer’s Body, but it had definitely been there. John stayed in position long after the tension had faded, feeling ashamed of himself. The only thing he was grateful for was that Tricia had ended the call before he’d made a fool out of himself by going into a meltdown while still on the line.

“Okay, so… that’s something to work on, then.”

John let a ragged breath escape him as he flexed his fingers, staring down at where the patch of blood had been moments ago.