Explain your plan

It occurred to you that Emma had never seen anything regarding your father now being on the KDK as there were no events she could have seen him in and well… you hadn’t told her anything since Sunday night.

You felt there was no other way to explain what had happened without first showing her the ‘non preferred gender’ explanation page as well as his profile. She seemed surprised at first but then a look of confusion returned to her face as what you had shown her still didn’t explain why the both of you were hanging around the school grounds instead of going home.

“It's not really the fact that I’ve added my father to the list of subjects, it’s this figure here” you said, pointing to the distance away figure while trying to give an answer to her confusion.

Name: John Cooper
Role: NPG Subject, Father
Age: 47
Distance: 22,466m

“Given where he said his job was located, there's no way he should be only that far away from us right now. Double it, maybe if he had a longer commute to work but it's way too small of a number” you continued, feeling yourself get a little heated as you spoke before forcing yourself to calm down as you carried on.

“I just wanna try and figure out exactly where he is” you finished with a sigh.

“And that's why we're out here? I know you don’t really like him but it's a bit unusual to suddenly wanna track him down isn’t it?” Emma asked, still not sure exactly why you were going to all this effort.

You kept forgetting how much had happened in such a short amount of time and now that you remembered, Emma was still out of the loop when it came to your fathers cheating. A promise for her not to tell anyone about what you said next and a quick rundown of what you had heard from Lucy was enough to get her in an angrier mood than you expected.

“And you think he's doing it again! Cheaters should just rot in a hole somewhere” she angrily spat, making you realise some of her resentment for her own father was probably leaking out. And giving you a chance to calm yourself down.

“...You know what I’m doing with the KDK isn’t exactly far from…” you started to admit, getting immediately cut off by Emma.

“It’s completely different so don’t even think that! We both know what's going on with our relationship and I’m not in the dark about your other relationships. Plus it's not like you're married to any of your subjects or even in a committed reaction with any of the others yet. You’re even planning to tell Rebecca about the whole thing even though you didn’t have to, so don’t tell me you’re the same!” she ranted, almost running out of breath towards the end but still having a fierce look in her eyes that told you she wouldn’t accept your disagreement on the topic no matter how much you tried.

“Okay, okay I get your point. I’m sorry for thinking like that” you apologised, seeing Emma relax slightly at your admission.

“Good, you better be” she replied sounding satisfied.

Silence hung in the air for a few seconds after her unexpected outburst and she quickly started to blush and pretended to clear her throat before she spoke.

“...So where were we?” she replied, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Right, the figure on the KDK tells us how far away my father is but not his direction or location. From what I’ve seen, it updates in real-time so we should be able to pinpoint his location if we have a large enough area” you answered, pulling out the extra supplies you had stored in your bag alongside your books this morning.

Getting a general direction was probably possible just from walking around your own room but you wanted to be as accurate as you could be hence doing this outdoors. You could have also done this in your backyard but that also came with the risk of having to explain what you were doing to either Mom, Sarah or Lucy and doing it away from home just seemed to make more sense.

Regardless of the location, there was one extra thing you wanted to try now that you didn’t have such a hang-up on spending your hard-earned points.

***WEEKLY ITEM! - 50% off SALE ***
KDK EXPLORER UPGRADE(KDK upgrade):
Description: Upgrades the current KDK distance feature to now work in conjunction with a minimap. The map will be accurate within a 25m radius of your current location and will show the position of all subjects within that radius. Subjects outside can still be tracked using the original distance feature.
Conditions: None
Cost: 25 points

It was unlikely and almost a complete shot in the dark but given how the KDK had told you the weekly sales should have some use for you even if you didn’t know the reason, you had a faint sliver of hope that the upgrade could somehow be of use.

With a quick check with Emma to see if she had any counterarguments, you hit the ‘buy’ button and confirmed your purchase.

KDK Explorer Upgrade purchased.
Installing upgrade… 10%...27%... … 87%...100%
Installation complete. View User profile to view additional information.

Emma seemed just as curious as you about how the new upgrade would work and you made sure she could see the screen as you loaded up your own profile after the upgrade had been finalised.

Name: Max Cooper
Role: User
Age: 18
Level: 4 - 220/250xp
Points total: 89
(Minimap)

Your points total had now been updated with the new purchase and the new line where a subject's usual distance value would be displayed now showed up on your own profile as a clickable button. With a quick tap, a new screen loaded up showing you a very simple looking map with you in the centre. It looked like it started off incredibly zoomed out as what looked like names listed under the dot were overlapped. Luckily the existence of a third name, Sarah’s, just towards the outside of the radius and the outline of the nearby buildings was enough for you to understand what was being displayed.

I quick zoom in was enough for your names to separate and you could now clearly see the individual dots for both yourself and Emma. With that clarified, you moved the map to then focus back on Sarah, trying to figure out where she was in relation to the outlines of the buildings. No names of streets or locations were available but you could roughly guess based on the movement of her dot that she was currently doing laps around the nearby running track that your school had set up on one of the lesser-used fields.

You and Emma watched her for a few seconds and given the track record of the KDK so far, you didn’t feel the need to go and check if what it was saying was true. The one disappointing thing was that no other subjects were being shown outside the radius it had specified. Part of you had hoped it would just show a dot at the very edge of the circle to tell you the direction they were in, like a tracked objective in a game but sadly no such feature was available.

Still, you had the backup method which you had brought your equipment for and with your first option failing, you got to work on tracking your father’s position the harder way. ‘Equipment’ made it sound fancier than it really was considering you only had a tape measure and a compass but it would have to do.