*** Patrick ***

  Sydney disappeared two days ago and since then part of Patrick’s morning routine included checking the neighborhood leaderboard to see if everyone was still here. It wasn’t clear if Sydney had given up or if his performance had dipped too low. He had always said that everything was going well, but was always defensive about it.

  Today when he checked there were two surprises; there were four new names in the neighborhood, and he was no longer at the top of most of the boards. The top two spots were occupied by Ji-ho and Tyler. The other two new neighbors were Darian and Edward. Double checking the global boards they were mostly unchanged from last night:

  43% - Strength - level 8

  23% - Endurance - level 8

  42% - Dexterity - level 5

  36% - Intelligence - level 7

  19% - Concentration - level 7

  34% - Overall

  ‘huh, I wonder what the new guys are like?’ Shrugging his shoulders Patrick put the question in the back of his mind and got started with his day.

  – neighborhood meeting –

  Curious about the new neighbors, Patrick was one of the first ones in the room. Soon enough Scott, Erin, Harvey, and three other men were there. All three were about slightly above average height with dark hair. They were about the same age as Patrick, who was the youngest of the original neighbors at 48.

  Scott was the first to speak, “Welcome to the neighborhood!”

  “I think that is our line,” replied the one with a goatee, “since you all are the ones who moved in.”

  Patrick mediated with “How about we start with introductions and then we can go from there. I’m Patrick, and this is Scott, Erin, and Harvey.”

  “Sure, sure, my name is Tyler, this is Darian and Edwin,” he said pointing to a man with a mustache and the other man who had two fingers on his left hand were missing the fingertips.

  A few more pleasantries were exchanged and then Harvey said, “What did you mean by us moving in? We have been stuck here for the past couple of weeks. There were eight of us to start, but the others decided to leave.”

  Edwin replied, “That describes our experience too. We started with eight, over time three left, and today the fourth one was replaced with the four of you.”

  They compared notes for another 10 minutes until Scott was impatient and said, “It looks like we are back to a blackjack tournament today, let’s get started.”

  Tyler said, “Let’s just wait a couple more minutes for John to join us, he should be out any minute.”

  “ok, we can wait a few this time.”

  After ten minutes of more chatting, Scott announced that he was going to start dealing. Everyone grabbed their seats.

  As he was dealing Scott demurred, “Sorry about leaving John out, but we try to stay punctual.”

  Darian replied, “It isn’t a big deal, he still gets credit for showing up as long as he spends at least a half hour with the group.”

  Darian then chuckled, “John is terrible about trying to optimize everything and being as ‘efficient’ as possible. He is a nice guy though.”

  As predicted, about half way through the tournament John showed up. He looked a decade younger, with dyed-red hair and a beer-belly. He greeted everyone and chatted while everyone else was playing, but showed no interest in joining the game himself.

  The conversation for the night consisted of exchanging pet theories and observations about what was happening. Like the old neighbors, the new neighbors were trying to make the best of the circumstances. John was the most enthusiastic, comparing the structured environment to an elaborate virtual reality game.

  John excused himself after a while so he could get back to his ‘vr game’. Tyler had won the game and chose ‘Ticket to Ride’ for the following day. While he was leading a debate about the evening’s drinks, Patrick went back to his room, joking that he wanted to get back to his ‘vr game’ also.

  Patrick thought the new neighbors were ok, but his social batteries were empty after the meeting.

  – Day 17, 5:45 –

  Patrick had a few minutes to go back over the global leaderboard while waiting for the neighborhood meeting.

  35% - Strength - level 10

  16% - Endurance - level 11

  28% - Dexterity - level 9

  25% - Intelligence - level 11

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  9% - Concentration - level 11

  18% - Overall

  The last few days had been productive for climbing the global leaderboard. Patrick still wasn’t sure if people who dropped out were still considered or not. He suspected that they didn’t but there was no way to know for sure. The new neighbors didn’t have any insight either about how many people had been taken in total. Patrick felt like he was starting to plateau in the Strength and Endurance categories, the impossible gains of the first few days had dropped to merely amazing gains.

  He felt that he made the biggest ability gains in Dexterity’s micromovements. Patrick was more confident in shaping the energy and was able to systematically work through each new challenge. In addition to different movement techniques, different types of energy had been introduced after level 6. The original energy was now labeled with the wind icon. The most recent icon, flames, took less effort to push, but demanded more attention to control properly.

  The Intelligence and Concentration challenges were demanding, but Patrick was able to keep up. He had a pleasant surprise two days ago when he reclaimed the top of the neighborhood leaderboard in Concentration. At challenge level 10 a tactile distraction was added to the tasks. This new distraction felt like spiders falling on a random body part and then dancing. Patrick almost fell out of his chair the first time it happened. Patrick disliked the new distraction, but it coincided with his rise on the local board. He hadn’t asked Tyler or John about it, but he suspected that they might have arachnophobia, or something similar.

  According to the calendar this was the halfway mark for the assessment. Patrick was optimistic that he would be able to crack the top 10%. So far his time management had been going well. Each day he would take on as many challenges as he could while making sure he still could complete all of the day’s tasks.

  One change he noticed today was the neighborhood meeting was no longer a stand-alone task. It was now listed under Intelligence. The other Intelligence tasks for the day had been unchanged, so he was curious what would be happening at the meeting to account for the change.

  – neighborhood meeting –

  Today the room was set up with a large central table, about 5x10, and eight workstations spaced around the central table. Above the central table a holographic display showed a game that looked like Risk with Axis and Allies pieces. After staring at it for a bit Patrick realized that the pieces were already moving. Scott and Darian had already claimed workstations and were already busy doing something.

  ‘uh-oh, a real time game, I better get started.’

  Edwin, Erin, and Harvey had similar thoughts and were moving to workstations too. Tyler swore under his breath and then went over to John’s door and yelled, “John get out here now!” before dashing to his own spot.

  Patrick passed Scott’s workstation on the way and could not see anything over his shoulder. There was some sort of privacy screen embedded into the workstations.

  At his workstation Patrick realized why this was under the Intelligence category, the interface was in Draconic. The opening screen said “choose your country”. The United States, China, and Japan were already taken; Germany, Russia, UK, Australia, and Brazil were still available. Patrick realized that if he could leverage John’s tardiness into some easy wins that it could catapult him into a win.

  While pondering this Australia was taken.

  Patrick chose the UK, the stronger navy would provide flexibility to either strike John’s neglected empire, or attack empires that over extended themselves to strike at John. Plus as an island he felt more confident in taking risks without being steamrolled by a neighbor. It wasn’t obvious yet who controlled which empire, but it shouldn’t take long to identify which one was on autopilot.

  By 6:02 everyone except John had their empire and the game was underway. John had been left with Russia. It was clear that everyone smelled blood in the water; Germany, Japan, and China were all mustering to carve Russia up. The United States and Australia were focusing on their economy, and Brazil was not doing much. Patrick set about building his economy while positioning his navy to make opportunistic attacks. There were no allies in the game, it was a straight-forward game of global domination.

  It quickly became clear that communication was the key ability in this game, namely understanding the reports the game generated and being able to issue commands in Draconic. The reports were stylized as Draconic communiques from the generals and admirals of the empire’s forces. Similarly orders had to be sent using Draconic.

  Fifteen minutes into the game Germany hadn’t attacked Russia, rather it rolled through the middle east to attack China, who seemed to be floundering a bit with the interface. Meanwhile Japan had taken the eastern third of Russia. The United States was slowly moving against Brazil, while both Brazil and Australia had made some blunders in their orders. Once Germany had committed the bulk of its forces to its land war in Asia, Patrick launched a blitzkrieg attack on the German capital.

  During the attack John joined the meeting. Tyler yelled for him to get to his workstation and help him out. John was confused but went to the open workstation. Berlin was soon captured and looted though. Japan and China started moving more aggressively into Russian territory. Patrick pivoted his forces and went for Moscow. He quickly arrived and was able to take it while John’s forces were still in disarray.

  With their empires neutered, both John and Tyler left their workstations to go off to the side and talk. Tyler was furious and John was still a little unclear about what was happening.

  Patrick’s skill with Draconic meant that he was able to respond to and issue orders at least twice as fast as the remaining players. The only neighbors who were higher on the Intelligence board were John and Tyler and they were now out of the game. Patrick’s gains from the surprise campaign also provided a strong foundation to finish rolling through Asia. While he was grinding through Asia he built up his navy and transports to decapitate Australia. Patrick then crushed the Japanese navy to have total dominance over the seas. The United States and Brazil never built up their economies, so once Patrick was able to dispatch them with relative ease.

  Once the game was over Tyler came back to the group and demanded, “Who was Britain?”

  The hostility made Patrick uncomfortable and he said, “What does it matter? It was only a game.”

  “So it was you. It was underhanded to attack John when he was not even in the game yet. And to stab me in the back while I was defending him. And who were China and Japan?” Tyler ranted.

  Tyler kept complaining about how everyone else played, while John occasionally egged him on.

  Patrick said, “I disagree” and walked back to his room.

  — 8:15 —

  Rather than work on Intelligence like he usually did after meetings, Patrick went straight to the treadmill. He hadn’t planned on doing the Endurance challenge today, but he was so worked up from the confrontation that he accepted the challenge to distract himself.

  —

  Tyler was the one who was unfair.

  —

  It was just a game, and Patrick was just playing to win.

  —

  There was no cheating, how could there be cheating, this whole place is so controlling.

  —

  If anyone is cheating it is John, spending the meeting time to get the top of the leaderboards.

  —

  And Tyler, treating John like they were on a team together when it was a free-for-all. No one else was teaming.

  —