Chapter 8
Summer was moving along faster than he remembered from his childhood, the days almost blurring as Seb got into a pattern that consisted largely of writing, following his workout routine with the gamification system giving him colorful ‘rewards’ at milestones to trigger the dopamine trap in his brain.
It was funny how the brain worked, Seb had always thought that. The ‘rewards’ were meaningless, he knew they were meaningless… but his brain still treated each new ‘badge’ like he’d discovered pirate gold in his backyard.
Hacking your own brain starts small, I suppose.
It was a little… strange for him, though, he had to admit. Most of his life, brain hacking was so commonplace, so much so that he doubted there were more than a handful of people on the planet who didn’t experience it.
Unfortunately, it was mostly at the behest of corporations, and generally aimed at getting people so glued to their devices, the attention economy valuing nothing greater than eyes on a screen and clicks through.
He was using the same aspects of psychology, but hopefully to a somewhat better end.
The results weren’t exactly turning him into Rambo, of course, but he was noticing an improvement in his wind and a bit of an increase in strength.
Not shabby for a couple months' work.
The summer was rapidly coming to an end, however, and while he’d managed to make some progress across his various projects, Seb couldn’t help but feel like he was losing ground with every passing day.
That feeling, it was one he knew well.
Oh, it came from different directions, of course, but it was the exact same feeling he dealt with every time he had writer’s block.
Every. Time.
The nastiest thing about writer’s block wasn’t what most people thought.
Sure, it sucked that you couldn’t progress your current project, but he’d always considered that just part of the process.
If he didn’t have the urge to write it, the story probably wasn’t sitting right with him.
His brain needed time to figure out how everything was going to play out.
That was fine.
No, the dagger in the back wasn’t the block itself. It was how the block made you feel.
Guilty.
Every moment spent not writing, became a swamp of guilt that plagued you.
Clean the house? You should be writing. Work on a personal project? Why aren’t you writing?
It was a reinforcing loop, and for a lot of years Seb had been mired down in a cycle of writing, and just not doing anything because he couldn’t write so nothing else was getting done either.
Combined with the dopamine hits that the post-internet culture generated as part of corporate marketing…
well, he’d spent a sizable chunk of his life just doom-scrolling because shutting his brain off was easier than trying to make it function correctly.
Breaking that had been the moment that he finally got real control over his own life, but it had taken nearly hitting rock bottom before it happened.
Seb had no intention of ever going back to that, so he kept working on what he could do and ignored the whispers of depression trying to gain a grip on his soul.
Not today, brain. I ain’t got time to entertain no existential dread.
Yes, he knew that was a double negative. No, he didn’t give a damn.
*****
With school coming up, though, he had to figure out his medium term plans with some more effectiveness.
Sitting in class didn’t seem like an effective use of his time, but he couldn’t think of any reasonable way out of it either.
He could make a move to be considered a ‘prodigy’...
honestly, most of his teachers considered him one already.
Pushing that just a little more with likely get him into College a fair bit earlier, which would certainly open up his freedom quite a bit.
The issue with that was whether or not he wanted the publicity.
If he were leading an invasion, he’d be watching for prodigal members of the defender’s side. Co-opting them would be valuable, removing them entirely if they proved a threat… would be simplicity itself.
Seb didn’t trust that he’d be able to hide effectively from that sort of scrutiny.
Which meant that he had to go to school. At least until he was sixteen or so, which was when he’d graduate since he’d already been pushed ahead a grade.
Five more years.
It was really pushing it.
Dropping out wasn’t… impossible… it was actually quite common around where he lived.
Kids would stop going to school and take a berth in a fishing boat as young as fourteen, even younger sometimes.
One of the side effects of living in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t much enforcement of truancy laws if the teachers and parents alike didn’t put up a stink.
Seb was pretty sure that wouldn’t work for him.
Both his mother and his teachers were unlikely to accept him dropping out. None of them expected him to walk away from his education, and the mental disconnect would drive them to throw everything they had at him.
He could probably outstubborn everyone, even the law if it came to it… but, again, that would attract attention.
So he was staring at… high school… again.
Someone just shoot me.
Seb did try not to think that too loud, though, just in case someone was listening.
*****
With the hot days of summer slipping away, though, Seb did stay determined to accomplish as much as he could manage with every action that he could take.
Now that Al had access to his commodore, he started pulling books from his own archives and sending them out to the few publishers that were accepting unsolicited work. He expected rejections, of course, but that was just how things went.
He just needed one to get through.
Just one.
Aside from that, and keeping Al looking out for any more signs of the invaders showing up in the world’s shortwave bands, Seb started to use his workout program for another purpose.
He’d bike out as far as he could in a day, mark the spot with his system, and the next day start from where he’d left off. Over the run of a couple weeks, he’d pushed his fast travel points to dozens of locations over nearly a hundred kilometers around his home.
It was a start.
*****
Eve really didn’t know what to do with that boy.
He was doing everything right, as best she could see, but something about the focus he had as he did… anything… set her on edge, though she couldn’t work out why. There wasn’t anything she could point to as being the reason she felt so worried.
Maybe it’s just the sudden change, she thought, trying to calm the concerns.
Seb didn’t seem like the same boy, now though. Though, she hated to admit it… but the reason he wasn’t the same was that he’d backed off most of his worst habits.
It’s so wrong to be worried about my son because he’s actually cleaning up after himself!
However, wrong or not, that was the situation.
Not for remotely the first time, Eve just told herself she was being foolish. Sebastian was just growing up. Everyone did it, after all.
Everyone grows up. That’s all it is.
*****
Seb looked at the road sign and pulled out a map… a paper map… and checked the position off as he took a reading with his little EMF scanner.
Stronger in this direction. No question.
His biking trips had been for a purpose, beyond just working out or extending his fast travel range. The alien signal he’d found wasn’t steady enough to properly track it this way, but he could slowly circle in on it by taking readings as he went and just sort of roughly close in.
Unless they were broadcasting a steady tone or something similar, though, he doubted he’d be able to narrow it down to anything tighter than a dozen or more square kilometers.
This would be easier if Al could operate in these frequencies. Unfortunately he didn’t have the equipment to do that just yet, and Al was limited by the shortwave antenna he was currently linked to.
But, easier or not, he would keep working the problem.
That had quickly become his motto.
Keep working the problem, and don’t let the problem work me.
*****
So the end of August came and went, and school was looming once more.
Seb was… anything but enthused about it, frankly, but there were a few upsides to school starting up again.
Among other things, he planned to ask his principal if it was possible to swing an access account to the NFSNet…
but he doubted that was going to be possible, since it wouldn’t officially be linked through the Canadian backbone for a couple more years.
He also doubted his principle would know what he was talking about, the man was an old school educator and not really one to be paying attention to the sort of things research schools were playing with.
However, he had connections and had taught at several prestigious private schools in Canada and the States before opting to finish out the rest of his career in the middle of nowhere.
Seb had often thought that there was a story there that he’d never learned, but that wasn’t his concern at the moment.
He just hoped that he could get the man to make some enquiries for him.
In the meantime, he’d subscribed to a couple magazines that printed numbers for the major BBS systems across the world.
Long distance charges were keeping him from using any of those for the moment, but that was what the writing was for.
Work the problem.
And then the summer was over, and the school year started.
*****