“Dead,” I heard my mom say from behind. Sighing, I dropped my weapon and raised my hands. “What did we do wrong?”
“Bang!” exclaimed Juny, floating off to the side. I glared at her, and for once I was actually looking at her and not a drone since we were in a virtual environment. She had taken the form of Majora’s Mask as her avatar and was moving around erratically, tendrils waving wildly.
“I didn’t check my corners,” I groaned.
“Correct! At least you could identify the mistake,” mom praised. We were currently playing a VR game with realistic physics where she was in the process of beating all the bad habits I’d already accumulated out of me. “You’re too used to relying on your motion tracker and Juny’s sensors. What would you do if you were caught without your suit or enough points to replace it? That Eyebot isn’t indestructible either. And what about things that aren’t moving?”
“Yeah, I get the picture. I need to maintain good habits even when they’re unnecessary so I do them automatically in a pinch, right?” I asked as I turned around. Like me, mom was wearing gear used by soldiers and mercenaries. We were in a versus mode so there were no team colors; I was in my typical teal and silver while mom was using purple and gold.
“At least for now, yep. Eventually you might grow past problems- maybe you’ll have integrated sensors, be able to teleport your armor to you, or just have more points than you know what to do with. But currently you’re still mortal like the rest of us, so you’ve gotta be careful,” mom lectured sternly. I felt like I was a teenager again but didn’t dare gainsay her.
“I’ll try. What’s next?” I asked, watching as mom opened up the in-game menu. The scene around us changed; we were now standing outside, in an abandoned city street instead of inside a building.
“Now I get five minutes to prepare and then you enter the building and hunt me down,” she informed me. “Juny, no advise this time either, please.”
“I would never interfere with Erica’s learning!” the AI promised, floating off to god-knows-where. I knew she’d still be able to see and hear everything that went on in here regardless of where her avatar was.
“Got it. Any advice before we start?”
“Nice try, but you’ll learn better if I let you make the mistakes yourself and learn from them. We always remember our failures more clearly than our successes,” mom replied over her shoulder as she went inside. A timer popped up counting down from five minutes. I decided to use the time to think things over and plan.
Obviously she was going to try to rig the building up with traps, but five minutes wasn’t a whole lot and this was a realistic sim. Mom could only use what she had on her, which was a rifle, two grenades, and a pistol, along with what she could find on-site. That would limit the number of traps she could set for me, so she’d probably use them strategically instead of liberally- maybe use the threat of traps to force me to go slowly and give her more time to prepare.
I needed to stay alert and check for triggers, but traps weren’t a topic I knew a lot about. I only had experience with tripwires, really. What was I even supposed to check for?
Shaking my head, I headed for the door the moment the timer ran down, weapon at the ready. I checked the door carefully, but wasn’t sure how I would know if anything was on the other side. Cautiously, I turned the handle and pushed the door open- and immediately heard a click followed by something hitting the ground.
The next thing I knew I was back where I’d started and I got a message from mom telling me I’d failed. That…wasn’t my finest moment, but I was struggling to see how I could have stopped that trap from triggering. Even knowing there was likely one there I hadn’t been able to spot it.
“Seriously?” mom said with a disappointed looking as she exited the building. I gave her a scowl.
“It’s not like I’ve taken a course on trap disarming,” I shot back sourly. “How was I even supposed to catch that?”
“You weren’t. What you should have done was enter through a window. The number of doors is limited so anyone securing a building will start there- but there’s too many windows to place traps on them all on short notice,” she critiqued, beginning with a face-palm.
“Oh,” I uttered lamely. It wasn’t like I’d never done that before, but the thought hadn’t occurred to me; probably because the way she’d phrased it was that I was meant to enter the building and then hunt her down; I’d checked the door to be on the safe side, but subconsciously thought the trial would only really begin on the inside.
“I set that one up specifically because you walked right in the front door of the building Thompson was hiding in, too. Just because you knew your enemies had retreated to the basement you didn’t consider the possibility of traps, even though you could have simply gone in through a third- or fourth-story window,” mom continued.
“Sure, but Juny had scanned the building ahead of me. I assumed she would warn me if there was anything dangerous, and she only allowed me to walk into a mine that couldn’t pierce my shields,” I pointed out.
“That’s not the point,” mom sighed. “The problem is that the lesson you took from that was to check for traps, which was a good thing to learn, but not the only thing you could have taken from it. It’s especially bad because you followed up by making your own way into the basement but still fell for this trap. I’m guessing you only came up with that plan because there was no other way in and it forced you to get creative, but you should always avoid entering the way your enemy wants you to, not just when you must.”
“Because I can’t check for every type of trap from the other side of the door if I don’t have sensors,” I concluded, for which I got a satisfied nod.
“Exactly. Now, let’s try this again,” mom responded before heading back into the building, the timer beginning again. This time I took a closer look at the building, searching for other points of ingress I could take advantage of. It was a brick building with exactly four windows on every floor, but only on the front. The sides and rear of the building were mostly flat brick, broken up only by a couple side entrances and a fire escape going all the way to the top.
I took mom’s words to heart and figured the fire escape was too obvious. So were the side doors. Restricted to the equipment I had on hand, there was no way I was making my own entrance, and although I doubted mom bothered to rig the front door again, it was safe to assume I wasn’t intended to use it. But with four windows per floor, it was a lot harder to guess which I might enter from.
Getting to them was the problem. In real life my jump-jets would handle it, but here, I didn’t have that option and I wasn’t exactly an assassin that could dig their fingernails into the edges of the bricks to climb a sheer wall. This sim was far too realistic for a grenade jump to succeed, either.
So what did that leave? The bottom four windows or the top four, which I could reach by fire escape. Immediately I dismissed the first option. Mom knew about my fear of heights but didn’t know how much my ability to deal with it had improved. It was still there and hadn’t reduced in intensity, but I could tolerate it a lot better and the vertigo wasn’t as overwhelming these days.
That was my chance to catch mom by surprise. I went straight for the fire escape when the timer hit zero and crept my way up, keeping an eye out for traps but fairly certain there wouldn’t be any- too great a risk of being spotted while placing them. I studiously ignored the mask hovering at the edge of my vision no matter where I looked. I didn’t know why Juny was trying to unnerve me like that, but it was probably as much a test as everything mom was putting me through.
When I reached the top of the building I crossed the roof quickly, watching the roof access door out of the corner of my eye just in case. I came up to the edge of the roof and looked over, fighting back a wave of dizziness and terror in the process. I needed to take a moment to steady myself and force down my instinctive reactions before I could identify anything useful, but then I tried to judge the distance to the nearest window.
There was no way I’d be able to pull the action flick move of gripping the rim of the rooftop and swinging down, crashing through feet first. That was too quick a movement and I would likely flinch at the wrong time. Instead I carefully sat on the edge and lifted my legs over the side on at a time, easing myself over before gently lowering myself until my feet made contact with the window sill.
With the equipment I was wearing this part was a bit awkward, but I allowed the bullpup rifle I was carrying to hang from my neck and knelt, one hand holding onto the roof while I reached down with the other. The window was either locked or not designed to be opened, so I stood back up and secured my grip before lifting one leg and kicking as hard as I could from a braced position. My boot went through on the second try, and a couple more kicks opened up the hole until I was sure I could get through.
After brushing aside the broken glass with a gloved hand, I crawled in through the window and took stock of my position. I was in a small office, outside of which was an only slightly larger main office room big enough for four desks and various office appliances. Ignoring all of that, I went for the hallway.
First I peered out through the tiny window, then I opened the door a crack and peeked out. The way was clear. It didn’t take me long to confirm mom wasn’t on this floor; she probably expected me to enter from the bottom like I suspected. But it wouldn’t be long before she realized I wasn’t coming…which gave me a unique opportunity to catch her by surprise.
I headed for the stairs as quickly as I could without making any noise. Based on our previous bout I was more careful about checking my corners as I went, not that it would likely help me spot mom before she could shoot me if she was around a corner. My best bet here was to find a place she wouldn’t expect me to have already reached and hide there waiting for her. The problem was that she knew better than to leave a flanking force behind when advancing- she would check every spot before passing by.
I needed somewhere she wouldn’t immediately spot me even if she checked first. Fortunately, she didn’t have enough grenades to clear every room with them and wouldn’t risk giving herself away just to shoot through every bit of cover she passed. I found what I needed in an office with a desk big enough to hide under, built in such a way that one couldn’t see under it without being behind it- and it was conveniently facing towards the door.
After crawling under the desk, I just waited. She would have to pass by eventually, no matter how slowly and carefully she searched for me. I kept my sidearm at the ready, as it was easier to handle from this position. Several minutes passed before she arrived. I had to listen very carefully for her approach; while I would have liked to have prepared some kind of alarm like something poised to fall over when she opened the door, I knew doing that would just tell her I was here.
But when she entered the room, the creaking of the door gave her away anyway. Holding my breath, I bided my time for the right opportunity- and the moment I saw her foot enter my line of sight I opened fire.
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Now that’s a training session, it should also be giving her ideas for upgrades to herself and her equipment as she learns “the hard way”
An interesting take for sure
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Natural born camper.