Sam and I were staring down at the terminal back in the harbor masters office and the text it contained.

  

  ‘No hostile entities detected.’

  ‘Major system failures in multiple systems’

  ‘No administrators detected.’

  ‘Emergency access granted.’

  ‘Please place hand on scanner to claim emergency access protocol’

  There was a hand print in a circle slowly blinking on the screen.

  “Do you think this is what Wendy meant by claiming the town?” Sam asked.

  “If it’s not, it might give us a clue on how to do that…”

  He waved at me to go ahead. “Me?” I asked.

  “You have the town quest, I have the ship quest. Seems fair to me…” I shrugged, couldn’t argue with that logic. I reached out and put my hand over the circle, but stop just before touching it.

  “Major system failures? Doesn’t sound good…”

  “Might be the reason you are being granted emergency access. Seems like, everything has gone to shit, please come in and fix me from whatever is governing this place.”

  The line of the circle thickened out at the top, and spun around the circle as if someone was drawing another one, once it was complete the screen blanked and was replaced with:

  

  ‘A. Ravencroft recognised. Temporary Local Administrator status granted.’

  ‘Updating task list with known issues’

  ‘Level 1 Access Key granted.’

  ‘Emergency Access Key granted.’

  ‘For further details, please contact the primary local AI core or any part of the regional command.’

  Sam and I shared a look and then I opened up my HUD to see what had changed.

  “AI core?” I asked

  “Regional Command?” he responded with. “What is you HUD saying?”

  The first was a blinking icon on my quest log. I also had two new icons, the first looked like a key. The second was a house.

  “Two new icons, A key and a House.”

  “Oh, yeah, I got the key for the Curiosity when I accessed the ships log and got the Quest to take her to Landing. Access rights, right?”

  Selecting the key icon gave me a screen with the words ‘Digital Access Rights’ at the top, and under that a table with the columns Key name, location and level. The top item was South Harmony, South Harmony and 1. The second was SHIFTE, South Harmony, Emergency Access.

  On the House icon’s screen, the words ‘Property’ were written. The section had a box in it, with the rest greyed out, indicating it could have multiple items in it. That box was entitled ‘The South Harmony Institute for Furthering Technology and Engineering.’ There were then a number of data items:

  

  Type: Port Town

  Size: Small

  Purpose: Science and Technology

  Residents: 2

  Power: Offline

  Teleport: Offline

  Connection to ComNet: Offline

  Defence Grid: Offline

  Ownership level: Provisional (Emergency)

  There were also some buttons, Access, Taxes and Enhancements, but they were all greyed out.

  “The house icon is for property. I have emergency provisional ownership of the town.”

  “A whole town would be a huge quest reward so early. I’m guessing it’s just a way to introduce you to the mechanics, because you will need some of them for the quest?”

  “That would make sense to me as well. Maybe it’s the start of a quest chain and a lot of the islands have them…and it’s part of how you claim land…”

  “Could be…”

  “Taxes? You know…the idea of setting up a regional base that other players come to and use as a base camp for searching the isles does have a lot of appeal…all those warehouses and workshops, could have players into crafting making use of…”

  “There are also the facilities on the docks to maintain ships…if those tracks allow for ships to be pulled out of and put into the water…there could be ship building and dry docks…”

  “Teleport, offline…could be a fast travel system…” my thoughts running through the possibilities.

  “Could be quite the challenge, first though, we need to complete the quests, get the power back on, get hold of the tiller connector and get to landing.”

  “Aye!” I agreed. “Definitely not the sort of thing I want to do alone. Get my guild involved, you as well if you are interested. If we can claim this place, I suspect it’s going to be quite the long project requiring much adventure.”

  “What do the quests say?” I nodded at his question and opened up my quest log.

  “Back to Wendy to find out how to access the tunnels.” I confirm. I couldn’t find any way to share these quests with Sam. “Have you found any way to share quests?”

  “Not yet. Might be in the features you unlock once you get to Landing. Apparently you get more social tools there.”

  With the decision made we started making our way up the town. It felt…peaceful. In some of the games I had played as a kid, when you defeated a big boss or overcame the region's big bad, it made the whole world lighter, the sun would come out, and everything would feel cleaner. The town felt like that. It wasn’t any brighter, or more colourful, but I could now hear bird song…

  “Does the town seem…brighter to you?” I asked as we crossed over the second tier and started on the stairs to the third.

  “Now you come to mention it…yeah…like a weight has gone…”

  “The bird song is pretty…” I commented.

  I think we just enjoyed listening to it as we made our way up the hill.

  “Well, aren't you two looking much stronger.” Said Wendy after we woke her up. “And I can see you have the provisional ownership of the town.” She said, looking at me. “I’m guessing the linkage wasn’t in the forge? No, it would have been unlike him to have done so. The easiest way to access the town vaults is through the door on the docks level, but they will need to be powered up. The Primary power plant is something called a Cold Fusion Reactor, it’s on the deepest level of the complex below the town. In all honesty, neither of you are anywhere near strong enough to have gotten to it via the main routes, even at our strongest, Francis and I wouldn’t have been strong enough to escort you down there. There was some kind of breach into a different realm and unnatural creatures have been breaking through.” She looked between us. My heart was plummeting, this didn’t sound good. “Fortunetly there is something about our universe which weakens them, and the ancient had effective defences, they have infested the lowest floor, but have been unable to escape from it. To have any hope of getting through and bringing the main generator back on line, you will need to be a lot stronger and come with a full expedition. Twenty four people, mixing as many disciplines as you can.” A raid? There is a raid below the town?? “That doesn’t help you now though. I say this as a warning to the pair of you, DO NOT go too deeply into the tunnels of the under-town. You should be able to handle the creatures on the top floor, but any deeper and they will overwhelm you. Am I clear?” she looked at the pair of us, like a stern mother hen. “Confirm for me please, I’ve become a little fond of you, and I don’t want it on my conscience you went to your deaths from something I said.”

  “Errrm, we agree not to go any deeper than the top floor.” I said.

  “Yes. No deeper than the top floor!” Sam agreed.

  “Good. Now you will need to power up the geothermal generator, fortunately the access for that is via a ladder from the AI chamber. We managed to seal the chamber, so while it is on the bottom floor, it will be safe from those creatures. There should be enough emergency power from the Harbor Master’s system now you have that up and running to power the door in the Manor house. The AI core can be found down there. With the backup generator down, the access hatch to the generator should be open. The core should be in hibernation on your way in and grateful on your way out.”

  “Thank you” said Sam.

  “Cheers.” I echoed. “Do you know what a teleport is?” I asked

  “Last time we were in Landing, the theory was that it is a long distance logistics and transport system. It supposedly needs the ComNet to be active between locations and the teleportation chamber here is also missing several parts, the AI core will complain about it if you let him. The Wizards insist if they can just get it working people will be able to access their personal storage vaults anywhere with a terminal.”

  “Ok. and it says my Ownership level is Provisional (Emergency), what does that mean exactly?”

  “That you have been granted provisional ownership of the place, for the duration of the emergency. Technically the SHIFTE AI Core is sentient, and by the laws of the people who created it, it can’t be owned, but it also can’t own. If you are asking what I think you are asking, in exchange for meeting its power needs it acts as the system administrator for this node and will have the power to choose who owns this site. Pass its criteria and it might choose to bestow upon you ownership rights, though only so long as you continue to meet those requirements. The cores are all fickle beings. Each has its own foibles.”

  “Any other questions? No? Good. The passcode for the door should be 1234 4321.”

  That really was the passcode…

  We crossed back through the manor house to the sealed door, and entered the code, there was an unassuming thunk and the door opened up to reveal a metal staircase going down, and the hum of lights turning on. It went down for about three floors before another door opened into a large domed chamber.

  Spotlights highlighted the middle of the room, but helped to cast the rest of it into shadows. In the middle of the room there was a round sphere on the end of an articulated arm, resting on a platform. The arm connected to the bottom of an inverse see-through pyramid. Inside of the pyramid was something which in a lot of ways resembled a quantum computer, but in some ways, made those look like desktop PCs. Next to the arm’s platform, on the ground, there was a hatch, and a ladder, going down.

  There was a wall light every 5 meters, helping to reveal the circular shaft going down into the ground. Ladders fell five meters to a platform circling the shaft, and another a few meters around, giving the person climbing down the ability to do maintenance of the wires and cables which descended down the sides, and if they fell off the ladder only a short drop.

  Sam insisted, as a gentleman, he'd let me go first.

  It was a hundred ladders! I counted them. Each and everyone one…

  We took it in turns going down the ladders first. Something had tickled him about letting me go first that I didn’t get and he wouldn’t elaborate on, but we did end up switching off. About half way down we took a short break, Sam produced some roast boar to help us keep our stamina up.

  The bottom revealed what the shaft was intended for, it made me swear. The only other feature was a corridor leading away from our position. We followed it to a side entrance of a control room. On the far side of the room, someone had taken a welding torch to the metal door and sealed it shut. They had then piled up several cabinets and tables to try and make it as structurally sound as possible.

  There was a noise coming through the door. It’s hard to describe, it was a wailing sound, but like their voice was the sound of someone scraping their nails on the chalkboard. It sent shivers down my spine.

  There was a plaque on the console revealing it to be the Geothermal Back up powerplant. It was positioned to overlook some windows looking down on some machines.

  We sat down at the console and activated the screens. Taking one each.

  “I’ve got the system reports.” Sam said. “Latest ones indicate the system was shut down due to loss of water pressure…detecting a loss of water…I’m guessing some kind of leak? I think I can pump in more water from the reserves.”

  I looked over my console. I had access to drones, both repair and sensor.

  “Let me have a look around with these drones first. Probably best if we can repair the damage before we activate the pumps.“ Sam nodded and then scooted over to look over my shoulder.

  I selected a sensor drone, a small hovering thing which let me get an xray view of the machine. Taking it along, I found there was something up against the turbine blades. Using an access hatch I then had it fly down the pipes into the well. Where we found something had caused the well to shift, cracking open the walls and explaining the loss of water.

  Sam found the drone controls on his console and took control of the one for repairing the wells. While I carefully manoeuvred one into the turbine chamber. I cleared out the rocks which had accumulated there, and replaced the damaged blades. Sam finished replacing the damaged well wall, and confirmed that it had been cured. I was about to set the whole system in process when Sam suggested running a water test first. Where water is pumped through it, but bypasses the turbine chamber. Good job we did, as it washed out a bunch of rubble.

  Once we were happy no other debris was going to rattle through, we selected the option to start trying to generate power, and high fived when the sound of the turbine spinning up joined us.

  There was a loud BANG on the door.

  Then another. BANG!

  “Time to go?” Sam asked. I agreed, but gave the console one last check, 20% and rising. It would keep getting hotter and hotter and produce more power because of it.

  Back in the shaft, I looked at the other feature of the area. One of the things that Sam and I had definitely agreed upon on the climb down, was that the climb up was not going to be fun.

  We stood on the platform, took a hold of the handle, and Sam pressed the button for up.