“Science! Doo-da-doo-doo, Science! I’m doing science!” I heard a baritone voice singing out, as I stepped off of the lift which had brought us up from the depths of the island. “There is much to do, but I get to do it, because it’s…Science!” I turned to stare at Sam who returned my look with one of his own. I gritted my teeth and climbed the ladder up into the domed room.

  The room was lit up like a christmas tree. The walls previously cast in shadows, now displayed a variety of brightly covered graphs, spinning icons, numbers counting down, and other numbers counting up. Inside the pyramid, various components were emitting light, which seemed to ripple through the bubbles which were streaming off of some of the other parts of the computer inside.

  The articulated arm, was spinning around the room looking at the different read outs, all the time singing its song about doing science. It continued doing this until Sam had followed me out of the hatch. We shared another baffled look.

  “I’m doing…” it stopped mid sentence and the orb on the end of the arm turned to reveal a large eye which was now looking at us. “Identifying.” the voice now said and the arm brought it closer to us. First Sam.

  “Rank 1: Samuel Storm, Novice Dragoon. Provisional Captain of the Curiosity. You are here for the linkage? Yes…ok…and transferred to your vault storage.” It turned to me. “Rank 3: Aenara Ravenscroft. Novice Storm Mage. Provisional… Ohhh.” The head swiveled to look down at the hatch then back at us, then back at the hatch. “You two are responsible for restoring my backup power supply? Please hold.” It’s eye switched back and forth between us. “Connection to ComNet still unavailable…they are massively behind on their service level agreement. This should have been ratified…five thousand cycles ago. I detect no indications of either of you being certified engineers? Is your interface lacking your qualifications…no, both of you are too mature for such low level attunements.” it’s head swiveled onto me “And you have indications of an emergency repair, with two points of attunement debt…ahh so you are actually also a Rank 1. And you were able to bring my power supply back online. One second…” the eye moved away from us and was lifted to one of the panels on the wall. Sam and I shared another look, and he whispered “What the fuck?” at me.

  “Ahh, I see there was a seismic shift, which created damage in the injection well. The rapid loss in water pressure caused an emergency shutdown…” The eye swiveled to look down on us again. “That does adequately explain my eighteen month memory gap.” it turned back to the system. “Scans indicate damage to the wells and damage to the turbine fans due to debris from the destruction.” the head tilted slightly. “You didn’t just refill the system and turn it on…you facilitated repairs before doing so…exceeding expectations.” The arm swung back down to us. “I am indebted to the pair of you for returning consciousness to me. Please accept this attunement upgrade.” A scanning plane swept up and down Sam a couple of times and then was repeated on me. “Please be advised I am only able to increase your attunement by one point at this time. In your case though, it is a debt reduction.” it turned to Sam. “You may wish to take a seat, records indicate initial attunement progress can have side effects such as nausea, headaches, lightheadedness and unconsciousness.”

  The head swivelled up to look down the hole. “Let’s get you back down the bottom where you belong.” it said seemingly to the lift as I could hear it start to descend. The hatch then closed with a hiss, and the eyeball nodded at it satisfactorily. It turned back to Sam who had taken to leaning against the platform. “Effects are usually short term, if they persist beyond thirty minutes, please report to the medical facility.” It turned back to me.

  “Records indicate it has been far too long without an administrator for the facility. Your actions while acting as the Emergency holder of the role, give me justification to extend this to standard provisional status. Do you accept?”

  “Err…” I mean, I was tempted, but I didn’t know what it would entail and something stopped me just blindly accepting. “What would that require of me?”

  The eye seemed to deflate slightly, the arm drooping. “As a provisional administrator you will be responsible for ensuring the smooth running of SHIFTE. You will need to acquire the components and manpower to run the facility and bring it back to a fully functional state.You will facilitate the gathering of knowledge, the application of science, the investigation of the unknown and proliferation of such undertakings to the rest of the wider world.”

  “And in return?” I asked.

  “In return….you would be running the greatest institute of science, technology and engineering in the world!”

  “Provisional implies that you can remove it at any time.”

  “Well… yes, if you fail to meet the requirements, the role will go to someone who can.”

  “What do these requirements look like?”

  “Initial requirements will be to bring the facility back online. This will require travelling to other facilities for the components to initiate repairs and the requisite knowledge to do the repairs. Side tasks include repairing connections to local net sub nodes allowing for scientific progress to be continued.” It seemed to think for a moment. “Provisional status will be removed once the facility has been fully restored.”

  “So, If I accept, I'll need to make progress in repairing the place, exploring other facilities for the parts, travelling to local islands and reconnecting them to you, and to make it permanent, I'll need to organise a raid to retake the reactor?”

  “You will need to bring the reactor online, how you achieve it is immaterial. But yes. As long as progress is being made on the other tasks, you can retain the provisional status. We do need to do Science afterall.”

  “For Science!” Sam called out.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “FOR SCIENCE!” the AI Core echoed jubilantly.

  “Accept it, ‘Nara, it’s asking you to do what you want to do anyway.”

  “OK, I accept, what do I call you?”

  “Wahoo!” the core screamed out, and seemed to bounce around the room looking at different terminals. “Ok, I need you to sort this out, and this. This as well. Oh yeah, this is a problem. This will be a problem.” I turned to look at my companion and raised an eyebrow, as he tried very very hard not to laugh.

  “Wheately.” I called out.

  “My name is not Wheately.” The AI core said. “It’s Shai.”

  “Apologies.” I said.

  “I have created a list of tasks for your to-do list. I have set your filter to hide most of them until they are relevant, for example there is no point in flooding your list with repairs to sensors on islands on the other side of the chain. I will expand your access rights once you have brought the connection to the ComNet and Teleportation systems back online. Those are your highest priority.”

  I opened up my quest log. The objectives for the South Harmony questline now had several struck through, just leaving the one to explore and learn the island secrets, the one to restore the reactor complex, and a new one of complete SHAI’s side quests to gain more access to the SHIFT facility. The new side quests listed were:

  The language in these ones seemed somewhat more flippant than other quests I had received.

  “Central Services?” I asked.

  “Without ComNet access I am unable to place another order for the parts. They should have an office in Landing, which from your quest logs is your intended destination. You may also be able to acquire another antenna from there which will save us some trouble with future orders and requests.” SHAI replied.

  With another chorus of “For Science!” that I joined Sam and SHAI on as we left, we headed on back to see Wendy and say our goodbyes. With the vault access being on the docks, it didn’t make sense to walk back up to do it once we had what we needed.

  “Can I ask one more favour of you?” she asked me. “The reports in our office. Would you kindly deliver them to the Explorators Head Office in Landing? I believe the pair of you will make good members if you are so inclined.” I agreed and thanked her again for her help. Sam stayed behind to talk to her a bit longer while I headed up to grab the paperwork I had seen earlier.

  He met me at the stairs down and we made our way back to the docks. Our destination was the large door which was pretty much right in the middle of the docks. The building wasn’t much wider and flowed into the cliffs behind. The doors had the tracks coming out of them and looked to be two stories tall. On the side of the left door though was a smaller human sized door that we approached. Last time when we had tried, the small door hadn’t responded to anything we did. This time it opened itself as we approached.

  Inside was a flight of stairs next to a ramp. Lights came on leading a path down into the mountain side. The air was dusky and a little stale, though the sound of air coming out of pipes gave a slight breeze as the now restored power started to circulate fresh air into the place.

  At the bottom of the ramp, the tracks headed forward towards another set of huge doors filling the entire corridor. Sticking out on the left was a sign with a chest on it, sitting over a double door. It met the description we had been given for where we needed to go.

  “Seems like the vault is where it is supposed to be.” I commented sardonically.

  “Worried someone might have run off with it?”

  “More we were going to have to fight through a horde of demon monsters.”

  “Yeah, that would suck.” The door opened into a large rectangular area, which kind of reminded me of a catalog store. Around the edges of the room and some island counters in the middle were these small consoles, each with a small hatch, and at the back of the room there were several conveyor belts coming out of flapped portals. On one side a large conveyor at least two meters across flowed into a larger portal.

  “I’m guessing small items,” I pointed at most of the consoles, “ medium items,” I pointed to the back ones, “and huge ones…” indicating the big conveyor. “How big will the linkage be?”

  “Should be the medium size.” He said walking over to the console and started tapping at it.

  I took the one to his left and had a tap myself. ‘Only Local Storage available’ a warning banner label informed me. Clicking on it revealed there was no access to the ComNet. Unsurprisingly my local storage was empty. I did have the option to transfer items between my [Inventory] and the storage, with an indication I had sixteen item slots available. I looked over at the sound of some electric motors grinding to see the conveyor belt moving. Several long rods with connectors came out of the flaps, the conveyor stopped when they reached the end.

  Sam spent a couple of minutes looking over each of the rods and their connectors, and seemed satisfied.

  “It’s a pity I never got to meet him. The smith who made these did a good job.” he said, storing them into his [Inventory].

  “Sails.” I said and we made our way over to them. Sam managed to store two of the sail bags before muttering about full inventory, so I grabbed the rest and managed to store all but two of the sails. Sadly, it was the largest of the two, so storing either of them meant we would be left with three. We ended up taking one at a time to Sam’s Longboat. I held it steady while he balanced and secured them.

  I turned to look up at the town of South Harmony, I’d only been here a day and already done so much. I knew I would be back, I liked the place way too much not to try and make it a home. I also knew too many of my friends would like to set roots here. I could already see Peachy and Kendra sun bathing on the beach. Jacobs and Voice would love surfing. Even Fisty would claim a space…even if it was just to create a shrine to his weapons. There was a cough. I turned, Sam was waiting for me to cast off the line and join him in the boat.

  “Time to go.” I acknowledged, before pulling the knot loose and stepping into the stern.

  Sam rowed, I steered and we headed towards the break to the sea. Once out into the open water, Sam raised the boat's sail, tied it off to maximise its wind catch, and I felt us speed up towards the island, which Sam had indicated was our destination.