Greystone Part 1

 I was part of the group of new arrivals from local High Schools, but we were all mixed together with the other newcomers. It was a long hard road for both me and my parents to become valedictorian and get the invitation to join the Greystone Monastery.

 I knew that there were experts or star people admitted directly into a more advanced and specialized program, sometimes apprenticing to an Elder immediately. What little I knew, was that I would be apprenticing with someone who was only a few years into the system themselves. Maybe if I got lucky I've be picked out by a Mid-career monk after a while.

Today our clothes clashed as we mixed. Valedictorians like myself were wearing school jackets and jeans while the existing membership wore grey uniforms, each one with their name and the name of their master. Others wore long robes of several colors, or even uniforms of other organizations.

The monastery was not built on some mountain as the fables talk about, but in a series of clearings between heavily forested areas. The existing members passed the admittance building by, heading down forest trails to the other parts of the monastery complex.

There were three lines of newcomers. The line of provisionals was very fast moving, and the experts were the smallest group, but seemingly the more time consuming to processed. My line was in the middle.

 There were no rusty Monastery gates here, just a brutal brick building with lines for crowd control. Only the elders got the manors with gates, I supposed.

The lady at the desk at the end of my line looked up and I passed my acceptance packet over, with everything filled out. I knew my preferences were only looked at, and there were many other considerations on the Monastery's part. I might end up having to focus in a different area than I wanted: crafting would be interesting, but battle studies unnerved me. I had seen a few combat specialists out of the monastery. Those people were crazy!

"Your superior will be Junior Monk Red Beaver of the Systematics Division. Your identifier is Blue Eagle, Candidate. Please refrain from using real names inside the Monastery and during Monastery missions. Next!"

There was a split here as the three lines formed into groups of people headed to all of the buildings throughout the complex. The provisionals were all headed one way but everyone else was split up, and I followed the color-coding. Silver markers showed where the trail headed to the Systematics building weaved and winded through the trees. Each marker was on a post or sometimes on a tree itself, but I had to double back twice to find my way.

Soon the only people I saw were a few others headed to Systematics way in front of me. One an expert, and another who was perhaps a candidate.

When I caught sight of the building, I wanted to inspect it's network room right then and there. I saw several people sitting outside with gray tablets. There were little nooks around the entryway area, but also I saw that they continued around the large building.

It was three stories tall and larger by footprint than my school building. Walking in, I was intercepted by several Juniors.

"Black Rabbit?" asked one of them. I shook my head. 

"Orange Squirrel?" another said.

Furthest back was the person I was looking for. It was a woman? I thought they stuck within gender for superiors. Men leading men and women leading women.

"Green Eagle?" asked the young lady who was my superior.

"Blue Beaver," I asked in return.

"We'll get your uniform later this afternoon, there's a lot of systems to get you checked through."

She immediately started walking towards the elevator, quickly.

She had a ring on every finger of her left hand except her ring finger and thumb. They flashed were both colorful and occasionally he thought her heard a sound coming from them.

He had to rush to get into the elevator with Blue Beaver.

"I'm in the middle of a transitional assignment, to determine if I can join the Full Member trial. If you are good at learning fast, you can help, I'm only going to tell you this stuff twice, and then it's your responsibility."

He was being dropped straight into a distracted Junior's hands. He hoped he could pick things up quickly.

"This is one of the two times. You're going up to the 5th floor---"

 "What, there's only three stories on the outside."

"Appearance is not reality. Especially not here Green Eagle. Did you think Systematics would take you away from the reality warping? You were mistaken. On the fifth floor, you must sign up for your accounts and systems in the order I tell you. First, get your system identification, Second, Divine Secured Ring, Third, Divine Battle Ring. 4th, VPN, you MUST get the Hardened VPN in our department. Fifth, Trial System registration. Sixth, Mission System registration. After that, find me ont he third floor. I will be out on mission, but I'll be at my desk."

This did not make sense, but he didn't dare confuse what she had said. He recited her instructions like a mantra.

 The identification station was easier. Room 1 on the fifth floor. My name for all networked purposes was not Green Eagle, but greagle.cand.blackteam@greyteams.cul. When connected, I would use that moniker/identifier.

I had to argue with the lady in the Divine Ring department. 

"What, a candidate is getting all this."

She wanted to give up and reject my claim, but I guessed my superior's id when I told her that blbeaver.jr.blackteam@greyteams.cul had requested it.

"Jesus, don't mention her again,"

I got my Divine Secured Ring and Divine Battle Ring quickly after that.

What they were, I didn't know.

I spoke my superior's id again at the VPN desk to get set up with a hardened VPN. The monastery worker took my secured ring and did something to it, to provide the hardened VPN. Similarly, in a mysterious fashion, the Trial system and Mission system were loaded on the ring.

It was like an ID card combined with a usb flash drive and security dongle, and more, but I couldn't conceive how it worked.

I got looks from some of the people I passed on the way back to the elevator. Were they candidates or provisionals themselves?

"Are we going to get that?" some candidate was whispering to another.

The third floor was home to many of the labs of the monastery's Systemics building. These were fancy computer labs, but they had more weird equipment than just that. Whereas the other labs he had walked by could have passed for school labs, if you didn't look closely, blbeaver.jr.blackteam@greyteams.cul's lab was painted completely black, and there were no windows inside. 

Only a dim light lead her to Blue Beaver. No one else was in the lab, although she could tell there were a few offices around the outer square of the lab.

The only sound was the sound of my sneakers against carpet. It was weird that the lab didn't have tile or a firm surface like labs were supposed to.

As I was about to speak, Blue Beaver shushed me with a finger. I stood there, silently, in the dark. My two rings were completely dark and silent, but I could tell Blue Beaver's were providing a light and sound show again. There was a sudden burst of high pitch sound, and then she seemed to respond to the environment more. Clapping her hands, the lights turned on in the office room they were in.

"Are you familiar with sensory deprivation rooms?" she said.

"Vaguely," I said. I wasn't sure the connection between them and Systemics.

"Our project group: Black Team, is pursuing a different path than the majority of systemics, and the majority of the Monastery. You will be training in a sensory deprivation chamber more effective than anything imagined by the outside world. As the rookie, you will train in the best chamber, you'll need it. Just be careful, Room 101, as we jokingly call it, costs more than you can fathom. I hope you don't have a habit of fiddling with rings, it's extremely dangerous to operate your Divine rings on accident. Even the team leader wouldn't risk such a thing. When the Room 101 seals behind you, rotate your Divine Secured Ring clockwise one full turn."

 "How long should I stay in there?" I asked.

 "You'll lose sensation of time almost immediately. Once you've oriented yourself turn the Secured ring counter-clockwise one full turn. That will stop it from functioning. Room 101 is designed to respond to the ring's term signal. You'll be able to exit then."

"How long?" I asked, insistently. What had I signed up for?

"Roughly 48 to 72 hours. We'll have a little party for you when you come out, but go to the bathroom first. You'll be responsible for cleaning the deprivation chamber after use, but you can give yourself a day before you tackle that. Better get started."

 Room 101 wasn't really a room at all, but a massive globe up on stilts with a portable staircase going up to it. Room 102, next to it, was also a globe, only slightly smaller, but touching the ground, and without the floating isolation unit.

I went into Room 101, climbing up, and then slightly jumping in. I bounced, falling backwards. The globe's hatch closed with a simple click, and I heard a hiss which quickly went away. My eyes were adjusted to Blue Beaver's office lights.

I took a deep breath and turned the Secured Ring clockwise, 1 full turn. As I turned, I got an increasing feeling like I was experiencing a revelation of God or something. I recognized that everything I had ever known and looked at was wrong. I looked on creation with fresh eyes that received it's raw signal. 

It was so much! So So much! My terminal session was flooded with a server who was transmitting terabytes of data per second. Immediately I ran top and closed out everything non-essential. The network portions of the system were needed, that and the kernal support behind, and the memory and disk subsystems to persist and recall and organize what was received.

I immediately mmaped a large space on disk where the input was coming through. The output was focussed on small protocals that modified what was received. There was a compression assumption. An organization trick which would allow the incoming data to be stored in a vastly more efficient fashion.

But there was this data and that data there that didn't fit in the neat boxes. I had to start over.

Start Over. Start Over. Start Over.

The information you get can change. I tried a few commands, using regression to estimate what would minimize data transmission from the remote. Phase polarization came into importance then, as well.

Finding all of the output I could provide with any kind of meaningfulness. It's correspondence in input.

I was a floating body of information and affordance. The information was rushing towards me in fast and tolerable bullets. My body shook and quivered with the extent of information. Occasionally there was a super bullet, and I activated my special shield, which cut me off from the useful bullets long enough for the deadly kind to pass.

On and on I went with these bullets. But I realized something was breaking down on the inside. I needed to get out.

Deciding it was neccessary, and devising an algorithm for doing so were two different things.

While dealing with the bullets, devising the method, watching the resonance, I observed the pattern present within, and eventually things changed.

"Eighty hours," there was a source socket and informational packet along with acoustic data.

"Go clean yourself up."

This packet came from an unknown sender. Automatic systems were coming online, and they guided you to the flow salutizer. Thermal energy accompanied the gradual reacquisition of all auto systems. Their high-filter factor removed most of the useful data, but provided regularization.

"Sh-ow-er -- Shower"

 He had a hangover once. Never wanted one again, but this was worse. His brain refused to relate the matters which had occurred in the chamber.

Smell was one of the last things which came back to him. He cleaned a few places where it warned him.

The water was cold now. He used the towel to make a humidity exchange between it and his body, reducing the convective cooling effect. The new uniform was carefully placed out for him.

"Senior Candidate
 Green Eagle
 (greagle.srcand
.blackteam
@greyteams.cul)"

The grey uniform fit nicely, and when I went past the pod again, I didn't smell what I expected to, but the pod was marked with a padlock and a note: Out of Order, Cleanup duty greagle.

"That was a close one Green Eagle," said the new person he had seen when leaving the pod. "Blue Beaver had recommended you as her first choice among the incoming candidates. Our choice bid is low because few make it through their first explosion. We were lucky that no one wanted to bid higher for you."

"Do you need to do some kind of psych profile to know if I'm ok?" I asked.

"You recognized that something was wrong physiologically, even though all of your instincts were turned off and you have never been trained in the field. You perceived the raw informational flow and recognized the problem. You devised the solution despite being completely unaware how the most basic elements of physics work. Our instincts possess common sense physics. You lacked that. You were adrift in a sea of information vaster that you've every imagined, inside a sphere of sensory deprivation that provides 10^-40 the normal sensation. Normal instinctual and para-mental responses were gone leaving your exterior person exposed to raw information."

Blue Beaver said to me, "The second pod will be ready for you after you can survivor 3 turns and exit the pod in 10 minutes. Your first experience was just 1 turn of the reality ring. It will be at least a dozen sessions before you can try two turns of the ring."

"Your team barracks are on the 7th floor. Just touch your Secured Ring to the elevator controls."

I had achieved lucidity long enough to respond to the group, but I barely remembered going up to the 7th floor. There were three beds per room, and I crashed into the Candidate room, where no one was sleeping. I wasn't sure what time of day it was.

I slept hard.