Dynamis | Chapter 2 - Upside (Patreon)

Karl stared at his computer screen for what felt like hours. He tried to think of a scenario in which the words, ‘meeting expectations’ were a good thing, and came up short. It felt like a furtive way to say that he was lacking. He leaned back in his swivel chair, covering his face with his hands, wondering what it was going to take to break this trepid streak of his.

Conducting a Dynamic Frame—often referred to as a DF—was nothing like he’d expected. Simulation or not, working with another person was tough enough. To think that the other person in the cockpit would share roughly half of the machine’s motions was so much more nerve-wracking than he’d expected.

Training was never meant to be easy, and the class had educated him in every way imaginable up until now. He went through many of the same struggles as his classmates, whether it was the controls, the thought of taking lives, or the idea of sharing a cockpit with the opposite sex. He studied hard, and within a week’s time, his scores were top of the class. Seeing that bolstered his confidence, and he was sure that with time, he would become an ace conductor.

Then the synesthology report came back. In large, bold print, the paper stated, ‘HARMONIC.’

Initially, he was excited. To be Harmonic meant that his body could seamlessly bridge his neural pathways with the DF interface. Feedback would be instantaneous, the degree of error less than one percent, and the potential for permanent brain damage significantly reduced. Out of his class, he, Lilibelle, and Daidari were the only ones who came back Harmonic. Seeing as he and Lilibelle had the top scores for the class, pairing them up only seemed natural.

He couldn’t have disagreed more.

From the very beginning, Lilibelle had no patience. Two simulations in as many days and she was fed up with him and pleading to switch partners. The instructor on duty didn’t take kindly to her tone, and instead of taking the feedback in stride, she only seemed to get angrier. In fact, everything seemed to make her angry. If she wasn’t sitting in the cockpit, then it was a waste of time. Small talk, getting to know one another, hobbies, all of it. If it didn’t have something to do with the DF, then she wasn’t interested.

Karl pulled his hands away from his face and draped his arms over the armrests. The ceiling was black and speckled with hints of grey. He remembered looking at it fondly, imagining them as little stars in the sky. Now, though, it was just an ugly mat of marble. 

Why can’t they just pair me up with Daidari instead? Daidari’s scores were only a few points below his and Lilibelle’s. He couldn’t imagine the difference would be too drastic. But Deadeye was a group that prided itself on matching up the best of the best. He’d already tried a few times to convince his instructors to see reason, and they were adamant about his placement.

This isn’t good, he thought, leaning forward and gripping the edge of his desk. Once the negative thoughts started, it was difficult to get them to stop. Time for a break.

To drown out the thoughts, he brushed his finger along the backs of several audio sticks he kept on a shelf beside his monitor. His finger landed on a stick with music he’d been curating for over a month by a group named Double X—an all-girl band focused on a mix of metal and pop—and he plucked it from the shelf. He clicked the button on the side, and a blue rectangle lit up next to it. He slid it into his pants pocket, threw on his sneakers, and pulled his earbuds out of the front pocket of his shirt.

It was time to take a walk.

Karl bobbed to the beat of one of his favorite songs as he ambled through the hangar. His frustrating social interactions with Lilibelle might’ve haunted his every waking hour, but his love for the DF’s sophisticated design was unaffected. So, he spent much of his off time strolling through the hangar, observing the loadouts and intricate paint jobs.

He stopped when he saw a conductor helping his partner into the cockpit. From where he stood, the couple looked like little toy figures. They were dressed in the neurosuits Deadeye issued to its recruits. Made up of intricate roads of beads, circles, and lines, they resembled the complex roads of circuit boards with its nodes and transistors. Without them, conducting the DF unit wouldn’t be possible.

The two teens smiled at one another, and the girl kissed him on the cheek on her way inside the unit. The boy brushed a hand over the spot where she’d kissed him, then followed her inside.

Hang on to that one, buddy, Karl thought.

In the month he’d been training, he had yet to make many friends outside the few mechanics who haunted the hangar. Immediately, he wanted to blame Lilibelle for that. Making friends, especially with the opposite sex, was integral if one wished to conduct the DF. Traditionally, one male and one female manned DF units. From his understanding, the differences between men and women were significant enough that they balanced one another out while within the DF unit. Whether there was any truth to that, Karl was unsure.

As his thoughts lingered on the bottle blonde, he wondered what her laugh sounded like, assuming she was capable of such a thing. Jeering and cackling, sure. But a genuine laugh? A giggle? That’d be akin to asking a spider to smile.

Yeah, fat chance. He admired the couple for a few more seconds, then turned up his music and kept walking.

Seeing how many unique Frames were on standby helped set his nerves at ease. Men hollered from heights over hundreds of feet up for their tool of choice. Sparks flew while mechanics welded together large beams of steel. Conductors were busy detailing reasons for their part selections. Each DF bore the hint of combat, oiled and fine-tuned to perfection, but scuffed in ways that gave each unit its charm.

Karl came to a stop and looked at the Frame to his right. The base coat was black, with stripes of violet resembling bolts of lightning. The bottom half was missing, and a pair of mechanical arms were making adjustments to the wiring that spilled out of the torso like a length of intestines. One mechanical arm kept the piping out of the way while the other welded the cracks in the metal at the bottom of the central unit where the cockpit lay.

That was concerning.

“Hey.”

Karl flinched and quickly stepped to his right, nearly pitching over. He murmured a curse and righted his footing. The voice belonged to a tall girl with long black hair and steely white eyes standing beside him. The neurosuit she wore complemented her feminine curves, and the nodes and roads bore a violet color. She was the third Harmonic student in their class: Daidari Ishima.

“S-Sorry,” Karl said. He quickly removed his earbuds, pressed a button on the side of each one to turn them off, then pocketed them.

Daidari shook her head. “It’s fine. How is your work with Miss Katsun?”

Karl blinked twice and refrained from sighing. “It’s getting better,” he lied. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry. You kind of caught me on a bit of an off day.”

“Clearly,” she said after a pause.

Daidari hummed and curled a lock of hair around her pointer finger. Of any female student in his class, she tended most to blend into the background. Soft-spoken and reserved, her responses were curt and straightforward whenever she was addressed. During lunch hours, she was usually alone, seemingly by choice. Every time someone walked up to make small talk, she would gently wave them away. Part of Karl wondered if Daidari’s reclusive nature was partially responsible for his partnership with Lilibelle.

“Can I help you?” Karl cursed himself as soon as the words left his mouth. He hadn’t intended on sounding so formal.

She nodded. “I would like your opinion on this Frame.” She gestured to the black DF.

“Uhh, sure.” Karl looked up. “Anything in particular about it?”

“Anything you can think of.”

“All right.”

The head bore a horn like that of a beetle. A pair of thin arms made of bronze-colored spheres broke up the arms’ shape into segments, bringing to mind a picture of bubbles placed alongside one another in a line. The central unit was V-shaped, bearing pointed ridges, which were all violet in color. ‘Sharp’ was the first word that came to his mind. First impressions were good, but without a look at the schematics, he couldn’t give a thorough opinion.

“It has style. It looks like the kind of unit that would belong to someone with a reputed callsign,” Karl said honestly. He glanced at her, and she reciprocated with an expectant gaze. On the off chance that wasn’t what she wanted to hear, he kept going. “But if you were to ask me what I think about its potential performance, well, I obviously can’t tell since it’s in pieces and I don’t know what the specs look like.”

Daidari hummed. “A fair assessment.”

Karl scratched the back of his head. “Was there something about it you were looking to change?”

“Everything,” she hissed. There was more emotion in that single word than anything else she’d said until now. “Most of the parts will be stripped. I hate it.”

Nothing about the Frame stuck out as immediately problematic. The design was sleek and aerodynamic. If it were up to him, he’d switch the arms out, but the torso and head would suffer less wind resistance than many other units he’d seen.

“Well, it’s a good thing the parts can be switched out so easily, right?” he said, smiling.

A large part of what made the Dynamic Frames so effective was how seamless it was to swap out parts. What was even more exciting was that unlike private mercenaries, who had to pay out of their own pocket for parts, the members of Deadeye could access any part within the hangar, with rank being the only factor that determined whether they could outfit their Frame with the part of their choosing.

“Yes. I suppose that’s true,” Daidari said. She put a hand on her hip and furrowed her brow at the DF. “Thank you for your time.”

Talk about professional to a fault. This girl’s hard to read. Was that what she wanted to hear?

“Um, sure!” Karl said enthusiastically. He wanted to find something, anything, to talk about. Building relationships with the other girls was going to be important if he and Lilibelle were split up, but Daidari’s attention was glued firmly to the DF. “Hey, maybe if—”

Daidari was already walking away by the time the words left his mouth. She gestured to a mechanic, who was busy eating his lunch. He brushed his hands and said something to her, but Karl couldn’t decipher the details.

Guess we’re done talking. Karl put his hands into his pockets and retrieved the earbuds. He thought they might be able to bond over DF technology. A part of him was hoping that she would call him back over, ask his opinion on another of its features, or maybe expand on what she meant in regards to how it was made and what it looked like.

But she never did. So, he kept on walking.

Karl came to the end of the hangar where a few of the mechanics he was acquainted with hung out. He pulled back the sleeve of his jacket to look at his watch.

Ten minutes. That’s all that remained until he was due to speak with the synesthologist. He didn’t see much coming out of it, but with the fights between him and Lilibelle worsening with each encounter, he figured it couldn’t hurt to see if Doctor Strobar had advice for him that he hadn’t considered. She has that position for a reason, right?

“Yo! Carrying Karl!”

Karl looked up from the floor. Standing before him was a man two heads taller than him. He was tanned and wore a smile that could warm even the most frigid of peaks. He had a black bandana wrapped over his head and wore a white wife-beater. His eyes were so brown, so large and childlike. They looked out of place on his otherwise chiseled body, giving Karl the impression that whatever force created this creature stopped halfway and called him ‘good enough.’

As for the nickname, Karl attained it from the first time he tried out the neurosuit’s muscle enhancing properties. With a few adjustments on the wristband, lifting crates, boxes, and oil drums became a breeze. He’d spent the better part of an hour helping out Jark and his friends carrying those very same items. When one of the other conductors had caught wind of what he was doing, they’d reported him.

He didn’t dare try it again after that.

“Hey—” Karl said, trying to raise his hand in a casual wave. ‘Tried’ was the key word here, as Jark clapped him on the shoulder repeatedly, each clap feeling like one meaty brick after another. Jark was blissfully unaware of just how freakishly strong he was, and often had to be told when he was exerting too much of it. “That hurts, Jark,” Karl said, forcing a laugh.

“Ah, my bad, buddy! Haha!” He pulled his hand away and repositioned it on his hip. “Talk to any cute girls today?”

Jark was also far too forward for his own good.

Karl sighed. “That depends. Are personality traits taken into account? If so, then one. If not, then two.”

“Haha! Either way, it’s at least one, yeah?” Jark patted him on the shoulder; gently this time. “That’s good!”

Jark was Karl’s best friend. He met him during his first week of training, and they hit it off like butter on bread. Despite Jark’s oblivious nature, he was a total natural when it came to DF assembly and optimization. During Karl’s worst days, Jark was the only person he looked forward to talking to, and he served as a great sounding board. Jark didn’t always understand why Karl was upset, but there was a charm about him that made it hard to stay angry.

On his best days, however, they were the dynamic duo, sharing one another’s ideas for how they’d plot out their ideal DF. Jark was one of the finest mechanics in all of Deadeye, and it showed. For what he lacked in social awareness he made up for with savant-like knowledge and understanding of the DF.

Jark had spent the better part of his life studying DF technologies in hopes of becoming a fine conductor someday. He’d never get that chance. Much to Jark’s disappointment, he was inert. That meant he was incompatible with the DF neurolinking systems. The test made it quite clear that any attempt to interlace his brain with the systems had the potential to cause permanent brain damage. So, he contributed in other ways and elected to become a mechanic.

“I know lunch is almost over, but you wanna hang with us for a bit?” Jark gestured to three other mechanics sitting behind him against the wall.

Karl pulled up the sleeve of his jacket. Eight minutes left. “Yeah, I got some time,” he said, smiling and pushing the sleeve back over.

“Awesome pawsome!” With a gentler touch, Jark put his hand against Karl’s back and ushered him over.

“Bringin’ us a live one?” one of the mechanics—a woman who went by the nickname of Wrench—asked as she hopped down from one of the metal crates stacked up against the wall.

A pair of golden-brown eyes set in a face framed by messy brown hair stared at him. Those eyes were filled with the zest of life mixed with a wicked curiosity. Her skin was tanned from time spent in the sun and the flames of the forge. She was cute, had a wonderfully thick accent, and on top of all that, she was… shapely to boot. She crept closer on the balls of her feet, pawing at the air like an animal.

“Don’t look too tasty,” Wrench said, “I might gobble ya up.”

“Nah, I’m much too crunchy for your taste,” Karl said as he scratched the back of his head. He was still getting to know the other mechanics. They hadn’t hit it off quite so well like he had with Jark.

“Maybe crunchy is what I like,” Wrench said, raising her eyebrows rapidly.

Wrench was especially good at making him squirm.

The other mechanics seated against the wall—a pair of men who went by Short and Dart—chuckled while they ate out of metal lunchboxes.

“Cat got your tongue?” Wrench giggled.

“No. No cat has my tongue,” Karl said with more irritation than he intended. “Just a lot on my mind is all.”

“Well, nothing a little R and R can’t help with, I’m sure!” Jark said.

“Piston,” Dart—a lanky man with blue overalls and a messy head of sweaty, black hair—said, “the kid looks like he’s about to throw up.”

“Does he?” Jark said, leaning forward to have a better look. “Looks fine to me.”

“I’m okay, really. Honestly, this is what I need right now,” Karl said.

“Talkin’ always helps me. What’s eatin’ ya?” Wrench asked as she shifted her weight to one leg. Today she wore a black tank top that cropped just below her bust, exposing her midriff. The way the top settled over her chest left the fabric hanging in ripples. Standing next to Jark, it looked like they were wearing matching outfits.

“I hate gossiping. And I don’t want to get myself in trouble.” That was a half-truth. While he was worried that wherever he said might make its way back to Daidari or Lilibelle, Short and Dart had teased him the last time he vented. Jark and Wrench assured him that the jokes were made with good intentions. He knew that, of course, but he feared he’d snap at them if they did it again. “Think I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed is all.”

“If you say so.” Jark nodded and crossed his arms. “You’ll be good with the girls soon. Don’t you worry.”

Karl felt his cheeks burn. He averted his gaze. “I didn’t say anything about the girls.”

“Just man up and talk to them,” Short said as he shoveled a lump of… something into his mouth. He was a portly man, with a shaved head and a scar down the left side of his face. Karl’s curiosity prodded him to ask where Short had gotten that scar, but he’d never worked up the courage to ask. He didn’t know him very well and the question felt too personal. “Then tell ‘em to piss off if they don’t like you.” He shrugged. “Always worked for me.”

“That’s why you’re married, right?” Dart asked.

Short frowned. “I’m not married. Whatcha goin’ on about?”

“That’s… that’s my point.”

“Oh.” He chewed, then squinted. “Hey, screw you!”

Karl chortled, pulling back his sleeve. Four minutes remained until his appointment. “All right, guys. I gotta go. I have an appointment I can’t miss.”

Jark nodded. “Take it easy, Carrying Karl. Hang in there.” He nodded, patting him twice on the shoulder. Each pat felt like a hammer.

“I’ll try.” Karl smiled. “I’ll see you guys soon.”

“See ya, darlin’!” Wrench said, waving.

“See you, dude!” Short and Dart said in unison.

As Karl walked away, he noticed that Daidari was gone. He thought about what he might say to her next time, when the thought suddenly vanished. A renewed sense of optimism washed over him, calming his nerves, straightening his back. He looked forward, not at the ground.

Running into Jark and his friends had done more good for him than he’d anticipated.