The Space
Chapter One
“Curiosity is one thing invincible in nature.” -Freya Stark
“Cyd, you know you’d be top of your class if that was still a thing, right?” Mark Macky knelt down by a desk trying his best to hold a steady light for Cyd. She was working diligently under there, like a dad trying to tune-up his old Ford, cursing and sucking on her dirty fingers each time she got a little shock.
“Well Macky, it’s good it’s not a thing anymore or I’d have to find myself another assistant. See, they used to separate people by age, no matter your knowledge level or interests, so there’s a good chance we never woulda met.” Cyd gestured for a screwdriver, whirling her finger around then flattening out her palm in a ‘gimmie-gimme’ motion.
Macky always knew what she was asking for even if she never used her words. He thought about how sad it would be if he never got to work with Cyd. She was just about the coolest. He could still remember the first time they met. He was 9 and his mom had just dropped him off for his first day at Affinity Space. He remembered walking into the main room; there was a tournament in full swing on one side of the hall and a lecture about the reforestation of trees happening on another. He watched 3D holograms of seedlings sprouting through their growth stages, and he could feel his jaw begin to drop as he walked across the floor towards the rock wall.
It was a lot to take in, especially for a 9-year-old. Macky lost it; he started to tear up and did a 180 for the door. His body spun around too fast for his head to catch up and he smashed right into a girl carrying a smoothie. The drink went everywhere and they were both covered from head to toe in purple goo.
“Woah, watch where you’re going, little dude!” The girl laughed, crouching down to pick up the kid. Macky started bawling. “No need for tears my friend,” she said, picking a blueberry out of his hair, “salt and acai make for a super weird combo. What say we get cleaned up and get ourselves a fresh one?” Macky wiped his tears away and nodded his head. “I’m Cyd,” she said, cleaning off her dark-rimmed glasses. “How would you like to be my new assistant?”
From then on, Macky couldn’t wait to get to the Space. That was three years ago, and there wasn’t a day that went by when the two of them weren’t joined at the hip. Cyd would help him pick out new lessons to game and they would make 3D models of things they found playing archeologist games. Cyd loved history and especially archeology. She said it was the most fun kind of history learning cause you could get your hands dirty.
That’s what they were working on today. Cyd hadn’t told Macky exactly what it was. “Minor modifications that change the world in a major way,” she explained.
“That ought to do it!” Cyd said, sliding out from under the desk. She looked up at Macky with a clever grin. “Ready to take her for a spin?” She pulled a chair around to the other side of the desk and motioned for Macky to sit.
“What’d you do to it?” He asked, grabbing the desk with both hands and leaning around the side to take a peek underneath.
“I modded it,” she said, clicking on her augmented reality glasses and sliding on a sleek VR mitt she’d made out of an old school driving glove. “You have to work on your math and reasoning, and I want to dig up a little history about this place, so I modified the desk to project an old role-playing game so we can learn together. Have you ever heard of the game “Dungeons and Dragons?”
“What?! You mean like from the 20th Century?! Give me a break!” Macky let out a hard eye-roll as he leaned back in his chair, arms crossed.
“Give me a little credit kid!” she laughed. “It’s called a quest. Now throw on your tech specs and let’s get this thing started.” He put on his augmented reality glasses and watched as the desk grew into a forest. A river sprouted up from a mountain that was growing to his left side and spilled over the edge of the desk. Birds flew overhead and Cyd transformed into an Elvan Cyborg, her own creation, and all time favorite avatar which she called “Stark” after Freya Stark, a female explorer she’d learned about in Arabian history game she loved.
The two sat on either side of the forest. Macky looked up at her in awe, “what did you… How did you do that?” He couldn’t believe his augmented eyes, she had made a full sim in AR.
“It’s a Holo-Desk, get it?” Cyd would go to any length for a pun but the humor was not lost on Macky.
“Let’s do this!” He said, pretending to crack his neck.
The two embarked on their adventure. Cyd was a masterful game designer; she’d learned how to do it playing all the game writing and coding classes at the Affinity Space. She was 20 now, but she’d been playing here since she was a kid. Her parents used to bring her in on weekends and they would all play together, “learning through living history, and beyond,” her dad used to say. She excelled so much in all of her gaming that her parents eventually let her come to the Space full time. They had tried to put her in a traditional school, but her teachers always said she had too much trouble staying focused.
“She’s got her head in the clouds,” they’d say. “She can’t seem to pay attention during any sort of lecture.” That’s when her parents decided traditional learning wasn’t for her.
“If she’s a dreamer, then we’re going to let her dream,” her dad said as he left the parent-teacher conference. He had gone to an Affinity Space in lieu of college and that’s where he met Cyd’s mother.
Cyd grew up exploring rainforests to learn botany and biology. She completed her first archaeological dig at the age of 13. And, she became the youngest person to earn her applied physics badge at the age of 12 when she used the rock wall to invent a new kind of low impact repelling now used to explore underground tombs. By 17 she’d already earned certificates in world history, game design, and kinetic sciences. She was a brilliant example of how applied learning had changed the face of education, and all she ever did was play the game.
Through the years, Cyd had designed 73 games. But this, she thought, was her best. She had managed to integrate all of Macky’s learning goals for the week in with her own pet project, which she called “the ultimate gamer.” Her goal was to find out who the best designer in all of Affinity Space was. This proved a difficult challenge because there was no ranking system within the space. Everyone learned and grew at their own pace, and each design made way for a new one. Everything had been integrated, changed, and reintegrated so many times that finding the best designer really meant peeling the onion back far enough to find the seed.
She had pieced old game programs together to build the quest. Each leg of the journey was a step deeper into the archives of Affinity Space. “Everything’s more fun when you gotta do a little digging,” she mumbled.
“Then let’s get our hands dirty!” Macky shouted, equipping his centaur avatar with a butterfly net, a spade, and some night vision goggles. As with all younger members, Macky’s avatar changed often as he continued to explore and develop. It wouldn’t be set to one character until he reached specialization in one research trajectory or another. But Cyd got a kick out of this phase.
“Stay gold pony boy,” Cyd laughed. Macky didn’t get the reference; he knew Cyd loved watching old-timey films, and she told him once it was from a movie that came out something like 80 years ago. “Still holds up,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, and with that, they were off.
The quest took the better part of a week. The two were exploring caves, learning about geology and collecting crystal samples. They made little figures out of clay that they left in the caverns for the next explorers to find. The walked through huge meadows and open fields, sometimes they would join up with a traveling caravan journeying the Oregon trail and learn about American history. The travelers would always comment on their avatars saying, “Nice suit, Y’all must be from Cleveland.” From which Cyd would gain endless amusement.
They sailed on a ship once for a whole day, learning to raise the sails and map by the stars. Macky loved sailing, so Cyd had extended this part of the sim. She spent the night staring up endlessly into the black sky and searching the captain’s quarters for log books, always looking for something, but she never seemed to find it.
Their quest brought them to Switzerland where they rappelled down huge cliffs and learned to go canyoning and white water rafting, learning about Newtonian Mechanics and other basic principles of physics. They were then brought up Mount Kailas, in Tibet, where they learned to communicate and problem solve with their Sherpa guides.
Cyd paused as they reached the summit. She put her hand on her pack, looked up at the point where the great mountain met the sky and took a deep breath.
“What are you searching for?” asked Macky, he had noticed her collecting bits of paper and small files along the journey where he had been collecting badges. “Maybe I can help you find it.”
Cyd smiled and looked at her young friend. “You’ve been helping me this whole time. We are searching for the ultimate gamer. The one who made this place.” She took another deep breath and started up the mountain.
As they reached the top the two looked around in awe. The view was spectacular, to say the least. Macky was enchanted. Of all the places they had been on this journey, there was never anywhere quite like this. He looked over at his friend to share in the moment and saw Cyd sitting on the ground, her head buried in her knees.
He knew in an instant she thought it would be here. “Don’t worry”, he said, reaching out for her, “we’ll find it together.”
Cyd looked up and smiled at her young friend, wiping a tear away from her non-cyborg cheek, and took his hand. “The beginner and the master,” he said, “just like you taught me.”
Just then there was a great shaking on the mountainside. They turned on their heels, never letting go of one another and there, just in front of them, a huge boulder rumbled aside. It revealed behind it a floating blue file folder, like the kind on an old computer. It hovered in place, bouncing and turning slightly. As they approached it, the spinning suddenly stopped. The file read: Number 5.
Continue to Chapter Two
