4 Four Hours

Cody went through another hour of trial and error and retrying until he finally arrived with 5kg of cleaned, edible berries wrapped up in packs of cleaned banana leaves.

"5kg, exact." The staff noted. "Bonus for precision and speed. 3 credits awarded."

"I got the bonus!" Cody was elated.

By that time, Riki was howling about berries at the warehouse staff and pummeling them with his little fists. Thankfully, they weren't real and didn't respond at all.

At the end of it, Riki stomped out and kicked a garbage can over in a tantrum.

"HEY! That's public property!" That came from a straight haired, straight-nosed, straight-mouthed blonde girl in a military-like dress uniform. The name above her head said 'Melinda'.

"So?" Riki turned to leave.

"YOU!" she half-choked. "Public property is our social responsibility!"

"Social wha…?" Riki blanched. Upon hearing the word 'responsibility', Riki looked like he wanted to run away.

"You should pay for the damages. The warehouse should be compensated." She added righteously.

"Pay…? With what? I don't have any money." Riki scowled. "It's all virtual anyway! None of this is real!"

"I'M real! You're real! Everyone here is real, and you're making a mess in the village we all share!"

"I can fix that mess for you." An NPC suddenly stepped up. The label over his head was colored gray, not white, and it read 'Bob the Janitor'. "For 10 credits."

"10 credits?! I don't even have one!" Riki protested.

"Then clean it up!" Bob the Janitor handed him a vacuum-broom. "If you can't pay for it, you'll have to work for it!"

This seemed to satisfy Melinda, who went on her way in peace, but Riki scowled at her back as she left.

Since peace had returned Cody left Riki to his new task and went his own way. He thought of trying the water analysis mission, then realized he had nothing to carry water in or to analyze it with. There was the warehouse cleanup mission, but Riki was there trying to clean up and he was making quite a mess, so Cody opted not to try that right now. There was no point trying to clean up a place that was going to be messed up at the same time.

This left him taking the mission to calculate the village's harvest. Apparently, this was a lot of math involving the farm, and Cody was somewhat stumped as to how to do it…

And then Melinda came and straight out asked the farmer for his crop yield estimates. Then she went around asking the villagers who had fruit trees or gardens about what they expected to harvest.

She finished the mission in fifteen minutes flat, most of that time being spent walking about and asking questions. At the end of it all, she added the totals together, and reported to the Elder.

Cody watched Melinda earn 3 credits with his eyes wide. I gotta try that!

He went straight to the Elder and reported the same numbers Melinda did.

"That's wrong." The Elder said. "Try again."

"But that's what she said!" Cody protested.

"Her numbers were correct for her mission. Yours is different." The Elder said.

"The numbers change every time?!"

"Every single time."

Cody went all the way back to the farm to get the farmer's harvest numbers. At least he found out how to do it right. When he finally reported his answer half an hour after he first took the mission, the Elder gave him 3 credits. "Bonus for precision and speed."

[It's not just about getting the right answers. It's about figuring out how to get them, and figuring out better ways to get them. I could have found the answers by harvesting everything myself and weighing it all, but simply getting the information from those who knew would have done the job.]

That meant… that those missions could be as hard or as easy as Cody made them. A lot of it would depend on how he did it.

So Cody stopped doing missions and started to watch. He watched Riki fail at the berry mission, giving up entirely and then going to try the water mission. He watched Kalen hauling bucket after bucket of water for testing at the workshops, and then changing his water sampling container to something else, paying credits for a clean test tube… and then one girl with long black hair coming back with the results from a simple hand-held water analyzer she'd carried in her belt during a comfortable jaunt in the Little Marsh. He watched Oren literally handing in berries by the handful bit by bit to the warehouse, taking hours to reach 5 kg… and then some older girl walked by, entered her Personal Space, came out with a basket of berries, and deposited it all within 2 minutes.

"Where did you get those from?" Cody stared at the berries. All of them were of the same type.

"I grew them in my garden." She shrugged, and walked off with her empty container.

[We can grow them ourselves!!] The revelation hit Cody like a hammer. [Nobody said where we had to get them from!]

Worse, he even saw a guy carrying 5 packets of berries bought straight from the farm, with the farm's label and price tag still on them. Even that counted as a mission success.

"How much did those cost?" Cody asked.

"Ten credits." The guy replied. "It's a small loss on my part, but it still counts as 3 more credits toward my total collected."

Goodness, even that works…!

Specs was going around selling little hand-made tools to other students. They paid her in credits, transferring them to her via wristcomm. [We can sell stuff to other students too?!]

"But the credits you earn like this won't count toward your collected total, right?" Cody asked her.

"They won't. But I can use them to buy stuff and to pay for courses." Specs explained.

Wait. What?

"Specs… you're already taking courses?" Cody gasped.

Specs looked at him in surprise and then her eyes widened in realization. "You're not a student yet? You're still doing the Entrance Exam?"

Cody suddenly remembered the girl who grew berries in her garden. "How long does it take for berries to grow in your garden?"

"About three weeks, using growth enhancers." Specs replied. "Forty days, otherwise."

"So that girl who grew berries must have been here for at least three weeks already… then this place…" Cody looked around. "This is where the Academy's regular students take courses?"

"Let me put it this way. Those credits you're earning to pass the Entrance Exam? They'll be useful even after you get in." Specs advised him. "You're going to want to get as many as you can. Some courses can get expensive."

"We have to pay for courses?" Cody gulped.

"Every single time." Specs used the same phrase as the warehouse staff.

Cody realized it then. [Academy courses are expensive… we have to work for them ourselves, and we can't transfer Clira in from real life or anything. There's no cheating our way into it. In other words… if you can find that information elsewhere… DO NOT waste credits learning it from the Academy.]

But the courses at the Academy weren't things you could learn elsewhere, Cody discovered. Specs showed him a menu of what she could sign up for that very minute. Rudimentary Telepathy, Domestic Space Flight license, Life Force Channeling, Elemental Resonance 1-on-1, Basic Telekinesis, Mina Sword Styles basics, Basic Disguises…

[This isn't Vera's reading, writing and math any more.] Cody gulped. Vera was their neighbor and childhood tutor of Cody and his siblings. [This is serious power.]

"And, uh… what sort of stuff can we buy?" Cody asked.

Specs raised her head slowly. "Right now, I'm saving up for a nanoforge, but you know what I really, really want to buy?"

"What?"

"I want to buy a Windamirri Utility Frigate." Specs said, slowly. "The one that costs 25 million credits."

"Wow! That's expensive! Is it really worth all that work and trouble to get a spaceship in virtual reality?"

Specs laughed slowly. "In virtual reality? Cody, that spaceship is for real. If I buy it here, I'll be able to fly it in real life. Assuming I have it properly crewed and supplied, of course."

"A real spaceship?! For Academy credits that even I can earn?!"

"A real spaceship." Specs nodded. "Although I don't think it's something students can earn enough to buy. That kind of price tag… I think it's meant to be sold to the teachers."

"The teachers use credits too?"

But of course they did. Everyone used credits in this Academy.