Alternative Personal Terminal

I threw my last set of dirty clothes into the dirty laundry bag.

"Alright! We should be able to set off now!"

Dragging the luggage bag out of my room, I saw Oliver with his own smaller bag waiting for me in the living room. Next to him was Ava, and the two seemed to be deep in discussion while looking at Ava's personal terminal.

However, once Ava saw me exit my room, she closed her personal terminal and the four of us left the house. We walked towards the communal garage. And just like our first day here, we met the dozing young man who was in charge of the place.

As we went up to him, he woke up, jumped off his chair and led us to our parking spot. Then, with only a small impolite goodbye, he headed back to his chair.

[I wonder what's his job here? After all, he surely doesn't seem to be keeping proper watch of this place.]

We boarded the car and drove out of the garage. Then Sazzy taught me how to key in the instructions into the autopilot of the car.

[Ok! With this, we can all sit back and relax as we travel towards the Fluvius village. The good thing this time is that the travel time is shorter so we won't have so much time to kill.]

Moving away from the wheel, Sazzy's first action was to head to the washer in the car to do the laundry for this morning. Meanwhile Oliver and Ava were discussing their confidential mission. Which meant I was left all alone by myself.

Pulling up my personal terminal, I was about to change windows to Jolt when I felt the messages seemed slightly off. The last message in the chat with Linda was her smiley face. The long paragraph before that, which was cautioning me to not reveal my connections with Liz and Vastum, was gone.

I thought back to Sazzy and Patricia's distrust of the personal terminal's security, or rather lack thereof, and just decided to pretend that paragraph never existed. Besides, it was probably Patricia or someone under Linda who erased it. And probably for the best too.

Switching to Jolt, I saw that Tim was currently streaming. It had been such a long time since I spoke to him and Josh, and to be honest, I still sometimes felt a little awkward for 'getting between' the two of them. Even if I didn't mean to.

Clicking into his stream, I saw he was tracking through the forests of Ferus. In front of him, leading the way, was Josh.

"Leading us today is our usual guide, Josh! Today's agenda, for those who just joined, is exploring Ferus' natural wonders that are usually found deep within the woods."

While speaking, I saw Tim's hand pull up his personal terminal. Sure enough, I then received a message from him.

"What's up? It's rare for you to pop into my stream."

Looking back at the stream, Tim was still talking and interacting with his chat normally. As expected of someone who streams as a living.

"It's just that, I might need some tips from the both of you about something important. It's not too immediate though, so could we call later?"

As more veteran streamers, perhaps they could help give me more ideas on what I could do to strengthen my house security.

"Sure! Give me a moment, the stream is about to end anyway."

As I read his message, I heard Tim saying thanks to his chat and explaining that something urgent came up. In the chat, a lot of viewers were pretty understanding. I guess he did this often enough that they were used to this. Probably because Ferus has a lot of confidential information everywhere.

Then as he said goodbye to his chat, I saw the stream turn black and offline.

"Ok we can call now."

I sighed in relief, before reaching for the call button...the call button? I never really gave it much thought before, but I just realized there was no call button on the chat area of the personal terminal.

A little embarrassed, I asked them how to call.

"Ah, so you don't have an alternate terminal on you right now?"

"Alternate terminal?"

I had never heard of anyone mentioning this.

"The personal terminal has quite poor security so it doesn't have any mic settings built in. The official statement is that the manufacturers just didn't want to risk any problems with hackers listening in on their customers, but anyone who bothers to research even a little knows the real reason. So most security conscious people order alternative personal terminals from less well known companies. The really good ones usually have built-in voice call and video call services."

After this whole text, Tim sent me a link.

"This company is one of the more reliable ones. Josh and I both order security plans and items from their site."

Looking at the link, I seemed to slightly recognize it. Opening it, I was sent to the same company site that Patricia recommended to me. But this page was showing their 'alternative personal terminal'.

I don't think I need to ask their opinion on the security system that Patricia recommended. They would probably endorse that too.

Looking through the features of their alternative personal terminal, I discussed my opinions about them with Tim and Josh. However, ultimately, I was convinced by them.

[Who are you talking to?]

Peeping at my screen, Sazzy saw what product page I was on and who I was talking to.

[What's this?]

"An alternative personal terminal."

Filling her in on what Tim and Josh had told me, Sazzy pulled open her own personal terminal and began researching the company, the alternative personal terminal and the security plan.

Meanwhile I was still talking with Tim and Josh.

"The alternative personal terminal aside, what was the important issue that you wanted to discuss?"

Seeing their worries, I forwarded a couple of the pictures of my ransacked house and explained to them my problem.

"That's terrible! I hope the police catch them soon."

"They say I'm not recommended to return to my house until investigations are finished. Luckily, I am currently traveling. But I hope the investigation ends soon. I also plan to renovate my house and improve my security. Which is why I wanted to ask you if you had any security plans you recommend?"

Immediately, I was sent around 4 separate links. One of them was the exact same link Patricia sent me.

"These four companies are the most trustworthy right now. Their user base might be small compared to the current main personal terminal, but in maybe around 40 years, they are estimated to be more trusted then the current one."

40 years...that's a little too long for me.

"Personally, Josh and I use this company. Josh was the one who recommended it, since he knows more about these things than I do. His friend that I think you might know, Samuel, sometimes video calls and I am forced to hear their long rants about all these security stuff. If you want more information, I can pass the conversation to Josh for him to answer."

The company they recommended was Patricia's company. It seemed as if her company was quite popular.

[Hey! Look at this!]

Sazzy drew my attention to her screen, which had several articles about Patricia's company.

'Anti-Colonists Company', 'Arrogant upstarts', 'Claims about the Personal Terminal's weakness', there were many articles about her company clearly going against the original personal terminal and standing against the Colonists.

[This may be the reason why it has such a good reputation among both Patricia, Josh and Tim. Especially Josh and Patricia.]

Certainly a company that was anti-Colonists would attract more anti-Colonists customers. But other than those articles, Sazzy showed me that most reviews of the company were pretty positive. Except for some extremists that were trying to review bomb their products.

[Based on a brief search, they seem to know their stuff. I'll search a little more about them, but for now you should look at their other products. See if there is anything else you want to buy. We have enough money to afford it anyway.]

Going back to searching chick, I also focused my attention on browsing the website. It had everything, from monitors, cameras and microphones to headphones, handheld gaming consoles and gaming mouses.

"I'm surprised that such familiar items such as monitors, gaming mouses and gaming consoles still exist in this world. It seems quite high-tech, at least when we visited Opes where there were stalls everywhere. I think I even saw a teleporter that allowed you to travel to the other sections of the mall easily."

Although we did not use the teleporter in Opes when we visited, I had silently observed people queuing for it, entering the capsule, then disappearing.

[That's mostly because a lot of the technology that everyone uses now is 'imported' from the Colonizers. It's a very common sight in worlds where transmigrators insert their original world's products and technology into. Since the country that had the knowledge imported into does not know the background and the workings of the new technology, there usually is a technology 'lag' or discrepancy, where 'old-technology' and 'new-technology' are found in the same place. It's why we usually handicap transmigrators.]

As Sazzy talked, she never looked up from her personal terminal.

I remembered when I first came here, I was quite shocked by the culture difference between my original world and this world, and how everything was so different that I couldn't fully use the knowledge that I had. It turns out that this was the reason behind it.

[The good thing is that this world is already recovering from this technological lag phase. Since we see so many alternative products, I think we can safely say that non-Colonizers have studied and now understand how the new technology works. Which means we should see a technological boom in around 40 years. It also means that once that happens, it would be the best time for the anti-Colonizers faction to make their move. Best to strike while the iron's hot!]

I could hear the excitement in Sazzy's voice as she talked about bringing about justice for the millions that died in the Loser's War, as well as those who became collateral damage, while the Colonizers avoided responsibility.

Again it was 40 years.

Whenever I thought of anything more than 20 years later, I was reminded that I was living on borrowed time.

In truth, I wasn't particularly bothered by the deadline. However, I would be lying if I said I wasn't saddened by the fact that I wouldn't be able to see such a historical moment. Especially since I knew several people who would be incredibly positively impacted by it.

Thinking silently, I suddenly felt a small tug on my shirt. Turning my head, I saw Sazzy staring at me in concern.

[Are you alright?]

I smiled at her and pushed aside those dark thoughts.

"I was just thinking about the new security system. They all seem so good."

I continued chatting with Tim, who was waiting patiently for me to check out all the links.

[Right! We should focus on that first!]

I saw Sazzy continue typing and breathed a sigh of relief. Even though she sometimes seemed slow, Sazzy was pretty sharp on picking up on my emotions. It wouldn't be good to worry her by being too silent or melancholic.