And at some point, I’m done. There’s no more delaying. Nothing else to stop me from picking something. I draw a deep breath and I find my hands trembling.
Suppressed fear or excitement? I’m not sure. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s—
Time.
***
Damage Calculation for Class Skill Open Ocean is Incorrect
Calculations when interacting with the Skills River Flows and the Greater Depths as well as during formula calculation of resistances to fire and elemental ice damage; damage calculations are providing x83-variance in Mana.
The first ticket seems simple. It’s an edge case, happened twice in all the time it’s been in play. It’s a relatively urgent ticket though, because an individual is running this particular underwater ice dungeon. Once he leaves, it probably won’t matter ever again.
But it still needs fixing.
System Mana is bleeding from the bad calculations as the System compensates for the bad data with raw power. System Mana fixes issues, paves over the problems so that those affected don’t see what’s happening, don’t realize there’s a problem—for the most part. But it costs. Costs more than it’s worth for the System to keep the Skill and individuals alive.
So we fix it.
Administrators, that is. The information flows through me, into me, an answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking. I fix the calculations, working by instinct, using Intelligence attributes in ways I never knew it could be used, Wisdom and intuition when raw processing power is insufficient. I twist the Mana strings, encode the new formula, the exceptions, and send back the results.
There’s a hum, almost a feeling of gratitude when the answer is accepted. I feel experience trickle into my body, going straight to my System Administrator role. The ticket closes.
And I grab another.
Regeneration of monsters in Class XIVI dungeons, at the Hamton and Brasmith dungeons compromised.
A simple matter of adjusting Mana flows around Mana lines that the System laid down due to damage from a recent Master Class fight. Stupid Geomancers, with their alteration of the Mana and physical environment. I adjust the flow, increasing it for the normal monsters, reducing it for the Alpha, and put the bleed-off into the nearby river. That’ll make the water slightly more Mana-rich, maybe mutate a few more things in the future. Make an alchemist or two happy.
Another prompt, another agreement. Another rush of experience.
Next ticket.
Attempted access to time displacement technology (5.7s) by the Varia White Institute on Yuhupe Satellite IV.
I dig into the information. It’s interesting—the notification isn’t because the System doesn’t want them to try to go back in time. It doesn’t care. There’s almost a smug sense of guarantee that it won’t work.
No, it’s not that the System doesn’t want them to try. It’s because the attempt itself is the problem, because the drain on System Mana and the subsequent destruction of the materials makes the experiment cost vastly more than what Skill, technological processing, and regeneration the individuals involved—even peripherally—have put into the System.
It’s inefficient.
I get the database, the full cost and variables. And I have to balance it all out. It’s part accounting, part manufacturing process management, and part Administrative Skill adjustment as I dig into all of the data. I make adjustments on the backend, not on the System itself. But there are so many variables that we never see—especially when creating—that it’s not easy to balance it all.
It’s not an easy ticket, because I can’t just make the artifacts they create more expensive. Otherwise, they’d get around it by creating something similar. And I can’t penalize their entire Skill because then it’d penalize everyone else. Nor can I do it on an individual level or else our adjustments would be noted.
My work slows down then as the library, the Questors’ library, assaults me. It floods me with information about times when an Administrator, or perhaps even the System, did a bad job. It gives me information, guesses, formulas that the Questors have used to understand what is going on.
Information.
I admit, I crib from the notes. I make alterations, twist the strings of Mana that are the program codes that tell the world how to work. I get to fixing, smoothing out the data, applying an older solution with some minor adjustments.
Next ticket.
Ares Gravitic Grenade v183.9 interaction with Mana-infused Dragon Silver—Overdrawn
Formula. Math. Calculation. Adjustment.
Next ticket.
Rhapsody of the Siren current degradation too slow
Just over two dozen individuals, all of them having found this once abandoned Class. Now they’re back and creating a… cult? Groupie group? I’m not even sure. It’s a problem, especially with the way they’re exploiting the Rhapsody. I dig into it, and once again the library comes to my aid. Research studies, Skill lists, details about mental and musical Skills.
All of it at my fingertips.
I adjust the degradation, add details of how and why and when, make it easy to explain away why it wasn’t noticed before. I give users a built-in resistance. And maybe I overweigh it a little bit so that they get a mental resistance for everything too.
The System rejects and fixes that overplayed hand. Sends back a feeling of… wrongness. The experience I get is less. The final ticket is adjusted by the System before the ticket itself disappears.
And I’m on to the next ticket.
Star 489151x199967y889987z-1 has begun to dim. Mana uptake is at 87% of expectations.
I falter a little when this one comes up. The System deals with suns? Not surprisingly, the library has something to say about that too.
I hesitate at adjusting this, wondering at a System where fixing a star is considered a trivial, low-level Administrative task. But the Senior Administrators are waiting, watching. I feel the weight of their regard even as I unconsciously note that they’re at work too. Coding.
I dive right in, forcing aside doubts.
For what is an enormous project, the code itself is simple. A simple comparison is all that’s required before I see the problem. The Mana equivalent of copy and paste fixes the issue, then I send it over.
Assessment, agreement, and experience.
Next ticket.
There’s always another ticket.
***
“Enough.”
Sefan’s voice pulls me from the fugue I’ve fallen into, grabbing tickets, fixing the problem, and moving on. An unknown period of time has passed, my abnormal Constitution, buoyed by the intense focus my attributes have provided, allowing me to work without interruption.
Multiple tickets are open before me, each of them in the process of being completed. I’ve gone from one ticket to three, search processes and databases open for each of them. At some point, the Administrative equivalent of their data repository was made available and I’ve got multiple windows into that open, allowing me to review and assess code. Adding remarks of my own, like the one I finish leaving as Stefan’s sentence recalls me to the present.
The next time you leave a code recommendation, make sure you check it over first. Otherwise you’ll cause a cascading failure in the third tier of the System database archives. References attached.
Code revision attached.
I finish the updates with a grunt and drop back into reality. I put bookmarks on the tickets, leaving links for reference when I get to them again. But a part of me burns with rage at being interrupted. Do they know how long it takes to get back into the right frame of mind for coding?
Actually, as I eye the pair of Senior Administrators, I realize they probably do. They deal with the System code much like I do. And while the System code is as much poetry and biology as hard programmed lines, the mindset required is the same.
“Seen enough?” I say. When in doubt, go on the offensive.
“You have some skill,” Sefan admits, looking to the side.