Sabotage

Job training was brief, but thorough. It lasted a full week, in which students did nothing but walk around, observe professionals at work, and ask questions. In this case, of course, it was within the context of a massive corporation that raided alternate dimensions of resources and then dumped the trash into the freshly looted planet. With this, however, the students were allowed access into different areas of the building that they usually weren’t even allowed to be in.

Everyone’s job shadowing started on the same day. While Vanessa was far from alone in the Security room for job shadowing, Cirice was only one of three students who could be in the math lab. Others worked with those in the warehouse, with the engineers that calibrated the portal generators, weapons testing, commanders, and labor organization.

“Ah yes, Cirice. You’re going to be with Dr. Simon this week. Just make sure you watch what he does very carefully and ask as many questions as you can. Understand that this isn’t weapons testing, so it’s not exactly the most riveting-”

“Don’t worry sir, I like math and what it can do. I think I’ll be fine.”

“Alright young lady, here he is.”

“He- hello there, I’m Dr. Simon and I’m here to show you everything about creating a portal with math.”

“Oh, you’re THAT Dr. Simon. I remember seeing you when I got here.”

“You did? W-when did you get here, exactly, miss?”

“It had to be about five years ago.”

“Oh, so you’re one of the ones who got here when you were a little older. That’s okay, follow me.”

They stepped into the lab.

—

At the same time, Vanessa joined the security force. Using brain separation technology, each guard could actively monitor multiple feeds at once with full focus.

“... And that’s how it works, are you ready?”

“I’m not fully sure about this brain separation technology. What could go wrong?”

“Not much. Worst case scenario, one small part of your brain will have reduced functionality, but even then you’ll be able to lead a normal life.”

“Huh. What about in terms of the monitoring? The wiring downstairs is pretty bad.”

“Oh, those go out a lot. When it happens, we just call the engineering department to fix it for us. That section of the screen can go black.”

The guard handed Vanessa one a VR headset.

“Go ahead, try it on!”

Vanessa put on the VR headset and her mind was cleaved into ten areas of concentrated focus, including camera feeds and… computer monitors.

“Son of a bitch.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing, I just didn’t expect it to work so easily.”

“Ha ha, we get that a lot.”

Vanessa wasn’t really concerned with that, but with how another one of the “crazy things” Cirice told her was proven right. No wonder Cirice wanted to stick with the paper. While there were cameras in the bathroom, there were none inside of the stalls. The security guard grabbed the VR headset and instructed Vanessa to watch the computer screen in front of her. It showed every feed except for the computers. He put it back on.

“Oops, you weren’t supposed to see that one?”

“What one?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I thought I turned it to ‘Student Mode’, but I forgot to. Grab a VR headset from the side table now and put it on.”

She didn’t.

“Got it on?”

“Sure do!”

“Alright, we can play games on these things, too. Come and join my lobby.”

“How do I do that?”

As he walked her through the process of joining a game, Vanessa acted like she was having some trouble and saw some wires on the wall, carefully organized by where they went. Carefully, she cut one to the math lab with fingernail trimmers, severing the section under an area that was covered. She quickly put the VR headset on and joined the game.

—

Back in the math lab, Cirice had already learned from Dr. Simon what they did up there and how their system generally worked. When Dr. Simon left to go to the bathroom, she modified some settings in their system. At first, numbers rounded to the thousandth and displayed to the thousandth. However, Cirice made them round to the ten thousandth, but be displayed as rounded to the thousandth. After this, she made a quick command prompt that would multiply results by 1.0002, making them slightly off without the appearance that anything was wrong.

During this time, other friends in Cirice’s close group went to the weapons testing department and began thinking of ways to smuggle some out. Later that year, a portal was set to open up to Warwick in the year 1330. The extraction would take place during a time in which people knew how to use farming tools, but still believed in things like magic and sorcery. In PlunderCorp’s terms, this was “the sweet spot”. As an added bonus, this was close to the time when the bubonic plague was meant to hit England, meaning it could be utilized to their advantage.

After watching a stronger resistance than expected on the battlefield, Cirice knew that her idea of messing with the math a little bit had worked. Dr. Simon quickly resigned when he noticed the errors in calculation. To Cirice, the funny part was that he thought it was his fault. But either way, a new era of subjugation had fallen over England in the middle ages. Cirice now had a mutiny plan and a united group who would love nothing more than to make PlunderCorp hurt.

The time was coming.

All of her planning had led to this moment.

Cirice opened the tent door.