Creation: Book 3: Strandbinder Complete!

Rather than call over Virgil, Walker decided he would do this on his own. He'd already bothered the larger squirrel multiple times in the last hour, and he didn't want to get on his bad side. Who knew what would happen then? Angry chittering? Wait, did Virgil chitter?

Walker considered the question his overlay was presenting him with again. Did he want to merge this system with another, before even starting it? Well, that was an interesting perspective. His goal was to create a Territory system. A program that would allow him to design a system that provided options for entities to customize their territories. So much of what Symphony was going to have was quite linear, so he naturally wanted the Territory system to be something that allowed for a lot of choices. The problem was, that he first had to make a system that recognized levels.

The new ability to create merged systems was fantastic. And, because any system he made was automatically uploaded to the Alpha Protocol....wait a second. Making sure he was right, Walker typed in the Milestone system to look it up. Boom, there it was.

The Milestone System:

A system designed by Creator Dante in the Alpha protocol of 4AA.

This system is designed to track, and reward, entities for reaching prescribed and quantifiable moments.

Flexibility: Extreme

Difficulty to modify: Low

Note: This system is based upon the Tracking system designed by Creator Ju in the alpha protocol of 2BC

He nodded his head. Yep. Any system he made contributed to the overall systems provided by the system designer. That meant he first had to make a leveling system that would work for not only his territories and regions, but his sapients as well. He wouldn't be ready for the Class system for another little while, but he could get the leveling system up first, let the Alpha Protocol copy it, and then merge it into both the Territory system and the Class system in the future. That way he wasn't always starting out from scratch.

Walker smiled to himself. Gaming the system was fun.

He had a Sequential system, which would let him create ordered ranks by progressive movements, but he needed the Tracking system too. He could just use his Milestone system, but that wouldn't quite work. The Milestone system had a prescribed program built into it, just like the description stated. If he tried to use it, maybe he could modify it, but it would take too long. No, he needed to start from scratch.

Walker went back to the Sequential system and clicked accept when it asked if he wanted to merge it with another. He typed in the search bar and found the Tracking system. Then a prompt appeared.

Would you like to merge these systems with another before finalizing your choice?

Yes/No

Unlimited options, how sweet you are. Because he was just making the leveling system, he decided not to. But it did create some very interesting possibilities. Like, what would happen if he finished the Class system, and merged it with the Monster system? Food for thought, definitely. Walker clicked no and another prompt appeared.

.....Analyzing.....

...

You are about to merge the Sequential system with the Tracking system.

Preview provided:

The Sequential system provides a set amount of logical movements to anything the Creator wishes, while the Tracking system is a filter that provides information to the Creator.

Combining both will allow the Creator to build a system that allows for the mapping of specific events within an entity or community-allotted threshold.

Would you like to merge these systems together?

Yes/No

Confirmed

.....

Merge Complete

The Sequential Ordering System is now ready to be used.

Walker had two takeaways from this. One, the protocol giving descriptive previews is outstanding. And two, the way they named things here was absolutely terrible. Walker went into his system and renamed it officially to the Leveling system. Once he assigned it, Walker would have to wait a week in Symphony time before he could start a new design. He knew he didn't want to directly assign a new subsystem assistant for this, as it wouldn't make sense. It was a building block to classes and territories. Walker called over to Cagna to see what she was working on.

"I'm building a limited series based on the age of a human entity. I specify human because different species will have different milestones" She said with a happy wag of her tail.

"Really, I hadn't even thought of that. What does it look like?" Walker couldn't help but ask, easily getting side-tracked.

"Let me show you." Saying so she sent an update to his overlay. Walker looked at the update with surprise, as he didn't even know they could do that. He didn't know why Virgil hadn't ever done it, but he must have had his reasons.

He spent a few minutes talking to her about it. What life was like for human beings growing up, how they moved through different phases. He even explained what synchronous role integration was, and how it affects human beings by psychologically pushing them into being different people at different times. That's when he had an epiphany.

"I'll tell you what. I'll help you figure this out so it's more efficient, and you help me out with the Leveling system."

"What's that?" She asked.

"It's kind of like the Milestone system, but it'll be specific to territories, monsters and classers."

She agreed and they got down to work. The first real milestone in growing up was called entering the preoperational stage. It was a basis for psychology that Walker learned in college. Basically, it's where children, between the ages of 2-7, start to really develop their mental states and begin to understand symbolism. It's also when their imagination really takes the wheel and drives. So, they added a milestone for that.

The psychological stage after that was called concrete, but Walker didn't want to get too bogged down in just adding psychological stages to a limited milestone series. The first milestone was also logical to Walker because it showed the child had survived to reach two years of age. A little morbid, but still an important step for living in Symphony. For the second milestone, Walker went with thirteen as that's when they had decided earlier that children would receive access to the Class system. Walker had Cagna add it in. They spoke for quite a while about what different stages of growth could mean, and how to take age out of the last three milestones.

Growth was something different for everyone. To Walker, becoming an adult meant accepting your responsibilities. He had met plenty of ten-year-olds who acted as much of an adult as himself. He had also met plenty of forty-year-olds who needed to have their hand held through everything. Adulthood was about much more than a number. But, you couldn't track that. That actually gave him an idea, and one that would work with the Unending Summit. It would have to wait for a bit, but it was a good idea. Either way, their last three milestones didn't actually relate to time, but experience.

Series Human Growth: Limited, Complete

Basic milestone- Imagine: Reach two years of age. 1 point.

Apprentice milestone- Adulthood: Reach the age of 13. 5 points.

Skilled milestone-The First Job: Take a job and gain access to the profession system . 10 points.

Advanced milestone- The First Kill: Kill a monster for the first time. 25 points.

Epic milestone- Titled: Earn a title. 50 points.

Reward: Obtain six points or more in the human growth series to unlock the Class system.

Limited to human beings only.

To make things fair, and continue with how they did the previous limited series, Walker had the reward be fairly easy. It was important that people could unlock the class system when they needed it, rather than have it locked away in times of stress. If a human being completed a skilled, advanced, or epic milestone, they'd of course instantly be granted access to the Class system. It could be abused, he was sure, but that was a part of being neutral in these milestones that are quantifiably built. He had to expect people would find ways around his rules and constraints. Better to understand that now rather than be upset about it later. The Advanced milestone wouldn't work until they had the profession system up and running. The Epic milestone in particular would be quite difficult, as Walker was planning on building a Title system.

He had a foggy idea of how it would work, and wanted to make the requirements for gaining one quite stringent. Cagna grew excited when he explained what titles were and how they would be earned. It was fun. Maybe that was another system she could help him with.

Looking over the limited series again, Walker made a mental note to watch out for any child labor sweatshops. With the ability to unlock classes early, and professions at any time, it would become a real issue going forward. But it was what he wanted, so he'd have to create something that kept that sort of thing in check.

Walker linked Cagna to the Leveling system and watched as she grew in front of him. She obviously wasn't as large as Rimi, his two extra-systems to her one, but it was noticeable. She spent a few minutes staring at nothing before turning to him and blinking. He started to explain what a Leveling system was, rather than the Sequential Ordering system they were given.

"So, what are levels exactly?"

"Well, they're a number system that allows entities, and cities...and regions...to track their progress. They'll start out at level one, and end at....never. That's why the leveling system works so well. It basically lets us create an infinite amount of levels where we can give specific rewards for reaching different stages, or in this case, levels."

"So...what am I doing then?" Cagna asked with a tilt of her head. "I am not complaining Creator, as everything I do is for the betterment of Symphony. But do you really need me for this?"

Walker scratched the back of his head, "Hrmmm." He hummed, "I need someone to help me keep an eye on it, and to bounce my ideas off of. Plus, aside from the Follower and Conductor systems, I don't see the point in keeping these systems to myself. As long as you guys have limited access, that works for me. The only reason I don't assign Rimi or Virgil as well, is because they're too busy."

Cagna nodded her pink head with a smile, "Okay! But why not make another subsystem assistant?"

Walker smiled back at her, "Because I need Virgil to focus for a bit, and that can be quite traumatic for him. Also, I don't have the time right now to explain Symphony and our goals to them. Ironic considering our time dilation. Now, here's what I want to do."

Walker broke down the leveling system for her. Every five levels, the system would create a visual to notify the receiver that they'd reached a new stage in leveling. That meant it went from the first level, or zero, to five. Cagna argued quite strictly with Walker that zero wasn't truly a number, and couldn't be a factor of five. Athena even joined in on one point, speaking about Plato and Socrates. Although she didn't know them personally, she did see some of the time Walker had spent in college studying philosophy, and used it to smack him around intellectually. In the end, Walker pulled the Creator card, and suddenly zero became a factor of five in Symphony. Just another way that this world would be different from his own. Considering the turmoil Earth was always embroiled in, maybe the more differences he could create, the better his new world would be.

Athena chose to stay and help him out with the leveling system, stating "it's only logical."

Walker mentally shrugged, he'd take what help he could get.

"So, just to clarify, levels are like the awakened's stages. Different stages allow for different types of improvements or rewards." The goddess of wisdom said.

"Yeahhh, pretty much."

"For what purpose?" She asked with her hands on her hips. "I'm just checking to make sure you're not creating superfluous and unnecessary additions to Symphony."

That irked him a little. He answered back in a clipped voice, "Visual progression, and personal or even professional goals." Walker answered succinctly. If he had to explain everything to everyone.... every time he wanted to do something, he'd never get anything done.

Athena nodded, "I see. And you said this would be for..."

"Yes." Walker cut her off without explaining. He already knew she'd heard everything he had said prior to her coming over here to "help". It was a small planet, and her awakened ears could hear practically everything. Walker was thankful he'd gone through the military, or this lack of privacy would have been astonishingly difficult. He was also thankful the protocol took away his need to go to the bathroom for the same reason.

"Okay." She said, then sat down and crossed her legs. She gestured beside herself, "Would you like to join me?"

"For what purpose?" Walker asked in confusion, repeating what she'd said before.

"I find planning and difficult thinking is greatly helped by being in a relaxed position."

Cagna spoke up, "Walker likes to pace."

"Ah" Athena said with a wise nod Walker had seen old people do. "You're one of those. I've known a few myself. Well, go on then and start your frivolous walking."

Walker raised a single eyebrow, then looked at Cagna. "I think the visual attached to the levels will matter, and we need to really consider how it will look. Colors, shape, opacity or transparency, images. What do we want it to look like? Levels could eventually become almost a form of classicism, where others will consider your stature and worth based on your levels. I don't really want that, so we need to make it so only the holder will have an idea of what level they are. The only time that will change will be when people hit a factor of five. Even then, the visual should be smaller, but noticeable. Plus, they will be used in...oh shit."

"What?" They both asked at the same time.

"Professions are going to have levels too. So will skills! Holllly crapp. Holy crap." Walker pulled at his hair a little as he considered everything.

"Gods don't crap." Athena pointed out.

"It's a figure of speech." Walker retorted quickly, still thinking. Unknown to him, he began to perform a small loop in front of them, walking back and forth. Athena smirked. "As this is a system to create an unlimited amount of progressive movements, we need to think about how to set this up for constant updates. Of course, everything we do with milestones will go back to the kernels, and skills with the class system will go to the grafts. Magic comes from the kernels too...." Walker at this point was just mumbling to himself. His mind kept going in loops and circles. "Professions will go....they'll go."

Cagna spoke up to redirect him, "What, specifically, is the issue?"

"The kernels! They'll be for magic and the grafts for skills. We have nowhere to put the professions! We need to find a way to instill in our entities different ways of moving their professions forward. Right now, we have nothing!"

"There is an obvious solution here." Athena said with a raised finger. "But first, let me ask you. How are the grafts going to work with the skills?"

Walker stopped pacing and scratched his chin as he continued thinking, "Well, we're going to use the grafts to notate what skills are there, and what they do. As an entity, be they human or monster, works on their skills, it'll update their grafts through the class system and improve systematically over time."

"Outstanding, so you have somewhat of a clue in what you're doing."

Walker sighed. The breath releasing involuntarily out of his mouth was a clear sign of defeat, as another person on Sonata gave him sass.

The golden-dressed woman asked an important question, "What is the purpose of the profession system, at its heart?"

"So that those who don't want to fight can still level up their skillssss. Ah." Walker said in realization.

Athena continued, "You see what I'm getting at?"

"Yes. Thank you. But, that would limit any one person from having a quasi-unlimited amount of skills. As they fill up space for their profession skills, they'll be limited in their class skills. We won't have room for both."

"Then it is, what it is. You do not have to make a perfect world or system Walker. You just have to try your best."

Walker nodded, "I see that, thank you. Cagna, what do you think?"

"Me?" The pink squirrel asked as she touched her chest. Walker nodded in encouragement. She was still a little quiet around the Primigenials, except for the corrupting influence of Echidna. "Umm, I think this pretty lady is right."

Athena smiled at her and received a smile in response. Walker just shook his head.

"Okay, so then, here's how it'll go. I'm going to work on the levels because you're pretty limited in what you can see and do, right Cagna?"

"Right" She said with a nod.

"Okay, so just keep an eye on everything, and let me know if I'm making any mistakes. The trick to this, is to design the levels to scale over-time, but to never quote "run out." I need it to make logical sense and move forward pragmatically. Got it?"

"Got it! I'll also start coming up with a full series of milestones for it."

"Don't do that. We won't need a series of milestones purely on the leveling system. Instead, answer a few questions for me please."

Walker started designing the leveling program. Level 0 would kick off right when a system was unlocked. As this was his first time building a system himself, rather than going through one of his assistants, he was asking Cagna for advice. She gave a brief idea of what she had done with the Milestone system, filling in some blanks for him on how actual system designing worked. He then ran over and bugged Virgil and Rimi once or twice for more information. He hadn't wanted to, but he still had gaps in his knowledge. They helped, although both were quite grumpy about it.

He decided to not associate any milestones within the system itself, because he needed a blank model for the alpha protocol to copy. If he didn't have that, and started creating attachments to territories, classes, or professions, he'd have to deal with creating the Territory system and Class system using a weird disjointed system that didn't fit them. It was important that the original leveling system stay pure and untouched. Walker wasn't going to go with a mental metaphor for that, even if his eyes did stray to Athena for a moment.

He clicked on the Leveling system and a series of screens appeared before him. Looking at it, he found a section labeled tracking and another labeled sequences. Walker clicked on sequences and spent some time creating a list of one through ten. The system recognized what he was trying to do, and he saw a ghostly version for the next series up to fifty. He added eleven and they started to populate on their own for him, not stopping until it reached fifty. Once he started fifty-one, the system recognized him again and the ghosts reappeared. He did this multiple times until he saw a range of two hundred numbers in the sequence. He'd add more later.

That's very handy, he thought to himself.

Walker then went over to tracking and began to attach a tracker to each number. After a dozen minutes of clicking the tracking area and attaching it to each proto-level, he realized just how long this would take. He stopped for a moment and considered what needed to be done first.

He needed to activate it, and early. It wouldn't hurt anyone because it couldn't be assigned to anyone just yet, that's what the major systems were for. If he activated it now, he could just wait out the seven days while he continued to work on it. He'd have to advance Symphony another seven days, but that was chump change for his temporal resources. Easy. Right as he clicked in the system on where he would like to start it, he had an idea.

Instead of establishing it on Symphony...why not establish it on Sonata? The days were already sped up, and it wouldn't be a problem. He chose not to slap himself for not doing this before. Walker selected Sonata and started it up, then looked around.....

No changes.

Walker grinned, then dove back into tracking. It took him quite a while, but eventually, every number now had a tracker associated with it. In the tracking section, he left it blank. For territories, it would require one process. Regions another. Not to mention professions and classes. No, he just needed a blank slate and something that brought them all together in harmony. Thus, the colors.

Walker clapped his hands together, getting the attention of the Greek goddess and Cagna. "Alright, so, level zero has nothing happen. No visual representation, just a notification that they've reached level zero when they unlocked the system of their choice. We'll have to design that into the systems as we build them, but leave them out of the Leveling system for now. What we can do, though, is associate levels with the rainbow effect from my homeworld."

"What's that?" Cagna asked. Athena looked interested too.

"Well, we're going to use the colors of the rainbow to associate the level that is attached. So for instance, a rainbow goes from red, to orange, to yellow and so on. Red is closest to the outside edge of the rainbow, so it's the starting point for this whole thing. For our first one-hundred levels, we'll associate the leveling system with the color red. I say this because that way it's the largest amount. Based on what Virgil expects out of our Class system, and the Profession system beside it, not too many people will get over level 100. That means they'll be the largest group. It makes sense. For levels one-hundred and one to two-hundred, we'll do orange, as that's the next stage."

Walker continued to explain the color associations and the range of levels. After they agreed upon everything, Athena making comments about what it should look like as entities and territories shifting by centennial achievements, he had a good rough draft.

Levels 0-100 Color: Red: Opacity increases with visual representation every five levels. Visual representation is shown as a small burst of color around the subject. Non-harmful.

Transition from 100-101 A light will rise from the subject, shifting from the color red to the color orange.

Levels 101-200 Color: Orange: Opacity increases with visual representation every five levels. Visual representation is shown as a small burst of color around the subject. Non-harmful.

Transition from 200-201 A light will rise from the subject, shifting from the color orange to the color yellow.

Levels 201-300 Color: Yellow: Opacity increases with visual representation every five levels. Visual representation is shown as a halo around the top of the subject. Non-harmful.

Transition from 300-301 A light will rise from the subject, shifting from the color yellow to the color green.

Levels 301-400 Color: Green: Opacity increases with visual representation every five levels. Visual representation is shown as a series of green colors pulsing off of the subject's body. Non-harmful.

Transition from 400-401 A light will rise from the subject, shifting from the color green to the color blue.

Levels 401-500 Color: Blue: Opacity increases with visual representation every five levels. Visual representation will show a great amount of blue light rising all around the subject. Non-harmful.

Walker had Cagna show Athena what he'd made, and when she asked how the system would release the colors, he realized he was missing something. He stepped back in and looked through the Leveling system, finding an area asking how it would be powered. Walker clicked a dropdown and found multiple options, including electricity, which wouldn't work, and a greyed out part that said Alma. None of his assistants had said they'd seen that before, so he locked it away in his mind for now. After scrolling through several options, he found ambient magic and clicked on it.

"I think we're going to need more Mana trees." Walker said to himself. "We're associating too many of our systems with magic for this to work otherwise."

Athena heard him again, and smiled to herself.

"Okay, the leveling systems basic version is complete. We'll have to wait the seven days here, but that time can be used in other ways. I'll work on my soul, and Cagna, you work on your milestones. We'll try to meet up again for territories as soon as I get the notification that the system is done."

"Okay!" Cagna said, running over to sit next to Echidna and working on her milestones. Walker looked over and found the gold-dressed goddess of wisdom staring at him.

"What? Do I have something on my face?" He asked.

"No, nothing like that Walker. I was just wondering what you like to do for fun."

"What?"