Cytronica

Six

Saturday

Hunter pulled his small car to the side of the road, parking outside the large brick house. He looked it up and down, wondering if this was the right address.

According to the map on his comm, it was.

He climbed outside and walked up the path, then knocked on the front door.

A few seconds later, the door opened inwards, revealing Zack.

"Hey!" he said, excited to see his new friend.

"Hey. Cool house."

"Thanks." Zack peered out into the street. "Cool car."

"Not really," Hunter scoffed. "It's like twenty years old. But it was a gift, so I'll take it."

Zack stepped aside and let him in. "I don't even have a car." He closed the door and locked it tight. "No one else is home. Parents are out. Come." He walked across the polished floorboards and began ascending the staircase.

Hunter took in his surroundings, impressed. "Your family must be rich."

Zack let out a short laugh. "I think every family has to be rich to afford the academy's fees."

Hunter shrugged. "My house looks nothing like this."

They turned right when they reached the top of the stairs, Zack leading the way to his bedroom. It was relatively clean, its blue walls covered in movie and game posters.

"Did you look at the manual last night?"

"A little," Hunter said. "I think it seems fairly straightforward."

"I looked at it all last night and this morning. There's a lot of deep stuff in there." He sat at his computer desk.

Hunter sat in the other chair, turning his attention to the manual in front of them. "Anything interesting?"

Zack nodded enthusiastically. "All of it. We have the basic parameter changes, and also time-based commands, as you already know. There are also event-based commands, so if something happens in the realm, it can then trigger another command. Did you read about the relativity clauses?"

"No, I don't think so."

Zack smirked, excited to explain it. "It's awesome. I'll show you." He scrolled through the document until he found the relevant section. "So, the Cytro language is really just like any other coding language. And it lets us execute certain commands that are relative to other commands or parameters in the world. For example, yesterday we set the gravity to fifty percent. Well, if we want to get creative, we can set the gravity's percentage relative to any other parameter. Meaning it'll fluctuate as things change."

"Wow," Hunter nodded. "We could probably think of some cool stuff to use that for."

"Agreed. It's complex though. And if we do it wrong, it might have a weird effect, because parameters could quickly change."

"There was one thing I couldn't figure out last night though," Hunter said, changing the topic. "How do we set the parameters so they can keep changing while we're in the realm? I mean, if we don't want something to be set in stone, can it change on its own?"

"It can. It took me a while to figure that out as well." Zack continued searching through the file. "Here we go. Freeflow. If you set a parameter to freeflow, it can change by itself depending on other things we set for the realm."

"I like it," Hunter said with a smile. "I don't want something to be stuck while we're in there."

"I know what you mean. So if we write a command that sets a parameter to both freeflow and relativity based on another parameter, you could get some interesting results."

"I like your thinking. What else did you discover?"

"Um, let me think. I wrote down a list of the most interesting features. You can do virtually anything in Cytro, but a lot of stuff won't apply to us." He glanced down at a small notepad with messy handwriting. "Oh, you can have a set number of login attempts. I thought that one was kinda funny. I also did some reading online last night from people's experiences in the public realms. One thing we really need to do is think carefully about what we change though. I've read in the past that it can get out of hand quickly. One subtle change can have a huge effect."

"Yeah, you mentioned that yesterday." Hunter flashed his white teeth. "Although that's kind of what I want," he admitted.

"Some things need a lot of coding. I read a brief tutorial last night that talks about the theory behind turning the realm into a giant RPG. It'll take forever though, so let's forget about that."

"Maybe one day. For now, I want weirder stuff. I want to make the realm more ... fun."

Zack looked back to his list. "What else was there?" he said to himself. "We'll have to start fairly small since we're so new to it. And also because it's not exactly our property. Oh! Did you read about virus mode?"

"No," Hunter frowned. "I saw that mentioned in the manual but I didn't read any more."

Zack could hardly contain his smile. "You're going to love it." He typed into his keyboard and searched through the document for the right section. "Here. Read this."

Hunter looked at the screen and began reading. After two paragraphs, his eyebrows raised. "Shit."

"I know. Sounds cool."

Hunter clasped his hands in front of his mouth, his eyes wide. "That's what I want. That one. Virus. That sounds epic."

"Same. It's perfect. We should wait though," Zack suggested. "Let's see what else we can do first. Virus is a lot more complicated. We'll need to add it to some other lines of code to make it work properly. I already have a few ideas I've written down for it. Plus I feel like that's something we should save for like a weekend or something."

"Good thinking, buddy," Hunter said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Zack blushed slightly. It was good to have a so-called buddy. His parents encouraged him to focus on his studies during his senior year rather than forming relationships.

Come to think of it, he couldn't even recall the last time he had a friend visit.

"Okay, so," Hunter said, "Monday. What are we going to do? Something cool. A little crazy. Not too epic. Something fun."

"Sounds good to me. I was thinking about tweaking the bots."

"Same. They're killing me."

Zack returned his attention to the guide. "There are a few different bot parameters we can change, but I was thinking the autonomy level. It says here, the higher the percentage, the more the bots will be free to think for themselves, giving Cytronica a more realistic experience."

"And our bots are at one percent right now. That's why they're so damn annoying and repetitive."

"Yeah. That looks like a safe place to start. We can get Casey's opinion too."

Hunter paused for a second and then let out a short laugh. "Who would've thought I'd be invited to his party? We've hardly said a word to each other since we were freshmen."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Same with us."

Hunter looked up and offered a friendly smirk. "Yeah."

Zack returned the gesture. "Well, let's keep looking through the guide and brainstorming. I'm sure with both of us thinking, we can make some pretty fun stuff happen."

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