Cale found himself in a real pickle. He had lost the last four rounds of tag to this new girl, Nadea, and now his pride was on the line. Predictably, she did not miss a single moment to tease him about his losses. Apparently, Leo and the others had been talking up how fast he was, even after being away for a week, and he was not meeting the expectations they had set. Even though he was a few years younger than her, and his legs were physically smaller, it still annoyed him that he lost to her and she rubbed it in his face.

  After his fourth embarrassing defeat, he finally decided he needed to change up his approach if he was ever going to win. The week in the hospital had really weakened him and normal him would have had trouble catching Nadea, weakened Cale didn’t stand a chance.

  He found himself sitting against one of the far walls, watching everyone else play, as he thought of ways he could potentially win. He racked his brain for things he had learned in his interface, he had reviewed so much in the last few days that he was having a hard time keeping it straight. But thankfully for him, he had a Maggy.

  “Maggy, show me a list of the built in scripts that would help me move faster.” He finally asked her, after running out of his own ideas.

  “I thought you were afraid to try the built in scripts” she responded as she executed his demand, a couple of scripts popped up in front of him in a little semitransparent display.

  “That was before I was losing. Besides, you said these built in ones are safe, right?”

  “Safe yes, but not efficient and hard to use.” She clarified.

  “Which one is the easiest do you think?” he asked as he went through the descriptions of each one. The default scripts were not very special and none of them were for fighting. One script let him get a little more grip as he walked, but it had an issue where it wouldn’t work if he ran or moved too fast.

  Another one was to help him swim faster by making little script fins on his feet, another bust for his current task. But then he came across an old familiar one, ‘Dancing Body of the Tennarr.’ It was an updated version of the one he had copied previously so he could finally get some details on what it did.

  This script was apparently named after some famous person named Tennarr, but he wasn’t sure how that helped him. What was helpful, however, was that this script helped him move, not just his feet, but his body. It obviously wasn’t for speed, with the name dancing in the script, but as he looked at other scripts, he kept coming back to this one.

  As he thought about it, was a game of tag even really about running or was it about the chase? A chase through tunnels, up slides, over railings, and under walkways. A game of movement… That was enough for him. He was going to learn to dance!

  “Maggy, I want to use ‘Dancing Body of the Tennarr,’ uh.. how do these work?”

  “According to the manual we found, the script won’t appear in your usable list until you’ve done an original sync with it.” She declared.

  “Wait are these just blueprints? I thought the manual said these are scripts.”

  “They are, but not everyone has a large soul nor is everyone compatible with every script. The manual states that these optional scripts are not for everyone and that some people will need to have them professionally modified by a technician.”

  “Interesting… Uh, remind me about that modification technician part later, that sounds like something I would enjoy. But right now beating Nadea at tag is my goal. How do I get this script to work?” He said with determination.

  His to-do list popped up, and a new line appeared that said ‘Beat Nadea at Tag,’ and then Maggy finally responded. “That reminder was 4% smaller than your average, and to make the script work you must setup the script training room in your soul lounge.”

  He rolled his eyes at her, she seemed to be taking her notes and reminder duties very seriously, sometimes too seriously... But what was this script training room? “The what? I have a training room? Why am I just hearing about this now?” He asked incredulously.

  “Because you said, and I quote, ‘Shhhh... you’ve been talking for an hour. Can I just read this manual and then review?’ In which we are now reviewing since the manual we have been reading is for an interface a few versions behind.” She reminded him.

  “The dark side of having a Maggy,” Cale quipped at her, “Do you remember… everything?”

  “I do not have enough storage for everything. If it is video only I can record an entire year. Less when I include audio and extra information. If I record all information coming in through your interface, I can record for about a single month straight before I need to start removing the parts where you are sleeping.”

  “Woh… That is so much!” He exclaimed, “All that storage space and not a single movie to watch. Maggy, we have to loot the data of this world! Wait, do you record me sleeping?”

  “I record a lot of things, Master Cale,” Maggy responded.

  “Aaggh! Gross! Don’t call me that, it weirds me out. Ok, change of topic then, I will just have to figured out how to turn that off unless you can record dreams… Don’t distract me dang it. Back to the script training room. What is needed for setup?”

  “That finished up during our conversation, it is ready for you now.” Maggy informed him.

  “Oh, well...” he looked over at the other kids playing and he saw Nadea mocking Leo with her hands acting like giant ears and he could hear her loud laughter as Leo tried and failed to catch her.

  His eyes narrowed and he clenched his teeth as he watched her mocking display toward his best friend. He could not let her beat them! In the next heartbeat he was in his soul lounge.

  The training room was a bit different than he expected, it was just a blank square room with gridded lines. Maggy had him stand in the center, where a circle on the floor was located, as she loaded in the training program. He didn’t have to wait long as the room around him shifted.

  The gridded walls started to flip in little square sections starting from the ceiling and working downward revealing their back side. A nice shuffling sound could be heard, like resetting those mechanical clocks that use cards to show the time. When the scene finally finished getting set, he found himself standing on a small stage in front of a row of empty chairs. To his sides he could see the back part of the stage where there were racks of clothes, chairs, and rope. Right next to him was the light blue shape of a person, only it had no features and was a solid color. When he looked at it, text popped up like a thought bubble and told him to follow the moves the outline did.

  When he read the last word, the person shaped outline before him moved forward a step, did a little standing jump and kick and then backed up. Seeing that it wasn’t difficult, Cale repeated the steps exactly as he saw it. It took him a few tries to get it figured out. He had to follow the exact steps, and make the same motions, otherwise a small beep would sound and the outline would repeat the move again.

  When he finally completed the action perfectly, one of the chairs in front of him filled up with a ghost person clapping loudly. Cale gave a little bow, because why not, he was having fun, and then went back to his starting position. The moment he looked at the outlined person, the next part of the session started, and that is how the next few minutes went for Cale.

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  A lot of the training steps were easy and only required a few actions, others he had to do a few times as the moves were more complicated. But he did enjoy that every time he completed something, another person would show up in the crowd and clap. Once the entire row of the theatre had filled up, he was given his final movement, a spin crouch that ended up on one foot and his leg up in the air at an angle.

  It took him multiple tries, but thankfully due to the size of his feet, he was able to finally get his balance to work and after a nice round of applause, the rooms walls re-flipped to show the original side, which caused the scene to end and he found himself back in the room. He looked at the clock on the wall and it had only taken about fifteen minutes to successfully learn this script.

  “Maggy, was that it? What else do I need to do?” he asked out loud.

  “That’s it, Cale. The configuration program is showing that it has calibrated to your interface.” She confirmed.

  “Hmm… That felt too easy compared to what I’ve gone through recently… Oh well!” he said, shrugging his shoulders and immediately left his Soul Lounge.

  When he came to, he found that someone had left him a little blanket and a pillow. He must have slouched over during his calibration and they thought he fell asleep. Standing up, he saw everyone still playing, and he figured that it would be a good time to test what he had just learned.

  His movement script wasn’t like his wind script, where he had to constantly keep his intent active. It was supposed to work like his mapping script, he could just ‘turn it on,’ and it was supposed to assist him. At least that is how he understood it.

  Somehow there was a way to program intent, or a digital version of it, so that a script could be used without actively thinking about it. This idea had really intrigued Cale and he was excited to see it being used. He had some ideas that could be used to enhance his baby body in other ways. After all he had put in a lot of time thinking of skills and moves that his game characters would do and he didn’t think it was impossible to potentially replicate some of the fun things he designed while in his other body. Ever since he saw that mech suit in the installation, he kept finding himself daydreaming of being as strong as a suit, but without the clunkiness.

  He positioned his feet in a stance he was taught in the training session and focused as he activated the movement script, he slowly moved his body, slowly repeated a few of the moves that he had learned in the training room to see if he could notice a difference when his script kicked in.

  It took a while for the script to actually start, he could feel it forming inside of him without need of him to interact with it, but it took over a minute before his interface signaled that it was fully active. He didn’t need the interface to tell him though, he could immediately feel a difference in the moves he had been doing. His feet landed a little more graceful, his steps literally popped with pep if he dared think about it. He was having a fun time moving his body when he dreadfully heard a voice yell at him from the side.

  “Hey, baby feet, you going to dance all day or do you need to take another nap?” Nadea shouted at him mockingly.

  Cale felt his anger rise but didn’t say anything back, as she had a good reason to be cocky, even if she was being rude. He stopped his dancing, feeling a little embarrassed, and sprinted over toward the other kids, who were now all watching him after Nadea’s shouting.

  SPLAT! He landed face first on the floor, he hadn’t deactivated his script, but for some reason it was not working when he tried to sprint. He picked himself up from the floor as he heard everyone laughing at him. He thought about shutting off the script since it didn’t seem to work and it was only embarrassing further.

  But as he thought about it, why did he, a literal man stuck in a kid’s body really care what these kids think? At the end of the day, he didn’t care that much, what he wanted to learn was this script and how to make it work for him. If he could get it to help him accomplish his goals… in a more literal sense, then it didn’t matter what Nadea said.

  He felt his anger cool, and a smile popped up on his face. After all, these were only kids! He embraced the embarrassment and tried running again. This time when he fell, he imagined one of the moves that involved rolling in the tutorial and he tucked his little head in and did a roll. Instead of just landing flat, to his surprise, and excitement, he found that the script worked perfectly! It helped him complete the roll and he popped back up on his feet with a little bit of a flair and swooshed his hands.

  “Now that I have your attention,” he told everyone who was watching, thanks to Nadea, “Let’s play some tag!” He yelled out and pumped his fist. “Tag, tag, tag!” His excitement was infectious and soon he had the other kids chanting with him. “Tag! Tag! Tag!” Seeing that everyone had forgotten his fall, he ran up to his friends, excited to get started.

  “Cale’s it!” Nadea yelled out, obviously not wanting to be outshone by him. That was ok to him. At the end of this he would have this script learned, and then he would use it to get around the base uncaught. This game was just training, and he was going to use it as such. The game started with Cale counting down so that everyone could escape. He only really wanted to get Nadea, but he had no plans of letting anyone get away, not even Leo.

  When it was time, he found his target – the closest person to him – and excitement hit him like a dose of adrenaline. POW! He shot off, clipping one of the poles holding up a walkway and careening sideways, sliding on the ground. He had started to think of a dance type run, but he hadn’t kept that idea in his head and the script hadn’t applied its help to his follow up movement even though he had the speed.

  He hobbled a bit and he knew that he would now have a bruise there, but he didn’t care. This was about learning, and sometimes that learning came with pain. He found a new target and took off again, he did better but he found that he kept missing at the last moment because as soon as he focused on touching someone, the script seemed to not think it needed to enhance that movement.

  This script really was designed ONLY for dancing and he was finding it a little frustrating, but he didn’t have time to modify it. Scripts may be code, and he may have a new interface, but he knew that he had a lot of learning to do before even attempting to modify his scripts.

  As he ran around, his arms and legs flailed and the script constantly kept activating and then deactivating, causing him to miss most people, while only catching the slowest of them. He found that sometimes, when he chased people around poles and between railings, that it felt a little like a dance. Which got him thinking, what if he treated the entire game as a dance? How would his script handle that?

  Each interaction, each touch, was a move that signaled he was going on to the next sequence, the next set of steps in his dance. He let this mindset envelope him as he tagged one of the kids, then another, and then another. Soon he found that he was in his zone and that tagging people had become very easy.

  He couldn’t help but start to hum a little beat to himself as he spun and jumped down stairs, and imagined himself in a musical as he literally climbed up walls. Soon he couldn’t find anyone and he stood up on top of the entire jungle gym area looking for fresh prey, but saw that there was no one left. Even Nadea and Leo were off to the side, marking that he had tagged them and he didn’t even remember it.

  “Cale, quit showing off and get down. You got everyone already!” Leo yelled at him.

  “Oh. Ok! Want me to be it again?” he asked.

  “No!” Everyone yelled out at once.

  Cale laughed to himself and when he got to the ground he met with Leo and Nadea, who seemed to always be together, and he couldn’t help but talk a little smack to Nadea.

  “Nadea, didn’t know it was your turn to take a nap.” Cale taunted her.

  “What was that, Cale? Were you holding back previously? How did you even climb some of those places?” Nadea asked him, she seemed skeptical.

  “See!” Leo said loudly to Nadea before Cale could respond, “I TOLD you he was good at this game.”

  “There is good and there is whatever that was…” Nadea said defensively.

  “Whatever, you just don’t want to admit it because Cale is smaller than you,” Leo teased her.

  “Hey!” Both Cale and Nadea said at the same time before they started to laugh.

  They played a few more rounds, which Cale used to practice with his script. If he let himself get distracted while moving, the script could really backfire and he could end up on the ground or falling painfully, which was typically how he ended up getting caught. But by the end he was confident that he could use it well enough if needed.

  He wasn’t disheartened by the idea that it wasn’t a generic movement script, but one that only helped him dance. He understood that this world loved its licensing and he bet there was a script out there from someone else that did exactly what he needed, as long as he had the license key, and if not. He would make his own.

  When the time was right, he said his goodbye’s to everyone, giving Leo a giant hug, and then left the place, waving to one of the NPC’s. He really liked how they never seemed to bother him after his stint in the hospital. With some energy burned, and anticipation of doing something he shouldn’t, Cale excitedly took off down the hallway toward the elevator that led outside.