SNAP CRAFT | Ch. 8 - Perceptual Memory
Added 2023-10-07 11:42:24 +0000 UTCAutumn of 345, A.D.
Everyone was dressed in red gowns and held hands around the crematorium pyre. Even though Kai was holding Ariel’s hand, his heart wasn’t racing. Instead, it felt like a cold dead stone. Albert was the only one wearing black. He opened a notebook and began reading it:
“Neil Ferguson was born on the 5th of January 266. He died at the age of 79.”
“He came as an exile from one of the other sectors after his foster mother placed #249 in the 309th trials and earned the points needed to bring him to the sector.
His first trial was when he was nineteen. Since then, he participated in sixteen more trials and always gave his best for the sector. He was a man who didn’t just teach us how to survive. He taught us how to live honorably. We shall never forget his crazy practical lessons, explorer’s hat, saber, and love for us all.”
Kai and Sunny grabbed the torches that had been previously prepared. When Trudy told him that Neil had requested that Kai be one of the torch holders for his funeral, Kai was caught by surprise. He hadn’t realized that Neil treasured him so much.
He cleared his throat and said his parting words. “Neil was a good man. He did his best for us. I’ll never forget him.” Kai knew the words were lackluster but didn’t know what else to say.
Sunny stepped forward. “His stubbornness was the most beautiful and most hideous thing about him. His stubbornness was love,” she said.
The words had such depth that they shook Kai’s heart and left him dazed for a few seconds. That was true. He was a stubborn man, but it was a kind of stubbornness that he channeled for the benefit of others. Sunny put her hand on Kai’s shoulders, returning him to his senses. He nodded, signaling that he was ready. They both threw their torch toward the pyre.
Everyone stood watching the fire gain strength and burn the remains of their friend. As it did, they all started sharing comforting words and fond memories of Neil around the pyre. After Kai had finished talking to Clara, Albert appeared. “Good job with the torch, Kai.”
“That’s nothing compared to having to say all that about him in front of everybody. I don’t know how you were able to keep it together.”
“It’s my duty as the historian.” After a few moments, he added, “Also, reading is easier than speaking from the heart.”
Memories of painful, crazy, practical lessons with Neil made Kai feel a bittersweet taste in his mouth. He found himself laughing. “Remember when he locked us up in a house with a skunk?”
Albert let out a chuckle. After a silent minute, Albert continued, “I still remember the day we arrived here. He was the first face I saw, you know. It was back when…” Albert trailed off as was his custom. Kai’s theory was that he was so intelligent that sometimes his mind moved faster than his mouth could keep up with. Alex thought differently. His theory was that the historian was starting to lose it. Everyone was used to Albert’s blanks, and Kai just nudged him back to the conversation. “Arrived where? To the sector?”
Albert nodded.
“Did you come from the same place?”
“We came at the same time. But I don’t know if we came from the same place. Exiles have their memories wiped. It’s part of the deal with Daisy.” After a few more silent seconds watching the fire, Albert spoke again, “I sometimes wonder if his past was what made him so obsessed with survival. Whatever led him to sign up as an exile must have been a terrible ordeal. I didn’t share that drive of his. We were probably from different places.”
“But doesn’t Daisy wipe out all your memories?”
“So they say.”
Kai frowned at the suggestion. “Albert, do you remember anything?”
Albert shrugged. “Nothing specific. But there are vestiges of memories. For example, I know some smells make me nervous, but I don’t know why.”
“Like what?”
“Shoe polish. The smell terrifies me.”
That was weird.
Albert continued, “Maybe some things can’t be deleted from our brains. They have been etched too deeply. Especially if they have left scars.”
*
353rd Daisy Exams, Round of 256.
Even though Kai closed his eyes, he didn't sleep. He let his mind wander for a few minutes, trying to let the pressure wear away. Once he felt he had enough rest, he opened his eyes and started drawing with his fingers, mentally reviewing every rule he discovered about the trial. His mind kept going back to the dead tree in the first arena. If only he had discovered that site before anyone else… He was under the impression that that spot was right at the center of the arena. As he went through his game plan for the next challenge, the timer on the corner of his vision eventually reached zero. It was time to go through to the next round.
Just like last time, in the time it took him to blink, he was transported to the snap arena. It was a much different place from last time. Whereas in the first round, he’d been under a ceiling of pine needles, now there was an open blue sky above him. Although there was nothing above him, in the distance, towering walls of rock enclosed him.
Closer to him, boulders and piles of stone fragments were strewn about. There were so many of them, and they were so tall that it gave Kai the impression that he was now in a forest of rock. Even though they didn’t obstruct his view of the sky, they blocked his view of the horizon. He could only see the distant cliffs because of how tall they were. What was this place? At first glance, it looked like a canyon, but the cliff walls were cut too cleanly, and the boulders were too cubical. No. This was a quarry.
After overcoming the first visual impact of the new arena, Kai shook his head and took off. He didn’t have time to waste. It was time to follow his plan. For that, he had to clear a few doubts. The first thing he did was to look for the map upgrade he had purchased. It wasn’t difficult to find it. He found an aerial view of his location in the bottom right corner of his vision. He saw a small patch of terrain within a black square and a little red triangle. He guessed that it represented him. He tried taking a few steps forward and saw how the edges of the map, which had been empty before, were revealed. Good. This would go a long way in helping him determine if he’d searched the whole arena or not.
The next step was to look at the time. As before, it was shown in the upper right-hand corner of his vision. He had two hours—the same as last time.
For the third step, he would have to use his camera. The most challenging part of the first round had been the mind games. Not knowing what his opponents had done or planned to do was troublesome. At every step, he wondered whether someone had already taken a picture of any object he found. But that had been a battle royale, with at least three trial runners.
Now that he’d entered a knock-out stage, there would only be two players. Even so, it didn't make much sense to him that Daisy would eliminate the mind games from one round to the next. If anything, Daisy would probably only make them worse. While waiting to be transported to the new arena, Kai had time to ponder what happened in the first round, and a question popped up: Had the number of cards available to players remained the same? Or had the numbers in the pool of cards been adjusted to the new number of players?
There was only one way to find out. He looked at the nearest boulder. Now that he knew this was a quarry, he could see how the giant rock cubes had been cut away from the mountain. He grabbed his camera and took a picture.
Capture successful!
Tries left: 19 of 20.
Block of Granite (Common)
1 of 4
Hp: 1
Vp: 2
Just with this picture, he had answered many of the questions lingering in his mind. First, the untaken picture from the first round hadn't carried over to this one. He had started with twenty tries, the same as last time. If saving shots had been an option, he would have started with twenty-one instead. That meant that he shouldn’t save any shots this round. He should use up the number of tries because it wouldn’t do him any good later.
Secondly, the number of available cards in the pool had changed. In the first round, there were five common cards to distribute among the players. Now, there were only four up for grabs. That meant he didn’t have to worry about hurrying and taking pictures of the more common things he found in the arena. There was enough to go around.
If the same reduction had also been enforced for the next card tiers, there would be pools of three uncommon cards, two rare cards, and one legendary. That was just his guess. He wasn’t sure of the numbers yet.
Whatever the case, this piece of information helped him settle on his strategy. Rare cards were the crux of this challenge, not common ones. Whoever grabbed more of the rarer cards would have an edge over the competition. He should focus on higher-tiered cards first and only use his precious tries with common cards toward the end of the challenge. Every point mattered.
Even though so much had crossed his mind in these moments, no more than thirty seconds had elapsed. He could only act so quickly and decisively because of the time he had to think after purchasing his upgrades. He looked at the longer shadows cast by a sun lower on the horizon. If the time still corresponded to the real world, it was about 4 p.m. Using the sun, he figured out where South was and ran toward it.
Kai hadn’t realized how much of a maze this place was. The pillars of boulders made it challenging to have a good broad view of the surroundings, and he was starting to get suspicious that this would be the case in every arena going forward. But even though the piles of rock and rubble obstructed his view, they didn't hinder his speed. Remembering his experience running through trees in the previous arena, he just ran through the obstacles, passing right through them. There was no point in wasting time dodging them. What was the worst thing that could happen, anyway? Pain was disabled in this place.
The towering wall of the quarry was coming closer into view. Daisy had a history of setting little traps to test the trial runners throughout the exams. Kai was almost sure that the towering cliff wall was an illusion. The actual wall of the arena had to be closer than that. Kai was expecting to bump into an invisible barrier at any minute now.
Kai kept running and eventually reached the wall of the arena. It appeared as a perfect curve on the edge of his map. To his surprise, it wasn’t an invisible wall like before. The rock wall of the quarry was the boundary of the arena! He had judged Daisy wrong. She hadn’t tried to set a trap here. He put his hand against the rock, and instead of his hand going through it, he could feel its cool sandy texture.
Now what? Was the rock wall the edge of the arena all around it? Or was the trap in him presuming that? Daisy and her cursed mind games. Good thing that this wasn’t like the 156th games when Daisy had tested human perception and abstract thinking. The illusions that she had come up with him made it one of the hardest exams to date.
Kai decided to run alongside the cliff wall to get an idea of the arena's boundaries. He would then work his way inward. The fact that the arena's edge, at least along the south border, was the rock wall didn’t change his game plan. He wanted to get to the middle of the map as quickly as possible. He felt that the center of the arena always had something special. Kai didn’t forget to watch for anything unusual that could be considered an uncommon or rare card as he ran. Those would be the cards that would grant him victory.
All over the rock walls, Kai spotted patches of moss and lichen. Knowing what these cards did and pretty sure he’d be able to find it in spades throughout the arena, he ignored it and kept running. After a few meters of running, Kai saw a different plant. Their leaves were meaty, and the spiraling patterns were beautiful. Succulents were growing on the cliffside.
Given how many were here, he suspected it was just a common card and chose to press on. He couldn’t get caught in capturing common cards. He had to focus on the uncommon and above. He would only bother with common cards if he ran out of time and needed to use up his shots.
After a short jog, he spotted something colorful on the rock wall. The red color stood out against the gray stony background. It was his first time seeing something like this plant in the arena. It was a flower. He tried to point the camera at it. He suspected that it would be at least an uncommon card. He tried to get a good picture, but it was too far. The camera didn’t have a zoom-in feature, which he now suspected would be one of the upgrades he could get from the shop.
After determining he wouldn’t get a clear shot, he forced himself to put the camera down and resume running. He had learned his lesson from the previous round when he had tried to photograph the canopy of the pine trees. If he couldn’t get a clear picture of the object, there was no point in wasting shots.
As he ran along the cliff wall, he saw the ground he was covering being drawn into the map. The previously black map started to resemble a circular shape. It looked like all arenas would be circular. Finally, he made it so that his map had an almost complete ‘D’ shape. He looked at the clock. He had found the northernmost point in the arena. From the time it had taken him to run half the circumference of the arena, he could confirm that all snap arenas were the same size. At least this and the one from the previous round were.
His starting point had been off-center on the eastern part of the arena. He checked his map, found his bearings, and ran toward the circle's center.
The pressure of being several minutes into the game and not having any new cards weighed on him, but he stayed his course. He would stick to his plan. After running for a minute, he found what was roughly the center of the map. There was nothing special in here. Just the normal collection of boulders. He searched the surroundings in a whirlpool pattern, hoping that he had been slightly off the mark, and after a few laps, he found something.
It was a quarry lake. ‘Lake’ might not be the best word to describe it since it wasn’t large; a quarry pond might be more appropriate. The water was incredibly clear, and Kai could see right into the bottom of the pond.
Kai let out a jubilant shout. His hunch had been correct. There really was something special at the center of every map. Happy with his discovery, he hurriedly pulled out his camera and went for a picture.
Capture successful!
Tries left: 18 of 20
Pond (Uncommon)
3 of 3
Hp: 2
Vp: 2
He fell to his knees.
“No way. How?”
