The walk back to the apartment took twenty minutes and seven seconds. Anton counted, not because he needed the precise duration, but because precision established baselines. Without baselines, change could not be measured.
He locked the door behind him, set the supplies on the desk without ceremony, and sat down. The tablet sat dark and silent. The room was quiet. But his attention was internal, focused on the pressure he had felt on the street. The presence that had not manifested.
Anton closed his eyes.
He did not reach for the sensation blindly. Instead, he constructed a framework. If the system responded to conceptual queries, then he needed to establish a protocol. A language.
"Interface," he thought, forming the word with deliberate clarity. "Status display."
Nothing.
He tried a different approach. "Proxy Function. Diagnostic report."
Silence.
Anton opened his eyes and looked at his hands. The scars on the wrist were pale lines in the afternoon light. He had not attempted to hide them. They were data, like everything else. Evidence of a previous experiment that had failed.
He picked up the tablet, not to use it, but as a physical anchor. A point of focus. If the system responded to neural patterns, then perhaps it required a specific state. Not questioning, but commanding. Not requesting, but declaring.
"System," he said aloud. "Open Proxy Function configuration."
The response was immediate.
[Proxy Function: Active]
[Clone Slot: 1/1 Available]
[Status: Awaiting Parameters]
The text did not appear in the air. It manifested in his awareness, clean and structured, devoid of decorative flourishes. No elaborate user interface. No accompanying graphics. Just information, presented with the austerity of a command line terminal.
Anton noted the parameters. One slot. Single use, then, until he understood how to expand capacity. He considered his next query carefully.
"Define activation requirements," he said.
[Primary Condition: Influence Threshold Not Met]
[Secondary Condition: Talent Assignment Undefined]
[Tertiary Condition: Dominant Emotion Unspecified]
Influence. The word from before. Anton leaned back in his chair, processing. The system required fame, recognition, social capital. Yet it also offered a clone, a proxy, presumably to acquire those very things. A circular dependency that suggested either poor design or a deliberate gatekeeping mechanism.
He tested the boundaries. "Bypass influence requirement."
[Error. Condition Mandatory.]
"Partial activation?"
A pause. Longer than before.
[Simulation Mode Available]
[Clone Entity: Non-Corporeal]
[Duration: Limited]
Anton smiled slightly. A trial version. The system permitted testing, even if deployment required payment. That was logical. Efficient. It allowed for calibration without commitment.
He stood and moved to the window. Outside, the district continued its mechanical rhythm. The industrial towers cast long shadows across the streets. Drones moved in formation, carrying cargo between buildings. People walked below, anonymous and countless.
To gain influence in such a world required leverage. Anton possessed no family connections, no institutional backing, no resources beyond 127 Supreme Coins and a tablet with eleven subscribers. Direct acquisition of fame would take months, perhaps years. But indirect acquisition, through a proxy with capabilities beyond his own...
He returned to the desk and opened a text document on the tablet. Not the streaming application, but a simple note-taking program. He began to catalog his observations.
System Architecture: Minimalist. Responds to declarative commands. No artificial personality detected. No tutorial function. Implies either degraded state or intentional design for user autonomy.
Resource Economy: Influence functions as currency. Suggests system originates from or is designed for social-optimized environments. Parallels observed in gamification theory and reputation-based economies.
Clone Function: Unclear whether entity is independent consciousness or extension of user. Philosophical implications secondary to practical applications.
He paused, fingers hovering over the holographic keys.
Practical Application: Clone requires identity. Identity requires construction. Construction requires purpose.
Anton closed the document. Theoretical analysis had reached its limit. Experimentation was required.
He settled into a meditative posture, back straight, hands resting on his knees. He visualized the system interface as a space around him, a workshop with tools laid out in darkness. He reached for the clone slot.
"Initialize simulation mode," he commanded.
The world shifted.
Not dramatically. No flash of light, no sense of dislocation. But the room suddenly felt... occupied. As though the air pressure had increased slightly, or a second source of heat had manifested in the enclosed space.
[Simulation Mode: Active]
[Clone Entity: Initializing]
Anton opened his eyes.
A figure stood in the center of the room. translucent, flickering at the edges like a projection with insufficient bandwidth. It was humanoid, male, roughly his own height but broader in the shoulders. The features were indistinct, awaiting definition.
"Configure appearance," Anton said.
[Template Required]
He considered. The clone needed to be unremarkable enough to avoid attention, but distinctive enough to be remembered. A balance between anonymity and recognition. He thought of the people he had observed on the street. The clerk at the convenience store. The workers in their uniforms.
"Standard male phenotype. Local ethnicity blend. Age: twenty-two. Height: 182 centimeters. Build: athletic but not exceptional. Hair: dark brown. Eyes: neutral coloration."
The figure shimmered. Details resolved. The face became specific, sharp-cheeked, with a jawline that suggested determination without aggression. The body filled out, musculature defined but not exaggerated. The hair settled into a practical cut.
"Name," Anton said. "Assign identifier."
[Designation Required]
"Kael Virex."
The name felt right. Sharp. Memorable. Searchable.
[Designation Accepted: Kael Virex]
The ghost of the clone stood waiting. Its eyes were open but unfocused, looking at nothing. It breathed, or appeared to breathe, chest rising and falling in a rhythm that matched Anton's own.
"Talent assignment," Anton said. "Display available options. Blue tier limitation."
The system responded with a list. Anton studied it, processing the implications. The talents were capabilities, not superpowers. Enhanced pattern recognition. Accelerated motor learning. Social intuition. Photographic memory under stress. Each represented a optimization of human potential, not a violation of physical law.
He eliminated options methodically. Physical combat talents were useless for fame acquisition in a civilized society. Artistic talents required years of development he did not have. Intellectual talents were redundant; he needed a proxy for what he could not do himself.
Then he saw it.
[Tactical Adaptation: Blue Tier]
[Function: Rapid situational analysis and response optimization in dynamic environments. Enhanced threat assessment and opportunity recognition.]
A talent for thinking quickly. For seeing paths where others saw obstacles. It aligned perfectly with the intended function: navigating complex social and physical environments to generate influence.
"Assign Tactical Adaptation as primary talent."
[Confirmed. Primary Talent: Tactical Adaptation]
The clone's ghost shimmered. Something subtle shifted in its posture, a readiness that had not been present before.
Now came the variable Anton had been considering since the system's earlier prompt. Dominant emotion. The instruction had been clear: selection recommended. Not required, but strongly suggested. The system was offering him the ability to shape the clone's psychological foundation.
Anton considered the options as he would consider moves in a game with undefined rules.
Ambition would drive the clone toward achievement, but might create independence too quickly. Pride would generate charisma, but also recklessness. Fear would create caution, but paralysis. Anger would generate drive, but poor judgment.
Calm, then. A foundation of measured response. The clone would not panic, would not rush, would assess before acting. It would be an extension of his own methodology, stripped of the hesitation that came from self-preservation.
"Assign Dominant Emotion: Calm."
[Confirmed. Dominant Emotion: Calm]
The effect was immediate. The clone's face lost the tension that had lingered around the eyes. Its shoulders settled. The breathing slowed, becoming deeper and more regular. It looked peaceful. Dangerously so.
Anton stood and approached the figure. He circled it, observing from angles. The projection followed his movement, head turning to track him, but the eyes remained unfocused. The simulation was limited, then. Sensory input but no processing. A body without a fully awakened mind.
"Test cognitive function," Anton said.
[Simulation Mode Restricts Higher Cognition]
[Full Activation Requires Influence Threshold]
As expected. The ghost was a template, a preview. He could examine the physical shell, test the basic parameters, but the consciousness remained dormant until he paid the price.
Anton reached out and touched the clone's shoulder. His hand passed through, meeting slight resistance, like pushing through thick water. Cold. Not quite solid.
"This is not me," Anton said quietly, studying the face that was not his own. "But it will do what I cannot. Yet."
He stepped back.
"End simulation."
The figure dissolved. Not fading, but collapsing inward, data retreating to whatever storage the system maintained. The room felt larger afterward.
Anton sat down at the desk and opened his notes again. He added new observations.
Clone Template: Kael Virex. Configuration stable. Talents integrate as predicted. Emotional baseline produces desirable behavioral parameters.
Constraint: Influence remains bottleneck. Cannot activate without significant social recognition. Must engineer scenario that generates rapid reputation accumulation without exposing connection to primary identity.
He looked at the tablet. The streaming application icon sat among the other programs, unremarkable. Eleven subscribers. A history of failure. But also a history of broadcasting, of digital presence, of infrastructure already established.
Too slow. He needed something faster. A single event that would imprint the name Kael Virex into public consciousness. A rescue, perhaps. A demonstration of capability in a moment of crisis. Or a competition, where talent could be displayed and shared.
Anton opened the local news feed. He scanned headlines with practiced speed, looking not for content but for opportunity. Industrial accidents. Public disturbances. Competitions with open enrollment.
Then he found it.
Annual District Skills Exhibition: Open Registration
Date: Seven days from present
Location: Central Plaza, Industrial Sector 4
Categories: Technical proficiency, emergency response simulation, tactical decision challenges.
The tactical decision category drew his attention. It was a public event, widely broadcast, attended by thousands. A demonstration of competence there would generate exactly the kind of recognition the system required. And with Kael's assigned talent...
Anton calculated. Seven days to prepare. Seven days to somehow get the clone from simulation to reality, to bypass the influence requirement through some method he had not yet discovered, or to generate enough preliminary recognition to meet the threshold.
He closed the news feed and looked at the empty space where the clone had stood.
"That will be your first trial," he said to the silence. "And mine."
Outside, the sun was setting. The industrial towers cast shadows that merged into a single darkness. Ships passed overhead, their lights bright against the darkening sky.
Anton began to plan in earnest. He wrote lists. He calculated resource requirements. He considered contingencies for discovery, for failure, for the system revealing constraints he had not anticipated.
Hours passed. The room grew dark except for the glow of the tablet. When his eyes grew tired, he switched to audio recordings, speaking his thoughts into the device's microphone, creating a record of his reasoning that he could review later for errors.
He did not sleep. Sleep was a luxury for those without deadlines.
Instead, he watched the city through the window, observing the patterns of movement, the rhythms of a world that did not know he existed. Soon, he would introduce them to Kael Virex. Soon, he would have his proxy.
But for now, he watched. And planned. And waited for the moment when a single borrowed life could become two, and the empty slot in the system could finally be filled.