The streets of Central City were calm, at least by the standards of a bustling metropolis where a man in red spandex could cross the city in three seconds flat. The early morning light reflected softly off wet asphalt, slick from last night's rain, and the hum of distant trams and streetcars provided a quiet rhythm to the city's heartbeat. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed—police, probably, chasing after some idiot who thought robbing a convenience store in the Flash's city was a viable career move.
Noah Graves pressed himself against the cold brick of an alleyway wall, hood drawn low over his face, eyes scanning the street beyond with the methodical patience of someone who had learned that hasty movements drew attention. At fifteen, he was small, slight, and vulnerable—the kind of kid people glanced at and then immediately forgot. That anonymity was his greatest asset.
He had survived a year on these streets.
Three hundred and forty-seven days, to be precise. He'd started counting after the first week, scratching marks into the inside cover of a water-damaged notebook he'd pulled from a dumpster behind a bookstore. The counting helped. It gave structure to days that otherwise blurred together into an endless cycle of scavenging, hiding, and moving.
The fire that claimed his parents had been ruled an accident. Faulty wiring in their apartment building, the report said. The building was old, the landlord had cut corners, and fourteen families lost everything. Three people died. Noah's parents were two of them.
He'd been at school when it happened.
By the time he got home, there was nothing left but smoke, yellow tape, and a social worker with kind eyes and a clipboard who kept saying words like "temporary placement" and "foster care" and "trauma counseling." Noah had nodded along, answered her questions, and signed the papers she put in front of him.
Then he'd run.
The orphanage—or "group home," as they preferred to call it—had too many rules, too many people watching, too much control taken from him. He'd lasted three days before he understood the fundamental truth: in a system designed to process vulnerable children, individuality was a liability. Compliance was rewarded. Questions were discouraged. And nobody, nobody, actually cared what happened to you as long as the paperwork was filed correctly.
Life on the streets was chaotic, yes, but it had a clarity the system lacked. Observation mattered. Timing mattered. Patience mattered. And action—decisive, calculated action—mattered more than courage or hope or any of the other comforting lies adults told children.
Noah shifted his weight, feeling the cold seep through his worn jacket. February in Central City wasn't as brutal as February in Gotham—he'd heard horror stories from other street kids about that frozen hellhole—but it was cold enough. His breath misted in the morning air as he watched a delivery truck rumble past, its driver half-asleep behind the wheel.
Target of opportunity, a distant part of his mind whispered. Truck's moving slow. Driver's distracted. Cargo door's not fully secured. High-value electronics, probably, based on the company logo. Risk: moderate. Reward: potentially significant.
He dismissed the thought immediately. Too risky. Too visible. The Flash didn't patrol every street, but you never knew when he'd zip by, and Noah had seen what happened to people who got caught stealing in this city. The police were almost gentle compared to what some of the local rogues did to "competition."
Besides, he wasn't a thief. Not really. He borrowed things—things people had thrown away, discarded, deemed worthless. There was a difference, even if the law didn't recognize it.
A faint vibration began in the back of his mind.
At first, Noah thought it was exhaustion. He'd been awake for almost thirty hours, ever since the close call two nights ago when a pair of thugs had chased him out of what they'd claimed was "their" territory. Sleep was dangerous; sleep made you vulnerable. Better to stay awake, stay moving, stay alert.
But this wasn't exhaustion. This was something else.
The vibration intensified—a cold, precise pulse, almost like a machine waking after years of dormancy. It wasn't painful. It wasn't even uncomfortable. It was just... there. Present. Observing. Measuring.
Noah's heart rate spiked. His first instinct was to run, but he forced himself to stay still, to breathe slowly, to think. Panic clouded judgment. Panic got you killed.
The pulse grew stronger, and with it came... awareness. Not words, exactly. Not a voice. But a framework, a structure, something vast and intricate and impossibly complex, like a blueprint for a machine he couldn't quite see.
And then, as clearly as if someone had written it on the brick wall in front of him, text appeared in his vision:
[MECHANICAL EMPEROR SYSTEM — ACTIVATION DETECTED]
Noah froze.
His breath caught in his throat. His hands clenched into fists. Every instinct he'd honed over the past year screamed at him that this was wrong, impossible, a hallucination brought on by hunger or cold or sleep deprivation.
But the text remained, hovering in his peripheral vision, crisp and clean and undeniably real.
[INITIALIZING USER PROFILE...]
[SCANNING COGNITIVE PATTERNS...]
[ANALYZING ENVIRONMENTAL DATA...]
Noah's mind raced. He'd read enough—comics, novels, web serials during stolen moments in public libraries—to recognize the tropes. A system. A game-like interface. The kind of thing protagonists got in stories about people transported to other worlds or given superpowers by mysterious entities.
But this wasn't a story. This was Central City. This was real life, where people bled and died and stayed dead, where fires burned down apartment buildings and left children orphaned, where heroes in bright costumes fought villains in garish masks and never noticed the collateral damage they left behind.
This wasn't supposed to happen. Not here. Not to him.
[USER PROFILE: NOAH GRAVES]
[AGE: 15]
[STATUS: UNAFFILIATED]
[THREAT LEVEL: NEGLIGIBLE]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY (30 DAYS): 34%]
Noah felt something cold settle in his chest. Thirty-four percent. Just over one in three odds that he'd survive the next month.
He'd known, on some level, that his situation was precarious. But seeing it quantified, reduced to a number, made it visceral in a way his own fears hadn't.
[ANALYZING SKILL SET...]
[DETECTING INHERENT TALENTS...]
[CALIBRATING PROGRESSION PATHWAYS...]
The text scrolled past, clinical and dispassionate, and Noah forced himself to focus. Fear was useless. Confusion was useless. What mattered was information—what this thing was, what it wanted, and whether it could help him survive.
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking slightly, whether from cold or adrenaline he couldn't tell. He flexed his fingers, watching the way the joints moved, the way the tendons shifted beneath pale skin.
Fragments of memory surfaced, sudden and disorienting. Cold metal in his hands. The smell of oil and heated circuitry. Pages of schematics, dense with notation he somehow understood. The satisfying click of components sliding into place. Tools—wrenches, screwdrivers, wire cutters—bending to his will, extensions of his intent.
But those weren't his memories. They couldn't be. He'd never worked with machinery beyond the basics—fixing a broken lamp, replacing batteries in a flashlight, that sort of thing. Nothing that would explain the vivid clarity of these images.
[MEMORY INTEGRATION: INCOMPLETE]
[ORIGIN: CLASSIFIED]
[ADVISORY: DATA FRAGMENTATION MAY CAUSE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE]
[RECOMMENDATION: GRADUAL ASSIMILATION THROUGH PRACTICAL APPLICATION]
Noah's jaw clenched. The System—because that's what it clearly was—offered no explanations, no context, no tutorial. Just observations and recommendations, delivered in the same flat, analytical tone.
Fine. He could work with that. He'd been working without guidance for a year. At least now he had... something. A framework. A measuring stick.
He crouched low and scanned the alley. Trash bins overflowing with garbage. A stack of broken pallets. A rusted shopping cart missing two wheels. And there, half-buried beneath a pile of rotting cardboard—a bent metal rod, maybe two feet long, probably from a shelving unit or a bed frame.
Noah reached for it, brushing away the grime, and the moment his fingers closed around the metal, the pulse in his mind surged.
[TALENT DETECTED: MECHANICAL AFFINITY — LEVEL 1]
[INNATE UNDERSTANDING OF MECHANICAL SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY]
Noah turned the rod over in his hands. It was bent at a forty-degree angle about a third of the way down, and one end was ragged where it had been broken off from whatever it was originally attached to. Useless to most people. Just scrap.
But as he examined it, his mind began cataloging possibilities. Straighten it out, and it could be a pry bar. Keep the bend, and it was a hook for pulling things out of reach. Sharpen one end, and it became a crude weapon. Attach it to a longer shaft, and you had leverage for moving heavy objects.
Every adjustment felt natural, as if his hands knew what to do before his conscious mind caught up.
[SKILL UNLOCKED: TOOL MASTERY — LEVEL 1]
[SKILL UNLOCKED: STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS — LEVEL 1]
Noah exhaled slowly. The text faded from his vision, but the awareness remained—a quiet presence in the back of his mind, observing, cataloging, waiting.
He stood, the metal rod gripped loosely in one hand, and looked out at the city. The sun was climbing higher now, burning off the morning mist, and Central City was waking up. Cars honked. Pedestrians hurried past the alley mouth. Someone laughed. Someone else shouted. The world continued, indifferent to the fifteen-year-old boy standing in the shadows with a bent piece of scrap metal and a system in his head.
Noah had survived a year on these streets by being careful, observant, and patient. Those skills had kept him alive. But they weren't enough—not long term. The System's assessment had made that clear. Thirty-four percent survival rate.
He needed an edge. And now, maybe, he had one.
But edges could cut both ways. He needed to understand this System, learn its rules, figure out what it wanted from him—if it wanted anything at all.
Noah glanced down at the metal rod again, then at the alley around him. Tools. Materials. Components. Everything was data. Everything had potential.
He allowed himself a small, tight smile.
"Alright," he murmured to the empty air. "Let's see what you can do."
Discovery Through Experimentation
The next three hours passed in a blur of focused activity.
Noah moved through the alley network with the practiced ease of someone who had memorized every turn, every dead end, every hidden alcove. He knew which dumpsters were emptied on which days, which businesses threw out the best scrap, which rooftops offered the clearest views of approaching danger.
His territory—because that's what it had become, even if he'd never consciously claimed it—was a six-block radius centered on the intersection of Infantino and Fox. Not prime real estate. No high-end shops, no tech companies, no places worth robbing. Just aging apartment buildings, mom-and-pop stores barely hanging on, and the occasional warehouse conversion that never quite got finished.
Perfect for staying invisible.
Noah's first stop was behind Maroni's Auto Repair, where the owner—a gruff man with oil-stained hands and a perpetual scowl—tossed broken parts into an unsecured dumpster every Friday. It was Saturday morning, which meant fresh salvage.
Noah climbed onto a crate and peered into the dumpster. Jackpot. Broken ratchets, stripped screws, lengths of electrical wire with frayed insulation, a cracked car battery, and—yes—a small circuit board from what looked like a car stereo.
He reached in carefully, avoiding the sharper edges, and pulled out the circuit board. It was damaged, half the connections severed, but the components themselves looked intact. Capacitors, resistors, maybe even a functioning transistor or two.
[STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS ACTIVE]
[COMPONENT SALVAGE POTENTIAL: MODERATE]
[WARNING: CAPACITORS MAY RETAIN CHARGE]
Noah turned the board over, examining the solder points. He didn't have the tools to desolder individual components—not yet—but if he could find a way to heat the board without damaging the parts...
He pocketed the circuit board and continued scavenging. Wire—always useful. A set of Allen wrenches with only two missing. A length of sturdy nylon rope, probably from a construction site. A battered tin of assorted screws and bolts.
Every item went into his backpack, and with each addition, the System pulsed faint acknowledgment.
[SKILL GROWTH: OBSERVATION +1]
His second stop was the construction site three blocks over. Technically, it was off-limits, surrounded by chain-link fencing with "NO TRESPASSING" signs every few yards. But the fence had a gap near the northwest corner where someone had cut the links, and the security guard only did rounds twice a day—morning and evening.
Noah slipped through the gap and moved quickly through the half-finished building. Concrete floors, exposed rebar, stacks of lumber covered by weather-stained tarps. The construction crew had been gone for weeks—funding issues, he'd overheard—which meant anything left behind was fair game.
He found what he was looking for near the loading area: a pile of discarded metal brackets, the kind used to reinforce joints in framing. They were bent and dented, deemed unusable by whatever standards construction workers operated under, but to Noah they were perfect.
He selected three of the sturdiest brackets and added them to his pack.
[SKILL GROWTH: THIEVERY +1]
Noah froze. Thievery. The System was cataloging his actions, categorizing them, quantifying them. He felt a brief flash of something—shame? Guilt? But it passed quickly. He wasn't stealing from people. He was salvaging waste. There was a difference.
Or maybe there wasn't, and he was just rationalizing. Either way, it didn't change what he needed to do.
He left the construction site as quietly as he'd entered and made his way back to his current shelter—an abandoned maintenance shed behind a shuttered textile factory. The shed was cramped, barely eight feet by ten, but it had a roof that didn't leak and a door with a functioning lock that Noah had replaced himself.
He set his backpack down, pulled out the salvaged items, and spread them across the cracked concrete floor. Metal rod. Circuit board. Wire. Brackets. Screws. Rope.
Individually, they were junk. Together, with the right application of effort and ingenuity, they could be... something.
Noah picked up the metal rod again, testing its weight and balance. The bend was still problematic. If he wanted to use it as a pry bar, it needed to be straight. But how do you straighten metal without proper tools?
Heat. Apply heat to the bend point, and the metal would become malleable. But he didn't have a torch, and building a fire in the shed was suicidal.
Unless...
Noah's gaze fell on the cracked car battery. Batteries stored electrical energy. If he could short-circuit the battery in a controlled way, generate enough heat at a specific point...
Dangerous. Extremely dangerous. Batteries could explode if mishandled, and the fumes alone could be toxic in an enclosed space.
But.
[SKILL FUSION DETECTED]
[THIEVERY + OBSERVATION → FIELDCRAFT: LEVEL 1]
[TACTICAL AWARENESS IN DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENTS]
Fieldcraft. Noah rolled the word around in his mind. It fit. The System was recognizing that his skills weren't isolated—they complemented each other, creating something greater than the sum of their parts.
He made a decision. He'd attempt the battery heating technique, but outside, away from anything flammable, with an escape route planned. Fieldcraft meant understanding risk. It didn't mean avoiding risk entirely—that was impossible. It meant managing risk, controlling it, staying three steps ahead.
Noah gathered the rod, the battery, and a length of wire, and headed back outside.
First Success, First Lesson
The process took forty-five minutes and resulted in three near-disasters, a minor burn on his left hand, and a working pry bar.
Noah had used the wire to create a short circuit across the battery terminals, generating enough heat to soften the metal at the bend point. Then, using two of the metal brackets as improvised clamps, he'd carefully straightened the rod, holding it in place until the metal cooled.
The result wasn't perfect—there was still a slight warp about halfway down—but it was functional. He tested it against the maintenance shed door frame, and the metal held firm.
[SKILL GROWTH: IMPROVISED REPAIR +3]
[SKILL GROWTH: STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS +2]
[SKILL GROWTH: TOOL MASTERY +2]
Then:
[WARNING: RECKLESS ACTIONS MAY RESULT IN INJURY OR DEATH]
[ADVISORY: SYSTEM DOES NOT PREVENT USER ERROR]
Noah stared at that last line. System does not prevent user error. Of course it didn't. This wasn't a game where death meant respawning at a checkpoint. This was real life, and mistakes had consequences.
He looked down at the burn on his hand—a red welt about an inch long where he'd touched the heated wire. It throbbed dully, and the skin was already starting to blister. He'd need to clean it, bandage it, keep an eye on it for infection.
Lesson learned: respect the tools. Respect the materials. Respect the process.
Noah wrapped the pry bar in a strip of cloth to protect his hands and added it to his pack. One tool completed. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
The sun was past its zenith now, early afternoon settling over the city. Noah's stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since yesterday. Food first, then more experimentation.
He made his way to one of his usual spots—a family-run deli on Broome Street where the owner's daughter sometimes slipped him day-old sandwiches through the back door. Her name was Sofia, and she was maybe nineteen, with dark curls and kind eyes that reminded Noah painfully of his mother.
He knocked three times, paused, then knocked twice more—their signal.
The door opened, and Sofia appeared, holding a paper bag. "You look terrible," she said without preamble.
"Thanks," Noah replied. "You're a real confidence booster."
She snorted and thrust the bag at him. "Roast beef on rye. Pickle on the side. My dad made too many again." This was a lie—her father never made too many—but it was the lie they both pretended to believe.
"Tell him thanks," Noah said.
"Tell him yourself sometime." Sofia's expression softened. "You can't keep doing this, you know. Living out here. You're going to get hurt."
"I'm careful."
"That's not the same as being safe."
Noah didn't have an answer for that, so he just nodded. Sofia sighed, shook her head, and closed the door. The lock clicked into place, and Noah was alone again.
He found a relatively clean spot in a nearby alley, sat with his back against the wall, and unwrapped the sandwich. Roast beef, still slightly warm, with fresh bread and just enough horseradish to make his eyes water. He ate slowly, savoring every bite, and tried not to think about the fact that Sofia's small kindness was one of the only things keeping him going.
The System pulsed once, briefly:
[NUTRITION STATUS: ADEQUATE]
Noah finished the sandwich, drank from a water bottle he'd refilled at a public fountain that morning, and allowed himself five minutes of rest.
Then he got back to work.
Evening: The Notebook
By the time the sun began its descent toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple, Noah had returned to the maintenance shed with three additional salvaged components: a broken multimeter, a spool of copper wire, and a small electric motor from what looked like a toy car.
He spread everything out again, creating an inventory on the shed floor. Then he pulled out his most valuable possession—a battered spiral notebook with water stains on the cover and pages filled with cramped handwriting and crude sketches.
Noah flipped to a blank page and began drawing.
First: the pry bar. He sketched its dimensions, noted the warp in the metal, calculated approximate leverage ratios. Not precise—he didn't have the tools or knowledge for true engineering—but close enough.
Second: a simple pulley system. If he could attach the rope to an overhead anchor point and thread it through one of the metal brackets, he could move objects much heavier than he could lift directly. Mechanical advantage. Basic physics.
Third: a crude alarm system. Wire the electric motor to a simple circuit with the circuit board acting as a switch. If someone opened the shed door without disarming the mechanism first, the motor would activate and—what? Make noise? Flash a light?
Noah frowned. The concept was sound, but the execution needed work. He didn't have a power source beyond the damaged car battery, and using that for an alarm was wasteful. He'd need to find...
[SKILL FUSION DETECTED]
[TOOL MASTERY + IMPROVISED REPAIR → ENGINEERING APTITUDE: LEVEL 1]
[FOUNDATIONAL MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRINCIPLES]
Noah's hand stilled on the page. Engineering Aptitude. That was... significant. That was the foundation of everything he'd been working toward without consciously realizing it.
He looked down at his sketches with new eyes. They were crude, yes, but they showed understanding. He grasped the underlying principles—leverage, force distribution, energy conversion. With practice, with better materials, with time, he could build things that actually mattered.
The System pulsed again:
[CLASS ASSESSMENT COMPLETE]
[CURRENT CLASS: APPRENTICE MECHANIC]
[PROGRESSION PATH IDENTIFIED: MECHANIC]
[REQUIREMENTS FOR BEGINNER MECHANIC:]
— INT: 21+ (CURRENT: 20)
— ENGINEERING APTITUDE: LEVEL 3+ (CURRENT: LEVEL 1)
— CREATE 3 FUNCTIONAL MECHANICAL DEVICES (CURRENT: 1)
— SUCCESSFULLY APPLY MECHANICAL KNOWLEDGE IN PRACTICAL SCENARIO (CURRENT: 0)
Apprentice Mechanic. The first rung on the ladder. Noah felt something unfamiliar stir in his chest—not quite hope, not quite pride. Determination, maybe. Or validation.
He had a path forward. Clear. Measurable. Achievable.
He spent the next two hours filling the notebook with sketches, calculations, and notes. He drew variations of the pulley system, considered ways to reinforce the shed's door, designed a simple lever-based lock mechanism. Every idea was recorded, evaluated, refined.
[SKILL GROWTH: ENGINEERING APTITUDE +1]
[SKILL GROWTH: STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS +1]
The light faded as night fell over Central City. Noah lit a small candle—another salvaged item—and continued working by its flickering glow. Outside, the city came alive with different sounds: music from a nearby bar, the distant wail of sirens, the rumble of cars passing on the main road.
Noah barely noticed. His world had narrowed to the notebook, the sketches, the possibilities spinning out in his mind like threads waiting to be woven into something tangible.
He was still a child. Still vulnerable. Still living moment to moment with a thirty-four percent chance of surviving the next month.
But now he had a System. He had talent. He had skills that were growing, fusing, evolving into something more.
And he had a plan.
Late Night: Reflection and Resolve
Noah extinguished the candle around midnight and sat in darkness, listening to the city breathe.
His hand throbbed where the burn had blistered. His back ached from hours spent hunched over the notebook. His eyes were gritty with exhaustion, and he knew he needed sleep—real sleep, not the fitful half-dozing that usually passed for rest.
But his mind wouldn't quiet.
He thought about the fire. About his parents. About the social worker's kind eyes and the group home's sterile walls. About the year he'd spent surviving, scavenging, staying one step ahead of hunger and cold and the casual violence that permeated the city's forgotten corners.
He thought about the delivery truck that morning, and how easy it would have been to steal something valuable. About the risks he'd taken with the battery, and how close he'd come to serious injury. About Sofia's worried expression and her warning: You're going to get hurt.
She was probably right. The System certainly seemed to think so—thirty-four percent survival rate.
But what was the alternative? Return to the system that had failed him? Trust adults who saw children as problems to be processed rather than people to be protected? Wait for someone to rescue him when experience had taught him that rescue never came?
No.
Noah had made his choice a year ago when he'd run from the group home. He'd chosen autonomy over security, risk over compliance, isolation over dependence.
And now, with the System, he had a chance to make that choice work.
He pulled up the status panel in his mind—another feature he'd discovered through experimentation. The information arranged itself cleanly:
[STATUS PANEL — NOAH GRAVES]
CLASS: Apprentice Mechanic
LEVEL: 1
AGE: 15
LOCATION: Central City — Textile District
TALENTS:
Mechanical Affinity (Level 1)
SKILLS:
Tool Mastery (Level 3) Structural Analysis (Level 4) Improvised Repair (Level 3) Thievery (Level 2) Observation (Level 3) Fieldcraft [Thievery + Observation] (Level 1) Engineering Aptitude [Tool Mastery + Improvised Repair] (Level 2)
ATTRIBUTES:
INT (Intelligence): 20/50 DEX (Dexterity): 12/50 STR (Strength): 10/50 PER (Perception): 14/50 CON (Constitution): 11/50
STATUS EFFECTS:
Minor Burn (Left Hand) — Healing Malnourished — Chronic Fatigued — Moderate
SURVIVAL PROBABILITY (30 DAYS): 36% (+2%)
Noah focused on that last line. Thirty-six percent. Two percentage points higher than this morning.
One day of work. One day of learning. One day of building skills and gathering resources, and his chances had improved—marginally, but measurably.
If he could gain two percent in a day, what could he achieve in a week? A month? A year?
The path wouldn't be easy. He'd have to be smart, careful, patient. He'd have to take risks without being reckless, push himself without breaking. He'd have to learn when to act and when to hide, when to fight and when to run.
But he could do it. The System had shown him that much. It didn't offer guidance, didn't hold his hand, didn't make anything easy—but it measured progress. It rewarded creativity. It acknowledged growth.
And growth was all he needed.
Noah lay down on the thin blanket he'd spread over the concrete floor, using his backpack as a pillow. The shed was cold, and the floor was hard, but he'd slept in worse places. His body was exhausted, but his mind was clear.
Tomorrow, he'd continue. He'd build the pulley system. He'd find a power source for the alarm. He'd practice with the pry bar until its use became instinctive. He'd fill more pages in the notebook, sketch more designs, test more theories.
One day at a time. One skill at a time. One percentage point at a time.
The fire had taken his parents. The streets had taught him survival. The System had given him potential.
And Noah Graves—fifteen years old, orphaned, alone, but no longer helpless—would use every advantage to grow, adapt, and survive.
One day, he'd be more than just a street kid scrambling for scraps.
One day, he'd be free.
But first, he had to make it through tomorrow.
Noah closed his eyes, and for the first time in weeks, sleep came easily.
[SYSTEM LOG — DAY 1 SUMMARY]
USER: NOAH GRAVES
CLASS: APPRENTICE MECHANIC — LEVEL 1
PROGRESS SUMMARY:
Talents Discovered: 1 Skills Unlocked: 7 Skill Fusions: 2 Functional Devices Created: 1 Survival Probability Change: +2%
BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT:
Risk Management: Acceptable Creativity: Above Average Adaptability: High Recklessness Index: Low Learning Curve: Steep
PROJECTION: At current trajectory, user will achieve Beginner Mechanic status within 30-45 days. Physical limitations remain primary constraint. Recommend gradual attribute improvement through practical application. Meta-human encounters: 0. Probability of premature termination: Decreased.
ADVISORY: User demonstrates appropriate caution and methodical planning. System will continue passive observation. No intervention required or planned.
STATUS: Progression continues.
[END CHAPTER 1]