When Charlotte finally climbed up to her room, she smiled seeing the numbers the screen of her desktop displayed. She had duplicated yesterday’s value, being close to 40 thousand Gers.

“Really, it was so easy, I guess after I finish this job I’ll stop working forever.” She smiled in pleasure.

She didn’t want to quit her current job for two simple reasons. First, she needed to monitor the progress Necox was making to be prepared for any anomaly. And second, Laurent was lending her another laptop!

Sure, she now had enough to buy another one, but she would need to withdraw it from the stock market, making some loss in the process. She wanted to get some more funds if possible.

The question now was if she should heighten the human factor or not. In one side she had gathered a lot in just two days, on the other was the illegality of her acts.

Hmm, it’s better to always stay on the safer side of the spectrum.

Arriving at that point, she augmented the ‘human’ part to 90% of its original value.

“I hope it’s high enough to avoid being noticed by the government."

After readjusting it, she continued to try to comprehend the results she had previously gotten from her desktop, the batch that started this race she called the making of the machine.

It was something she had to do, after all she had seen something out of normal there:

For it to work, there was needed five forces of nature.

As far as she knew, there were only four forces making up everything on the universe. The most tricky thing was that the fifth one made it all to connect and work together in harmony, as if it was a director telling the players in an orchestra how to play their instruments.

What could it be… How to prove or deny it.

This was something that had been bothering her a lot for the last few weeks. Even then, in theory, her machine would work without causing any problem, as if there was nothing wrong with it. Taking this ‘new’ force out of the equation, the machine would work, though it would be useless and would not make anything.

It would be solely a machine without function.

Not being able to answer, nor make heads or tails of it after an hour of research, she went to the good ol’ net.

On there she typed: “The fifth force of nature”

She found that there had been scientists claiming that they’ve found traces of a fifth force that could, possibly, unite physics, but no one ever made any progress on its interaction with other matter and how it was supposed to behave.

Aside from the speculative and random findings of this force, she found a lot of mysticism and spiritism articles, claiming that it was the spirit and what not.

What to I make out of it…

She was truly at a loss on the direction she should take, so she started to read everything she found, an activity she did for a few hours. When it was close to eleven in the evening, she went to sleep.

All week went on without a hitch, she continued to investigate what that mysterious force of nature was without any good insight. As for the stocks, she made another increase of 30%.

It was now Friday. She and her teammates were in the shared building’s hall where Treller resided. They were making this week’s shared report. Her team had come to a halt, every time they found a possible lead, it was branched into so many forks it was impossible to follow. At least with what they had found.

She didn’t know how the two other teams were doing as it was not something she could track on the net, but she believed it was not much different. If they wanted to find something related this way, though a lot faster than with what the rest of the teams were doing, it would take a month or some more.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m sad to inform you that we’ve reached somewhat of an impasse. I’d like to thank everyone who has helped us this time, we’re going to pay you all depending on what you did and stop this now.”

Dunn Frousher said when every team leader finished their weekly report. He had a tired face and disheveled hair.

Charlotte’s team was the only one who would continue working, something she didn’t understand looking at the results.

Did some team make a progress?

She started to feel restless, it was hard to guess why they were keeping her team working on this dead project.

A staff member approached them when Dunn was finishing his speech and giving props to everyone. The staff member told her team that they were doing a reunion afterwards with them so they must stay.

After the meeting was over, Charlotte and her teammates went to the 10th floor where Treller Corporation was. They owned all the floor and there were more than 100 people working in cubicles. Being led by Dunn, they entered a meeting room larger than the one she had visited in the past for her interview.

Once they all took a seat, another man entered the room, he was tall, wore a black suit with a red tie and had squared glasses. He looked dignified and had a face which spoke of his experience. He was well built despite his age. His hair was totally white and he had wrinkles all over his face.

“Hello guys, how are you doing. You might not know me, I’m the president of Treller Corporation and branch manager of Necox here in Monnimoyes, Armand Droulin. As you know, someone from Abergia made a breakthrough in looking for this hacker, his name is Aber Fake. He will be looking at your work as your new boss.”

Armand spoke with a voice so mellow it didn’t leave any doubt to what he was saying. Charlotte felt that she could listen to his voice all day and wouldn’t need anything else…

No! I need to be careful with this kind of guy!

“Excuse me sir, why will we keep doing this? I thought we arrived at some point where it’s impossible to continue.” Charlotte voiced her concerns as she truly felt that what they were doing was unnecessary.

Armand looked at her while showing a calm expression and keeping on his face a small smile.

“Miss Charlotte, yes. I must agree with your point of view if we only saw what you guys have done.”

“Then, do you mean that there was some progress in other areas?”

“Indeed, I’ve not been informed about what exactly was found nor its means, but Mr. Fake will tell you all what you need to know. As for your wages, you’ll be getting double of what was agreed before, if you want to continue, that is.”

“This is great!” “I’m all in.”

Said two of her teammates, she rolled her eyes and stayed silent in thought.

If we’re continuing, then that means we’re gonna be told about Paversia… It could be dangerous to get involved directly. I should refrain but I also need to know how’s it going…

As she was thinking, the other 4 members of her team had agreed to continue the investigation without much thought. They were discussing how they would be contacting the new boss of them.

“Uhm, sir?” Charlotte said while raising her hand.

The room quieted down as Armand looked at her with tranquil eyes.

“Yes? Do you have anything in mind? Please tell us so we can improve our performance.”

“Eh, no, it’s not like that. I was thinking, I want to forfeit this job.”

“Oh? Will I be allowed to know the reason?”

He looked quite interested in her decision, from what he could tell, the terms were good and the wages were attractive enough for anyone to accept the job.

“Erm, right now I’m helping a friend of mine in some other project, and it’s getting to my sleep… From what I understood just now, it’s going to be harder and will consume much of my time to keep the pace.”

“Harder and much of your time? I see… What makes you think that?”

“The increase in wages, well, it’s too much. Also, I don’t even have a degree to back me up so I think I’d be dead weight to the others.”

Charlotte talked while looking down, trying to come with whatever excuse she could think of, so there wouldn’t be any suspicion from her leaving the team.

“That’s not true! You’re one of the fastest workers I’ve met, heck, you’re faster than me!”

Laurent said with good intentions, trying to improve her image to Armand and to herself. Meanwhile Charlotte…

This fuc*er! Let me leave alone! You can do whatever you want after you leave!

“Thanks, but I still think it’s too much to me.”

“I understand, it’s sad to have someone leave before even starting. Now, can you please exit the room? What we’ll be discussing is private,"He turned around and looked at the other man keeping them company. "Dunn, please show her out.”

“Yes, sir.” Answering with respect, he motioned to Charlotte for the exit.

They both went outside of the room and started walking, once they were getting close to the reception room, he said:

“Miss Charlotte, I’d like for you to sign this, it’s a contract of confidentiality. We don’t want this to be known to the public, specially the last part we discussed before you left.”

What’s it?

She wasn’t paying much attention at the end, so even without signing it she wouldn’t have anything to share.

“Uh, ok, no problems.”

She nodded and signed the contract. After the lest interaction she had with Dunn, she left the building. It was past noon and she had all day left to work on her things.

I now have funds to spare, I’ll start with the most problematic thing.

She looked at the various labs of the world that made complex material if given enough money. She found 4 that periodically worked with this kind of business.

And another one in Paversia… I’ll leave this as a last resort.

After getting their contact information ready, she sent the specifications of the matter and asked for the price and time it would take.

“Let’s wait for an answer.”

She then started to look for the unknown fifth force.

“Really, everything is so vague. Maybe trying this spirituality stuff is worthwhile? If it’s still a thing with so much technological things going around, it must have its reasons…”

Move the energy to stay healthy… Meditation… Points of energy of the body… So unscientific.

She found innumerable sources that said how it worked and what was good and what not. She couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing.

Even if there’re a lot of results, it’s no good if it cannot be observed.

“Well, now I don’t have anything to do until I get all the stuff I need, may as well try it, if it isn’t anything it’ll be a good experience I think.”

She found a book called ‘breath of the meridians’ and she started to read through it to kill time. Once she finished the first chapter, she couldn’t help but think of how stupid she was being.

If one could simply move energy by solely breathing then it could be revolutionary, but alas, no one has ever found solid evidence!

It was truly a wonder for her, though. And despite all her bad thoughts she continued to read through it, trying to find clues about to this fifth force.

When it was almost midnight, she stopped reading the book, she was almost at the middle of it. The book consisted of three parts as well as the introductory chapter she read first. She had finished the two first parts now.

The first one talked about meditation, on how with one’s breath they could move energy and what kind of breaths there were. The second one was about how one could influence others by breathing with some kind of purpose and how it was needed for the opposite party to be willing to accept that purpose.

The last part, though she hadn’t read it yet, was about the different meridians and how they interacted with each other. There were a total of 361 external points which could be influenced to change something in the body, along with other internal points which couldn’t be accessed directly but could be interacted with the help of the external ones.

“It’s a good point to finish on.”

She said when she saw the time. Looking at her AI, she felt satisfied as it had made some progress despite having augmented the ‘human’ part of it.

She went to sleep feeling proud and without worries.

A week went by in a flash, today she had gotten another answer, telling her that the material she was asking for was too complicated, it’d take a long time and money to make one kilogram of it, it was too problematic for her to shoulder that kind of money.

… Again! Do I need to be a millionaire or something?!

They told her that for do that kind of material she needed fifty thousand Gers, and to wait for a month. Truly, a material composed of 20 elements and needing it to be as pure as possible was hard, even with today’s scientific help.

*Fuu, fuuu

As she started to get hysterical, she remembered what she had read all this week: points of meditation and how to control yourself so you wouldn’t suffer of sickness. As well as to treat others in an acceptable way so you wouldn’t accumulate bad will, or karma as it was referred to.

She then started to meditate a little, or at least what she could gather from meditation.

She closed her eyes and concentrated her mind on her middle part of the body, just below her navel. Once she calmed herself, she realized her mind was much clearer.

Even if it’s unscientific, it truly has its merits.