Beth knew finding Pete was going to be difficult. After all it wasn’t like travelling to another planet on the hunt for a single person would ever be easy. But she was sure she could handle it. She was level 5, had lots of Credits and was competent in combat if needed. She considered running a Sponsored Trial to get somebody to bring him back but decided it needed a more delicate touch than that could offer. On the other hand she was sure she would be able to find him and so wasn’t willing to waste the credits on somebody to hunt him down. She was sure even if it took a while she would find him without all to much stress. She didn’t quite know how she would convince him to come come but she was sure that if he knew she missed him and wanted him to come home he’d return with her. If not, she would worry about it once she got there.

First though she had to work out how to find him, but again that should be fairly easy, she had the same option she had every other time. Unlocking a new skill, something she relied on time and time again. In theory she was aware most people familiar with the system focused on a smaller collection of skills, each carefully chosen ahead of time. But Beth didn’t have that ability to plan so far ahead. She needed skills as and when they were useful to her life. Plus she had an added advantage the others didn’t providing what she hoped would be constant flexibility. Even if it meant most of her skills would remain at a lower level.

It was fortunately the day of the Trial something Beth was thankful for. She made a quick mental list of what she needed to do. She wasn’t in a huge rush, after all Pete was unlikely to be going anywhere and was assumedly content enough with where he had ended up. She had no illusions that this would be a short trip. As such she’d want to properly say goodbye to her mum, especially given she had disappeared for several months relatively recently. She considered delaying further and heading across to Newcastle again in an attempt to get even more Credits. After all she had new options and it was going to be at least a 60 Credit round trip. Plus she imagined she would take several more Trials in the mean time. In the end though she decided the time delay would out way the benefits there was a difference between not dropping everything to give chase and taking large detours before pursuing Pete. Especially if he had already been gone for multiple months.

She considered sending another letter to Steve or even visiting and saying hello but then remembered how they left things. After all he had turned his back on the system and Beth very much felt that in doing so he had also turned his back on her. Not that she needed him anyway. She had her mum and Pete and Harri and even Harri’s family. She started the thought of how most of those people weren’t even on the same planet as her but she shut that thought down before she could get bogged down in it’s consequences.

Having gotten the hang of how to influence the theming of the Trials Beth was unsurprised but still happy when she arrived and the relevant skill was just what she was looking for.

Trial: Social Tracking (uncommon) 1

Using whatever clues you can find, deduce where “Arnold Ward” can currently be found.

Time Limit: 2 hours

Two hours was a timeline Beth could very much work with. Or at least she hoped she could. After all her other skills wouldn’t prove that helpful but she certainly couldn’t afford to have to wait another full month. She needed to absolutely bare minimum pass the third Trial. But there was no sense planned for failure. She swept the screen aside and began to look around.

She was in a bedroom, or at least a room resembling a bedroom. It reminded Beth of Harri’s bedroom. That is to say it was an absolute tip. Clothes everywhere, bin overflowing, papers thrown haphazardly on the desk. The kind of thing that would have Suzanne rolling in her grave if she were there, and dead.

Beth began to tidy the messy space sorting through it as she went. She started with the clothes. That was fairly easy. After all she didn’t particularly have to care exactly where they went. She assumed they were all dirty and having identified what she assumed was a laundry hamper began to chuck the clothes into it, pausing only to check the pockets as she went through. This revealed some coins that Beth pocketed, after all she’d received money from Trials before. More excitingly though she found several receipts that she hoped would point her in the right direction. Not having anywhere clear to assemble her clues she also set about making the bed giving her a flat clean surface for her finds. Reaching for the pillows in an attempt to straighten and plumped them revealed a small nondescript book underneath them. She excitedly grabbed it and added it to the pile.

Having sorted all the clothes the room was much easier to navigate. She grabbed the bin bag from the small overflowing bin and in what might have seemed a counter intuitive move upended it onto the ground. Then she quickly began to refill it with things she knew wouldn’t be relevant. It was a little gross but Beth was far from squirm-ish. Unfortunately it hadn’t been quite as fruitful as the rest of the cleaning so far had been. She ended up binning everything again as well as the rubbish that covered the floor the bag having more space now it had been removed from the bin. It was mostly food wrappers and other packaging, as well as some clearly ripped shorts. This got the room looking much more respectable and if Beth had been in a cleaning Trial she would be very happy with her progress. Unfortunately for her she wasn’t. Instead she was half an hour down without having even confirmed that the person she was looking for was the owner of the room. None-the-less she felt like she’d made some progress and sat herself down at the desk. There she quickly piled the sheets into organised piles and began to skim them. Quickly splitting them into irrelevant, possibly relevant and definitely relevant. She was relieved to find multiple letters addressed to Arnold Ward confirming she hadn’t been wasting her time. Most of the papers had random scrawlings or loose numbers that didn’t mean anything to Beth. Nor did she imagine they were meant to. Other letters looked much more promising, shopping lists, bank statements and other printouts that actually contained information that Beth could understand even if it was still lacking context. She even found a tear away calendar. The dates weren’t any that she was familiar with but it at least gave her context and gave her the possibility of creating a timeline of events. Obviously the context of the Trial wasn’t Earth which meant she wouldn’t exactly be able to rely on her own context. If a letter said she had gone north or something similar she wouldn’t exactly be able to put a label on where that would be. However she hadn’t come across any Trials so far she would outright label as unfair and so she was sure that everything she needed to know would be within the room. At least she really hoped it would be. She did notice there wasn’t any technology she wasn’t familiar enough with to understand. From the way Harri talked about online communication there was a whole world of social tracking that was directly related to that but given that Beth would have had less to no idea where to start with that she was glad it wasn’t included.

Having collected what she hoped was all the resources she would need to to track this Arnold Ward

Beth picked up the thin book, feeling optimistic about it’s contents. Unfortunately that hope was misplaced as it was a dream diary and was filled with nonsense stories. She flicked through it anyway but nothing jumped out beyond acknowledgement of his generally scratchy handwriting. She refused to get sucked in though and put it back onto the pillow. Out of her way. After all she hadn’t decided how real these scenarios were and if this had been her room she would want things at least vaguely in the right place if it had been invaded. Not that the idea of somebody she didn’t know going through her stuff gave her anything but a sense of dread. She resolved to tidy a bit more aggressively going forward, just in case. She turned back to the receipts, she knew that had been a stretch but she proved correct when she inspected them. One was for a bag and towels and the other was for swimming trunks. She did a quick further look around the room and nothing matched the items described. She looked through the papers she had labelled as possibly important and finding what appeared to be a list of purchases she found one referring to a Lakeside lodge. The type of place Beth imagined you would need new swimming trunks. Unfortunately there was no confirmation of the dates they would be away. At least not on that sheet. Thinking through the clothes Beth had tidied away they matched the type of clothes you would consider taking on such a trip. The bed had also been kept clear as a surprise given the other surfaces. Unless of course you considered that a large bag had been sat there before he left. Beth still had 40 minutes and wasn’t willing to rush on something so urgent. A couple minutes saved in the moment weren’t worth the potential month lost if she got it wrong. Sure enough the evidence she found in the remaining time only backed up her suspicions. At least the evidence she put weigh in did. She managed to find a name of the local lake. and something describing a potential holiday for the date in a calender that was hung on the inside of the cupboard. It didn’t have the current date on it and was filled with other activities but based off the tearaway desk calender Beth was fairly confident in that decision. Plus the few documents that were dated were all from prior to that point. Before ending Beth slide the diary back.

Sure enough she spoke her answer into the obvious mic and sure enough she proved correct. She had hoped the Trial might reveal the clues she’d missed as she was sure there were numerous but instead it just popped the familiar pair of rifts. Having committed to her journey Beth continued forward to continue the challenges.

The next several Trials were all fairly varied and Beth would almost describe them as fun, or at the very least satisfying. A series of challenges that were self contained and didn’t remind her of the situation waiting at home for her. She confidently pushed herself through 8 more Trials, making decisive decisions based on the evidence. Sometimes there were people she had to talk to as part of it which she found peculiar. Obviously, she had interacted with people before in Trials, but these were the first people who seemed ot be playing a role, or at least Beth imagined it was a role. Otherwise, it was just that they If they were actors hired in they were very good. Maybe it was a joint Trial, they had to be authentic and believable while Beth was doing her own thing. She really couldn’t be sure and it bothered her much more than she would have cared to admit. She hated not knowing any answers. IF they were actors they didn’t have a name tag above their head. In fact none of the Trials or tracking she had to complete had any reference to the system as it existed or to Trials. It was like she was looking at snapshots from before that occurred. No reference to the type of abilities the Trials offered either. Everything was as Beth would expect a competent relatively fit person to be able to achieve.

Beth had unfortunately decided to retire from the attempts before attempting the Trial that would take her across the line to level two. She hadn’t found the 9th Trial anything approaching easy and had more made an educated guess than anything based on concrete evidence like the previous attempts.

She reasoned she had the ability she needed and she could always push it further at literally anytime. She’d been informed all Trials completed are invalidated if one is failed within the same process. Tem had heavily implied death was all that waited if you failed, something that had more than made an impression on Beth even if she was now convinced it was a slight miscommunication. But it wasn’t like she had the ability to go back and ask them, Beth had a list of things almost a mile long she would ask Tem if she ever had the chance, something she was 99% sure she would never actually get. Feeling a little remorseful she couldn’t push further she headed out back to Leeds.