Free Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) by Stephan Morse Page A

backyard laughing. At least talking to her was a good distraction from cleaning up this messy hull. Splitting my focus made straying from the handholds a bit iffy. I didn't want a warning bar to flash up and leave me torn between typing to Beth and diving for a handhold.
    Of course floating off into space would give me tons of time to talk. I could type things out happily until the surrounding abyss provided me a game over message. Maybe I would find a secret area.
    Hopefully, I could keep surviving. I had grown used to dodging and avoiding objects, but this body had nowhere near the same stats as Hermes in Continue. It was similar to the beach cleaning exercise I gave SweetPea as Carver.
    An absurdly quick moving object beeped into my awareness. Along with it was a tiny message in red going, 'Dodge'.
    "Ah!" My flat voice was swallowed up by the void of space. I managed to get around one rock and another started blinking in.
Elizabeth Legate : Well. I...know it's not something I should ask about. I, I don't want to see you in danger over it. I read that letter, the one with Auntie Xin's name on it. It doesn't make any sense, though. I've never heard of a quest that talks about dead people.
     
    Reading Beth's next message had to be put on the back burner. There were too many of these flying debris coming in.
    "Unit Hermes. Are you okay? Our sensors show a small debris field,." Treasure's dual voices came through from somewhere. Probably a radio or some robot people communication ability. "I would have warned you, but a new unit was arguing with me."
    "Ah!" I dodged another small black object. Piles of glop smacked into the hull and rolled around like snot streaking across.
Elizabeth Legate : Uncle Grant? Was it really from her? Like did she leave a message from the past or something?
     
    That would be a weird take on things. No worse than anything else. I didn't have much spare attention to respond to the next window in my way.
    "Unit Hermes? Be careful!" Treasure shouted with a strange calm.
    "Right!" I yelled. My response must have made it through to the gold themed [Mechanoid] . She said more words, but another item demanded attention. Something that looked like a small black raptor with an extra set of arms darted across my line of sight.
    I dodged under another pile of goo or asteroid, whatever, and tried to get back to safety. The ledge itself was too far away and there were no exit hatches.
    It slammed into me. The health bar on my interface dropped which made me downright frail again. I turned to try and escape because my energy bar started dwindling rapidly as my body got knocked around. ARC feedback turned everything into pain equated with frozen paintball bullets.
    The small creature jumped on me again. It moved rapidly along the ship's hull. I needed an [Anchor] ability to travel around but this small bundle of blackened anger didn't care about my failing grip or swiftly dwindling energy bar.
    Another rock hit and my foot lost any grip. The bar to hold onto wasn't close enough. The small bundle of anger made one more dive bomb at me and I found myself floating into space. My red bar was below half. The blue one was nearly empty. I reached out and tried to grip the spaceship.
    A message displayed on the screen.

Synchronization complete .
    Upon cessation of your current shell, a new one will be created with all current progress stored accordingly. Synchronization will need to be completed again with each new shell in order to avoid loss of status.
     
    I had at least one consolation as this [Mechanoid] shell drifted off into the unknown. Once it ran into a star or something similar, my [Anchor] ability wouldn't be gone. Maybe they would let me keep the space mop too.
    "Neat," I said as the cold emptiness sent a shiver through me. Thank goodness robots don't need to breathe.
Grant Legate : I just looked at the time and we should both probably get some rest. You think of any questions you want to ask, and I'll answer