GOD FORMULA

16 Flashback- I

| Three Months Back |

| Year 2699 |

| Shepherd House, Area G |

| Concord City |

Noah sat in the garage under his makeshift fort. His foster family was sound asleep. He had gathered four frayed, rejected blankets and propped them up with steel pipes. 

When Lia was younger, she came to play with him under his blanket fort. They would pretend to be warriors exploring a dungeon.

Therefore, Lia was always under the impression that Noah built the structures for fun. 

The truth was much more straightforward. The fuel fumes from the Shepherd family's old car made him nauseous. The blanket fort was a shelter to make it through every night without gagging and suffocating. It helped to some extent but sometimes made matters worse.

However, Noah was queasy for an entirely different reason that night. His foster mother had refused to let him have dinner. He had arrived at home that evening past curfew. It was against the rules she had set for him, and going without dinner was the penalty.

Noah laughed bitterly, telling himself that she had sent him on the shopping errand in the first place. He reckoned it was one of his foster mother's ploys to punish him.

With him already half-starved and gone through several hours of relentless gaming, the confined garage space full of carbon monoxide was not helping. One could only imagine the misery that the already feeble Noah went through every day.

The boy was taking a fifteen-minute break from Knights of Regia. He had already cleared new maps that the expansion pack had introduced. GoulagSlayer13 had been beside him all along throughout the difficult campaigns. 

His only friend in the whole wide world. 

Noah scrolled the news section listlessly and played a trending video.

< PROTESTERS CONTINUE TO THRONG CONCORD CITY HALL >

< We want Trinity! >

< Give us the Power!-

< We want to Play! >

< Liberty and Equality! >

A crowd of several thousand, primarily youngsters, had flooded into City Hall on Sunday and had set up camp there. They demanded unconditional entry into the Trinity Network.

The previous month had been anarchy in the cities of G*****a. ANONYMITY, a hackers group that Noah had great respect for, had breached the online security of Providence, an interplanetary organization. Major leaks about their secret activities blew a massive conspiracy open.

The most shocking among the revelations was the existence of the Trinity Network. Built on the foundation of God Formula, a technology that potentially made an individual stronger through video game-like AR interfaces, the network had been kept secret from the public for years. Apparently, some old geezer had made the invention several centuries back. Providence had finally reverse-engineered the technology but had chosen to keep it secret from the worlds.

God Formula made real-life both exciting and engaging. Humans, especially, could rise above their miserable status quo and walk abreast of other races. 

'That explains why most protestors are humans,' Noah surmised, clicking on another related video.

Even hybrids and cyborgs came forth stipulating that the Trinity Network be opened to them. They could potentially multiply their skills and abilities, raising them to much higher levels.

Mages and clerics, however, were opposed to such an advent of technology. Magic had been exclusively their realm until God Formula was invented. They condemned and declared it as blasphemy against the gods the star system worshipped.

The Covenant government, which collaborated with Providence, had been in touch with rebel leaders and public speakers, trying to come up with a solution. However, days had turned into weeks, and they were still at an impasse. 

Noah was thrilled about the new technology but was not optimistic about participating in the network. If Providence ever let civilians participate, they would be chosen ones, physically fit and with heavy purses to afford the hardware. 

Somebody weak and penniless like him had zero chances of being one of the lucky ones.

'I should stick to my video games. That's all I have ever wanted.' Noah told himself

Ding!

| Message from PIEDPIPER17 ]

Noah remembered disabling messages, so how did one get through?

The name sounded familiar, though. 

| Lovelord15: Who is this? |

| PiperPiper17: Piper Lee. Your classmate from Synergy High. |

| Lovelord15: I’m sorry. I don’t know anybody by that name. Bye! |

| PiperPiper17: Come on, Noah. You don’t have to be so hurtful. I sit right across from you in class. |

'How does he know my name?' Noah asked himself, biting his lip hard. 'Is he a hacker?'

He was about to disconnect when another longer message came in.

| Message from PIEDPIPER17 ]

| PiperPiper17: You do remember me from class but are being an asshole. Anyway, there is something important that you should know. This is going to sound weird, but bear with me. Your memory has been tampered with. You think we have never been friends, but that is not the truth. Your memory is wiped. That’s why you don’t remember hanging out with me. |

Noah raised an eyebrow. His nausea was climbing along with his hunger, and the eerily odd messages aggravated his headache.

| Lovelord15: I don’t have time for pranks. |

| PiperPiper17: What exactly seems so impossible to you? The memory wipe? Isn’t that practical technology?  |

| Lovelord15: No, of course I know about memory tapering technology. What seems impossible to me is that I hung out with you. That doesn’t sound like me at all. |

| PiperPiper17: Ouch. That hurt. But I can assure you this is not a prank, man. I am dead serious. Let me tell you everything that happened, and at the end of it, you can judge whether or not I am telling the truth. Does that sound okay? |

| Lovelord15:  Fine. Let’s talk on voice call. |

Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz!

"Hello?"

"Hey, Noah."

"First, tell me how you knew my identity through my gaming account."

"Hackers do not reveal their tricks."

"You have two minutes, Piper."

"Fine. I will straight away get to the memory wiping bit."

"Why would anybody wipe my memory? I have never come across anything significant."

"Wrong. You came across a big secret of Providence- God Formula. You, no, we stepped right into the middle of a massacre. And everything was chaotic. You became overpowered for a few minutes, and then you almost died." Piper's voice faltered. Perhaps he realized how ridiculous he sounded. The young cyborg had a lousy reputation for indulging in conspiracy theories.

"Piper, is this one of your conspiracy theory trips? I don't want to be part of this discussion if that's true. I'm going to disconnect the call and block you."

"Wait, I know who GoulagSlayer13 is!"