Unsteadily, Alan rose to his feet, trying to get used to this new perception of time and information. It was odd, having his body react a split second slower than he was used to. Alan proceeded out the hallway and back to his room, slowly and steadily, holding onto the wall. He came to the conclusion that he should first talk to the Chief Administrator as the new information he gained would doubtlessly influence his decisions.

He passed by a few Haxlards on his way back to his room. As he glanced at them their names, health, psi-energy, shield-energy and class would pop up above their head. This was apparently all information that Eve 2.0 had acquired from Titan’s AI. Alan decided to keep calling the AI Eve, and accessed Eve's information on the Haxlards.

It appeared that they followed a sort of class system, with their masks representing the field each worked in. A blue mask signified service or basic grunts, green meant a skilled worker of some sort, silver represented assassins or spies, red was reserved for elite warriors and gold, which Alan had yet to see, represented royalty of some sort. Being an Ultihaxlard was a difference in rank rather than a difference in race, signified by the marks on a Haxlard’s mask. That was how Eve had identified Pharaoh as an Ultihaxlard.

The five minute trip to the Med-bay turned into a 15 minute trek, but Alan managed to reach his room, tripping over his feet only a few times. He was starting to get used to things, he thought. Then he opened his mouth to turn on the table. He had intended to simply say turn on, yet what emerged from his mouth was a jumble of the syllables that sounded off to him. But the desk lit up.

Alan saw how the technology worked now: it simply adapted to the user's needs. He put his hands on the desk and a keyboard appeared. Alan could set up the table like a desktop computer, and the desk would simply supply the monitor, keyboard and mouse; it was just a matter of requesting them. If he chose to, Alan could also forge a mental connection to the desk, but he decided to stick with the mouse and keyboard he was used to. For now.

A few keystrokes later, it didn’t matter that his perception was a bit off as long as he hit the keys in the right order, he sent a message to Chief Administrator 170. It appeared there were also a few digital networks that he could access, basically a series of universal internets.

This time, the Chief Administrator immediately accepted his communication request, and launched into discourse. The Administrator talked as fast as he used to, despite everything else having slowed down.

“Hmm, I see you’ve chosen to join our brotherhood, welcome. Now, onwards, toward the future. As a Machine Lord I’m sure you’ve already realized your perception of time will be a bit different. In extreme situations you may further slow down your perception of time by many orders of magnitude. Adjusting yourself to these varying perceptions of time can take some getting used to, but you had better master it as I see you have a semi-combative subclass, a rogue, which is interesting.