*** Patrick ***

  Patrick hadn’t slept well, but he was feeling better emotionally than he had last night. Patrick was proud of how he treated others and it gnawed on him when others made unjust accusations. It was especially jarring because he had been having a lot of fun. Then Tyler’s tantrum ruined the mood.

  One surprise was that the risk-like game had upended the local leaderboards. Patrick was now on top of the local Intelligence board, with Scott in second and John and Tyler falling to third and fourth. The leaderboards didn’t have points or any other hints about how the scoring was done, but clearly the new competitions were weighed heavily.

  ‘I guess the neighborhood meetings will be a lot more intense.’

  The new competition didn’t affect the global leaderboards though:

  30% - Strength - level 14

  12% - Endurance - level 17

  22% - Dexterity - level 13

  23% - Intelligence - level 15

  8% - Concentration - level 16

  14% - Overall

  Patrick decided to switch his routine to have Strength and Endurance after the meeting in case he needed to unwind again. Today’s meeting was listed under the Dexterity category and he wasn’t sure what to expect.

  – neighborhood meeting –

  Everyone was there on time today and a triple-sized ping pong table and eight pairs of Dexterity gloves greeted them. The gloves were on a side table that described the game as a double elimination ping pong tournament where micromovements controlled holographic paddles. There were 20 different types of paddles to choose from, each associated with a different energy icon. Patrick had only seen about half of the icons so far, and only had micromovement experience with the elemental ones. Each paddle type had different shapes, sizes, and “weights”, and a player could only use each paddle type once.

  ‘hmm, “wind” is the one I am best at, since this is double elimination I’ll start with the others and save “wind” until I’ve taken a loss.’

  “Argh, why ping pong, golf would be so much better,” Harvey complained. That comment broke the ice and some chatter about different games was exchanged. Lots were drawn for the brackets; John and Harvey went first while everyone else watched.

  John quickly won 11 to 5, followed by Scott defeating Edwin 11 to 9. When Tyler and Erin started their match Patrick said to Scott, “Good game; and good game yesterday, that really boosted your position on the local board.”

  “Thanks; I actually do not look at the boards very often. It seems like a gimmick to manipulate us into working harder. Given how all of this has been staged, they must be just looking to weed out the underperformers. There are at least hundreds, probably thousands of us in the running, so the local boards do not mean jack.”

  “huh, I hadn’t thought that deeply about it, but I can see that”, Patrick replied.

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  “You should have stuck around last night. They took away the choice of game, but everyone can order up to three free drinks or snacks now”, Scott said.

  “You’re not worried that the food is another type of manipulation?”

  “Oh, it definitely is, but free food is free food,” grinned Scott.

  They chatted until Tyler won and then it was Patrick’s turn to play Darian. Patrick chose the “waves” paddle, which had a traditional weight and medium size and shape. Compared to wind, waves energy had more momentum. Patrick and Darian exchanged a couple of warm up serves to get used to the board, paddle, and virtual ball. Surprisingly the gloves even provided tactile feedback to simulate hitting the ball.

  The game would have been embarrassingly bad except everyone else had been as bad. Patrick eked out a 12-10 win.

  The tournament progressed smoothly, with the waiting players occasionally talking amongst themselves. Patrick lost his next match against Edwin, the rock energy had too much momentum and Patrick kept overshooting his positioning. He used wind energy in his match against Erin and won that game 11 to 4. Erin was using rock in that match and had trouble controlling it also.

  Through a number of lucky breaks Patrick won his fire versus water match against John. It was John’s first loss though so he was still in the tournament. Patrick was eliminated in the next round when he played against Scott. The electric paddle was small and very fast, but this was Patrick’s first time using the energy. Patrick was only able to score three points in his loss.

  The top three spots in the tournament went to Erin, John, and Scott. John and Tyler went off to the side to talk for a bit before returning to their rooms. Patrick stayed to socialize a bit over free food. It wasn’t healthy to be overly competitive with the neighbors. Patrick wanted to strike a balance between playing hard to win and not being a jerk. That meant seeing the neighbors as people and not just obstacles.

  After 20 minutes Patrick’s social energy had been spent and he returned to work on his Strength and Endurance goals.

  — Day 32, 2:15 —

  The last day of the assessment and there were no daily goals. A meeting with Human Resources replaced the neighborhood meeting at 6. Technically the 6:00 event was labeled as “Gather for meeting” and a second event at 6:05 was the “Mission Overview and Job Description”.

  The neighborhood meetings were less stressful after taking Scott’s advice of not looking at the local leaderboards. His camaraderie with most of the neighbors had improved during the last couple of weeks. Scott, Erin, Edwin, and Darian were chill about the competitions and they were who he was closest to. Edwin was often in last place, but had a positive attitude.

  Tyler and John kept to themselves and were still hyper-competitive. While Harvey did spend time with the group, he only talked about himself. Mostly about how everything was stacked against him, yet he was still coming out on top.

  The nightly activities tested everyone’s proficiency with the different categories. Since everyone was still a novice, winning ended up being equal parts skill and luck. Patrick's least favorite one was a huge parkour course that tested Strength. The most fun one was a combination Intelligence, Concentration, and Endurance version of Dance Dance Revolution. The dance mat had different runes on it and the players needed to choose the rune that was the best match for the one that was on the screen. Players were also subjected to audio, visual, and tactile distractions as well as extreme environmental conditions. Patrick still hadn’t figured out how the environmental conditions were created for Endurance tasks. He had given up on keeping track of all of the things that didn’t match his understanding of reality.

  Overall the past couple of weeks had been good. Patrick was pleased that he had gotten into the top 5% on the global leaderboard.

  12% - Strength - level 25

  2% - Endurance - level 29

  9% - Dexterity - level 24

  8% - Intelligence - level 27

  1% - Concentration - level 29

  5% - Overall

  With nothing else to do, Patrick decided to see how many challenges he could complete and maybe eke out a slightly higher rating. He set a time-limit of 5:00 so he could shower and relax a bit before the meeting.