[ WP ] The Swap N ' Buy will trade or purchase your current skills for credits . Being an average person with no impressive or unique skills , you do n't have many credits . Searching the discount bin , you find a skill that has no business being there ...

It's common knowledge that the known universe is a simulation. 
 
 There were plenty of doubters at first, of course. # wearereal and # notabot were instantly trending when the news broke. Alexander Volskov had been the first to prove the theory with his work on quantum observations and other underpinnings of reality as we know it. I'm certainly not a scientist, I could n't tell you the details. 
 
 I'm not a scientist, because I do n't have the skills. I possess very few skills in fact. The Gamification of Earth, as it became known, was a movement that dwarfed the space race of the 20th century in scientific progress. We unlocked the secrets of the human brain, our full potential, and all the abilities and skills in history became available for purchase and trade. 
 
 Swap N' Buy. I turn into a dry alley, old brick patterns concatenating into eternity above me. Down the old concrete stairs points a rusted blue sign with the generic logo, long faded into the scenery in my many trips to the shop. The door does n't creak as I push it inwards, but the weatherstripping makes a satisfying vacuum sound as I let the city air in and the musty store air out. 
 
 `` Hey hey Jack! I'll let you in the cage as soon as I take care of this guy.'' Gary gives me a half-wave, half salute and turns back to his customer. Big burly guy, looks like a construction worker. Probably renting some mid-grade study chips to move up to union work. As is my ritual, I stroll along the glossy back-lit display cases, checking out the most expensive chips the franchise owner can afford to insure. Platinum-level Pianist, Aikido, Database Administration… 
 
 “ Look mate, you haven ’ t paid your rent for three months. You don ’ t pay, I have to front it to the boss. I can ’ t sponsor your fucking architect classes just because you ’ re a family man. ” Nailed it. Gary ’ s got a soft spot for the guys trying to make it work with just a little learning grease. He doesn ’ t talk much about his family, but I ’ m pretty sure he ’ s sending money back to Melbourne. 
 
 A hairy arm pounds the counter. “ Come on, man! I ’ m so close! Just a few more months and I ’ ll be able to – “ 
 “ Able to what, Mr. Stone? Graduate and use your last bit of cash to go to corporate training for a few months? Wait to get your first commission on a project that pays more than just your food and rent to maybe pay me back? Fuck off. ” 
 The second Gary finishes –ff, a boulder-like fist barrels straight towards his face. The contrast is fantastic, a gigantic white missile heading towards a calm black wiry tree. Too bad for Mr. Stone. 
 
 Lightning flashes, and the boulder whiffs. Gary lashes out a combo, solar plexus, kidney, neck. The poor guy drops like a rent check and bounces, I don ’ t even know how Gary got over the counter. I let out a low whistle. 
 “ Shit, what is that? Gold Krav? That ’ s new ” 
 “ Nah, love. Plat MCMAP, I let him off easy ‘ cause I like him. He ’ s normally a great guy you know. Poor cunt ’ s in a rough patch with the old lady I think. ” 
 U.S. Marine Corps martial arts at Platinum grade? That ’ s definitely way more security than this dinky shop needs. Unless there ’ s been more trouble about than the owner is willing to admit. To this day Gary has ignored every question about the guy that signs his checks, so I stopped asking. 
 A phone call to the police and some key jingles later, he lets me into the cage and apologizes for the wait. He ’ s genuinely worked up about this. “ One of these days I ’ ll stop seeing you in here Jack, believe it. Just let me know when you ’ re done grinding. ” I nod and grunt in his general direction, turning to the bins and racks of discount chips. Nothing more than 2 creds in this room, but it still needs security because of desperate grinders. 
 I'm a grinder, because I was born poor. People still learn to do things the old-fashioned way of course, and if you're at the bottom of the tax bracket, you can bet your ass is going to school. Once you graduate, you can apply for ten skill creds to use up any way you wish. Most people choose a decent lower-middle class profession, use up all their creds on the required skills, and off they go. 
 Grinders are different. Skills are tradable, and some are worth more than others, which means there's a market. When there's a market, there's a way. A grinder can spend 1 precious cred on a platinum level pen-twirling chip, and trade that for a gold novelty-whittling chip. Repeat the process and trade those two whittling chips for a silver fishing chip. A dedicated grinder can take those 10 credits and turn them into hundreds, even thousands of credits worth of skills if they've got the brains and the balls. If they can survive until then. 
 I dig into a random bin, swimming through the chips, sifting with my eyes like skimming a page for relevant info and keywords. Skill chips are about 2/3 ’ s the size of a playing card. A colored border corresponds to the grade of the chip, and an icon fills the middle, indicating the loaded skill. If you don ’ t know what icon you ’ re looking at, you simply scan the chip with your phone and get the info. I haven ’ t needed to do that for quite some time, as I ’ ve spent about 2 hours nearly every evening in this bins for 2 months. 1 more month, and I need to make my decision. Spend my creds and start working, keep grinding. 
 Who am I kidding? I ’ ve already made my decision. I ’ ve made 8 creds these past 2 months by selling my gold city navigation and my bronze driving. Common enough skills, but concepts I could relearn. I never drive, so that was easy, but city nav was tough. Relearning how to make my way around the city I ’ ve grown up in was more emotionally taxing than I expected. I still haven ’ t achieved the intuitive feel for numbered blocks, avenues versus streets, that I used to have. I sigh. All in time. 
 
 I ’ ve got something that most grinders haven ’ t got. I was 14 when I realized how it all worked, when I saw the pattern. We were studying History of Video Games in Social Studies while reading about old-school RPG ’ s. There was an interesting chapter discussing the abstraction of the power of character skill by using variables to represent the raw ability to perform particular game mechanics. In a single moment of clarity, the pieces started falling into place, clicking together in my mind. Every single skill chip is an abstraction and combination of multiple root affinities, which are abstracted and combined from more roots, and so on until you reach the floor. At the root of it all, just a handful of raw categories of human intelligence, different fuel types powering the entire engine. 
 
 I combined my first skill chips a year later, and the results blew me away. I ’ d failed countless times before, trying to combine wood-tier skills with no results. Combining some cooking with accounting and business, and I should get some vague idea of how to run a restaurant right? Wrong. The specifics were getting in the way; you can ’ t smash a van into a sedan and get an SUV. The software that most people use to load the chips into their brains has combination software, but it ’ s a lottery. So they think. Combining 2 chips into 1 means you only have 1 chip afterwards, and it seems random if you don ’ t know the pattern. If you only think in the abstract specifics of the skill, and not the engine that lies beneath, you ’ ll just end up wasting a chip, so people stopped trying. 
 
 Eventually, I decided to say fuck it and run some tests. I saved up for months at my fast food job, and bought as many wood-tier chips as I could, randomly selecting them from bins without looking at the skills. When I had what seemed like enough, I randomly selected 2 chips and combined them, and recorded the results. To this day, I'll remember the pure awe I felt when it happened. I combined a wood singing with a wood running, and out came a bronze swimming. 
 
 I wipe the sweat from my forehead with a now-dusty shirt sleeve, 3 bins in. Nothing good today yet, I ’ m looking for bronze math chips. They ’ re rare, people don ’ t like giving up the ability to do math even if they ’ re not very good at it. My 2 credits I ’ ve got loaded on my Swap N Buy account should net me about 12 if I can find them, though, and math is a very good base to combine with monotonous labor skills believe it or not. People intuitively do a lot of basic math when they ’ re passively getting better at digging post holes, sorting toys in a warehouse, or answering phone calls. Give those skills a boost of more problem-solving capability and you might start building towards management skill chips. 
 
 Frustrated, I start digging through to the bottom of the 4th bin. Gathering heaps of chips and dumping them on the floor. I ’ ll get ‘ em later, if Gary doesn ’ t throw a fit first. If I don ’ t start getting too hungry. Fuck I could go for a slice right now. I reach the very bottom, plain cardboard staring back at me without a care in the world. Hateful, apathetic, mocking all at once. Yeah, I ’ m hungry. Cardboard doesn ’ t have a personality, get a grip. One more chip, wedged into the corner, almost stomped into the pallet underneath. That ’ s weird, the brown colored border is barely sealed on, and I don ’ t recognize the logo. Idly, I start picking at the loose edge of the plastic as the scanning app starts loading. I can ’ t quite tell in this light, but it looks like there ’ s another border underneath. Is it… black? My heart starts beating ever so slightly faster as the scan loads the data from my retina back to the interface. I ’ m trembling. 
 
 Unlimited: Motor Coordination 

