John didn't look up immediately. He was in the middle of a complex task, taking out various pieces of equipment and then retracting them into his inventory.
He was deep in his work mode, scanning the underlying code of his defences, checking to see how the world's demotion had affected their internal logic. He looked like a man trying to solve a puzzle that only he could see.
"Hey," John replied, his voice neutral as he continued to cycle through a stack of defensive modules.
The flickering light of the aurora above danced off his face, highlighting the intense focus in his eyes, a focus that, for the moment, was entirely dedicated to the machines rather than the person standing right in front of him.
John's eyes flickered across the translucent strings of data floating before him. He was itching to begin a mass upgrade and evolution of his defences, yet a specific technical worry nagged at the back of his mind.
