Aug 17th, 2022 6:27 PM
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I was in my den, walking back and forth across the room, gently bouncing my sick 3-year-old son, while watching the news. I had just finished work and I either fell asleep or something REALLY strange is going on. I checked for the third time that I was watching CNN and not some natural disaster apocalypse movie. 3 different magnitude 8 earthquakes and over 20 magnitude 7s in the last 5 hours?!?! Volcanoes all over the world are erupting and some Volcanologist from the University of Wyoming is live on CNN losing his shit, screaming that the Yellowstone super volcano is about to blow.
A blue text box popped up in front of me.
Welcome to The System Mr Straub. You have 17,530 System Points.
Before I had a chance to react to this box, I'm suddenly standing next to my wife in a featureless white room looking at someone I only know from a dream.
He greeted us with our names and a nod. "Dave, Sarah. This isn't the way I wanted to meet you but your situation deteriorated rapidly and I had to react before I was ready. I can see that you both recognize me but I will introduce myself to confirm. I'm Sammual A'Karon and this is a recording I made to explain what is going on. I had a very limited amount of time to put everything together and you only have a small amount of time here to listen to it so I'm going to hit you with as much information as I think you will have time to absorb. To answer your unspoken questions, Yes. Your dreams of Twilight and myself were real. Yes, this is real as well. Your reality connects to many different realities, mostly through dreams, artistic inspirations, and Déjà vu. Dave's dream connection to the HFHM254961Twi universe created and/or empowered me and helped guide my actions to save my City-State, ascend to Godhood, and keep my planet from becoming a lifeless world of nothing but undead. I owe you. I know you don't feel that way but I do. I have been waiting for a chance to pay you back but could not until 2 days ago. Your reality has been in a period of time that was referred to as 'The Age of Man'. During this Age of Man, higher powers were restricted from interfering in mortal affairs.
'The Age of Man' ended two days ago, I was able to project a fragment of myself here and learn more about you and this reality. Gaia woke up sometime in 2019 and she is pissed off at what humanity has done to Earth and has decided to kill off everything on Earth and start over. 2020 and 2021 was just Gaia warming up and Aug 17th, 2022 is the grand finale.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Gaia is a major god of this reality. She has primary domain over both the Earth and humanity. She has chosen to set off a series of apocalypse level natural disasters to wipe the slate clean and start over with a species that she hopes will be better caretakers of the Earth.
This is more than a small problem. Even though I was created by you, I'm not a god of this reality. Gaia is older and stronger than I am and if any of the local gods object to anything I do, I will be forced to undo it. The short version is, I'm not supposed to be here, and if I try to directly oppose Gaia or any other local god this fragment will be destroyed without being able to help you. I have a very limited amount of time and only a small amount of power I can safely use here so I had to think outside the box. WAY outside the box. I'm sorry I wasn't able to discuss this with you or ask your permission but I didn't have the time. I had to finish as soon as I started and then leave before I was caught and forced to un-do everything.
My plan is to have you convince Gaia to not destroy humanity. As things stand right now you don't have any hope of doing that. In this run-through, Gaia decided to destroy humanity at some point between Aug 2019 and Aug 17th, 2022. I invited 'The System' into this earth tonight on your behalf. You are going to need more power than I can give you and that was the only way I could think of to get it for you. I created this little bubble of frozen time to give you the chance to hear what is happening and to decide if you will trust me. I pulled the souls of you and your children here. If you agree, all of your souls will be sent back in time to your wife's 12th birthday. The children's souls will be placed in stasis inside your wife's soul so that they will be reborn when you have children. Your knowledge and memory will return with you. You will need to arrange things such that on Aug 15th, 2022 when 'The Age of Man' ends, Gaia will not want to destroy humanity, or that you and yours will be out of her reach. I invited 'The System' to this realm in return for the power to send you back in time and to give you the power to change things. In the end, you only have until this bubble of frozen time lasts to decide if you trust me enough to grant me dominion over the souls of yourself and your children or not. My best guess is you have about an hour before you will all be put back where I pulled you from, to deal with Gaia's rage on top of a System Apocalypse, or to be sent back in time 33 years before you have to deal with both. Either way, you will have The System to help. The reason you saw the welcome message from The System before I pulled you here is that once you are a system user you will always be a system user. Even if you go back in time or travel to a place not under the domain of The System. The rest of your realm will not gain access to The System until Aug 17th, 2022 at 6:30 PM EST. Your children will gain access on their 12th birthday. When a person becomes a System User they gain 1 System Point per day that they have lived. System Users also gain System Points by increasing a skill, increasing attributes, completing quests, and killing System Monsters. System Points can be spent to gain anything they want. Abilities, powers, skills, attributes, spells, wealth, items, vehicles, properties. ANYTHING. The ability to cast spells, 1,530 points. Psionics, 2,295 points.
You and your children will have an immense advantage over everyone else. I can only hope that 33 years with this advantage is enough to change the world to the point that Gaia will not feel the need to destroy humanity.
In your inventories you will find 2 pamphlets, 'A basic guide to The System' and 'Facts, suggestions, and warnings'. I would suggest looking over them quickly and then putting them back into your inventories so they will go to the past with you.
Good luck, I hope to see you again in about 33 years.