October 20, 2022
Day 0
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System Message
Integration of Planet Earth is now underway. Welcome denizens of the earth.
Welcome to the multiverse.
The tutorial stage of the integration will begin in 24 hours. Please align yourself to a bastion and elect a representative. All sentient life forms that fail to align themselves will cease to exist in their current form and will be used as resources to fuel the integration of the planet.
Neha heard the words spoken directly into her mind, clear as day, even as she listened half asleep. She saw the prompt occupying her vision as her eyes were closed, and it didn't clear away even when she opened them.
Soon the voice finished speaking, and the prompt vanished, bringing the entire world back into focus.
Neha found herself floating in the air in the middle of the night and decided it was just another one of her weird dreams. As she closed her eyes to sleep again and her hands reached for the blanket, she felt them grasping at thin air.
Her pillow and blanket were gone, along with her entire bed.
Now alarmed, Neha looked around and noticed that she was suspended in the air.
That's when she heard the first scream.
Followed by another.
And then another.
And another.
Weird dreams were a common occurrence for Neha, as were shrill shrieks of excitement in the girl's hostel.
But this was no dream.
Not just her pillows or bed, all the stuff in her dorm room was gone along with the walls and floor of the room.
In fact, the entire hostel building was gone.
Neha looked around and saw hundreds of girls flailing helplessly in the air, roughly where their rooms were supposed to be.
But that wasn't all.
Neha's eyes scanned the Delhi skyline and saw not a single building for miles in any direction.
That's when she heard her own voice join the screams.
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Neha read the notifications as she sat in a huddle with her friends on the football field. The pure intent titles they had all received for safely levitating to the ground were confusing, and the multiverse integration notification said precious little.
One of Neha's friends surmised their situation.
"Okay, so aliens exist and have come to Earth to do whatever they please. They have stripped us of our technology and forced us back to the stone age. And now they want us to align ourselves to a bastion, whatever that is."
Another one of her friends spoke.
"I bet it's those glowing pillars that have popped up everywhere on campus."
Neha's closest friend, Zoya, motioned to her surroundings with her hands.
"Campus? What Campus?"
That attracted dejected nods from everyone.
There was little left in this place for it to be called a college campus anymore.
Before the conversation could go any further, a group of professors and other university staff passed by the girls and offered them warm clothes and blankets. A lot of the student's belongings had fallen and collected in a heap at the base of the erstwhile buildings when they had disappeared. The teachers had let the students collect much of their personal effects but rationed the edibles and clothes.
Not that there was much to collect.
All their electronic devices, along with pretty much anything invented post industrial revolution had simply vanished along with the buildings.
Some enterprising students seemed unaffected by the situation and were in high spirits as they cataloged the things that had vanished. They argued among themselves as they tried to figure out the rules that governed what materials the system took and what it didn't.
Neha couldn't bring herself to care for any of that.
Her most important belonging, her wheelchair, was gone.
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The college administration had arranged for the students to sleep in groups in the numerous sports fields on the campus. Zoya carried Neha to their designated sleeping spot and the two girls laid down on a mattress.
"What do you think is going to happen once the 24-hour period is up? There were enough bastions on campus to house all the students, professors, and staff, but what about places with denser populations? Do you think everyone will find a bastion to align with?"
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Zoya shrugged.
"How the hell would I know. Everyone in our college has been split between the one female and three male bastions, leaving behind four more bastions that we have claimed but are sitting empty. If bastions are as abundant everywhere, then sure, everyone will comfortably find one to join. But as you said, if the occurrence of bastions is uniform and does not take population density into account, things will suck in certain places."
Neha nodded, glad that Zoya hadn't lost her energetic manner of speech even in these circumstances.
She thought out loud.
"I hope my family is fine, back home."
Zoya spoke reassuringly.
"I bet small towns are gonna prove to be the places to be in the coming days. They have much more tightly knit communities and people will look out for each other."
Neha smiled and spoke.
"I think so. We too are lucky to be in our college and among friends. I envy you though, your family lives close by. You should go visit them when you get the chance."
"I plan to. I'd have gone home right away, and taken you along too, had there been vehicles around. But as things stand, it might not be safe to walk all that way until things settle down. 10 km is not a trivial distance anymore, but it's much better than 1000 km. Going back to your hometown will be close to impossible for the time being without trains and flights."
Neha was listening carefully to Zoya and nodding along until she got to the last part. She suddenly remembered that Rahul had gotten on a flight a couple of hours before she had gone to sleep, and her face paled as she realized that he would have been in the air when the integration had happened.
Zoya saw her friend's face turn pale, and the same realization struck her.
"Fuck! Rahul was on a flight, wasn't he?"
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It was with a lot of difficulties that Zoya managed to assure Neha that her brother would also get that pure intent levitation and have a chance to fly himself to safety. Neha still cried her way to sleep, and Zoya held her the entire time, feeling guilty for tactlessly blurting out the part about her home being so far away and bringing up flights.
She would have thought of her brother and remembered he was on a flight sooner or later anyway.
Zoya thought, trying to assuage her guilt a bit. After making sure that Neha was fast asleep, she quietly snuck out of their sleeping area.
She wandered around the campus and noticed something. While there were no roads or buildings around, the areas where those structures and roads stood were still quite clearly visible, highlighted by the lack of any grass or vegetation. Zoya easily found the not-road that led outside her campus and onto the not-highway, and started exploring the vicinity of her campus.
She saw no buildings for miles, and the concrete jungle that was Delhi now seemed like a barren wasteland dotted by trees, shrubs, and occasional forests. Zoya looked around and saw various groups of people wandering aimlessly like her, most headed toward a spot with natural elevation.
Counting on safety in crowds, Zoya decided to follow a large group of strangers with a mix of men, women, and children, and accompanied them to the elevated mound.
The moment she reached the small summit, Zoya held her breath.
She could see the city for miles.
It was the same sight she had seen only hours ago when she was floating in the air when her hostel building had disappeared. But she had been fifty percent asleep and a hundred percent terrified back then, and had failed to really take it in.
Now she saw the entire city and noticed the various undeveloped patches of land with lush green forests which seemed entirely unchanged, while the formerly densely populated localities looked like flat barren lands with ant infestations.
She could see swarms of humans, small as insects, walking aimlessly around the city, in particularly high concentrations in certain places.
She finally looked in the direction where she knew her home was, where her family lived, and saw the same sight.
Tiny, individually indistinguishable humans.
Sometime later, Zoya walked back to the sleeping area, wishing that her family was safe and had found a bastion to align to.
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October 21, 2022
Day 1
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The eight stewards had argued among themselves on what was the best strategy for the bastions and had failed to find much common ground. The only thing they had all agreed on was that all the bastions needed to be part of a common settlement and that they needed to build castles to house everyone and defend that settlement.
There had been arguments even on the placement of the castles, but eventually, they had arrived at a configuration that was acceptable to all eight. Four castles were placed so close to each other that their outer walls fused into a common one, forming a single highly defensible compound. The remaining four were placed at a distance to serve as outposts.
Then the eight stewards had started to vanish, each one insisting that the other seven were redundant, and asking to be the only one to be recalled the next night.
Once they were gone, the college administration quickly assigned rooms to the students and soon Zoya carried Neha to her new bed on the first floor of the castle and sat with her.
Neha lay down in her new bed with Zoya, her best friend and now roommate, and joked to lighten the mood.
"As a child, when I had imagined living in a castle, this isn't what I had in mind."
Zoya chuckled.
"I doubt anyone did."
Then she had a thought.
"You know, when the lockdown was imposed during the pandemic and I had gone back home, I had one moment when I felt certain that the entire year was a ridiculous dream. It wasn't anything extraordinary that triggered the feeling. I was simply looking out of my apartment window at the completely vacant streets and quiet neighborhoods when I realized something. In my whole life, I had never felt the city sleep, even in the middle of the night, I could feel something moving somewhere. But during those months, Delhi stood still. No cars, no construction, no noises, no pollution. It had felt so surreal."
After a pause, Zoya continued.
"Getting thrown back in time into a medieval world with no technology and stone castles makes that covid era feel oh-so-normal in comparison. And as if all that wasn't enough, there had to be these fucking stats and levels."
She went on ranting.
"Is this a bloody video game? A fairy tale? What's the system going to throw at us next? Do we have to kiss a frog? Kill it?"
Neha nodded and was about to speak when Zoya suddenly remembered something and broke into laughter.
"Wait, I almost forgot! Did you say you imagined living in a castle as a child?"
Neha nodded meekly, realizing her folly.
"I can't believe it. Neha Sharma, the most pragmatic person I know, had dreamed of living in a fairy tale castle like a fairy tale princess."
Neha blushed.
"I never said anything about being a princess or it being a fairy tale castle!"
Zoya retorted.
"Well duh! What other kind of castle does a young girl dream of."
Neha couldn't come up with any good excuse and just changed the topic. Zoya let her, and the girls kept talking.
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Eventually, Neha fell asleep and Zoya snuck out of the castle. She traced her way out of the campus and climbed that elevated area again. There were only a few people around this time, and Zoya felt on edge coming here alone tonight. But she had to do this.
As Zoya had expected, the sight she saw now was nothing like the one she had seen last night.
What she saw was a haphazard, disorganized, and yet dazzlingly beautiful maze of castles that had replaced the barren nothingness of yesterday. And there was one area that stood out even in that mess of castles, toward the center of Delhi.
She couldn't be sure since the line of sight wasn't quite as clear as last night with all the castles in between, but Zoya was all but certain what area she was looking at.
Lutyens' Delhi, home to the government of India.
At least the government seems to be functional.
Zoya thought to herself and then looked toward her home. She couldn't quite see all that way, but felt like she could see a cluster of castles in that vague vicinity.
Deciding she had enough time, Zoya started to walk along the not-road that led to her neighborhood, and two hours later, found herself staring at a large cluster of castles in a dense defensive configuration.
It was late at night, there were very few people walking about, and Zoya had no idea which particular castle her family would be staying in. She decided to wait and before long, saw someone she recognized.
She approached her old neighbor, Aunt Ayesha, and asked her about where her parents were staying and why there was such a large cluster of castles there.
As her neighbor spoke, one by one, all of Zoya's worries turned to reality.
All the Muslims in this part of Delhi had converged and formed a massive settlement here.
Some had lived close by and naturally joined the nearest bastions.
Some came from afar, as bastions around them had refused to let them enter.
But most had come of their own volition.
Regardless of whether they had all ended up here by wilful self-segregation or lack of hospitality elsewhere, Zoya knew these new developments would spell trouble down the line.
Memories of the 2020 Delhi riots were fresh in her mind, and she hoped and prayed that the tutorial had a lot of monsters and beasts to throw at bastions and keep them busy.
If not, Zoya feared that society, on all sides, will start giving birth to its own monsters. And this time, they would be empowered by a ruthless system that rewarded violence, bloodshed and murder with experience, skills and levels.