LitRPG, as it turned out, seemed to be about mixing the D&D Player’s Handbook with a fantasy book, and using the result to drive some kind of story. Intellectually, he immediately understood the appeal. Numbers, stats and skills drove basically all the leisure activities that he could remember from his childhood; from computer games to football fantasy leagues. He wasn’t surprised that someone had applied the same mechanisms to books, and he spent the late afternoon on the porch with an iPad in his hands, reading some of the more popular stories. At one point he had to admit that some of these authors were also pretty skilful, and he took notes as he considered how some of them combined the stats with the story to produce something that was both entertaining and that had an internal consistency that he admired.

Sure, some protagonists got a bit too powerful too quickly; and sometimes the skills flew out of the stories like ghosts escaping from machines, but overall he quite enjoyed what happened to stories when there was a rigid system driving both plot and character development.

Bob put the iPad down on the small table next to him and took a long sip from the mug of tea his wife had prepared. He looked out over the garden, waving at said wife who was apparently pulling up the dahlia tubers. Ah well, he thought sadly. He was going to miss the display those flowers had put on over the last months, and he really didn’t enjoy the impending winter. The bright oranges and yellows of autumn always made him feel sad.

As Bob looked at the garden, he released his mind to follow its own paths for a moment. He breathed deeply, making an effort to disassociate himself from the endless tittering of thought that accompanied his days. He had always been a thinker, and discovering this light version of meditation had been a godsend to his mental health.

This happy state of being was abruptly interrupted as a very big thought came crashing through the serenity: The skills! Plotting… Editing. Aglaophonus. That was… like a LitRPG, only he was living it!

A shiver ran down his back as he followed this train of thought. The skills, the text and how they appeared.. That was all exactly like the systems worked in the LitRPG stories. He was confused and not a little unsettled. He needed to understand what was going on. Bob closed his eyes and yelled out Aglaophonus! into his thoughts. The fucker had some questions to answer.

Nothing happened, except for the feeling of weirdness that kept growing inside him.

His serenity was now firmly a thing of the past, and Bob went inside to his office. A small room at the top floor of the house, in a corner facing their sizable garden, the room had become his sanctuary over the last three years since they moved in. It was perfect as a home office, and even better as a place to hide away to simply be alone. Twenty years of professional life had taught him the skills he needed to pretend at extroversion, and Bob was now a highly functioning introvert. For a long time in his youth, he had embraced the geek persona, finding an identity that gave him social permission to stay inside his apartment all day to play computer games, or to spend his work lunches on a table in the corner with his head in a book. Since then he had been forced to evolve, to fit into new positions and new roles - both professionally and at home.

Nevertheless. At heart, he savoured the time he got to spend all on his own.

He sat down in his chair, opened the editor, and created a new chapter. Chapter 2 appeared, and this time Bob’s fingers found the keyboard with no pause or hesitation.

Floating quietly through space, Josh was perturbed when he realised the source of his unease. Completely unexpected, for the first time in his life, he felt lonely. In more than three decades as a solo pilot, flying freighters from star system to star system, he had spent almost every day completely alone, with only his thoughts for company. Now Jake was dead, and there was a hole somewhere in his consciousness where his twin had used to live….

Bob was lost in the words for almost two hours, not noticing night falling outside and only emerging from his focus when he realised he was starving. Strange, he had eaten dinner as normal, and that was usually enough to keep him over until bedtime. His brain had been working overtime, burning calories at a higher rate than his body was used to.

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Only another 2 views, but this time he was really too tired to care too much. Actually, if he thought about it, he was feeling pretty good about the fact that someone out there had read his writing. That was an amazing thing, and he let the good feeling he was carrying from having written another chapter carry him to the kitchen before he headed to bed for an early night.

Hopefully, he would meet the fucker again in his dreams to demand some answers.

–

“Knock, knock, knock, knock, kn…”

Bob punched the creature, and the crunch of his fist hitting its nose travelled up his arm and settled like a happy thought in his brain.

“Yes?” he asked, innocently.

“Why did you do that?”, Aglaophonus exclaimed, adding, “That hurt!”

“Good, “ Bob said. “You have some explaining to do.”

“What do you mean? Explaining? Didn’t you get exactly what you wanted?”

Bob stared at the siren, and then at his surroundings. A traditional oak-panelled courtroom had replaced the clouds. He was seated in the judge’s seat, and Aglaophonus was in the seat normally reserved for the defendant. Remind myself to give my subconscious a solid pat on the back, he thought. Bob said, “I got some… skills. Now it’s time for some answers.

It seemed like Aglaophonus had noticed the room as well, because he suddenly flew out of the chair towards Bob. “Now you listen, human! I’ve been perfectly reasonable since we met, and you..”

“Silence!” Bob shouted, now noticing that he was wearing a black robe. I wonder if…

He imagined himself holding a gavel, and suddenly he was. He raised the gavel and pointed it at Aglaophonus, saying, “Back in your seat!”

At that, the creature appeared to be pulled back by unseen forces and forced back into the chair. That is… interesting. Seems like I am actually in control here, Bob realised, and wondered how to use that.

As Bob had been pondering the nature of dreams, Aglaophonus was getting increasingly agitated. Apparently unable to speak or getting up from the chair, he was thrashing around in his seat and looking daggers at Bob.

“Ok, fucker, “ Bob said. “As I said, it’s time for answers.” Bob imagined the scene changing, and suddenly he was standing behind the prosecutor’s table, now wearing a smart Italian suit. Aglaophonus had been transported to the witness box, where he still could not speak and… was fuming. Was that actual smoke rising from his head?

Bob stepped out from behind the table and approached the witness box.

“Mr… Aglaophonus. Thank you for joining us here today.” Bob gave the creature the least sincere smile he could muster before continuing. “As noted previously, we would like some answers.” We?? Bob wondered if he was taking this lawyer thing too far.

“First question: What is the nature of these skills that have given me?”

Bob looked at Aglaophonus for a moment before adding, “You may speak.”

“This is an outrage!” the creature shouted. “I am an ancient magical creature, you will treat me with re…”

“Silence!” Bob commanded. “Let’s try this again. In a moment, I will permit you to speak. As you have conveniently visited my dream, where I appear to be in command, you will do as I say. That is; you will answer fully and truthfully, in the most pleasant voice that you can manage. Comprende? Alright, you may speak and answer my question.

If looks could kill, there was a fair chance this courtroom would be needed again before the night was over, but at least the creature responded this time. In a calm voice, dripping with syrup and barely hidden acid, Aglaophonus answered,

“The nature of the skills… Well, I guess you can call them distilled competence. It was actually part of a system created by Zeus back in the day. He had this… phase, where he turned into various creatures. You may have heard. Like… a bull or a swan. Anyway. He was busy, and the court of the gods was becoming restless. At one point, he was about to take off again, and some of the other gods basically told him to either stay there and watch over his affairs, or create a framework for governance that they could use when he was away. So… he wrote this book. And described a… well, it’s like a policy framework. Or a protocol. For dealing with all the minor disputes and problems that kept resulting from wayward minotaurs, the distribution of sacrifices and things like that.”

Bob was wondering if the little fucker was going to get to the point soon, but waited patiently.

“Anyway. I think… Zeus was in a hurry. Or not… not careful. When he created the framework, because shortly after he left the protocol book behind in the throne room and left to chase some woman… Well. It took them about fifteen minutes to find loopholes and ways to exploit the protocol with… Let’s say, unintended consequences.

One of these consequences was the creation of the skill system, where any member of the court was able to basically copy the knowledge of anyone else and shape it into a skill. The trick was to package the skills into discrete packages - if they tried to make the skills contain too much, it fried the brains of the… recipients.”

Bob interrupted. “So, you are telling me that… skills are effectively a hack, exploiting vulnerabilities in a protocol?”

“Well. I don’t know what a protocol hack is, but since then, anyone who read the protocol book has been able to create skills. Some of us are better at it than others, and we tend to have specialities. Songs, stories and poetry are the domains of sirens and muses.”

Bob was quiet for a while, absorbing all this. Eventually, he looked back up at the creature. “Ok. Second question. What is it really that you want with m…”

Suddenly, the room shook. The glass in the windows shattered, Aglaophonus disappeared, and chairs were thrown around. Bob hunched with his arms above his head for protection, trying to figure out what was going on.

The room shook again, and an intense beeping pierced through his head as a huge hand forcefully pushed him in the side.

“Robert!” His wife was shaking him. “Please turn off that alarm. I don’t have to go to work for another three hours!”