I had no idea how long I had been gone or what had happened while I was away, but as I became aware of myself and my surroundings, I also felt a pressure inside—a force waiting to be unleashed. I gasped for breath, opened my eyes and stood up. I had a big yawn and was stretching after a long nap. I was interrupted as I was crash-tackled by Sarah. She flew into me and wrapped me up in a hug, yelling, "He's awake! He's awake!"

Oddly, I knew she was there, and I saw her moving slowly and could have easily rolled out of the way. I didn't. A hug would be nice.

I smiled, "What's up?"

She stepped back, looked me up and down, and then punched me. "You prick. Don't do that again."

I didn’t feel her punch.

She looked slightly embarrassed as she opened the door to let Dallas and Jean in. She was shaking her hand.

An older gentleman entered with them. He had a slight Asian or Middle Eastern look to him. Like Dallas and Jean, he was tall and fit-looking. Dallas introduced him, "This is Rahsaan. He kept an eye on you when Sarah let him. He is a medic."

I shook Rahsaan's hand and sat down.

Rahsaan took a blood pressure kit out and started measuring my blood pressure and taking my temperature, listening to my heart and all that.

How are my vitals? I mean, is my heart rate going to be different? Am I still medically human?

Sprite: Luke. You are a nanite-enhanced Earth Human. He will notice some differences. The energy levels here are deficient. Too low. You will start to feel lethargic and sleepy when your reserves run out. I have put an energy bar in your HUD. I must keep myself to a minimum to conserve energy. I would say that within a week, you will go into stasis until integration. The more you use your power, the quicker it will deplete. I have contacted Julie. She is looking for a short-term solution. Do you authorise me to work with her for now?

Sure Sprite. Just let me know what is going on. Keep me informed.

Sprite: Julie said we need an energy generator. Minimum of Tier 3. She will see if we can send one to you so we can start operating normally. Xarius and the Legion will be here in two weeks. They must file the appropriate documentation before they arrive, as there is a System Quarantine Zone on newly integrated planets to stop exploitation.

Sarah was looking at me.

"What?"

"What the fuck Luke? Look at you." "What?"

"You are an inch taller and ripped. Flex, let me see your guns. Do you have abs? Show me!" she was laughing.

I flexed my biceps, impressed by the new muscle mass, not huge, but solid. It was a decent improvement.

I smiled. "I evolved."

"Evolved, what happened?" Rahsaan asked.

I checked the time and date in my HUD. Just over two days had passed.

"Last I knew, Sarah was sticking that glowing tube of blue crap into me."

Sprite: That was a stolen Tier 2 Legion Field Enhancement Nanite package.

"Evidently, it was a stolen Tier 2 Legion Field Enhancement Nanite package."

Sarah looked at me, "Well, you threw up some black stinky gunk, then you froze. We had to clean the muck up. It was disgusting. Then, we could not move you. You were lying there, not moving. None of us could move you. Then, about an hour in, a blue field covered your body like a godamned forcefield. We could see through it and could see you were alive. Your eyes were flickering like crazy. Rashaan said it looked similar to REM sleep. The field expanded and then disappeared just now. No one else got enhanced. We were giving you another day before we called in for help, not that we agreed on who or what we could call."

Sprite: It was a temporal stasis shield to protect your body while your body gets rebuilt and enhanced. Each of your cells has a nanite embedded in them, and with a Tier 5 Race upgrade, each one has a nano-wormhole comms and storage to shunt energy and power. Good quality enhancement kits proved the protection. Most do not.

No idea what you said, but it sounds cool.

Rahsaan spoke, his quiet voice holding a lot of authority, “I would like to run some more tests.”

“Why? Is there anything wrong?”

“That’s what the tests are for. How do you feel?”

"Fantastic. First, we need to talk to everyone here. This is big. Way bigger than we thought. I only have a small idea of what is happening, but we must think things through and plan. We have some help on the way and a couple of aces."

They all just looked at me. “First, some privacy. I need a shower.”

I ushered everyone out so I could shower and change since I was weirdly still in my boxers. I missed the under-armour. I shoved everyone out of my room except Sarah, who refused to leave.

I smiled, "I'm getting changed."

She smiled, "Go ahead. I'm not letting you out of my sight." But she did turn around, and with my new perception, I noticed she had a peek.

I checked that my inventory and HUD still worked and was relieved when I could get a set of under-armour out. I didn't put them on since that would probably freak everyone out. It was a bit uncomfortable putting on my new clothes, as I had grown. It took a moment to get reacquainted with my new body. I didn't spend a minute flexing and admiring my new physique in the mirror at all, really. Well, maybe a moment or two until Sarah whistled.

While I did that, I also asked Sprite to fill me in on the enhancement process. I needed a history of the Empire for dummies - since I still had not read Julie's tablet and a few other bits that I thought my friends would ask. I particularly paid attention to the descriptions of energy and mana and how we interacted with them.

A few minutes later, we were all around the coffee table, sitting on the lounge chairs in the large lounge room of the house. It was spacious enough that all of us could fit in. I met Corey, Ryan, Phillip, and Jerrod, who had arrived with Rahsaan the day before. It was nice that they could come on short notice. Not for my bank balance, though. They were older and ex-army friends of Dallas. All were working as security or logistics consultants and knew Amy from her time house-sitting. Jean had organised them to come out for an all-expenses-paid consultation meeting for a few days to negotiate an extended contract. I was footing the bill. I didn't really care at this stage.

Everyone looked at me expectantly. Shit, this was going to be complicated. I had no idea where to start.

"Ok. listen, I'll answer questions as I can, but as far as I know, I am telling you what I know to be facts. The universe we know is totally different from what you think."

Ok. That went well. No one looked at me weirdly. Everyone was looking at me expectantly. Well, they were all looking at me weirdly, but not super weirdly. I guess we had already covered there are aliens, so what was a little bit of extra special weird sauce on top?

"Can we record this and send it to Amy, maybe?"

Sprite: I will record this and convert it to a suitable format for you for distribution.

I nodded.

"A while ago, Amy's company made a discovery that was a prerequisite for Earth becoming involved in the wider universe. They punched a hole in our reality into another place…."

I held my hand as Cory and Ryan started to ask questions, "… Look, I don't know, just somewhere else. Maybe it wasn't a cross-dimension, just somewhere else in our universe? Listen up. This is hard, as I don’t have all the answers. Not a science guy, not a genius. Maybe we should have invited Brian Cox if you want to know more.”

I had to stop the noise again. Mike asked, "Why would we bring in an actor?"

God dammit. “The scientist, not the actor, dumbass; why, indeed, would we invite an actor when we are talking about aliens and dimensions? Stop interrupting. Yes, there are other dimensions. Yes, there are aliens. Ok. In this other space, were a race of people, beings or something."

I waited again as people spoke over each other, asking questions and reacting in shock and disbelief.

"This will take long enough if you keep interrupting. There is a lot of blow-your-mind shit; deal with it and ask later, write questions down or something. Most of you suspected some crap after seeing the blue goo and me being enhanced."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Surprisingly, Jean nodded and got a notebook out. I smiled and nodded.

Sprite: You are handling this so well.

"Shut up. Not you, my AI. God Damn. Stop.”

I had to wait it out again.

“Ok, other beings, maybe humans who belong to the Karass Collective. They are a Military Empire based around expansion and warfare. Amy's douchbag boss, being the greedy prick he is, managed to convince them that he would make a good stooge. He entered a contract that divided the world into seven zones, each with a ruler. Think Mafia scum lord, Psycho Tech CEO, Middle Eastern Oil Barron, Cartel Bosses, and some world leaders, both good and bad. Each potential ruler was given 100 doses of enhancement, like the ones we got, a settlement stone, and several thousand symbiont cyborg entities. They were also instructed to take the doses a week before the integration counter reaches zero and train up."

I took a deep breath.

"Amy lucked into finding out the plans, and because she hates scumbags who cheat on their wives, instead of cutting his dick off, she stole some doses and the stone and sent them to me. She contacted Dallas and Jean. Well, lucky me, I got dosed up, and here we are, and that is not even the weirdest shit!"

Everyone erupted into a chaotic mess of noise again, getting louder and louder. It took about ten minutes for them to realise that I was waiting for the questions to be asked sensibly.

I nodded at Sarah, "One at a time.”

She asked an easy one, NOT. “What happened after I injected you."

Where to start?

I noticed my energy bar had dipped a part of a percentage quicker than I liked. 99.87%

"Ok. This is not totally accurate, this is just what I found out, and even then, a lot of it is guesses and random thoughts. I went through a configuration process, then sent to a tutorial to learn how it all works. The prick I spoke to was as mad as a cut snake. I am not even sure if he was real or not. Maybe another AI. The package is a set of symbiont nanites that attach to your cells and allow you to control access to higher forms of energy. They codify your understanding of this into a coherent system."

Blank looks.

"You get upgraded, and then you get a HUD, Stat points, abilities, skills, titles, and I have an inventory, loot and …. like a video game."

Everyone started shouting.

I bought out the under-armour from my inventory. That shut them all up. From everyone's perspective, it was fantastic. It was like summoning something from thin air. I also noted that it dipped my energy another part of a percent. Crap. I'd have to watch my inventory usage.

I sacrificed a few more percent getting the Thunder Guard pistols and energy packs out, the healing potions and some Grimclaw steaks. I passed them around for people to look at. Interestingly, Tier 0 people could not use pistols. They all felt some kind of an aura from the steaks, which I guess was the denser chaos energy from the creatures. Who knows.

Once everyone calmed down, I went and got changed into my armour. When I came out, Sarah whistled, "Wow. Doesn't leave much to the imagination."

I blushed. Mike started laughing at me. Grumbling, I pulled my jeans over the top and moved back to my seat.

"Ok. Enhancement first. Everyone has a racial tier. You are all Tier 0. You will move to Tier 1 or 2 when you get enhanced, depending on the package. The Karass stole a bunch of Legion stuff. I think we got the good stuff. It is all to do with the energy levels and such. It is a kickstart for people who are not connected to their System."

Sprite: I believe they were going to modify it to connect to their Prism, their version of the Empire System.

I continued, "The Karass has a thing called Prism, which is the bad guy’s system. It is all about the System you connect to and the nanite programming. The nanites and their operating system will enable you to integrate into a system and use skills and classes. You will be given some stats to assign, Body, Mind and Spirit and Karma. If you are Tier 1 or lower, you must reach Level 10 in your class to see the substats. The body has the substats of Strength, Agility, Endurance and Comeliness. Yes, Mike, Comeliness is how hot you are. I expect Mike to be around 3, and Sarah, you are a natural 10."

Everyone laughed except Mike, who gave me the finger and Sarah, who blushed.

"I think 10 is the max base a human can be, or maybe 5; there was no manual, and I was in the beta program. Mind has the substats of Intelligence, not how smart you are, but how fast you can process information. Wisdom, Insight and Perception, think willpower. Spirit is measured by Charisma - how likeable you are; again, Mike will be 2 and Sarah and I will be 10. Unfortunately, I was informed that a state range at Tier 0 is 1-3 max."

There were more smiles and a bit more grumbling from Mike as I continued with my half-assed attempt at explaining this, " Empathy, Willpower and Presence are how in tune you are with reality. Karma is your measure of cosmic balance and goodness. It is a combination of Karma and Luck. I think both are hard to quantify. Just high karma is good. All these contribute to your Health, Energy and Mana. Health is how hard it is to kill you. HP or hit points. Energy is used to power skills, and yes, Sarah Mana, magic."

She fist-pumped and smiled. "Before you ask, no idea. I didn't see any spells or wizards or whatever, and I didn't get offered a class choice to spellcast."

Mike smiled at me, "That's because you need high intelligence for that, I guess…"

I gave him the finger with a smile and more smiles, and the tension in the room lowered.

"Once you assign your stats, you roll for an item. No idea how that works, but you get a choice. It was just this prompt asking to roll a number. You pick a category and then get the item like roulette. All I know is that high is good. I scored a big time with my roll. Then you go to a tutorial where you pick a class and learn some stuff. I lucked out again and got a weird but perfect class. Again, I literally cannot tell. The System can enforce a lot of stuff. Oh, and I got an AI."

They wanted to know what effect the stats had on us, and I just told them mine were high. I was a little embarrassed. They all wanted proof. They all wanted to know how the AI compared with Bard and ChatGPT.

I started easy. I arm-wrestled Dallas and Jerrod and then got them to punch me as hard as they could. They could not even make me feel it. I stabbed my hand and showed them both my regeneration and then again to show a healing potion. That was hard. I didn't like pain and am not a fan of self-inflicted wounds. Sarah jokingly stabbed me again but could not break my skin, no matter how hard she tried. That was funny.

Sprite: You would be immune to most attacks and weapons here on Earth. Your damage mitigation will work up to Uncommon Tier - energy dependent, of course.

It was trivial for Sprite to connect to Jean's Bluetooth speaker. She then joined in to have a conversation with us. She was a lifesaver. She helped out when my explanations were too simple or inaccurate or I could not talk about things. My descriptions were entirely crap, which was not surprising. We spoke about Julie, the Legion and the shop. It was strange how they all started accepting things once they overcame the newness and weirdness.

Jean and Mike started directing the conversations, both working together seamlessly.

My biggest concern was getting in contact with Julie and getting an energy generator so that I could operate at normal levels.

"Short-term priorities should be securing energy and enhancing you all, and we have 8 things left. Julie is sending a generator, which, once we get enough power, we can install a portable store. We can buy a decent generator from the store. The issue is that it will take a couple of days. Once it starts generating energy, we may see incursions, chaos, and void spawns as the surrounding area's energy destabilises."

We were interrupted by a message on my phone from Lawrence. "Luke, what the hell are you doing? Against my better judgment, I just signed off on a property deal that was either outright crazy or brilliant. You own 26 properties and four businesses in Port Douglas. Call me."

Crap. Note to self: Don't buy property and stuff while buzzing.

NOTE: Don't buy property and stuff while buzzed.

Sprite: I can handle those for you. Are you interested in acquiring more properties? There are another 45 that you could get with no outlay, using your existing ones as collateral. Your property market is ripe for exploitation, especially since we know that money will be worthless in three weeks. Any loans we take out will never be repaid.

What do you mean worthless?

Sprite: Credits will replace cash eventually. A lot of your technology will not function post-integration without significant upgrades. Over time, things will fail unless it depends on energy levels, which means ambient nanites and mana. Properties will default to the System and to the nearest settlement stone that gains authority over them. You earn prestige and power if you have ownership and a settlement stone.

Well, crap. That gives me some ideas. Get the other properties. We may as well buy, and as they say, possession is 9/10ths of the law.

I let the others know. I was telling them to cash up and buy up.

Sprite spoke over the speaker again, "You must be enhanced, or these spawns will destroy you. A Tier 0 classless being is no match for a Tier 1 Chaos beast. I envisage that your enhancements will take about a week for all of you, and then we can train and prepare. We may have Julie and our energy levels sufficient for Luke and the rest of you to train.”

Rahsaan asked if we were safe when being enhanced and was happy that the forcefield would protect everyone. There was little or no earth technology that could move them once activated.

I assured him it was safe, "The mid-term plan should enhance ourselves and ensure we have the settlement stone ready to go as soon as integration occurs. This will stop the CEO of Flex Tech from being the de facto ruler of this region. We need to find out more about him. Amy would be helpful with this, so we need to contact her. In the longer term, we must consider saving as many people as possible."

Crap. Saving people. It was not really fair. I know Uncle Ben from Spiderman would want me to save them, but damn it, he was just some made-up dude who said, 'With great power comes great responsibility'. Could I live up to those ideals? Did I want to? I wanted to ensure that Amy, Sarah, and Mike were safe.

Damn. Mike would like to save everyone. Sarah too.

Sprite spoke again, her voice sounding like the one in my head. "Integration generally sees what is referred to by those removed from the site as the Culling. Expect a 15-20% population decrease in the first 24 hours, then about the same over the next week. By the end of the first month, the population will be about 50% of what it is now. Based on historical analysis of the Karass Collective, they will try to enslave humanity. It will be a lot lower, and the current projections are a 15% survival rate as Karass citizens. They will not be gentle about it, and the rulers chosen will be the worst kind of despots, so I expect a much lower survival rate. Then, while the energy levels fluctuate, Chaos and Void spawns will occur. Without a cohesive effort, large tracts of the planet will become incompatible with humanity."

She paused. “Without integration, and the only reason it was sanctioned even in this most barbaric way was that the human race had a less than 1% chance of survival over the next one hundred years. With the integration, the human race, or Earth Human race, will continue.”

When Sprite finished, we were shocked. I was, too. I had not really thought it through. It was a lot higher stakes than we thought. Potentially, 85% of the world population will die, the rest enslaved.

I was right. Sarah started, "Well, if we can gain power, we have to save everyone. I mean, my mum is .."

We all got the message. The next step was to pick who was going to get juiced up.

We decided that Sarah, Dallas, Corey, Ryan, Jarrod and Mike would start with a dose after dinner. At the same time, Phillip, Jean, Rahsaan and I sorted things here, mainly working on our plans, and I would train as I was able to.

Sprite: You should thank Tasar. If you put that collar on, your energy levels will last much longer. At least the collar won't be annoying.

Crap. I hate that man. I'm not too fond of that thing.

I am sure that I felt Sprite smirk.

We sat around talking, and I sat by the pool with Mike and Sarah, catching up. For them I had been gone for 2 days, for me it was close to a month.