Jade's sand skimmer bounced easily over the occasional obstacles found within the wide desert. The sun shone down from high overhead, leaving only shallow shadows while creating a shimmer of heat in the air over the burning sand.
A small drake scurried away in terror as the skimmer zoomed over the low rocks that it had been shading itself behind. The image stayed in Jade's mind long after his speeding vehicle had left the animal far behind.
The wind swept the hair of his dwarven figure back and tugged strands free of the braids that he used to keep his hair out of his way. Dwarves grew hair like they grew muscles, without effort, as though the traits were linked. Neither the gnomes, nor the dragons, from whom the dwarven race had been bred, bore such a hairy racial attribute.
His grin was a little wild as he bounced over the small rise just before reaching the edge of the city, but he slowed the skimmer down to a sedate pace as he slid neatly into the city's lazy traffic pattern. His dwarven coordination was so much better than his human form's.
--
Jade's mother was meeting him in the archaic Steam Café that lay near the town square. She could talk for hours. She still liked to recount her adventures as one of the first players to help build this city within the game's first expansion area.
Her contributions had apparently been nearly as significant as she claimed, since her character's name was permanently carved upon the dwarven built enchanted fountain in the town square, along with dozens of others. Jade had tried sanding it off once, just to see. The NPC city guards were not to be trifled with, and the carvings were automatically repaired as though the fountain bore the highest level of enchantments.
Jade's mother had been playing 'Living Jade Empire' almost since the game had first launched, (hence his own name). The MMORPG was already nineteen years old. It wasn't a record time for a game series by far, but it was an impressive length of time for a single game to remain popular.
He had no way to guess whether the system that displayed similar menus within his own mind was younger, or older, than the game, but he'd been able to see them for as long as he could remember. The earliest memory he had was of her holding him up in front of a screen and asking someone, "Can you see him this way?"
He had only a few fragments of memory before he was about five years old, but his mother was a constant figure in almost all of them. Her familiar slim, dark haired, human avatar turned as she caught sight of his dwarf.
"Jade!" she exclaimed and pounced forward to hug him.
"Mom," he replied dryly, while returning her hug. "Don't call me Jade, I'm Hisui here," he reminded her again.
"Hisui then. But it's Jade that I want to know about! How are you doing in the city?" she asked worriedly, as though she didn't also live in a city, although it was a smaller one.
"I'm fine," Jade said, without mentioning his recent demise.
"Fine?" she asked querulously. "That's the same thing you tell me every time I call. Can't you at least use other descriptive words?"
He nodded and replied seriously, "Alright, tolerable, okay."
His mother laughed and replied just as dryly as he had earlier, "Fine, fine, I won't complain about your phrasing." She gave him a slanted look and asked lightly, "So no accidents? Work going ok?"
Jade had always suspected that his mother had some secret contact with the system. She always seemed to know everything, and he had never been able to get a lie past her, but when he had been small she had never insisted that he was imagining anything.
Jade sighed now, and admitted reluctantly, "I got hit by a bus when I was standing too near a curb. I lost my balance when someone bumped into me while I tried to dodge. But I only missed one day of work! It's fine."
His mother hugged him again far more tightly, and he protested, "Mom!"
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
She replied in a muffled voice, "Shut up brat! How can you be so calm about it?"
"I'm fine," he pointed out more calmly.
She finally released him, wiped her eyes, and nodded. Her human form beside his dwarf made their perspective the same as it had been years ago, and he looked up into her face.
"I'm really okay," he insisted.
"Okay," she agreed. She took another deep breath, and a sip of her drink before asking more calmly, "Have you met anyone interesting?"
He rolled his eyes. "If you mean do I have a girlfriend yet? No."
His mother stuck her tongue out at him and then protested, "I didn't ask that!"
"I'm doing my best to fit in," he muttered.
"So is everyone else," she assured him.
After a moment he nodded.
When he had described his internal quests to her when he was younger, she had always insisted, "Even if everyone doesn't see the world the same way that you do, just remember that they also have both large and small goals set for themselves."
--
When Jade disconnected the next morning, he dressed quickly. He hadn't left himself much extra time.
He watered the houseplant his mother had insisted on giving him, and felt surprised to see the small pale flower buds. They decorated a new stalk that the plant had thrust toward his small window. The last time he'd watered it, the plant had only shown its usual green leaves.
Whenever he saw little things like this, he wondered if maybe this was the kind of thing that would actually let him make progress on his main quest. But perhaps these small miracles weren't relevant to seeing the world through a human perspective. The system didn't give him any guidance.
Jade ate the same cold cereal every morning. He had never quite figured out what other people loved so much about different types of food. He could distinguish between them, but to him food was just food. He quickly washed his bowl when he finished, and then went to class.
He was only attending classes part time, because he didn't want his mother to have to pay for them. Even if he had only enrolled in a trade school, it was another expense.
Jade hoped that the two year degree would help him achieve his future plans to travel around the world. Someday he hoped to have set foot upon every continent at least once, so that he could find out if his main quest meant for him to literally see the world.
Eric greeted him cheerfully when he slid into his seat with, "Hey! You finally skipped a day, everything ok? Finally loosening up a little?"
Jade blinked in surprise. Most people never seemed to notice if he had been missing for a day. "I am ok," he assured his classmate.
Eric winked, and then sent a message to Jade's phone just as the bell rang. The system could have shown it to him unobtrusively, but he risked bending over his phone to read it in the usual fashion.
It was notes from the previous day's class. They were rather incoherent despite being in a regular font, and using the same language that they spoke every day. But Jade felt a flicker of amused affection for Eric as he read them. Usually Eric was the one who missed classes and asked Jade for notes.
Jade thanked Eric for the notes when the class ended, without mentioning that the system could have replayed the whole class for him if he had asked.
Eric replied cheerfully, "No problem! I owe you!"
The system blinked his quest list at him, so Jade checked it. He discovered that he had a new one that said: 'Invite a friend to an activity.'
It startled him, since usually his quests never involved other people. Jade glanced at Eric and hesitated. Eric waved and departed swiftly.
Jade glanced at his quest list, expecting to have failed the new quest in his hesitation, but it remained.
--
When Jade reached the convenience store, his boss was waiting. The older man said gruffly, "Emily is out sick, but I can only stay for a couple of hours, so you need to get all the cleaning done before then."
The system handily popped up a quest timer in Jade's peripheral vision, as Jade nodded. Both the system and his boss took the new quest as having been accepted without a verbal word of acknowledgment.
Each subquest task, like mopping the floors, cleaning the drains, and scrubbing the bowls rewarded him with a point of Karma if he finished it with high efficiency. His Karma balance was a bit low after his recent reincarnation, so he was careful to do a good job.
After his boss inspected his work before leaving, he said merely, "Hmph, good enough I suppose."
Jade sighed. He wondered how people who couldn't see the system managed to sustain their motivation for subquests. They probably wouldn't be able to see that they were receiving anything for their hard work.
A moment later he summoned a smile to greet one of his regular customers as she banged through the door like a small messy tornado.