Travis and Clyde made it back to the SUV in track meet timing. As they were running, Travis started to worry that the police would be there, and he would have to answer a million questions. To his surprise, they had apparently finished up. The wolf corpse was gone, as were any signs of what had happened. He had not been gone that long so he wondered what really happened.
They got in the truck and sucked air for a little bit before talking. Travis thought about grabbing a water but figured he would introduce Clyde to his new items in dramatic fashion.
“Want a water, man?” he asked.
“Please.”
“Okay, just reach into that bag back there; bottles are inside of it.”
Clyde reached back and went to open it but realized it seemed empty. He pulled it up front to be sure. “There is nothing in here.”
“Humor me for a second, will ya?” Travis said. He made eye contact with Clyde, who nodded. “Double-check if it's empty or not.”
Clyde did, and again there was nothing. He just looked at Travis expectantly.
“Okay, now put your hand inside and think about having a bottle of water. No, wait, maybe it has to be specific. Think about a bottle of Fiji water.” Travis was having more fun with this than current circumstances would dictate.
Clyde was tired and had been through a lot, but he already looked up to Travis and was willing to play along with whatever kind of joke he had going. He figured the guy blew off steam this way.
He reached into the bag, half expecting to put his hand in something nasty. Then he thought of Fiji water. Since he didn't expect anything to happen, he would have just thought of water in general, but he used to argue with another professor that Fiji water was superior in taste to others. When he had the specific thought in his mind, he felt a bottle of water touch his hand. Again, not expecting anything, he didn't have his hand open. Startled, he peeked in the bag and saw the bottle.
Clyde was about to react how someone normally would if that happened, but then he remembered they had just had telepathic conversations with a werewolf mage.
“How long have you known?” he ended up asking.
Travis looked at him questioningly, disappointed he didn't get the reaction he wanted.
“You've had a magic gym bag, how long have you known things had changed?”
“I got a package after work; it had this and a journal in it. A game journal, like from an RPG. I shit you not, man.” He added after seeing a skeptical look on Clyde's face.
“Well, this I have to see,” Clyde sounded excited for this.
As Travis pulled it out, he said to Clyde, “I can't believe you weren't more freaked out by the bag.”
“Oh, I was going to be, but think about what we just did. In comparison, a bag is still a bag, magical or not.” It would take some time to loosen Clyde up, but he was exactly the type of person Travis needed on this adventure with him.
“Here is the journal, it will be interesting to see if everything shows for you. I've wondered if it will be one of those ‘only the owner can read it’ type things,” Travis mused.
When he handed it over, Clyde could see the cover. Travis waited for him to digest it all. Clyde had a look that was somewhere between surprise and expectation.
He finally said, “I thought to myself that this all seemed like some kind of tabletop RPG.”
“Do you play?” Travis cut him off to ask.
“Not as much as I'd like to now, but yes. I used to play a lot more. How did you say you came to have this?” he asked.
Travis explained about the drone-like delivery driver. When he was done, he had a few questions of his own. “How could someone pull off a game like this? This couldn't be someone from Earth, obviously; right?”
“Why, what are you thinking?” Clyde had an inkling but wanted Travis to go first. As crazy as all this was, making certain suggestions could still ostracize you.
Travis seemed uneasy as well but pushed through fast. With everything that has happened, ideas needed to be discussed without fear of embarrassment or worse.
“There is no way this is being done by a person or group from Earth. I was a member of the strongest organization on Earth, and we could barely coordinate our radios half the time. On top of that, how do you explain magic and talking wolves? This is not an inside job,” Travis was calculated in his thinking, and Clyde was happy to see it.
“It has to be some kind of off-world thing. Either your traditional aliens or maybe some kind of dimensional travel or wormhole. Even then, that is only the what, not the why or how,” Travis finished up and looked at Clyde.
“All I can do is agree. There is nothing that says this can be done by people from this planet. I do not think it is some type of religious punishment, although I'm biased in that area. I would say either dimensional cross up, or some type of alien experiment,” Clyde postulated.
“I have some colleagues who teach different sciences who I'd love to hear from; my specialty is animals.”
“I imagine there will be plenty more time for conversations like this. May I continue looking at the book?” he asked.
Travis nodded as he continued to think.
Clyde had only held the journal and looked at the cover. When he opened it up to the first page, there was nothing there, but a second later, Travis heard the notification sound. As he did, the book turned to a page Travis hadn't seen yet because it just filled in now.
It was titled ‘Party Members’.
Add Clyde Sanderson to your party?
Clyde handed the journal back. Travis read the line again and waited to see if anything else would come up. Travis was not the type to feel awkward in a situation normally, forcing him to do something prematurely or not think it through. He did feel that a little bit here, though. He could see Clyde's glare and knew he wanted in on all of this.
He did think Clyde would make a good team member, as long as he had other more martial members as well. He didn't know if there was a limit, but he did know you could remove party members in games, at least the few he had played.
Travis said “yes”.
---
As they sat in Travis's SUV essentially talking DnD, the Cataclysm was decimating huge swaths of land, including tremendous numbers of people. The hurricane that was near Maine was about to make landfall and would pummel the northeastern seaboard all night. The one in Florida had already been doing so.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
There was a woman in Pittsburgh who had family in New York and New Jersey. She wanted desperately to go and make sure they were safe. It was mostly older aunts, uncles, and grandparents left, as the younger family members had moved west.
Her name was Anna, she was a 27-year-old who was born in Puerto Rico. She had spent her early years living with her mother, but once she passed away, Anna moved to the US. They had a huge family, and it was not hard for her to find willing and loving caretakers.
To this day, she still felt the need to repay the family that had taken her in. Her mother had been an outcast, mainly due to her criminal ties in their native country. The only worthwhile thing she had done, besides giving birth to Anna, was to teach her a few tricks of her trade: burglary.
Anna, however, was not a criminal. She considered herself a law-abiding citizen. That's what she told herself, anyway. In her mind, there was no crime when you stole from those who had stolen from others. Her specialty was infiltrating secure facilities unseen, a skill that might prove useful in the future.
But for now, she wrestled with the decision of whether to save her family or not. The reason she hadn't, and it was compelling, was the journal that was telling her not to.
You see, the Dungeon Master (DM) had planned on making Anna the first member of Travis's party. What he or she had to say about that, well, we would find out. All the DM knew was that 'his' players were not behaving in the way he had expected. He didn't intend to dictate the entire game, only the early stages and up through the building of the base. He knew that men on Earth found Anna attractive, and although Travis and she would make a good team, the DM wasn't a pervert, not in the way people on Earth are, but he did love a good drama.
---
Clyde was now behind the wheel of the car, allowing Travis to work on his attributes, of which he had a lot to do. When Clyde joined the party, he had seen a small snapshot of his stats:
Clyde Sanderson - Party Member NPC Tier 3/Level 1 Class - NA Attributes: Strength: 4.5 Intelligence: 11 Endurance: 6 Reflexes: 6 Charisma: 6 Secondary Attributes: Luck: 9 Willpower: 10 Perception:11
He told Travis that he had to find a way to change their party name.
When Travis saw his stats, he felt much better about having Clyde as a team member. Clyde, on the other hand, was not happy. He believed he was shortchanged with his lower stats but didn't make a big deal about it. A strength rating of 4.5 was terrible, and if things went as he thought they might, he promised himself to work on improving his strength.
Clyde hadn't told Travis yet, but he mostly expected this to play out like a video game, more so than an RPG. In video games, you had to play out the minutiae of a character, making some aspects more realistic. Yet in DnD, it was all just imagination. You could say you trained for 8 hours with weights, and it happened. You got a bump, and all was good. In video games, there was usually some kind of minigame where you improved your stats, and while that wasn't entirely realistic, it was more so than how DnD handled it.
Travis looked at his stats again.
Tier 3/Level 2
He had to figure out what the tier was all about. An upgrade to his journal was good, but he had to setup this base first, who knew what that would entail. Having someone that understood gaming made him happy. How he met Clyde made him wonder if the 'game' had sent him this way. Not only had it not but the "game" was the not thrilled about having an NPC in his main characters party. He did not have all the NPC/PC parameters set yet.
Still no change to race or faction and that stuff. Attributes hadn't changed either, but it said he had 3 "upgrade points." This was wild! What would happen if he put 3 points in strength? Could he start lifting way more?
Clyde seemed to think that's exactly what would happen, but he thought it might be more subtle. He hadn't needed strength so far, but he had definitely used his reflexes and perception. He also planned to raise charisma when he could. Travis knew from experience that if you could get people to do what you wanted, things became much easier. Most people knew that through video games; Travis had been trained to know it and had used it in life and death situations.
These were his starting stats; he wrote them down in a small notebook just so he had them in his pocket.
- Strength: 7
- Intelligence: 9
- Reflexes: 9.5
- Endurance: 10
- Charisma: 7.5
Secondary Attributes:
- Luck: 10
- Willpower: 10
- Perception: 9
Why were the bottom attributes considered secondary. Was Clyde really that much smarter than him? How did the book even generate these numbers? He chided himself. He and Clyde had agreed that they had plenty of time to "geek out," as Clyde called it, over the stats. He needed to level up, and then they had to come up with a plan. Columbus was only about 11 hours away, but time was ticking, and they had no idea what else might distract them between here and there.
He was a quick decision-maker, so he stopped wasting time. He looked at the book and said, "2 points in strength and 1 in intelligence." The journal added the points and highlighted the ones changing in red, then it displayed underneath, "Are you sure?" "Yes." The new numbers turned black.
Strength: 9 Intelligence:10 ......... ......... ......... Are you sure?
Travis waited to see if he felt anything and was almost disappointed. Then he experienced something similar to the feeling he had when he ranked up—a warmth, but this one seemed to focus on his muscles, followed by a very brief but noticeable clarity in his mind. It felt as if a fog had been blown away, and only now could he see everything. Of course, he had only spent one point on intelligence, but the first upgrade was the most intense.
Clyde, a veteran of these types of things, at least on the imaginary side, wondered if Travis had spent a point on intelligence so he could be closer to himself. He hoped not; Clyde did not wish to compete with this man. He would be fine as the "smart sidekick." Now that he thought about it, he wondered if it was possible for him to become the mage to Travis's fighter—the leader who kicked ass while Clyde stayed on the backline, sending fireballs into the baddies like Neera from Baldur's Gate (come to think about it her magic was a bit too 'wild').
There were still things to do in the journal, but Clyde was just driving down the interstate with no destination in mind. "Sooo, what's the plan, Major?" Travis had shared his background with Clyde earlier. When Travis gave him a flat look, Clyde said, "Well, this is your party, and you do outrank me, both in and outside of it." Clyde also wasn't above laying it on thick, so Travis didn't feel any type of competition.
Travis laughed; he liked Clyde a lot. He hoped the man didn't think he had raised his intelligence to compete with him. In reality, he knew he wasn't strong, even though he could handle himself in hand-to-hand combat. He was more of a ranged fighter. The implications of this game were getting to him a little, as much as something could get to Travis. In other games, intelligence dictated a lot of things as Clyde was telling him, like magic, computer use, and scroll reading. He wanted to be able to do that stuff. He felt a bit underwhelmed by his starting stats.
Travis didn't realize that if he survived and kept ranking up, he would be able to do things that would make superheroes jealous.
"I was hoping you would come with me to Columbus," he said to Clyde.
"As you are now it be a huge asset having someone with your knowledge and intelligence, not just game wise either," Travis added quickly, not wanting to emphasize intelligence as the sole reason, "I could also really use someone that understands all of this RPG lingo."
Clyde had already decided that he would go with Travis if asked; all he was pondering was whether he wanted to go to his house first. There was an apartment that the University lent out to him in Pittsburgh. Clyde had some clothes and stuff there. He didn't want to double back, so he asked Travis if they could just make a quick stop before heading on to Columbus.
"Sure thing, Private," Travis said with a smile. He wasn't known for his comedy, and it showed, although he was good at deadpan and sarcasm sometimes.
Clyde mock saluted, and they were off. An odd couple no doubt but their fates would be intertwined, if they could both survive.