Death
That’s what awaited 10-Epsilon if she couldn’t convince Beta-42 that he needed to continue generating instances and completing quests. Of course, that’s probably what awaited him too if she failed, but that wasn’t really at the top of her list of concerns at the moment.
The past few hours had been a whirlwind of events. It hadn’t even been a full day since she had convinced his grandmother to buy what was potentially the end of their world in a box and her grandson was already firmly on the route to ruining her life.
First there was that affinity analysis demanding that she report directly to High Command. Talk about a death wish. And as if to confirm that being the case, the Overseer herself gave her a personal visit.
There was little doubt in 10-Epsilon’s mind that the Overseer had made the visit to decide whether or not she’d murder her to make sure she’d keep her mouth shut. And top it off after she had evaded her potential execution, she received the following hidden quest.
Hidden Quest - World Ender’s Keeper
A person of immense potential has been discovered. Nurture this person’s potential without High Command being informed. Do not let them be stolen away from you.
Rewards
Power, Status, Fortune
Failure’s Consequence
Death
Obviously, 10-Epsilon ended up accepting it. Quest or not, she’d probably die either way if she failed to fulfill the conditions. Might as well get a chance at a reward then, right?
This is what I get for putting in work in the slacker’s department, she thought. Just her luck that she’d stepped on a landmine while climbing up from the gutter of the streets to the top.
As she walked through the space between departments, another consequence of her ambition followed close behind her.
“Honestly, Eve, I love your work,” her friend—more so a reluctant colleague—Double-Gamma said. “It feels like I’m working with another Gamma when I’m working with you.”
“Really?” 10-Epsilon asked. Her voice did not hold a hint of enthusiasm and she most assuredly did not take the statement as a compliment.
“You’re just a little too tame, that’s all.”
10-Epsilon thought back to when she’d gotten Double-Gamma’s help acquiring an outlier user in the forest earlier that summer. A little too tame, in that situation had been stopping Double-Gamma from making use of the anal probe when pretending to be the type of aliens that abduct people with flying saucers.
“I’ll try to keep that in mind, Gigi,” 10-Epsilon said.
Double-Gamma slung her arm around 10-Epsilon’s shoulder. “Which is why for our next collaboration, I was thinking we should make a little bomb threat.”
10-Epsilon internally lamented the fact that their tech department was filled with psychopaths. “I don’t think—” she began, but stopped once she received an alert. Before she could finish her statement, she received an alert.
Heads Up!
Beta-42 is showing doubts.
“Sorry, Double-Gamma.” 10-Epsilon threw off her colleague’s arm. “I’ve got to go.”
“We’ll talk about it later?” Double-Gamma asked, waving as 10-Epsilon sprinted down the hallway.
10-Epsilon was swift to reach a vacant conference room. “Make me a voice request template,” she said as she walked in. The template message popped up in front of her. She snapped her fingers and the door closed behind her.
Heads Up!
A staff member of your local Gamify branch would like to help ease your concerns over voice call.
Do you accept it?
“Forward it to Beta-42,” she commanded. She snapped her fingers again and the shades swiftly lowered over the room’s glass walls. It was a simple trick, but still beyond her newest acquisition.
User has accepted communications request!
“Delay connection. Pull up most recent response to user question.”
Most Recent Response
It is not required of you to continue generating new instances and completing quests.
Oh, it certainly is in this case, she thought. “Display user environment and pull up user profile highlights.”
Inch by inch the office space around her was torn away by a vicious illusionary projection. She remained, but the glass walls and the artificial light of the small conference room that surrounded her departed. In their place, came the walls of a moderately sized bedroom and the natural light of an afternoon sun, bleeding through a window.
10-Epsilon stared forward. Sitting at his desk, in the room where there wasn’t much out in the open beyond said desk, a bed, and a gaming setup was Beta-42.
Beta-42 Profile Highlights
All the information she had marked as relevant when first targeting this landmine flew by her eyes and she quickly scanned over it.
Jake, grandmother, hoarder, age 25, bachelor’s degree, junk hauler, minimalist, best friend Will, gamer, single, orphan, grandfather, don’t bring up, got it!
With a thought, she closed the information in front of her. “Finish the connection,” she said. “Project self.”
Despite the situation, 10-Epsilon was confident. Yes, she had been caught off guard earlier by Beta-42’s activation, but she was in her element now. Her gift with the spoken word had brought her up from the slums of a dying world to selling the end of a world in a box and they would take her even farther. This was just a roadblock.
Agent Connected
“Jake,” 10-Epsilon said the name softly.
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Beta-42 jumped up a little in his chair, then turned around to see her. She gave him a somber, teary-eyed look that didn’t show a hint of the confidence she felt within.
“Please, you can’t give up,” she said. Her tone was far more noble than her intentions. “For your sake and mine.”
===
Welp, didn’t see that coming, Jake thought as he collapsed onto his bed. When he accepted a support call from a Gamify staff member, he hadn’t been sure of what would happen next. He certainly hadn’t been expecting some hot chick to project herself into his room and ask him for his help like she was Princess Leia from Star Wars.
To summarize what he had just been told, this girl, Evelyn, was an alien from another dimension, all of Gamify’s initial staff were aliens from another dimension, the instances were alternate dimensions generated and layered on top of our reality, Gamify was invading Earth, and he had just been given early access to what some would consider the apocalypse.
The severity of apocalypse varied from world-to-world with the worst scenario being along the lines of the destruction of the entire solar system. The minimum severity would be everyone getting superpowers and monsters roaming the streets. Whatever it ended up being, human civilization’s current paradigm would be upended.
When Jake asked why aliens from other dimensions were even going through all this effort, Evelyn told him that The System had willed it.
The System, in this case, was a multi-dimensional entity that flooded worlds with mana and gave people superpowers. High Command, the aliens in charge of a space empire that spanned multiple dimensions, were tasked with integrating more worlds with The System by The System. Gamify was just the earth-based branch of theirs that they had recently established.
As for how Jake and Eve factored into all of this, Evelyn was the one assigned to managing Jake and Jake just so happened to unlock an extremely rare affinity. Thanks to some crazy alien politics, she’d be executed if he failed to grow strong and he’d be turned into crafting materials due to the value of his affinity.
She was his life coach. As in, if she didn’t coach him well enough, they’d both die.
“I’m sorry you have to go through all this,” Evelyn said. She had her projection standing over his bed, showing him the sad girl eyes. Despite being from a galaxy far, far away, she very much looked like a human. Switch out the formal business attire she was wearing for something more casual and she’d easily fit in at any Californian university.
“Well, from what you're saying, it sounds like I’d have to go through this down the line, anyway,” Jake said. “I’m just getting a headstart.” There was no safe option for him. It was either get strong or die trying.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be watching over you.”
“Then I’ll be thinking of your sad face the next time a spider ends up mauling mine,” Jake joked.
For the first time since they’d started talking, Evelyn smiled. Jake smiled back. “Don’t make it look like the idea is making you happy,” he said.
Evelyn held back a laugh. “I think it's about time I go,” she said.
“Wait.” Jake tried to catch her wrist as she turned away from his bed, but caught air instead. “Oh, right.”
She turned back to him with an inquisitive look.
“Before you go, you know my grandma, right?”
“Yes.”
“She’s been in a bad place ever since my grandad died,” Jake said. “Is there anything I could do to help her using The System?” If he could open pocket dimensions and use stat points to make himself superhuman, there had to at least be something he could do to get some of his grandma’s old spirit back.
Evelyn looked him straight in the eye. “Continue completing quests. You’ll get what you want.”
“That’s all I needed to know,” Jake said, standing up from his bed. Fighting for himself was enough reason for him to get up and get to it, but he had double the reason if he could help his grandma out while he was at it.
“I wish you luck,” Evelyn said, her projection breaking apart and scattering like dust in the wind. In no time at all, she was gone.
“Thanks.”
Jake walked out of his grandparent’s house into the backyard. As soon as he had seen the details for the first part of his second Founder’s Quest, he already had a location for his next instance in mind.
There was a treehouse with a small deck out back that he had abandoned after his friend, Will, helped him get a gaming setup for his room back in high school. Before then, it had been his go to place to escape to when he didn’t want to deal with his grandfather’s death or what his grandmother was becoming because of it.
The treehouse was a decent size, still big enough for him when he was back in middle school, but he was hoping for a more spacious retreat once The System had finished generating his instance.
He placed the scanners in the yard around the base of the treehouse’s tree. Each of them were set far enough apart from each other that he was sure that the treehouse above would be caught in the instance generation perimeter along with a little extra breathing room.
Before attempting to generate the instance, he asked his wrist brain if an instance built around his treehouse was outdoors enough for it.
Heads Up!
As long as there is more outside space in the instance generation area than indoor space, the requirements for Founder’s Quest 2 will be met.
“Let’s get this show on the road then.”
Scanners have been properly placed.
Would you like to create an instance?
"Yes."
Instance Generation Issue!
It appears that you've chosen to create an instance that covers a greater area than what you are capable of generating at your current level.
This is an issue originating from the verticality of encompassed objects.
Would you like to adjust the height of the generation area?
"Yes, I would," Jake said.
In response, he received a tutorial about how to adjust the scan area using a projection that his display shades would present to him. After he closed the message, he could see the outline of a three-dimensional box projected over the scanner area at the ground level of the tree for him.
The projection covered the way up to the treehouse, but cut off a few feet through the treehouse itself. Jake adjusted it to cover everything from the very top of the tree down. That made the new cutoff point for the instance generation just out of reach from where he was standing under it with his hand raised. A couple more levels and he’d get the whole thing no adjustments required.
This area will generate an area that meets quest requirements. Would you like to begin instance generation?
“Yes.”
Instance Generating…
Blinding white light filled the projected outline. The world around the instance darkened and the wind began to whistle. It was a much more cinematic experience than when he had been waiting for the instance to generate in his bathroom. Of course, he was preoccupied with the spectacle that was his affinity being discovered at that time, so maybe he missed something.
While he stared up at the generating instance, his eyes protected by the automatically adjusting protection his display shades provided them, Jake speculated on what the system could give him to help his grandmother.
If there were things like the potions in video games, he’d assume a stamina potion might give her her energy back. A mana potion or some kind of mind restoration potion might do her better though. Anything that could help get her mind running on something other than collecting random things that she might need in one-in-ten lifetimes.
He’d probably be able to buy potions at one of those Gamify connected stores they were holding his money hostage at if potions like that actually existed. Maybe he’d find one in a treasure chest generated in one of these instances too. He hadn’t run into any while in the guest bathroom, but that was only his first instance.
And who knows, maybe there was a chest already waiting for him hidden at the bottom of his sink if he actually managed to drain the thing. As he leveled and created larger instances, the rewards would increase and the chances of a chest being spawned probably would too.
“Come on,” Jake said, staring at the generating instance as if his gaze would communicate his desire for bonus rewards, “Spawn me a chest.” He didn’t need the chest to have a potion inside. Any kind of treasure or even just useful supplies were fine.
Instance Generated!
The wind settled and the brightness of late afternoon returned to the instance’s surroundings as the blinding light within it receded. Jake looked above with great anticipation as the outline of his generated treehouse was formed. As the white light fully disappeared, however, something came rushing down the side of the tree. Before Jake could even react, a chest came flying down, smashing straight into his face.