Saturday

The clock was ticking.

Karl Hausman sat and listened to the grandfather clock, almost the only sound in the house. He looked around and sighed. He didn't feel motivated to do anything. Jane would have teased him or goaded him until he got moving and felt better. She'd have said something like, “What, are you melting into that chair? Get up and go check the mail.”

He missed her. He stared at the gleam on his left ring finger. God, how he missed her. It had been three months, eight days, and...ten hours since she passed away, her hand in his, that sad smile on her face that shattered his heart into a million pieces. She was a fighter for so long, but when the last lab results came back, she said that she was done. She wanted a little dignity, at the end. Quality over quantity, she said. She was satisfied. They'd had a good run, almost forty years together. She decided to let herself fade away, peacefully.

Oh, she had her regrets. She'd listed them while he listened, cried about some, shook her head at others. At one point, when the idea of dying was hurting her the most, she'd begged him not to die with regrets like she was. “Go out and live,” she urged him. “Don't just stay in this house all alone. Have friends over. Go to every movie that looks good. Go to reunions. Get a hobby. Go to the library and flirt with a nice librarian. Take up yak herding, I don't know. Just...don't waste your time. Promise me, Karl.”

“I'll do my best, my love.”

“You'd better. When you get to the Pearly Gates you'd better not complain to me about all the things you didn't do, or I'll be telling you 'I told you so' over and over for the first century, buster.” She managed to smile through her tears. She was always good at cheering people up, even herself. Karl didn't know how she managed it. Maybe he should have asked her for lessons in that instead of staying such a curmudgeon.

Now, months later, he looked around the nearly silent living room. I know I promised, my love. And I will. Just...not quite yet. He had showered and shaved and dressed. He'd done enough for the moment. He thought about putting in the effort to make breakfast and sighed. I'm not hungry. His stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly. He looked down at his belly. Traitor. He imagined Jane giggling at him, and it felt both good and painful.

He still didn't want to move, but his stomach continued to insist. Fine. He slowly stood, making his 'creaky old man noises' as Jane was wont to tease. He sighed again. He was always sighing these days. It felt as if he were trying to vent his melancholy out of his body and his mouth were an exhaust valve. It didn't work, but he seemed compelled to keep trying. He started walking towards the kitchen.

And then...

His vision was replaced by white letters on a blue background. He blinked. The image completely blocked his sight. He stopped short. He couldn't see anything except words floating in space before him somehow. Am I having a stroke?

He closed his eyes and blocked the strange view. Relying on his memory and perceptions, he knew that he was still somewhere between his easy chair and the kitchen. He started waving his hands out in front of him, trying to feel for furniture. He took a step to his left and banged his ankle against one leg of what felt like a dining room chair. Portside furniture detector reporting in. Ow.

Don't fall down. He was alone, and sixty-eight years old; there would be nobody to help him if he injured himself badly. Swinging his arms to the side, he accidentally rapped his knuckles against the chair back, which smarted, but not much. It was more surprise than pain that time. He felt his way into the chair, pulled himself up to the table, and lay his hands flat on the tabletop. Only then did he open his eyes again, to the disorienting vision.

The next thing that struck him was that he could see the writing. It was in focus. Karl didn't have contact lenses; he hated them. He felt his face, slid his fingers up behind his eyeglasses, opened and closed his eyes a few times, accidentally poked himself in the left eye a little, and finally stopped fiddling around and read the words:

System Message: We thank inhabitants of Sol-3 for participation in our extended alternate natural laws beta test. For the past 6237.3 Sol-3 years you developed under alternate natural laws, showing that even with harsher conditions humanity still develops planet destroying weapons, given enough time. We have removed weapon after it was successfully constructed and you now return normal natural laws. In three days, Sol-3 time, the alternate natural law beta test will terminate and original natural law conditions will return in conjunction with the System.

He stared. He read it again. And again, piecemeal. Questions piled up in his brain faster than he could sort them.

Aliens? Writing in English? Bad grammar. Planet destroying weapons? What the hell did those idiots at CERN do now? Or was it some secret boneheaded military ...'We have removed weapon'... I guess that's good? Natural laws? Alternate? What, is Aristotle suddenly going to be right instead of Newton? Three days. Could we have had more time if we hadn't done science?

What the flying purple dumbasses is this?!?

Karl felt his stomach rumble again.

I'm blind, except for this stupid, crazy message. This 'System' message. ...'will return in conjunction with the System.' Capital S. What is that? Karl realized that whatever the System was, it currently had the ability to put things directly into his visual cortex.

Have I cracked? Am I dreaming? This has to be a surreal dream, or a lucid dream or something. If you know you're dreaming, can't you change things in the dream however you like?

He cleared his throat. “Umm...hot breakfast, appear!” He felt around the table in vain. “Okay, that didn't work. Um, restore vision!” Nothing. “Exit. Escape. Shut down. End program.” He pressed his hands against his closed eyes in frustration for a moment. “Scotty, beam me up! By the power of Grayskull! Klaatu Barada Nikto. Stop. End. Finito. Close window.”

His vision returned. Karl felt stupid. Of course it would be something simple like 'close window.'

Hesitantly, he said, “Open window.” The System Message reappeared, filling his vision. “Close window.” It vanished and he could see his dining room again.

His stomach rumbled. Oh for fuck's sake. He got up, and carefully walked into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal, which was the first low effort meal that came to mind. He spilled a little milk on the counter, he was so distracted. Shoving a spoonful into his mouth to shut his stomach up, he ignored the spill and carried his simple breakfast back to the dining room table.

After another spoonful, he thought, 'open window' and the message reappeared. Huh. He sat there, his mouth full. I just have to think it. 'Close window.' 'Open window.' It works. He spent a few minutes copying the System message down onto the pad of paper, word for word, opening and closing the window repeatedly so that he could see what he was doing. Finally he had the window closed, and stared at what he had written. Then he started underlining things of note, but stopped when he realized that he was going to end up underlining everything.

When he was halfway through his breakfast, he suddenly stopped short. Wait a minute. Did everyone get this message? The same way I did? Then...oh my God. He hurried over to his laptop, started a browser and brought up CNN—or tried to. It wasn't loading. He switched to the New York Times website. Error message there.

Karl tried to remember how to get live TV. It took a few minutes of fumbling with the remote, and he ended up subscribing to something or other, but he finally got a live broadcast and turned the volume up.

“—repeat, say 'close window' to remove the blue message from your vision. Please, everyone, pass this on to anyone in hearing range of you. Saying 'close window' or 'exit window' removes the blue message, and 'open window' brings it back up.

“To all our viewers: we are doing our best to bring you information on what is happening. Here in the studio, an intern figured out the 'close window' command fairly quickly and told the rest of us, but for many it must be taking longer. So again, if you can hear my voice but not see past the blue and white message blocking your vision, say 'close window.' I'm going to keep repeating that for new people tuning in. People in the studio are reporting on the view outside, and there appear to be a lot of car accidents near the building.

“We don't have word yet whether this is a global phenomenon or restricted to the Atlanta area. One moment...I'm now receiving word that our New York affiliate is reporting the same situation. Reports are coming in...we're going to go to London now where May Summers has a live report. May, go ahead.”

There was a burst of static on the screen, and then a stunned looking blond reporter stared into the camera, one hand to her ear and the other holding a microphone. It was early evening there. “Thank you John. I'm standing outside of Westminster Palace in central London. Behind me you can see a number of car accidents, some of them minor, some serious. Everyone here has apparently received a 'System Message' which...oh my God. Steve, behind you!” Summers gestured upward frantically, then the view panned dizzyingly to catch an airliner flying dangerously low over the city.

“There's an airliner...I think...I think they are trying to pull up...yes! My God, someone tell Heathrow!” The reporter fell silent for a moment and they could hear the roar of the engines as the plane cleared the buildings and went into a slow climb. Then the camera swung back to the reporter. “Right. Everyone, saying 'exit window' will clear your vision. John, I'm hearing and seeing multiple explosions in the distance. This is happening in Atlanta too?...I see a number of planes in the air, but most of them appear to be all right. Several planes either taking off or on final approach appear to have crashed.” The camera panned across the city skyline, then focused back on the reporter.

“John, it's chaos here. I don't know what to say. I feel I should be...hold on a moment...” she said quickly, then turned and ran a few steps. The camera followed to where she crouched down before a small child. “Little girl, can you see...? Can you say, 'exit window'? Try to say it.” The microphone failed to pick up the child's reply, but a moment later the girl started looking around frantically. “Mummy! Mummy!”

The reporter felt her earpiece, then smoothed her face and straightened up quickly. “Back to you, John. This is May Summers, CNN, London.” She was already turning back towards the child when the video cut to the studio newsroom.

Karl turned the TV off. And here I am, just calmly eating cereal. He wondered if he should go out and try to help people. He didn't have any particular skills for it, no EMT training like he had been meaning to pick up for years. He'd never gotten around to it. If he went out there, he'd most likely just be contributing to the chaos. But he couldn't just sit at home.

He grabbed his birding binoculars and his coat and stepped outside, carefully patting his pocket to make sure he had his keys before closing the door. The house was on a heavily wooded hillside, and Karl owned several acres. It was a long walk to the end of the driveway, and he took it slowly.

He ended up helping two stranded drivers in the road who hadn't figured out how to clear their vision, but who had managed to successfully slam on the brakes while driving. Karl watched them drive off, saw no one else nearby, and retreated back to the house. At least I helped a little.

Social media was exploding. A movie star in his feed was being helpful, listing several commands she had figured out and asked her fans to only comment if they knew more commands. Karl wrote them all down. Someone had stumbled on something like a text editor. Another found help files, but apparently they were hard to work with. Karl tried to refresh the page but it refused to load.

Then his phone went off with a long, strident beep: The Emergency Broadcast System. Karl read the text, which asked everyone to remain calm, and to shelter in place. There was audio as well, telling people how to clear their vision. Too late for some, but probably still in time to save a lot of lives.

Karl sat heavily in his armchair and stared at the Message copied on the pad of paper. He thought about the possibilities, automatically trying to analyze what he was experiencing to make it make sense.

There are aliens, and they are clueless. Incredibly powerful and clueless. They reached into our minds and chose a popular sort of interface based on something. People game a lot, so maybe it was a form in heavy use? I'm not up on the latest games. But the aliens don't have good English...I wonder if French speaking people got it in bad French? He snorted, whimsically imagining the righteous indignation.

But one part of the message gave him chills. In three days, Sol-3 time. He wondered. Invasion, maybe? What was the 'System'?

What on Earth would happen if the laws of nature changed? Karl remembered reading some science article or other about how perfectly fine-tuned the universe was for human habitation. Something about the constants of physics like the speed of light needing to be in a narrow range for life to exist? He recalled that he had found the philosophy in the article fairly dodgy, but still. He reread the System message for probably the fiftieth time.

Harsher conditions. Humanity. So. If Earth were harsher conditions, and humans existed on other worlds...did that mean that life would get easier somehow? You now return... We used to exist in this System? You'd think we'd have written about that. But we've had this 'beta test' going since we first invented writing. Coincidence? At least that would imply that the change wasn't going to kill everyone. The aliens expected humanity to survive whatever was about to happen.

He wracked his brain, trying to suck more meaning out of the message. He coughed and shook his head. “This has the feel of a primitive computer interface,” he said aloud. It helped him to think sometimes—to speak his ideas out loud, especially when his brain was hard at work on a puzzle.

He blew air out his cheeks. “Beta test. Sounds like new software. The universe running software?”

He tried the internet again but it was failing to load just about anything now. Were the aliens already messing with Earth systems? Probably it was just human panic. He remembered how he couldn't get at the New York Times website on 9/11 either. Hopefully it would clear up later.

He looked at the short list of commands he'd copied down. Help, he thought with intent. His vision was completely covered as a big blur of text started scrolling by. Instinctively he swiped an arm at the air in front of him, wishing he could shove it aside. To his surprise, the new message shrank to a large window on the right side of his vision. He winced at the moving text and closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them again, the list had stopped scrolling. The last entry visible was 'waiting period.'

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Help waiting period.”

Waiting Period: This is the span of time between announcement of System commencement and actual System commencement. It is good time to prepare by building stats or gathering equipment. Limited equipment may be converted to System at commencement of System rule.

“Stats...” he said aloud musingly. “How do I build stats?” The 'System', if that's what this message box was, didn't react. “Help stats.” Nothing.

It said building stats, so why won't it tell me what they are?

I hope we're not in a goddamn monster fighting game. If we are, I'm dead.

Karl could only speculate what it might be like, but most of his imaginings involved him dying the first time he was attacked by a blob or gremlin or even mildly annoyed squirrel, let alone anything like a dragon.

This can't be right, can it? I'm guessing wrong. Please, let me be guessing wrong.

He looked down at his frail body, feeling helpless. Build stats. He shook his head. As if I could make myself smarter or tougher overnight.

Karl sat and stewed for a while. Then he realized that he could poke at the mysterious window anywhere. He put his jacket back on, made sure he had his house key and his phone, then left the house and walked back out to the end of his driveway. He looked up and down the street. Unsurprisingly there were no cars in view. There's a 'shelter in place' order, but if this is happening to the whole world nobody is going to bother with Sycamore Street in particular. Taking a deep breath, Karl shrugged and went for a long walk.

He figured out how to make the window smaller and move it around his field of vision. It took him a while; he never felt particularly comfortable with computers, and this was like a computer. It didn't improve matters any that the damned interface had such poor English even when he succeeded. It took forever before he figured out that 'window put' was how it described repositioning the window.

He went as far as he normally would walk on Spring Hill Road, but then decided to keep going. He remembered a little shop attached to the gas station a long way further up, and set that as a walking goal. He'd probably be worn out by the time he got home, but at least it was something to do, and he wanted to get more practice moving around and looking at the System interface simultaneously.

The gas station turned out to be even further away than he had remembered. By the time he approached the place, he'd switched the language to Spanish, played with it enough to realize that the Spanish version was just as badly written as the English one, tried French with the same results, and switched back to English.

He walked up to the gas station just as a young man came out wearing a smirk on his face and carrying multiple filled plastic bags. Karl frowned. Nobody buys that much junk at a gas station, and they sure as hell wouldn't be smiling if they did. He started walking a bit faster.

The man noticed Karl's expression and lost his smile, then hurried over to a red sports car, threw his bags in the back and jumped in the front. The engine roared and he sped off, one arm gesturing out the window. Did he just flip me off? Karl scowled and tried to focus on the license plate, but didn't get past “BP5” before it was too far away to read. BP5. Remember BP5.

Karl turned and walked into the mini market. The bell rang over the door and he was greeted with an alarming sight: one of the stands holding items had been tipped over, a lot of other items had been knocked off shelves, and the cashier was standing nearby, holding a baseball bat and looking around randomly, not focusing on anything. He was angrily shouting in one of the Indo-Iranian languages Karl didn't know. When Karl entered the man turned roughly in his direction and shouted some more waving the bat.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He realized what must have happened. “Mister! Say 'close window.' Close window. Listen to me. Close window. Say it!” He had to shout to be heard over the man's panicked yelling. “Say 'close window'!”

Finally the man stopped moving and shouting. His expression was scared, but maybe with a flicker of hope.

“Say 'close window',” Karl told him slowly, at a lower volume.

“Close...window. Ah!” His eyes finally focused on his surroundings, then filled with tears as he looked around at everything wildly. “Thank you! Thank you!” He took a couple of ragged breaths, then hastily wiped his eyes with his sleeve and scowled. “Where is he?”

“He's gone. It was a red sports car, license plate...uh...what was it...BP5! That was it. I didn't catch the rest.” This must be how things are going to go from now on. Karl was disappointed but not surprised. Twenty minutes into the apocalypse, people were already turning on each other.

Karl spent a few minutes slowly explaining what little he knew about the System interface to the distraught man. Before long the man was uttering simple commands to it in his native language. Karl looked around at the mess in the mini-mart, then lifted the stand back into place, and started putting items back on shelves randomly, just to get them off the floor.

“Thank you!” The man was fervent with relief not to be blinded any longer. “You are a good man!”

Karl smiled awkwardly. “I am glad I could help.” He looked around. “Actually...I think I might want to buy one or two things, while I'm here.”

“Of course! Of course!”

Karl did have one advantage in this crazy situation: he was well-stocked at home with most everyday items. Jane had always made fun of the way he bought 'too much' of everything. But their new house was further out in the country than he was used to. Moving out of the city had caused him to adapt, and he started to think differently about potential emergency situations. Never in a million years would he have imagined this one, though.

He looked around the mini-store for odds and ends that he didn't already have. He picked up a couple of roadside flares, some protein bars and candy bars, and a few other small items, mindful that he would have to carry it all on the very long walk home. He walked up to the counter and waited patiently for the other man to stop tidying up for a minute and get behind the register.

Karl hesitated between cash and credit card. He supposed it didn't matter. If he was right, neither was going to be worth anything a few days from now. He ended up paying by card, then on an impulse took most of the cash out of his wallet and put it into the tip jar. The man stared at the jar, and then at him.

“Why?”

He looked at the clerk. “In three days, it might not be worth anything. In three days...” He sighed.

“Get groceries, supplies, and be with your family.” Karl shrugged and turned to go.

“It is a bad world,” the clerk said somberly. “But you are a good man. Thank you.” Karl didn't know what to say to that. He really hadn't done much. He just nodded awkwardly and left.

He was feeling pretty tired before he was even halfway home, but pushed on, doing his best to stretch muscles now and then. He was a lot more prone to injury than even a few years ago, and the last thing he wanted was to pull a muscle. He wasn't sure how much time he had spent on this walk already. He was trying to read unhelpful help entries as he walked, so it wasn't wasted time. It's not as if I have a shortage of free time, anyway.

The last bit up the hill towards his house was especially wearying, but he pushed on through it even though he was tempted to rest. He was almost to his driveway when a window popped up in his vision again, on the right where he had specified, so it didn't block too much of his vision. All it said was

Endurance +1

Karl stared. The hell? Did I just...raise a stat? “Stats!” he called out. Nothing happened. He grumbled and shrank the window as much as he could to get it out of the way. He was so tempted to just stop by the side of the road and fiddle with that while he caught his breath, but made himself push on. When he got to his front door, another window popped up.

Willpower +1

He blinked. Seriously? He shrank that window too and let himself into the house. He was almost wobbling on his feet. He decided to take a second shower for the day before anything else. Harsher conditions, he remembered the message said. Is it going to be easier to...get stronger? Healthier? Is this 'System' already taking effect?

He had so many questions.

After his shower, he decided to look through his supplies and see what else he needed. He was already pretty well stocked on materials that were long lasting. He wasn't sure what benefit there would be from stocking up on short term items like milk. They were talking about changing the laws of nature. Would technology still work? Would the refrigerator? Eventually he stopped reminding himself of inventory he already knew well. It was time to see if someone out there had found any answers.

Karl checked the news. They had talking heads debating. He shook his head in disgust. The world might be effectively ending and they're treating it like a sports program or political argument. They kept repeating that the federal government had instituted a “shelter in place” order, and people were arguing about the legality and the wisdom of the move. Others reported on the rising death toll. Karl cared, but knew there was nothing he could do about it, so he turned it off to spare his energy. He had tried 'doomscrolling' a while back and gave it up as a fool's errand. Bad news is only worth hearing if it affects you and/or you can do something about it, he'd decided.

Online he found some more helpful tips. One faction was convinced that everyone was going to be living in a computer game come Tuesday, and cited some badly phrased help pages as evidence. To Karl it was suggestive but not conclusive. Another side thought the message itself was some sort of test, and that we would be judged on our reactions to it. There were the usual religious claims. Karl believed in God, but he was pretty sure no one on Earth knew God's preferences, except that he figured the common threads among major religions probably had a little bit of truth to them. He was raised Catholic, but hadn't been to church in many years.

It might well be a game. But games were usually competitions...and sometimes had spectators. Were the aliens doing this to Earth for...fun? A line from the end of an old, old science fiction story came back to him, somewhat mangled from the depths of memory. “We don't shoot sitting ducks!” the hunter protested. “Neither do we,” the alien replied ominously. Something like that.

Karl grimaced. Did we make enough advances in science that we're no longer considered sitting ducks? Are we now fair game? It certainly sounded as if human actions and discoveries were the motivation behind the timing. But are we going to be hunted? If it's a game, how do we get points? Keep score? Win?

“Help victory.” Nothing. “Help victory conditions. Help goals. Help purpose. Help...preparation.”

Karl felt like that character in an old movie he saw, set in the early days of the internet. She was trying to guess a password based on lyrics she couldn't hear properly, and was trying lots of silly things, just like he was now. Then he thought about what's-his-name trying to figure out the oath for his magic ring. He shook his head. His mind tended to wander a bit these days.

“Help help.” A window popped up.

Help is to help new users from interface. Help can be changed by Settings.

Unless this thing has a 'set to coherent English' option, that is pretty useless. He messed with the settings a little, but it was mostly just teaching him things he'd already painfully figured out on his own. “Help FAQ.” “Help frequently asked questions.” “Help advice.”

“Help emergency.” “Help first aid.” That got a window. First aid is a Skill to assist sick or injured person. Anyone can learn First Aid Skill, not but Healer classes.

Karl sighed. “Not but? Did you mean 'not just'? Or was that 'naught but'...no, that doesn't fit the rest.” Then he read the notification again.

“Help Healer Classes.”

“Help Classes.”

Classes are ways being in life. Choose class with carefully. A few classes are very common, just many classes exist.

“List classes.” Nothing. Karl tried in several languages, with no better results.

Karl stubbornly kept at it for a long while. Eventually he took a break, and decided to focus on eating things primarily from the fridge for the weekend, just in case.

While munching on a cold cut sandwich, Karl considered what he had learned. The phrase 'a good time to prepare...' kept going through his head. 'Limited equipment may be converted to System...' What kind of equipment? Could he save the house? Solar panels? The woodshed? He'd better pick out some high priority items.

One thought kept nagging at Karl, even though he tried to avoid thinking about it. Finally he sighed and faced it head on.

This might involve combat. If it does, I'm likely doomed. I'm not built to survive in war, or anarchy, or whatever is coming. I'm a retired linguistics professor, for God's sake. And in games with fighting...there is strength in numbers. Karl slumped in despair. He had few friends these days, and had been a shut in for months on top of that. Jane was the one who had had friends, and had dragged him out to be with people occasionally. Besides, what could he offer an adventuring party? A home base? His house was a pretty good setup, not quite self-sufficient but close. But what would stop them from simply taking it and kicking him out of his own home? Or killing him outright?

Karl had very little trust in his fellow humans. He'd seen plenty of nasty and hateful behavior in his time. Just the thought of socializing at all made him feel weary. He was happier when he wasn't around people.

Maybe he should just give up.

Karl spent a fair bit of time moping, long enough that he realized that Jane would have been yelling at him long since. “Nobody ever got anything done by moping. If you want to mope, do it after you've finished all the work around the house. If you've got time to mope, you've got time to fix that broken trellis like I asked you to.”

Karl sighed, the faintest of smiles on his lips. “Yes, dear,” he murmured. Besides, he was at least a little curious about what was going to happen. Did he really raise his willpower by a point? And his endurance? And what was a 'point' anyway? What kind of scale was it on?

So many questions.

If he was going to die, he might as well figure out as much as he could of this worldwide puzzle, this 'System', before then. Maybe he could learn something to save someone else. If he died, maybe it wouldn't be in vain.

Karl considered. Even if he couldn't see his stats, maybe he could at least find out the names of the stats if he managed to raise them a point. So far he knew of Willpower and Endurance. What about intellect? Could he make himself smarter? Wiser? Funnier? What about agility or dexterity or balance?

A good time to prepare...

Karl snorted and chose which procrastinated challenge he would tackle first.

* *

Reading that horrendously difficult philosophy text he'd been putting off, Karl pushed himself stubbornly, determined not to give up stretching his brain until he got some kind of 'smarts' point. He didn't know what could trigger it (if anything) so he focused on his own thought processes as much as on the material itself. He found himself trying very hard to think outside the box.

He thought about what it meant to be smart. He thought about all the different puzzle solving techniques he knew, all the different approaches to problems: work it backwards, redefine, simplify, name and label things precisely, approximate, consider the contrapositive, consider a contradiction or an exception, look for edge cases and base cases and special cases, try to extend a tool into a new domain, use analogies, translate the problem to a different form, ask what a solution would look like and mean, recheck definitions, challenge assumptions, imagine consequences, subdivide, step back holistically...

It had been a long while since he had really pushed himself this way. He'd almost forgotten he could. It was as if he were visiting a long forgotten vacation spot. In the middle of the struggle, he found himself grinning at times, and growling in frustration other times. Each time he grasped another idea or a meaning, it felt like a small victory. He found himself writing lots of notes. Finally he had an epiphany, and stared at the page in surprise.

“That can't be...but...oh for the love of Mike, why didn't you just say that!” he yelled at the book before him. “All that effort was totally unnecessary! You should have...” Karl bit his tongue for a moment, then pulled out a fresh piece of paper, thought very hard, and wrote one paragraph that summed up over a dozen pages of the book. He checked it over, again and again, occasionally changing a word, then painstakingly reread those pages of the book, verifying. He got to the end of the passage, put down his pen, and shouted, “HA!”

He sat back, smug and self-satisfied. Damn that felt good! I don't think I've pushed myself that hard in years. I should write that up and send it to the author. Karl typed up an email, then went back and did his standard “don't embarrass yourself” check, made sure his tone was polite and respectful, checked to see if he was forgetting anything, and pressed SEND. Surprisingly it went through, or at least it registered as 'sent'. Nothing was coming in though, not even spam.

A notification window popped up—in his mind, not his computer—which read

Aptitude +1

He burst out laughing.

A bit late, you creepy alien invasion computer. I already found validation for myself!