Jennifer’s menus came up without her mental command. Before, the menus were small tabs scattered throughout in her menu scape. She could tell Woozle was somehow moving them around. Before, when she pulled up her character sheet, the menu just appeared in her vision without borders. Pulling up her menus now, there was a stark contrast. Now, at the bottom right of her vision was a space where her powers were placed in a neat row of circles. Casting Force Field on herself, the power’s circle greyed out with white illumination moving in a clockwise direction around the power. When the illumination made a full circle, the power lit up again and was ready to be used.
On the top right, she could see her health, energy, and stamina bars. Her stamina was about two-thirds full with the last third being greyed out. The grey part of the bar was growing. About halfway between where her power sat at the bottom and the status bars at the top were three coloured tabs with labels. Red showed Character sheet, blue indicated level up points and an achievement section, while green held quests. Both the blue and green tabs had stars on them.
“What does it mean if there is a star on one of the tabs?” She felt silly asking and understood that it was probably important, but not why it would be.
“Well kid, it means there is new information that you have not seen yet.” Woozle moved from the sunbeam to Jennifer’s lap.
On the top left of the menus was a mini map, showing where Jennifer had already been. The rest of the mini map was blacked out. On the bottom left was a transcript of her actions and dialog. “Is that better?” Woozle asked while purring in her lap.
Relief washed over her. This was getting better thanks to her little familiar. She snuggled Woozle. “Yes, that’s much better. Thank you.” When she picked up her familiar, he was no longer the size of a mouse. Woozle was the size of a kitten. Curious about the change in him, “Woozle, you are getting bigger.”
“I’m miniature now. When you level up, I’ll get bigger until I reach adult size. I’ll also have the chance to be faster, stronger, and maybe jump higher every time you gain a level. I’m hoping that my adult size is as big as a massive shark.” Woozle replied with some pride in his voice while wiggling his back fin.
“So, you’re a miniature, giant, flying lynx-shark?” Jennifer eyed him for a minute and smirked. “Can I add space to your description?”
Woozle spoke slowly as if considering the question. “I think there is a rare quest line that would be able to do that. I have never done it. I wonder what kind of power or abilities that would come with.”
The turtle returned with a plate of green bread and a square juice box.
“It is a cucumber sandwich,” Woozle said, still curling up on her lap.
Accepting the plate with a polite nod, she asked, “Why is the bread green?”
“It’s seaweed bread. I think this turtle is a vegetarian.” Woozle stretched out his front paws, opened his jaws, and let his tongue curl in an enormous yawn.
It was the cutest thing she had seen in all of her time here, feeling the need to make a sound to accompany her feeling she let out an, “Awwww.”
“Kid, you were going to accept the quest.”
Jennifer could bring up the quests now and saw four available to her.
1) Save the town, Save the Nation, Save the World: 0 of 1 towns saved, 0 of 1 nations saved, 0 of 1 world saved. Town not yet explored. Task extreme hard, reward proportional to experience, legendary loot.
2) Explore Bishop’s University of Magic, Social Sciences, and Ninjas: 35 blocks of 155 blocks explored, experiment room explored. Task easy, reward acceptance into Bishop’s University of Magic and Social Sciences.
3) Get into Bishop’s University of Magic, partying, and brewery. Then finish education.
Pending
4) Clean books: Clean 10 books, task uncommon, reward library card, reward perk, unlock Speak Turtle language trait.
Jennifer mentally pushed the accept button for the last quest, and the text 0 out of 10 books cleaned appeared. As she munched the sandwich, she noticed her stamina bar was filling with green. It had dropped to about two-thirds filled with grey, but now it was only one-tenth grey. She felt better. Her muscles no longer slowed.
After eating the sandwich, she stood up. In a loud clear voice, she said, “I can clean and repair the next ten floating books. Would you please line up.” Jennifer returned to cleaning and casting Mend on the books.
She ended up cleaning closer to twenty and was happy to have something to focus on. She sat down and mentally brought up her menus. The Clean Books quest was listed as finished, and a library card was presented from a webbed turtle claw.
A ding from the menu rang out, when an alert came up.
You have been given a perk, speaking basic local turtle trait. If you wish to make this permanent, you can choose to use one of your available traits.
Jennifer double checked when she was levelling up. She chose her powers but had not chosen any traits, stats, or anything else. Jennifer was unsure how to maximise herself or if she even wanted to. She did remember that librarians were either very helpful or an evil cult trying to take over the world.
She had one trait listed as Half-Giant and two slots listed as EMPTY. She decided to use one of her free traits, knowing she had one trait left she turned to the turtle. Believing that new students should be polite and professional, she said, “Hello. My name is Jennifer. I’ll be one of the new students. Thank you for your help.”
The turtle spoke with an experience that only came with age. “Hello, Jennifer. You are the first student I have seen in almost three hundred years, and you are the sole student to ever repair the books. As a functionary, I am impressed.” The words were smooth and reminded Jennifer of what it was like speaking to her elders. The strange thing was that the turtle’s mouth did not move when speaking.
“What is a functionary?” The words escaped Jennifer’s mouth before she had time to think about how to ask the question more politely.
But the turtle seemed to not mind the question or how it was asked. “A functionary is placed with required tasks that need to be completed. Most functions do not speak, but important ones like myself do. My tasks are to maintain this library and to assist those who come here in the pursuit of knowledge. Guiding people tends to require more than just miming, after all.”
“Woozle here - ” she looked down at her lynx-shark for a moment, “said that I am a fragment, but I feel whole.”
The turtle’s head turned down facing the ground. “Oh, I was hoping you were a parallel and the system was starting the education sector again. I do miss when this school was fully powered and teaching.” The turtle’s voice held more than a bit of sadness.
Wanting to change the subject, Jennifer asked, “What is a parallel?”
Woozle spoke up, “We don’t entirely know, kid. We think the parallels come from another system. Some seem to come for enjoyment because they go on adventures and rush into danger for fun, damn the consequences. They don’t even die. If they get hurt or are near death, they’re just teleported away to, respawn, as they call it.”
The word respawn hurt Jennifer’s ears. She heard the word, but it escaped her mind. She tried to say the word but couldn’t.
Before Jennifer could ask, the librarian continued. “Respawn is a system word. They understand it. I can say it, but most fragments can’t. Some of the parallels come here for training. You can normally tell parallels that come for training apart because they have a rank rather than a name followed by numbers. They barely interact and are always running around having mock battles or manoeuvres or whatever they do.” Woozle stood up and looked both Jennifer and the turtle in the eyes before adding. “The most important thing about the parallels is that they have the ability to log out and go back to their own worlds.”
Time stretched in front of Jennifer and everything slowed down. She was holding her breath and released it. “I can go home?” With hope before her, she did not realise it was an option until now. There was no response from the others for a long time.
Arms wrapped around Jennifer in a comforting bear hug coming from a turtle woman. “I am sorry, Student Jennifer. This is your world now. There is no going home for any of us.”
Dread filled Jennifer, and she tried to tramp down the rising fear. “My parents said when they were young, they were sent to school. Those schools taught them to walk the way of other people, to talk the way of other people. And in those teachings, they took something away from my people. My family could no longer speak our own language. They lost traditions and many of the youths at that time. Their graves were still being found when I got my acceptance letter to come here. When they were able to return, they were strangers to their own families. When I was born there were 17 of those schools still in operation.”
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Tears welled up at the memory. The few times her parents spoke of the reservation schools, it was accompanied with the pain of loss and shame. They could not even look at each other when speaking of those institutions. They had not wanted her to go to university for fear of losing her, and they were right.
“Well,” Woozle clearly searched for something to say, “at least those schools taught something.”
Jennifer’s anger building. “You don’t understand,” Jennifer yelled but trailed off not knowing how to explain it. “What do schools do here?” Jennifer looked at Woozle.
“Schools teach,” the turtle said.
But such a simple explanation was not enough to satisfy her. “Do young children go to day schools here?” Jennifer asked, seeking common ground to start on.
“No, this is a university. We normally have young adults come here,” said the turtle.
“No, I mean, do children in this world go to day school? Where do the children go when their parents are at work?”
The turtle's mouth opened with an unspoken ‘oh’, understanding the question. It seemed to think on the answer a bit before replying. “To answer the question, parallel children are given the same tasks and rewards as an adult parallel. They have the same level of commitments, jobs, adventure, and crafting. There are no child fragments. However, there are child functionaries. A child born from parallels, fragments, or a function is a function. They attend a storage area during the time the parents are occupied doing other things. The age of the child is equal to the level of the child. However, at level eighteen, the child is processed into an adult function and is given the tools to change classes or traits to better serve the function they are assigned to.”
This felt like a lecture, but it gave Jennifer what she needed to explain the schools she was referring to. “That sounds more like a normal school, one I wouldn’t have minded attending. The type I was talking about, the type my family was forced to attend, was more like a prison. Imagine living in a dungeon where you’re trapped for years and are never allowed to see your family or friends. The guards are cruel and steal what few resources are supposed to be used to run the place. What few functions are taught are tasks no one else would want to do.” Jennifer shuddered at the thought. “With no medicine and little food, only one in every four children survived those places. Some running the school took the money meant to provide necessities for themselves. They wanted the money more than they cared if the children lived or died.”
Woozle questioned, “Well, if one in four made it out, that one person must have been very tough by the end, good enough to survive the world, probably going adventuring, right?”
Jennifer slowly shook her head. “What does not kill you does not always make you tougher, Woozle. These schools were brutal in more ways than one. Those places had survivors, not graduates. And not just for the children. Most parents never knew what happened to their child, even if they died.” Jennifer let out a sob as the memories of her own childhood rolled over her. “When I was young, my parents made me run and hide every time there was a knock on the door for fear of me being taken away.” Jennifer’s voice rose with alarm as her situation dawned on her. “Now, now I’ve been taken away into this strange world.”
Woozle paws patted her face. “But you’re a fragment. That means the person you’re copied from gets to return home,”
Jennifer calmed as Woozle's words sank in. Taking a deep breath, she counted to ten then exhaled. “But I can’t go back.”
“Sorry, kid.”
“What makes people so cruel? Why destroy a culture’s belief, language, and self-worth only to treat them like they were less than dirt? Even the adults weren’t safe. Why did they want us to conform to their cookie cutter standards, knowing they would never accept us?”
Jennifer spoke slowly, fighting to get the words out, “My family gave me the ability to come to this school, to make myself better, and to make the world a better place. I didn’t know the risks coming here, but I will not let it stop me.” Jennifer could feel the anger well within her as her voice rose, and she white-knuckled her mop. “I came here to learn and to help improve things, not just for my people but for the world. If the world tries to stop or slow me down, I’ll tear it down. I will not let the pain and suffering of my people be repeated.”
“This is nice, deary. Would you like another sandwich before going back out to tear down the social barriers?” asked the turtle.
“Yes, please,” Jennifer blinked, wiping away something in her eyes. “Why do I remember those res schools, and not my parents’ faces?”
“Backstory,” said Woozle. “Parallels get to pick their back stories, fragments get to live with their backstories, and functionaries get to know what to do. One of the gnomes told me that it helps the parallels, but I’m not sure how. Something about psychology or something.” The words rolled off his tongue with such practised ease, it was obvious this wasn’t his first time in explaining the subject.
Jennifer blinked back the tears threatening to run down her cheeks. She looked at the turtle and attempted a smile. She was unsure if she had answered the librarian’s last question, “Yes please, I very much liked the last one you made.” She closed her eyes. “Time to make the world a better place.” She said as she opened her eyes.
Woozle laughed. “Kid, you went from being the big scary necromancer bent on tearing down the world, back to being a kid.” Woozle paused looking down for a moment, before he raised his head and made eye contact with Jennifer. “I’ve seen lesser people start out with more. I’m sure they achieved less than you will.”
Thoughts and ideas clashed in Jennifer’s mind as she fought to make sense of it all and corral it into a cohesive plan. Should she choose what she needed and what she wanted, or choose what she wanted, and then figure out later what she needed. Jennifer wanted to go to school to learn. She wanted to learn so that she could help people. While she worked out what to do next, she started cleaning the books again. The work became automatic.
“Okay, Woozle is with me,” Jennifer spoke aloud without meaning to.
“With you till the end,” Woozle replied while cleaning his paws.
She smiled at Woozle for the response. “I have a mop and what I’m wearing,” She trailed off as a memory floated up. You can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. But what was shelter? She could not remember how long someone could survive without shelter.
“How long can I survive without shelter?”
The librarian handed Jennifer a book. An Outriders Field Guide was the name of the book. On the cover, a young boy was smiling while wearing a beige button up shirt and a red sash with some badges on it. Behind the young boy was what looked like a lean-to. A poorly made lean-to. But the thing that caught her eye the most was not the title, the sash, or the lean-to. The boy had the head of an orca. It looked like an orca just replaced the boy’s head on a human body with its own and said, “This is my body now.”
Jennifer thanked the turtle and skimmed through the book. When she realised that there was still a queue of library books in front of her, she held her arm out with a single finger pointing up, indicating she was pausing for a moment. She was able to find what she wanted after reading a chapter on shelters as fast as she could. She realised a couple of things, the person who wrote the book thought children must be very slow, and she would need a shelter to stay in before tomorrow. It also dawned on her she was homeless, alone, and in a strange place. Taking in what she had, a smile broke her lips. She did have Woozle and a silent spider.
The library did not seem like a good place to sleep, but she needed to find somewhere to stay while going to school and adventuring. “Umm, are there still dorms on campus?” Jennifer asked the turtle librarian.
“I am sorry, I do not know. And the only active member of the administration core seems to be the dean. I can mark the dean’s office on your map.”
“Do you mean the dean is the only one left for admissions? He’s the one that will let me sign up to be a student?”
“I believe so,” the turtle said.
“Then I shall find the dean.” With her course set, Jennifer grabbed her mop and took off in the direction of the dean’s office marked on her map. A line of books followed Jennifer to the door. As she passed through the doors, most of the books trailed her when floated down to the ground. Woozle ran by Jennifer’s side while she walked with her seven-legged spider on her shoulder.
After the third or fourth turn, she thought they built the school as a maze. At most, it was about one hundred steps before coming to a three-way intersection, and there were no signs anywhere. After opening another set of doors, Jennifer walked back into the library and realised this was the same door she left from. The shadows were getting larger.
With a huff, she set out again. After following one side of the wall, and seven left turns, Jennifer ended up back at the doors she had left from.
“Kid, maybe take a navigation trait?”
Jennifer let out a huff, letting her frustration show.
“My people were hunters and trackers.” She tilted her head and added, “I think.” She was sure she knew where she was going, but she seemed to bounce around on her mini map. It was almost as if the university was moving around, but that was crazy. Jennifer looked at her familiar. Lynx-sharks were pretty crazy. They did not exist in the real world. But then again, she no longer lived in the real world. She needed to readjust her idea on what was crazy and what wasn’t.
Woozle looked up at her, waiting. Inside her own head, the memory of being able to easily navigate warred with her new existence. Trying to sound confident, she said, “One more try, and then I’ll see about the navigating traits.”
Jennifer stormed down the corridor again. Before the first turn, she spun around and did not see the doorway to the library. Groaning, she pulled up her menu and checked her mini map. The spot she was in was on the top left corner of the Bishop’s map. While she could see the library and the dean’s office on her map, she was in another building. There was no straight connection from where she had been before to where she was now.
“Shenanigans.” Jennifer said as her fist met the palm of her other hand. “I’m calling shenanigans. Not only am I moving around, but the rooms are moving around.”
“Kid, what are you going to do about it? With a navigation trait you’ll be able to move around without being moved around,” Woozle replied sagely.
The next hallway had a row of windows. With her shoulders squared, she stormed over to them. After pushing open a window, she jumped into a courtyard. Jennifer put her hands on her hips and looked out on the courtyard. It was a space with four sides. The school was made with red-brown bricks and green pointed roofs, with small towers jutting out, revealing its windows. The building was bright, pristine, and well maintained. The green in the courtyard looked like it did not have a single blade of grass that was too tall or too short. It had some benches for sitting in the area, a path leading through an arch, and a black and white cow wearing sunglasses with a cowbell around its neck.
There was an overpass she could go under to leave the courtyard and an enormous set of doors that were between her and the dean’s office. After using the doors, she decided to check each room they passed rather than just head down the hallway. The first door Jennifer entered led to the most typical classroom ever. A blackboard hung on one side, tables and chairs lined the room, and large windows looked out onto a field. Beyond the field was a forest.
In front of the blackboard was a professor’s desk. When she searched each drawer, she found that they were all empty except one. A small notepad with a grocery list lay in the bottom. She sighed, reading the list. She knew in her heart the professor forgot the list and probably forgot to bring home food.
Woozle also searched the room with his nose down on the ground. By the casual way her familiar was walking and sniffing, there was nothing of interest here.
Jennifer turned to leave the classroom, but something caught her eye. Walking next to the tree line across from the field, she saw four large deer-like creatures.