You wake up to someone calling your name and the sound of fists banging against the door. You get up and make your way to the door and open it. Both Helen and Alicia are trembling and glowing. People are staring as you invite them in.
“Welcome to the family cousins,” you say as they move past you into the room.
“We… we … how can this be? Either our mother or our father must have been one of the family then. Our mother was a wonderful woman, while our father was a sperm donor. Really. She wanted a baby so she went to an agency, got sperm and was impregnated. She raised us herself,” said Alicia.
“Sperm donor. One man could have dozens of kids then. The Family might be strong here. However, we need to meet up. In most Universes the Family is small, but I have a strange feeling about this one,” you say.
“When will we stop glowing?” asked Helen.
“It’s different for everyone. But we do need to get everyone together and train them,” you say.
“How do we do that?” asks Danny.
“Through luck. Now that we have activated our powers, we can begin to train. Four options summon the die roller and command the roller to roll. Let me demonstrate,” and with that, you begin to train.
“...And practice Fortune often, it makes your luck stat go up,” you say.
“Luck stat?” asked Helen.
“Everyone, think stats, focus on a representation of you. The System will take care of the rest. Does everyone see the stats sheet? Normal people have between ten and eleven in a stat, twelve means you’re above average. Nine means you are slightly below average. For instance, I need to eat better, exercise more, and talk to people more, I am deficient there. But I am good at learning new skills,” you say.
“In a year or two there will be a family get together, we will train the survivors of the alien attack,” you say.
“Didn’t you say the main attack will come in two years?” asked Danny.
“Yeah about then. It is when the Family is all together to fight them off,” you say.
“What happens if we fail?” asked Helen.
You answer, “we won’t fail, we are the Family. The question is how long will it take, and how much will it cost, to succeed. I don’t know. I do know that all we must do is survive. All we need to do is survive long enough for our Luck to take effect.”
“Who attacked us in the hospital? They didn’t look like aliens,” asked Danny.
“I don’t know who they were, they attacked without warning. I do know that I will take one of them, prisoner, soon,” you answer.
“You have a plan?” asked Danny.
“Yes, Combat Fortune. I will prepare to be ambushed. I will use a six option selection. I was planning it out when I woke up this morning,” you say.
“I will finish designing it now,” you say.
The first to try to attack you will be rendered unconscious by a flying baseball bat to the head.
The second to try to attack you will be rendered unconscious by being hit by a car.
The third to try to attack you will be rendered unconscious by a powerful blow to the neck.
The fourth to try to attack you will be rendered unconscious by water stuck in the nose and mouth.
The fifth to try to attack you will be rendered unconscious by accidental injection of sleeping aid.
The sixth to try to attack you will be rendered unconscious by sensory overload.
Select options, summon die, command roll.
You feel a slight pull on your psyche as the more powerful wish is actualized. It will take an hour to a day to go into effect. You then begin to go over what you did with the rest of them.
“Once the wish is actualized, you don’t know when it will happen you don’t know when it will come true. It could be immediate or a year from now. That is controlled by your Luck stat. The average person’s luck stat is ten or eleven. With us, our level of fortune is added to our luck stat to make us very lucky. We are potential gods. Our wishes come true,” you continue explaining.
“Now if you have no more questions, you guys try it. Use a four option selection and make a wish. You can wish for anything, and you will get it. The question is only and always; when. Now make your wishes please,” you ask.
The door rings and Helen answers. It is a pizza delivery boy. It seems you got a free pizza because the last person who lived in this room didn’t get theirs. Helen takes the pizza and turns around to face you with a pale face.
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“I wished for a breakfast pizza,” she said.
“Open it and see what you got,” you say and she does. It is a breakfast pizza
There is another knock on the door and this time Alicia answers it. It is a dry cleaner delivery with a dress. In the pocket is a scratch-off ticket. It is a five hundred dollar winner.
“Does the dress fit you?” you ask smiling.
“Oh my god, it’s my size,” she says. She walks and sits down, turning from the ticket to the dress and back again.
“Preparation is key. Each of you, prepare a wish as I did, anyone who attacks you will get injured. It will alert us to our enemies, and it will foil the attack,” you say. The next half hour was filled with silent contemplation. They created their guarding wishes. They created their shields and armor of Luck. When they were ready they selected, summoned the die, and rolled.
“I just got a message saying that I went up a level in Fortune, and my luck increased to fourteen,” said Alicia.
“Me too, but my luck is at 18 now,” said Helen.
“You always were luckier than me. It is how you survived looking for stories in dangerous places,” said Alicia.
“Hmn, my luck is seven now. I have never been a lucky person. What I got in this life I earned,” said Danny.
“Ouch, that’s low Danny. No matter. With each Fortune level, your Luck goes up by one. This is what sets us apart from the normal humans, even other Families. Our Luck improves. After we get to human maximum, divine stuff happens to us. It’s … crazy,” you say.
“What’s human maximum?” asks Danny.
“Eighteen is maximum and 3 is minimum, the average is ten or eleven. Now let’s work on teaching these aliens to understand us,” you say and for the next three hours you teach Baka and it was good to find it had an eidetic memory, it rarely forgot anything. It grasped English syntax quickly and went on to expand its vocabulary faster than you would have thought possible. You then turned to the news to find out what the world thought of what was going on. Nothing. Then you went to the Web. Nothing on popular blogs or the news outlets.
“I don’t know how but they’ve covered it up. Popular blogs have been taken down, my publisher issued a recant of my work. I’m gonna call them and find out what’s going on,” said Helen as she started on her phone call after running back to her apt with Alicia behind her. They return.
Alicia got onto her phone and after talking for a bit said, “I have to go, they are calling me back to the office. I’ve been given a new workload and can’t take my own cases for a while. I can’t represent you.”
Helen got off the phone and you see her face paled, “I’ve been fired. I am so lucky, if it weren’t for my blog and youtube channel, I’d be out of business. I still have an income though. I have been blessed.”
You say with a heavy heart, “I think we should all split up. We will all get phones and exchange numbers, but I think we should all go our separate ways.”
Alicia was pensive and said after a while, “What about you and the aliens?”
You smile scratch the back of your neck and say, “I will luck into finding someone who can take care of them, someone from the government who is interested in justice and who is compassionate enough to not dissect them. Hence we taught them English. We also need to teach them American culture.”
Danny looks at you, “American culture …”
You sprawl on the couch in front of the TV, “I want him to know enough to protect himself in the event of a disaster.”
The girls sit next to you and Danny goes into the kitchen from which, “I need to get back to work myself. My students are probably missing me about now. It’s funny though. All these new powers and we are doing our old life stuff.”
“Did Overseers really defeat Arkanians in battle?” Baka asked sitting on the floor.
Danny smiled and whooped, “yep! The good ole US of A Air Force took down the mighty Arkanian Empire.”
The girls chuckle. You turn to Baka and say, “we are the Human Race and we are actually very strong. History has taught us that Arkania bows to Terra more often than not. Once we understand Fold Space technology we challenge Arkania for control of the Universe. We control the Multiverse, or more specifically the Family does.”
Baka was confused, “what is the Multiverse?”
You smile as the others turn to you to get an answer to that question to which you say, “It is all there is. It is the dance of exploding and contracting everything of which this is only one. Imagine balloons filling and emptying. We are tiny little creatures living on the skin of the balloons. The set of infinite balloons is called the Multiverse.”
Baka was wide-eyed, “And the Overseers control all of these balloons?”
You smile, “No not all. There are countless balloons and we control only a few thousand. But we are so far one of a kind. But we need to get you to the proper people.”
Danny snorts, “proper people? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
Alicia picks up, “you are too cynical Danny. There are many good people out there, we just have to find them.”
Helen spreads her arms and adds, “And we are the Lords of Fortune and Travel!”
You jump up, “right!” And with that, you begin finding the right people and the right gear. You get cell phones and exchange numbers and then you all go your separate ways.
Helen, Alicia, and Danny set up a bank account for you. They each put in a thousand dollars. You take those three thousand dollars and turn it into thirty thousand with lottery tickets and the New York Lotto. You rent a car and travel to upstate New York, to a large State University Campus.
You went to school on one of the worlds of a Universe where Humans reigned supreme technologically by a very wide margin. There was a professor there, Mark Wiseman, who you could trust. Was he alive in this world? Was he trustworthy?
You are in Binghamton New York and you drive to the University there, a SUNY school. With the aliens in an oversized backpack, you go off in search of the professor. You find his office and luckily he is there. You wait outside until he is done with all his students and you enter.
“Michael … Michael Tanner? It has been a long time. Sit down, sit down.”
“Professor Wiseman, it is good to see you again,” you say as you set the backpack down in front of you.
“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“Have you heard that Earth has been visited by super-intelligent aliens?” As you open the backpack you say, “Say hello to Professor Mark Wiseman.”
“Hello, Professor Wiseman. I understand you and I will be publishing documents together; if you agree that is,” said Baka.
Mark Wiseman’s face drained of blood and became ghost pale.
Name
Michael
Abilities
skills
Characteristics
Char Values
Fortune 15
Arkanian Culture
Strength
9
Travel 1
Arkanian Tech
Intelligence
16
System 0
Mythrian Sci
Knowledge
15
Mythrian Tech
Dexterity
10
Kung Fu
Constitution
9
Human History
Charisma
9
Human Sci 3
Luck
28
Human Tech 3
Wisdom
12