Bob started. He couldn’t feel his right leg. He was crippled. Something had attacked him in the night. It was over. It was all over. Oh wait, Bob gently lowered George’s head to the bathroom floor and started to rub life back into his thigh. The damn thing had fallen asleep. Try to keep your head Bob.
Bob yawned. He hadn’t slept well. He’d had a series of awful dreams in which the system repeatedly attempted to recycle him. He’d been rolled flat and repurposed as the label on a bottle of milk. Bob hated milk. It tasted meaty and hollow like something still alive. Bob promised himself he’d never to drink whiskey again.
Bob’s leg had entered the pins and needles stage. He had serious business to attend to today. Very serious, very important. Business. Business. But he wouldn’t be mobile again for a few more minutes. Might as well clear out the old system inbox. First, he pulled up the world quest.
> Quest: D Grade Evolution (World)
>
>
> Reach level 10 and evolve to D grade
>
> Time limit - one week
>
>
> Current highest leveled sentient: 4
>
> Remaining Time: 06:16:10:46
>
>
> Reward: None
>
> Penalty: World Recycling
The quest stuck in Bob's throat. He shook his head. He was supposed to be free. He'd played the system game and he'd won. Nobody said anything about another round. He wanted to live quietly. He wasn't cut out for this stuff, for killing people, for grinding day and night. Bob had a simpler and milder soul. Some might have said lazy, but that was surely a matter for perspective. He'd wanted to survive and he had. Apologies if he didn't fancy jumping right back into the pot of boiling water.
Obviously some people felt differently. Somebody had already made it to level 4. God, some people try too hard. Fancy coming back from those four challenges and immediately throwing yourself into leveling. Bob hoped he’d never have to meet that particular madman. Didn’t life have to be more than jumping through hoops for some unknown, all-powerful entity?
Bob was in the middle of thinking up some more choice remarks on the unappreciated beauty of laziness when he realized this development was a good thing. Someone else, someone who was not Bob, could shoulder all the risk, danger and discomfort. Someone else could clear the quest for Bob, while Bob laid back here and took things easy.
"Well done, brave hero, humanity applauds your devotion. We all look to you to save us in this our darkest hour, we, weak and helpless civilians, who exist only to be saved and protected, coddled and sheltered, whose true purpose lies in praising your accomplishments and complaining about insolvable problems. Fight the good fight." That ought to keep the boy motivated.
Bob let his tensed-up shoulders relax down. The world quest was somebody else's problem. Bob was nothing more than a spectator. He'd sit up somewhere in the stands, far away from the action, munch on popcorn and pretzels, and cheer on those mad fools who stepped in the ring. Now that almost sounded like fun. So what else have we got here?
> System Initiation
>
>
> World Rank - D
>
> Pass Percentage - 18%
>
>
> Rewards unlocked:
>
>
> Rank E
>
> * System Shop
> * System Post Office
> * System Weather
>
>
> Rank D
>
> * System Bank
> * System Contracts
> * Pre-seeded System Pylons
>
>
> Rank C+ Rewards locked
Way to let a man down. Bob shook his head with the infinite sadness of one untouched by tragedy. Some people really don’t pull their weight. Other folks have to do all the work. Tut, tut, tut. Bob brought an A to the table and look at what they brought in response? World average D. Who are these people getting all Es and dragging down our average? It’s embarrassing.
Wait a moment, that pass percentage couldn't be right, could it? There was some mistype or confusion. Mythology had taught Bob that nobody was quite as fallible as omnipotent beings. And Bob just couldn't believe it. It was unbelievable.
> Pass Percentage - 18%
But... did that mean what Bob thought it did? Everyone who hadn't passed was dead, right? Dead dead. Like six-feet-under-the-ground dead. 100% minus 18% was 82% (good job Bob). 82%, more than four in every five. Four in every five people were dead. People Bob knew. People Bob cared out. The idea staggered Bob.
Were his parents ok? Probably not. He wasn't close to them, but that didn't mean he wanted them to die. His sister? His two little nephews? His friends, Nate and Joey? The old man at the corner shop? His loud and unfriendly neighbor? Who was still alive? Not all of them. Not all of them by a long-shot. 82% was a big number.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Where was his phone? He'd almost jumped to his feet before remembering he'd left it on the living room table. The living room that had magically disappeared. Before further remembering that the system had scrambled up the world's surface; cell phone service likely hadn't survived.
Bob leaned back and tried his best to process the idea. The system initiation was the single, greatest catastrophe to ever befall humanity. More than any war, or plague, or natural disaster. This was on a nuclear armageddon scale. Humanity might just die out, no? And then Bob realized. He was thinking too small. Because it wasn’t just humanity. It was all life on earth. Four-fifths of the earth's population had just disappeared over-night.
Bob's head hurt. The numbers were too large; they boggled his mental capacities. He'd go mad trying to understand it, to feel that loss, to parse out those consequences. Finally his mind just cut it loose. It was too heavy. He couldn't bear it. Nobody could.
Bob stopped thinking about it. He stopped trying. The people he'd known. Maybe they were alive. Maybe they weren't. Bob was alive. George was alive. And all Bob had to worry about was keeping them both alive for the foreseeable future. Small, tangible, achievable goals. Baby steps, Bob, baby steps. The world quest, the great tragedy, the mysterious system, those were problems for somebody else.
Bob cycled through a couple deep breaths until he'd managed to partially restore his mood. Then he returned his attention to the remainder of the message:
> Rank E
>
> * System Shop
> * System Post Office
> * System Weather
>
>
> Rank D
>
> * System Bank
> * System Contracts
> * Pre-seeded System Pylons
Bob grew more confused than ever. What on earth was this system thingamabob? He'd kinda guessed it was some kind of training program, a sort of interverse motivational coach/taskmaster. That world quest made it pretty clear the system wanted its citizens to level up asap.
Now what part of that core objective overlapped with providing a weather service. Hell most of the high street was represented: a shop, a bank, a post office. Was this an all-powerful deity or some kind of overstuffed mobile phone application?
He started looking for some kind of settings menu. And as soon as he did, a little grey icon, three horizontal lines, appeared beneath the notifications icon. "Convenient," Bob nodded approvingly. He mentally clicked the icon and a tab bar slid out on the left side of his vision.
"Impressive. But how about this?" Bob sharply turned his head to the left, trying to outsmart the interface and see what lay beyond the tab (he was a QA engineer after all). But the application was too smart; the tab was pinned to his vision somehow and rotated smoothly around. Bob grudgingly accepted defeat.
The interface was some manner of augmented reality. The system must be projecting the information onto his visual perception. Not only that, the application responded directly to mental commands. That meant the application, and by extension the system, was listening to his surface thoughts...
Bob didn't remember signing any user agreement that authorized that. Actually he didn't remember signing any agreement at all. The system had unilaterally transported him to the initiation, unilaterally assigned a class to him and unilaterally installed some spy software inside his head. Yes Bob, now is the time to get into a huff and start complaining about your rights and freedoms as a citizen of the world.
Bob refocused on the interface in front of him. There were eight tabs laid out in horizontal rows, text labels followed by abstract icons. The aesthetic was modern and minimalist, greyscale futuristic if you will.
When Bob focused on the first tab, "Robert Brown", the lower tabs slid down and four sub-tabs, slightly offset, emerged:
* Stats
* Skills
* Achievements
* Quests
When Bob clicked on "Stats", the menu-bar receded and he was taken to the now familiar view:
> Name: Robert Brown
>
> Race: Human (lesser)
>
> Class: Heaven's Fool (unique)
>
> Level: 1 (0%)
>
> Rank: E
>
> Wealth: 4,902,200 credits
>
>
> Stats:
>
> * Strength - poor
> * Dexterity - below average
> * Vitality - average
> * Constitution - below average
> * Wisdom - feeble
> * Intelligence - below average
> * Will - below average
> * Luck - godly
Bob willed the menu bar back and it reappeared, gracefully overlaying the "Stats" view. Bob might have been a tad impressed. It was a nice design, well executed and there had to be a ton of edge cases. He wondered who the system used for its quality assurance. Maybe there was a job market after all. Bob would have to write up a new CV. What does the system look for in its QA engineers?
But Bob didn't have time to go explore the whole interface now. There was something he desperately wanted to try and he kept getting sidelined. He'd just read through the high level groupings, so that he'd know the kind of things that were available.
> * Robert Brown
> * Stats
> * Skills
> * Achievements
> * Quests
> * Weather
> * Shop
> * Post Office
> * Send
> * Track
> * Bank
> * Account
> * Transactions
> * Loans & Credit
> * Investment
> * Vault
> * Contracts
> * Public
> * Private
> * Primer
> * Locked
His gaze stopped on the last item: "Locked". The icon was a squarish, almost geometric padlock surrounded by a grey haze. As Bob stared at it, he thought he saw the haze pulse, taking on bluish hints while the padlock itself seemed almost to tremble. As though it wanted to be opened or whatever was inside wanted to come out. Bob tried mentally tapping on the tab, but he only got a disabled feedback. What would a man have to do to unlock that tab? Bob scratched his chin. Intriguing.
Bob set aside his curiosity and returned to processing his notifications. Truth be told he was in a desperate hurry, though it'd be difficult to tell from his many, many detours. Emails really are a rabbit-hole, productivity sink aren't they? There were only three more notifications to go through and then Bob could get on to what was really important: magic.