"It was amusing to learn that many other civilizations do not use base 2, or at least another compatible base. And it was even stranger that their units of measurement remained arbitrarily defined, instead of being replaced by [Planck units] early in their histories. Species from those civilizations often find the numerical aspects of the Game quite odd. But alas, total fairness is nigh impossible."
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Welcome to what you may call the ‘System’, since that is the closest parallel to this concept in your culture’s literature.
Alex awoke with a start. A prompt filled his vision; black text in a rounded, translucent, white box, fuzzy and flickering in and out of his vision. He was surrounded by darkness, and all of his senses except for his vision seemed to be numbed. It was like he was a disembodied entity floating in the void, with only the floating white box to keep him company. It was a completely unnatural experience. But while he should have been scared or surprised, he felt fine.
In fact, when he thought about the fact that he felt completely fine, he realized that he felt better than fine. He felt absolutely great, having a level of physical comfort that he had rarely ever experienced. In fact, it felt like he was under the influence of a powerful opioid. Everything felt like it was going to be okay. But then the memories of the past day came back to him. A sense of utter confusion overtook him as he thought about what had happened. As much as he struggled to remember, his memory went dark after he and Peter had started browsing the Deep Web. Did he somehow die after that? Was this what death was like?
In order to protect the integrity of your consciousness, suppression of memories related to the Integration is partial and targeted only at experiences that contain sensitive information. Please do not be concerned if you have confusing memories of the Integration. If you achieve Tier 1, these memories will be restored.
At least the ‘System’ explained some things. And it was nice enough to have greeted him with a welcome message. For now, he ruled out the idea that he was dead. Instead, maybe the entire day was just some drug-induced hallucination. Did someone put DMT in his water or something? But that wouldn’t make sense for many reasons. His stream of thoughts was interrupted by a new prompt in his vision.
Please think to yourself the following command: ‘View Status’. Once you are familiar with the feeling of viewing your status screen, you will no longer need to use a verbal command. You can use the command ‘View Help’ to access a list of all available commands.
Alex complied with the request, surprised but a bit excited that this was starting to feel like a game. Being a coder and a hobby gamer, he appreciated systems with set rules and well-defined progressions.
The status screen was arranged in a small, easily legible table.
Player
Name: Alex Scarfeld
Race: Human (Tier 0)
Class: None
Level: 0
Energy
Energy: 0.0 / 19.0 Lucens (Tier 0)
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Flow Rate: 256.0
Channel Period: 21.9 hours
Channel Condition: Perfect
Attributes
Physical
Mental
Power
8
8
Resistance
8
8
Speed
8
8
Recovery
8
8
Free points: 4
Abilities
None
Insights
None
Titles
None
Alex was taken aback about how accurate his thought had been. A Status screen had implied some structure, but it seemed that he was now truly in some sort of twist on an RPG. It seemed like this “System” had taken over the Earth using some sort of pathogen, but then it turned life into a game? This was absolutely surreal.
He could see there were buttons next to the attributes where he could assign free points, but it was definitely wise to hold off on that allocation until he had more information. It would be foolish to play this “game” like a normal videogame, where you respawn when you die and your choices are often reversible.
A new prompt appeared on the screen.
Please prepare for Mental Integration. All experiences are natural, and it may take some time to adjust.
“All experiences are natural”? What did that mean?
Suddenly, the scene changed. It was as if the world just started buffering. His vision was assailed by a host of strange images, passing by too quickly to process. He thought he saw some grass, the interior of the military base from before, shades of colors, trees, strange figures, endless landscapes, and flickers of scenes that were even weirder and more nonsensical than those found in dreams. The shifting dreamscape wasn’t just restricted to his vision; his other senses were also assaulted by an overload of information. He heard strange noises that seemed to mix hundreds of sounds from life in the city and suburbs, clangs, whispers, the sounds of the ocean. Intense physical sensations danced across his skin and burrowed their way into his internal organs, from heat, to sharp stabbing pain, to soothing calm, to a feeling of climax throughout his entire body.
Even more indescribable was the utter chaos into which his inner thoughts and feelings were plunged. The concept of categories was dissolved; it was as if the boundaries between different things and different concepts were melded together and ripped apart, then recombined in bizarre ways. Feelings that were associated with diverse concepts were switched and reformed. Thought ceased to work through any logical pattern. While it would be almost impossible to remember and represent the experience accurately after the fact, an odd realization arose in his mind, in the form of a single sentence: “Create the conditions for struggle.” The thought quickly passed and chaos took over once again.
After what seemed like an eternity of these clashing sensations and feelings, since he had long ago lost all concept of time, reality slowly started to crystallize. There were still peculiar flashes of images and sensations, but they only happened once every few seconds, and Alex’s thoughts began to clear up. The experience that Alex had just undergone was far too momentous and shocking to even consider at this point in time, much less that one cryptic sentence that he remembered from the transformation. For now, he brought his focus to the present and took stock of his surroundings.