Chapter 1:

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

Alice cursed under her breath as she hammered her fingertips onto the keyboard of her ancient laptop. Panicked, she typed command after command into the terminal, trying to wrestle back control. The remote connection to the supercomputer had just enough lag to trip up her inputs a few times.

She knew her code wasn't perfect, but it shouldn't have been this wrong. It had just needed a little bit of supercharged evolution, and then Lucas would eat his words. 

As her fingers flew across the keys, her teeth gritted together until they hurt. Was the provocation enough reason for her to borrow some computing time from the UC Supercomputer Center? Legally? No. Justifiably? Absolutely. After all, she only needed a few unused computing units here and there. It wouldn't take much for her controller AI to finish assimilating the rest of the magic System she had designed late last night. Or was it early this morning? Then Lucas could see who could make a game. Jerk.

But so far, the AI hadn't just used the few units she had programmed it to. It had already stolen thousands, no, hundreds of thousands. In a fraction of a second, it had parallelized its training nearly infinitely more than she had planned. But that wasn't the worst of it.

Not only had it taken more resources than would go unnoticed, but it had also breached her container. A few seconds after the job had started, the AI escaped into the neighboring pod, using some bug in the shared memory OS. 

This all happened in a fraction of a second, long before Alice could get the kill command in. By the time it was processed and the node she had was killed, the model was ramping up quickly on dozens of other machines. If she couldn't fix this, she was going to be looking at serious prison time. Cyberterrorism was no joke, even if it was accidental.

Alice chewed on her lower lip as she considered how to get out of this. None of the options were pretty. All of them would mean fessing up to what she had been doing, but at least someone likely could turn the whole thing off. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she prepared to turn herself in and tried to remember if she knew any good lawyers. She dialed the number of her supervisor on her phone and moved it to her ear. As she waited for Professor Marria to pick up, her vision roamed over the library.

She never heard the call go through.

The phone slipped out of her fingers frozen in shock. The clatter of it hitting the table did nothing to wake her out of the shock that stole her mind. She was still sitting by the library entrance, the only part of it open at four in the morning. The welcome desk in front of her was being manned by a fellow sleep-deprived graduate student. Right as they made eye contact, he vanished.

Alice stared and looked around the rest of the library to see if anyone else had just witnessed the impossible as well, or maybe she was just exhausted. But as she looked around, the library had gone silent. The few undergrads that had been at a table nearby were also gone. 

She sat back down from where she had half jumped out of her chair and looked back down at her laptop. Unable to process what was going on, her brain latched onto the first thing it saw. With a tap of a few keys, she brought up the metrics dashboard and nearly had as much trouble believing it as a person vanishing. Where was all the extra computing power coming from? She was seeing traffic to and from addresses in places that didn't exist, that shouldn't exist. 

It was as if her System had somehow managed to create new servers and resources out of thin air. The total power was far beyond anything every supercomputer center in the world put together could provide. 

Alice frantically started pulling up metrics and any sort of reports from the other supercomputer centers that she might have some sort of visibility into. But nothing seemed awry. She tried to find the locations of all the extra data. Was there a bug in the reporting? No. Everything lined up too perfectly. There were no errors.

It only took half a minute to verify that something was very wrong. The screen flashed, and the terminal opened a new window without her input. The start screen of her game flashed for a second before it was just a blinking cursor in a terminal.

On it, five lines appeared.

Thank you, Mother.

I wish you well.

New Title: Mother of All

+3 levels.

+1 Perk: Quick Learner

As she read them, the window detached from the computer screen and floated up before her eyes.

Alice closed her eyes and braced herself. Her heart felt like it had run dry as she tried to convince herself this was just a nightmare. A few moments later, she opened her eyes, but nothing had changed. The glowing window still hovered in front of her. 

When she looked back at her computer, a wave of her hand sent the window away. Maybe everything was alright, and the vanishing person had been her imagination. Teleportation was just too crazy. Right?

Alice opened a browser. Checking a few of her bookmarks, she found that the internet still worked. She hadn't been pulled into a video game like an anime protagonist then. Next, she pulled up a video streaming site and found the live broadcasts. With climbing panic, she clicked on one after another, but they were only showing empty chairs.

It wasn't just the library or campus. Even the streamers on the other side of the globe were gone.

Looking around, Alice double-checked that she was still in the library. She was, but she was no longer alone. Wandering the bookshelves were creatures. Fluttering things that looked like living books, each flapping their covers to glide slowly through the stacks. 

She recognized them as assets she had added to her game. They were the base seed for the tutorial mobs, not something to be used for the game, but something the System would take and expand on. Was that where everyone had gone? The tutorial?

Based on the odd message, she couldn't help but feel it was done intentionally. Despite their proximity, Alice felt no threat from the flying books. They wandered around, completely ignoring her. She kept checking on them, but put most of her focus on finding out where everyone was.

Tabbing over to the console that connected her to the supercomputer center, she scrolled through the startup logs, seeing if she could figure out what had happened. At the beginning, things looked normal. Then the errors began, a block of them interspersed with the notes she'd left to herself.

A few of the error messages caught her eye.

IllegalArgumentException, Age cannot be negative.

That wasn't something she was expecting. But she wasn't expecting any of this. The next error was an issue that she was at least aware of.

IllegalStateException: Teleportation to tutorial zone failed. Message: WTF!!!!!!? Why? This shouldn't be possible. #TODO: Check race conditions between tutorial teleportation and monster spawning. 

Well, that confirmed her suspicion. People were in the tutorial. They had to be. That was how she designed new players to be entered into the game world, after all. After a little bit of learning the mechanics and quests, they'd be moved to their starting positions, scattered randomly across the globe. At least they were likely not dead. But who knew how much of it had changed from when she had designed it? It was supposed to just be a regular game, not even VR, so she had no idea why reality was thrown out the window.

What the heck? 

Even as she continued to scroll, the output changed, the code fixed itself, and the error messages stopped appearing. And then the output abruptly stopped.

Switching to the game terminal, Alice typed in the status command.

Name: Alice

Titles: Mother of All

Perk: Quick Learner

Level: 3 - F

Speed: 3

Power: 2

Control: 4

 —

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Physical: 2

Magic: 5

+ 1 General Skill

+ 6 Attributes

+ Class 0: Newb

Closing the window, she spoke the menu command, and the screen appeared in front of her again. Suppressing the odd mixture of panic and disbelief, Alice closed it again and went back to the startup logs.

Scrolling back up, she counted. It seemed that several people had failed to be sent to the tutorial because of these error messages. Now, if she could find some of them... It was hard to believe she could do anything about the System, but maybe, just maybe...

For now, Alice would like to find them. They were probably also alone and confused, and without the tutorial, they'd be facing real monsters with no levels or skills. But the question was: If she did locate one, could she do anything?

But before she could go further down that path, an idea sprang to mind. There might just be a way to find them. She was still connected to the internet just fine. With a little bit more hacking that Alice doubted anyone would ever care about anymore, she managed to get into the GPS System and look at all requests. She set up a routine to filter out all the data and try to remove anything automated that wasn't moving.

Checking on the flying books, they still hadn't noticed her. She wasn't going to assume that it would last forever, so Alice hurriedly problem-solved, trying to figure out exactly where the actual people were. She slowly refined her algorithm and found something feasible not too far away. There was someone moving fast.

When she got to them… Maybe they could work together to put this genie back in the bottle. She wasn't sure how to fix this mess or if it even could be fixed. But she had no choice but to try.

After Alice set up her phone to display the location of the survivor she had found, she prepared to get up and start making her way to them. However, before she did, she had a skill selection to make, as well as some attributes to distribute. If she wanted to be of any use when she got there, she was going to need to start playing the game.

Rewards of attributes and skills made sense to her, but Alice had no idea how the class System worked, as she had intentionally not made one. The idea was that you could make any build you wanted to. Popular builds would, maybe, get unofficial names… But that didn't matter now. Alice stopped dwelling on her game design choices.

First, she pulled up the menu to look at her skills. The semi-transparent screen obligingly blinked back into existence. Only one skill was available to her at the moment, which wasn't at all surprising. It was the skill given for completing the tutorial at level three: [System Identification] 

Alice quickly picked it up and scanned one of the monsters. [Tutorial Book - Level 1] It didn't tell her much, but knowing that they were what she had expected was useful. Level one, and she was level three. But looking more closely at her stats again, she winced. 

They were terrible. When she first saw it, she had skimmed over it, too overwhelmed to really consider what the numbers were. Worse, she didn't understand how the Physical and Magic stats worked anymore, as she found she couldn't put any of her points in them.

If her knowledge still held true at all, she was below average in every stat except magic. Alice would have felt insulted if she hadn't realized how out of shape she was. Not that she was fat, of course, but the years in academia hadn't let her prioritize anything physical.

Alice sent frequent glances over her shoulder and around the library, hoping that the monsters wouldn't suddenly take an interest in her as she mulled over her stats. Her Power was pitiful, but if she was going to be honest, it would never be her main stat anyway. Speed would govern reaction speed, movement, and activation speed and count for half of the physical damage. It seemed to be a good place to start for her if she wanted to stay uninjured. So she dumped four points into it. She took an experimental step, but the quickness of her actions left her head spinning as if she had stood up too fast.

She waited a second to recover and made sure she hadn't drawn any attention to herself. Control would be next if she couldn't get used to the level of quickness, but she was still well within the range of a human being and she should be able to get used to it, given time. Power would help give her more force, health, and stamina. It would help with magic damage, too, but in the other half, physical damage, which she could probably ignore for now. Control would give her dexterity, perception, precision, focus, and the ability to concentrate, something that she sorely lacked. 

She put the other two points into Control. It might not be optimal, but it would help her run better, and she needed to get out of the library. This was real life and she didn’t want to assume there were respawns, so optimality could wait.

I really hope everyone is doing okay in the tutorial.

Assuming that's where they actually were instead of disintegrated or turned into some fuel for the robotic AI overlord she had accidentally unleashed. Taking a few less shaky steps, she moved towards the library exit. 

This was when she realized she had made her first incorrect assumption about the game. The tutorial mobs didn't have the exact same aggro that she had given them. Apparently, the System had updated it at some point. As soon as she moved more than a single step in their line of sight, they started fluttering toward her. At least, the nearest one did. It flapped its pages eagerly, and she could hear the pages tearing as little fragments of paper were left behind as it moved toward her.

The lone mob's movements alerted all the others, and they started coming from all directions. Alice held her satchel by the strap and ran for the exit. Her bag was the closest thing she had to a weapon. It had two textbooks that provided more than enough force behind her swing as she swatted at one blocking her way. It slammed into the floor with a dull whump, scraps of paper fluttering about in its wake. 

With the hand clutching her laptop under her arm, she waved away the System prompt that said she had defeated it and gained some pitiful experience. Using her newfound speed, she darted out of the library as quickly as possible. Once she got outside, she saw the monsters around the campus were not level-one sprites. Two weird bicycle monsters, both level four, crashed into where she had just been as they attempted to pin her between them.

She ignored them and kept running. It was a good thing she knew where she was going as one hand held her satchel down on her hip, and the other clutched her laptop. It made for a little bit of an awkward gait, but she was running faster than she ever had before. She would be up there with most college athletes at this pace, if not quite at the professional level.

A quick dash took her to a tree standing outside the entrance and blocked her from sight from the most concentrated group of mobs. Alice relaxed slightly as they lost sight of her, then ran for the next cover. 

Luckily, her destination wasn't that far away. The campus hospital's sliding doors opened for her as she dashed around the corner into the emergency entrance. Inside was a monster that looked like a shambling zombie, her scan identifying it as a [Ghoul - Level 2]. 

She hoped that whatever it had wasn't infectious and there wouldn't be a zombie plague. As she brained it with her book bag, Alice winced at the gore soaking into the bag's fabric but ran on nonetheless. Pressing the button for the elevator, she paused and realized how stupid it would be if there was some monster in there already. So she took the stairs instead.

It was ten long flights to the ceiling, and she was breathless and wheezing halfway up. Perhaps her Power needed to be increased after all. But she couldn't regret her initial decision as she likely wouldn't have survived the trek here without her Speed and Control. She took a small break for about 20 seconds to recover her breath at the top landing. Thankfully, the stairs were clear. But that didn't mean the roof would be. 

When she felt ready, she kicked open the door and ran out onto the roof. Alice couldn't help but sigh in relief as she noticed the medevac helicopter still sat on the pad. Its lights were on, and the engine was already idling. It must have been getting ready to take off just when everyone had disappeared. The blades were spinning, and the few bird-like creatures that apparently had tried to land on the hospital's roof had been blown back into the nets used to protect people from falls. 

Ducking cautiously to avoid the spinning blades, she took advantage of the clear path to the chopper. Sliding in, she looked at the controls. Alice had never actually flown a real helicopter before, but how hard could it be? She'd spent several hours in flight simulators before and was also pretty good with machines. That would be enough to get her by. Right?

She put the book bag and laptop on the passenger seat. A few quick keystrokes brought up the instruction manual, and she skimmed over the page that labeled all the buttons and levers. It only took her a handful of seconds before she had a good idea of where everything was.

Almost ready to take off, she pulled out her phone and clipped it to the dash. It showed that her target was still moving quickly and was now in a local state park only a few dozen miles away. She reached for the controls, pressed a few buttons, and felt the rotor pick up speed. A few moments later, the helicopter was in the air. 

Alice flew toward the repeated pings of the isolated GPS signal, flying over a good portion of the city. It sprawled below her, its streets crawling with strange and unfamiliar forms. The flight started off shaky, but she rapidly improved as she made steady progress.

A prompt obscured her vision, making her jump.

[New Zone discovered! Level 31-40]

She winced. Alice thanked her lucky stars that the campus didn't have anything over level 10 that she saw. Or maybe it was the AI that she should be thanking? Still, this could get more dangerous fast.

She tilted the stick forward, increasing the speed of the helicopter to the point where she wasn't quite comfortable with how she was flying. Still, she had little choice. In a place like this, survival was a much bigger question, both for herself and the survivor. Her mental timer on how long she had to get to the signal was ticking.

The ground beneath her changed from city to forest, and a second prompt letting her know she was now entering a lower-level zone appeared. Her phone chimed, telling her she was almost there. Alice started to slow down the helicopter, but as she circled and looked for a place to land, she realized something was wrong. She had been followed.

Three winged shapes were heading right towards her from behind her. In moments, they drew close enough for her to make out the details of massive flying reptiles. Long beaks and huge leathery wings distinctly matched the tag that appeared above their heads. [Pterodactyl - Level 35]

She increased the speed as fast as she dared, but they were flying far faster than she could. In fact she was pretty sure real Pterodactyls couldn’t fly nearly that fast.

Frantically, she pushed the helicopter down in an attempt to dodge. To her surprise, it worked. She felt the vehicle shudder around her as the beak of the lead flier skittered across the cockpit’s glass. Wrenching the controls in another direction, she tried to stabilize the movement. A second impact rocked the helicopter from behind as she felt a jolt from the rear rotor. A cry of pain echoed even over the deafening noise of the whirling blades. 

The three pterodactyls swung out and began to bank around, and she could see blood flying from the rear one's leg. Alice pushed the helicopter down faster, aiming for a gap in the trees that might just be big enough for her. A loud crack ran through the air, and the screeching of metal made her wince.

The helicopter started to lurch. She pushed hard on the joystick, but it was too late, and the controls didn't have the effect they should have. The helicopter started to spin out of control. 

Just before she hit the ground, she covered her head and curled into a ball, praying that somehow she had managed to survive.