July 18th, 2022
Three years had flown by quickly. Johnathan had learned a lot. His memory was sharper. He had more energy. He could run faster and he felt stronger. As he thought back, he could honestly say that the closest analogy he could come up with as to why he hadn’t noticed the massive changes he had gone through during those three years was akin to Neo finding out about the Matrix from Morpheus; “It's what we call residual self-image. The mental projection of your electronic self…” except in this case Johnathan’s mental faculties were keeping his physical body at a level that he believed himself to be at. Since he believed he could only lift a little over his body weight, that was all he could lift. Also, with his Luck attribute as high as it was it had probably prevented anything bad from happening to him, or as Domino from Deadpool 2 said it best; “I’m Lucky.” In this context, Johnathan’s Luck prevented him from being hurt. He had no detrimental encounters. He just went to school, surfed the net, played video games with his friends, and went on the occasional trip home to visit his mom and dad.
Johnathan shied away from relationships. He believed he didn’t have a chance, so he didn’t. He had only noticed two changes. The first was that his memory seemed to be even better than before, and he practically downloaded information off the internet into his mind after school every night when he surfed the internet. The second was that he’d started sleeping a lot less. He’d go days with only three or four hours of sleep and feel fine. Then one day Johnathan would feel a little tired, sleep for eight hours and he’d be good for a few more days. As time went on, the time he needed between each full eight hours of sleep increased as well.
Saturday had been Johnathan’s 21st Birthday. He’d been home in Clovis to enjoy a week with his parents before starting another summer semester. They’d gone out to eat at the local steakhouse and his first official, and legal, alcoholic drink had been a beer. Not really a fan of the flavor of beer he tried a Long Island Iced Tea. That drink was awesome! He’d had two before his parents called it a night and they’d all gone home. They’d thought he’d had enough even though he’d felt fine. His parents had “knew” that he wasn’t fine, so they went home. They were a bit surprised when they arrived back at the house and Johnathan didn’t seem to be drunk at all and did actually seem fine. They sat down and talked for a bit about school and how he was progressing towards his bachelor’s in computer science, but it was just small talk. Eventually, he went up to his room to watch TV.
Johnathan propped up some pillows, laid back on his bed, and started flipping through channels while he looked for something he hadn’t seen before when he came across a Public Broadcasting Station (P.B.S) show concerning meditation. As he settled in to watch the show, he realized that he hadn’t actually meditated in just over 3 years, not since going to college. Hopefully, this show would have information he hadn’t already learned. He left the TV on and listened. As he listened, he felt himself becoming more relaxed. In a very soothing almost whispering voice, the female speaker continued slowly.
“Okay, close your eyes and relax.“
“Let all the stress of the day flow from your body.”
“That’s it.”
“Feel the stress leaving your body.”
“Good.”
“Now focus on your breathing.”
“In.”
“Out.”
“In.”
“Out.”
“Good.”
“Next, I want you to visualize that you’re at the top of a carpeted staircase. You can feel the carpet touching the bottom of your feet.”
“Good.”
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“Wiggle your toes.”
“Do you feel the carpet brush the bottom of your foot, reaching up between your toes?”
“Good.”
“Now you’re going to make your way down the staircase. As you walk down the stairs you are going to feel all your stress, anxiety and fear leave your body through the fibers of the carpet.”
“Breath In.”
“Breath Out.”
“Good.”
“Now we’re ready for that first step.”
“Stepping down with your right foot, feel the energy leave your foot and enter the carpet. Now bring your left foot to that step.”
“Good.”
“Let the stress flow from your feet into the carpet…”
The voice kept this up until finally Johnathan was stepping onto the basement floor and his focus was utterly and completely internalized to the point that he couldn’t hear the voice on the television speaking anymore. He felt like his body was floating gently in an open void. In the distance, he saw what looked like a computer monitor rushing towards him which stopped when he was only a few feet away. A new message was appearing at the top of the board every second which scrolled those messages before it, down the board until they disappeared:
You have earned 1000 experience, total experience above level cap.
You have earned 1000 experience, total experience above level cap.
You have earned 1000 experience, total experience above level cap.
Attempting to scroll up, would be idiotic. If he’d received a message like this every second, then he had at a minimum 37,708,210 messages to review. Figuring that this was in his mind and that he should be able to control the interface he willed the information to be categorized by type and was pleasantly surprised when it did. A second later he had five categories:
Experience Gain: 87,713,280 messages, which was increasing by one every second
Leveling: 4,999 messages.
Warning: 4,999 messages.
Informational: 4,999 messages.
Message from Unknown Source: 1 message.
Ignoring the experience gain messages Johnathan focused on the Leveling messages and willed the 4,999th message to display.
Congratulations, you have reached level 5,000! You have been awarded 4 attribute points which may be distributed however you wish. Level 5,000 is the maximum level that any creature can attain without choosing a path of ascendancy in this dimension. All earned experience will be stored for later use once a Path of Ascendency is chosen.
Say what now, Level 5,000? What the hell? He had levels, Like in a game? Putting those thoughts out of his mind for a minute he willed the 4,999th warning to display:
WARNING you have reached a new level without allocating your attribute points. You now have 240 unspent attribute points from previous levels. If you do not allocate your unspent attribute points within the next seven days, they will be randomly allocated for you.
Again, with the unhelpful information. Attributes? Like Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and the like from Role-Playing Games. What was this message referring to exactly? Maybe there would be another clue in the last informational message:
It has been seven days since you leveled. your attribute points have been distributed as follows, 4 points have been placed into the attribute Luck, Total Luck attribute 1,820.
One thousand twenty Luck? Again, with the unhelpful information. What exactly does that mean? Without a frame of reference, Johnathan had absolutely no clue what that meant. Quickly scrolling through the last twenty-four messages, he was able to determine that he had ten other attributes; Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Endurance, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Willpower, Perception, and Charisma, and each of those had a value of 1,818, whatever that represented. It looked like that automatic distribution ensured that his attributes stayed level. He wondered if that was mandated by some other mechanism, as he still didn’t know what he was looking at. Sighing. he put questioning thoughts that went nowhere to the side and opened the message from the category “Message from Unknown Source”:
I have reviewed all the information I have been able to form from your subconscious. When you finally access this prompt, please respond by answering this question, would you like to know what is going on? Yes or No?”
Without hesitation, Johnathan thought, “Yes.”