He was on his feet, pacing left to right in front of his desk. Three short steps one way, and then back again. Despite this expression of anxiety, his voice was calm as he spoke into the phone.

“No, Mom I’m okay, I promise I don’t know what’s happening either…Yes, I got the same emergency alert, no I’m not going to leave my apartment.” David muttered into his phone as another curfew order rolled across the bottom of his TV screen, “You should call Dad on that satellite phone thing, he’s probably halfway up a mountain somewhere without reception. I’m safe here but he might not even know what’s going on…Okay, I love you too. I’ll call you back.”

David ended the call with a frown as he read the alert for the hundredth time in the last thirty minutes. When it arrived it had locked him out of most of the functions of his phone for about thirty seconds, emitting an impossibly loud tone that made his teeth itch the entire time. Needless to say, it had gotten his attention, and probably everyone else's quite nicely based on the angry and confused shouting through every wall that had accompanied it.

EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM

OFFICIAL SHELTER-IN-PLACE ORDER

ISSUED BY: National Emergency Management Agency

DATE: 8/12/24

TIME: 11:13 PM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO ALL CITIZENS:

URGENT: SHELTER-IN-PLACE ORDER DUE TO MAJOR CELESTIAL EVENT

Attention all citizens: A significant celestial event has been detected by our national space agency that will affect our region imminently. This event could potentially cause unusual and dangerous atmospheric and environmental phenomena. Effective immediately, all residents are ordered to shelter in place. Please proceed to your nearest designated safe location or remain indoors. Do not attempt to leave your home unless directed by emergency personnel.

This order will remain in effect until it is deemed safe to resume normal activities. We urge everyone to follow these instructions closely to ensure your safety and the safety of others.

Repeat: This is a shelter-in-place order. Do not leave your residence. Await further instructions.

END OF MESSAGE

He didn’t know what to make of it other than he’d never even heard of something like this, and that meant it was probably bad.

A few quick internet searches turned up nothing but about a billion other people all searching the same thing, and most social media platforms were in full hysterics, the tinfoil hat crowd boiling out of the pixels to infest every single comment section with doomsday prophecies. Everyone was screaming about disclosure and how humanity's new reptilian overlords would surely not be merciful. David saw, however, that the majority were long-winded posts about judgment day, and mocking posts in all caps proclaiming: ITS HAPPENING or YOU COULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS!

David locked his phone with a snort and set it down on the stack of milk crates he used as an end table next to his PC; which sat on a cheap but well-made desk he’d had since he was a teenager.

Of course, something like this happens at the end of your one day off. Shouldn’t have stayed up huh? Coulda just slept through the end of the world but no, you wanted to order pizza and play video games.

He leaned back in the computer chair he’d had almost as long and glanced at the clock, which read 11:53 PM. With a huge sigh, he simply accepted that he wouldn’t be getting any sleep before work tomorrow and just resigned himself to being tired. David's thoughts alternated between formless worry and whether or not he could afford a couple of energy drinks on the way to work in the morning. He continued to drift between the two until his phone buzzed again, this time with a text from one of his friends at work asking if he wanted to go out and fight aliens with him. David laughed and replied with an extremely inappropriate reaction gif before tossing his phone across the room onto his bed. The bed was messy, as was most of the rest of his room, but he lived alone and stopped caring a long time ago.

He blinked several times as the glow from his computer monitor flickered and blurred , his eyes unable to focus on it. The light faded in and out, varying its intensity and crawling past the edges of the monitor only to snap back into place before starting again. The plain walls of his bedroom seemed to breathe, both closing in and falling away bizarrely no matter where David looked, his eyes skipping off of everything in the room. The circumstances were so bizarre he was hardly surprised to find that the ceiling seemed to be receding forever despite clearly not moving.

David brought his hands up to rub the exhaustion from his eyes, except he didn’t, finding to his horror that he could no longer move. His body relaxed, waves of heat blooming in his chest and flooding into his limbs. He felt like he was melting into the chair as the screen fuzzed out to form a strange cloud of bluish-white light that hovered before him. David was gripped by a falling sensation, which paused before starting again, only to continue to drop oddly a few times while a small part of his brain insisted that he had fallen asleep, and was just nodding off in his chair like an asshole. As he redoubled his efforts to wake himself up from a stress-induced sleep paralysis episode a strangely soothing and artificial voice sounded out around him with perfect clarity.

**SYSTEM ADMIN COMMUNIQUE**

Greetings, Earth Inhabitants!

Congratulations on achieving a remarkable milestone in the cosmos! Earth has officially survived more mass extinctions than any other reality we monitor—what an extraordinary testament to resilience!

As a reward for your world's remarkable endurance, during the upcoming System Integration, you will be granted direct control over the evolutionary forces that have shaped your planet. This is a unique privilege, allowing you to guide your world's future development directly.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Prepare to embrace this new power responsibly, and stay tuned for further instructions as we move forward with this Integration.

Warm regards,

**System Overseer Ω**

What the fu–

David’s thoughts spiraled as the feeling of dropping intensified a thousandfold. Colors he didn’t have names for billowed and spun all around him in a whirlpool of insanity that prevented him from screaming with its beauty. Within moments he felt numb and the torrent of color had receded to an inoffensive gray, broken only by a shimmer of blue light directly before him. The cloud of light pulled together as if by magic, and formed a single shimmering pane that hung in the air. It solidified quickly, hanging motionless before words began to etch themselves into its surface.

–System Integration Underway–

–Welcome User: David Fisher–

–You have 1 Mandatory Evolution remaining–

–Beginning Evolution–

–SetUserLevel_0–

–Error_NoTraits–

–Accessing_PsychologicalProfile–

–Collating...–

–SysAutoGen_Traits_4–

You have been assigned the following traits:

Nocturnal F

Echolocation F

Small E

Flight F

–Please wait while we finalize your stats before Ability Selection–

David watched with a growing unease, his body tingling with greater intensity after every line of text until he was entirely suffused with an unpleasant bubbly feeling. He couldn’t help but wonder if he'd gone mad while he read the text populating the screen, which wiped itself clean to present an organized table for his inspection.

User: David Fisher

Species: Duskling

Rank: F

Health 18/18

Stam 120/120 (++)

Level: 0

Exp: 0/25

Special: Echolocation F

Traits: 4/4

Nocturnal: +8% Damage, Stam Regen, Exp Gain at night.

Next Upgrade: E

Echolocation: Manipulate high-frequency sound waves to see with more than just your eyes. Next unlock: E

Flight: Allows for short flights and gliding. Moderate Stamina drain. (stam+)

Next Upgrade: E

Small: Your form is small, weighing no more than 65lbs. (stam+)

Next Upgrade: D

Abilities: 0/4

Empty:

Empty:

Empty:

Empty:

Mutagens: 0/5

Empty:

Empty:

Empty:

Empty:

Empty:

–Proceeding to Ability Selection–

–You have 2 Points Remaining–

Ability selection?

David almost screamed when the screen vanished and he was dragged forward through the omnipresent gray fog at high speed. Fog whipped past, and he found he was rapidly approaching a twinkling wall of light. Just before impact, he stopped dead in the air, mind reeling as he realized the lights were an almost endless grid of icons, all rotating around the others in an enormous cube. As he focused on one for a moment it detached from the collective, zipping over to present itself to him.

|Venom F(2pts): You secrete a deadly venom to be injected into your target. Upgradeable|

Uh…no?

The small rectangular icon zipped back and away as if pulled by a magnet, returning to the endless gray to rejoin the titanic rotating cube of icons that dominated the horizon. David hung motionless and thought for a minute, the similarities to certain games he’d played quickly becoming apparent.

Oh, maybe this is one of those lucid dreams I always hear about? That’s cool, I guess I did fall asleep playing games. Makes sense.

Content to be lost in contemplation for a moment, David finally snapped back to reality and turned his attention to the cube rotating above the empty infinity all around him and scanned the icons. Several dozen drifted closer only to be immediately rejected, despite some of them being pretty powerful, just too expensive to be anything other than a curiosity. David continued to browse the giant icon vault with interest for some time before finally finding something that seemed to synergize well with what he’d dreamt up so far.

|Screech F (2pts): You emit a loud screech, damaging enemies around you. Low Stam consumption. Upgradeable|

That one.

–Purchased Ability: Screech F–

–Updating User–

–Error–

–System Integration Incomplete–

–Entering Standby–

Wait, whaaa…whoooaaaa thas weirrrrddd...

David’s thoughts spiraled into collapse as everything smeared together, exhaustion rising up to drag him down into a dreamless sleep.