The sun shines bright directly into my eyes. Which is strange, considering I should be dead. I mean sure, there may be a 1 in a million chance that I survived a nuclear explosion, in which case me seeing the sun would only be unusual due to the lack of a nuclear explosion.
Well, I won't get my answers lying here all day. I'm sure if I get up and look around me, I'll figure out what's going on. Yep, just have to get up. Pull myself up. Or push on the ground. Or move my neck. Anything.
It appears that I am immobile. And not in a 'buried under ruble' kind of immobile. More like a 'lost all mobility in everything' kind of immobile. Hey, isn't this the plot to that one psychological horror novel? Ah, fuck. I guess I didn't emerge from the explosion unscathed. My best guess is brain damage paralyzing my whole body.
Well... now what? I can't even shout out for help (assuming there's anyone nearby) and I still don't fully know what my surroundings are. Hell, I don't even know if I got the status of my body correct.
Loading Status...
...what
Name: Desmond Lee Johnson Race: puddle Level: 1 str: N/A rct: 0.347 spt: 1 dex: N/A prc: 1 (+0.7) stm: 1 con: N/A rgr: 0.89 fcs: 1
Hm, yes. This is very helpful. I already know my name, but with this I now know that I'm a puddle. Yep this totally makes sense, and everything is fine. I definitely understand what this means and stuff, yep.
F-
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"So why that mountain in particular?"
"The oracle said that the fountain of youth is on the most fragile peak. Rain has long since carved that mountain to only a moment before collapse. If the fountain is anywhere, it's there."
"Well, I'll pray for your frail body to return unharmed then."
"Just because I'm old doesn't mean I'm frail! Dammed child, show some proper respect."
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I've never read 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream', but I can say with confidence that I'm in a similar situation. I mean, surely this is torture conceived by the cruelest of gods. I can't move, speak, and my one mercy of seeing is currently stuck staring at a too-bright sun.
Well, only half the sun. Conveniently, this blue rectangle is blocking half of it. Not that staring at a bunch of letters and numbers that I can barely understand helps.
Now, I'm not entirely dumb. I've played video games and stuff before. This is definitely a character sheet, or part of one. I mean, 'str', 'dex', and 'con' are all common stats in games. Sucks that they're all N/A, probably since I'm a puddle.
The problem is the other stuff. What the fuck is 'rct'? or 'fcs'? Is 1 average? Why is there something in parentheses for 'prc'? Can I please have a tutorial or something?!
hmph~
Okay, I calmed down a bit. I've played games with worse learning curves before. Let's go back a second. Why did this pop up? I didn't specifically ask for it or anything. All I did was think about my current situation. More specifically, I was thinking about how I might be wrong about the status of my bo-
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Reloading Status...
Name: Desmond Lee Johnson Race: puddle Level: 1 str: N/A rct: 0.347 spt: 1 dex: N/A prc: 1 (+0.18) stm: 1 con: N/A rgr: 0.89 fcs: 1
Ah, so it comes up if I think about 'status'. Good to kn-
Reloading Status...
No no no, you know that's not what I meant you son of a-
Name: Desmond Lee Johnson Race: puddle Level: 1 str: N/A rct: 0.347 spt: 1 dex: N/A prc: 1 (+0.17) stm: 1 con: N/A rgr: 0.89 fcs: 1
...so I guess I just won't ever think of the word unless I want to see this. Noted. Now, an annoying problem is that they don't go away when opening a new screen, and instead just overlaps the previous ones. Well, at least it's covering the sun completely now.
....'close'? 'close screen'? 'close recent'? how about 'close status'?
Reloading Status...
FFFFFFUUUUU-
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"Hey, Susanoo, have you seen an American soul around there? Name's Desmond Lee Johnson. Died by a nuke. Can't seem to find him anywhere on the surface."
"Hades, dude, I'm dealing with well over 2 million souls coming through all at once and half of them consider themselves 'American'. You gotta be more specific."
"Caucasian, 44 years old, 5' 7". blue eyes, blond hair, chevron mustache, has reversed internal organs, and is demisexual."
"...did you ask J-"
"Yes I asked Jesus. He hadn't seen their soul either. I really don't want to deal with another lost soul incident."
"Well, I'll go ask Buddha. Have you tried checking on the niche gods?"
"I swear if the flying spaghetti monster got another one..."
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Finally got some good news! I can move the screens. Still don't know how to get rid of them, but I have a trash corner where all the extra stuff goes. Not that there's much there other than old s-words. I'm using some of them to shade my non-eyes from the sun. (How the fuck do i see?)
Now that that's over, let's do what I originally planned to do. Mainly, see if there's any 'skills' or 'traits' or 'abilities' or...
...
...or 'active effect'-
Loading Actives...
Aha! Got it! and it only took... hey wait where's the sun? Should be somewhere behind one of these shade-screens.
Available Actives:
Generate Clone Generates a Clone
Unavailable Actives:
Interesting... So it's possible for a skill (that's what I'll call them) to become unavailable. Now, what does 'Generate Clone' do?
Activating 'Generate Clone' using default genetics.
I should really stop thinking out loud.