I was so surprised I almost dropped my phone. Right there, on my screen, Aimee’s hat sat in the middle of the pavement. I was ready to vault the rail of the patio and run all the way to where it sat but I could still see the dismembered corpse of the Nope Spider from where I sat. Who knows what else there is out there? I’ve already seen goblins, dire wolves and nightmare fuel enough for weeks. I looked at my stump. And what the hell am I going to do about this?

I had an idea and after collecting all my stuff from the table and stashing them in my backpack I headed downstairs, out the back door and through the minuscule backyard to the garage. I looked at the dead dire wolf corpse as I passed it and made a note to dispose of it somehow. Gotta google that, I guess. Can’t exactly jam it in the wheelie bin. I drew the bokken and looked at the abused blade. Sure it was made with a nice hard wood, but it is only wood. The lacquer was flaking off and had several chips out of the edge and while it was in one piece for the moment that couldn’t last. Still, it would do for now.

I opened the garage door and peered in. Silence greeted my ears and there were no weird shadows visible so I provisionally deemed it safe. I put the bokken back in the sheath but stayed wary. I had my explaining boots on and wasn’t afraid to expound on the theme of “don’t surprise me” if anything jumped out. I scooched between the car and my bike to reach the rack where I’d hung my motorbike gloves. On the way out I nabbed a heavy duty kitchen glove from the cabinet where Aimee keeps all her gardening crap.

Back inside I dropped the three gloves on the kitchen counter and stuffed the kitchen glove into the left hand motorbike glove. I used a chopstick to make sure the fingers were all the way in and snug. Then I blew up the kitchen glove so it filled the motorbike glove like a hand.

Aaaand then I stood there looking silly holding the glove shut with one hand wondering how I was supposed to seal it since I couldn’t tie it off one handed. I spotted a bag clip we use to seal bags of chips that Aimee wasn’t going to finish sitting on the counter and had an idea. I grabbed a bag of corn chips from the top of the cupboard and tore it open with my teeth while I considered how to seal the glove.

Oh.

Yeah.

I blew up the glove again and clipped the opening shut. The heavy duty rubber it was made of actually sealed reallly well and when I jammed the motorbike glove over my stump and fastened the velcro wrist strap it kinda looked like a normal hand. I wiggled it at my reflection in the microwave door and giggled slightly. It occurred to me again that I might not exactly be thinking straight, but who was right now?

I popped the other glove on my right and did it up too. It felt a bit better being symmetrical again.

Heading out the front door I felt that golden ripple once more and thought about how a sensation could “feel” golden. Eh, doesn’t matter. Gotta get over there.

There, in this case, was several streets over where another park stood. It stuck out over the whole neighborhood because in the centre of the play area loomed a five storey wireframe rocket. Obviously not a real one, even with the magical changes in the world, but a massive play frame and from the side of the nosecone came a slide for kids to scream down. On the other floors were pieces of sci-fi themed play equipment in case one of those uncultured heathens had ever seen Duck Dodgers in the Twenty-First and a Half Century and wanted to emulate him. Or Super Ted. Or Mr Squiggle.

Nah, they just want to climb and squeal. At least they aren’t doing it today. Today the park is as deserted as the streets and kinda creepy with it.

Niantic had designated a low wall nearby with an ocean scene embossed on it as the artwork worthy of a Poke Stop and right there on the pavement was Aimee’s hat. I ran over to it and tried to pick the hat up but I’m normally left handed and was not particularly successful closing my dominant hand, it being rubber and air at the moment.

Not that I was much more successful using my right hand. The hat wasn’t just on the pavement, it was stuck to it somehow. I pulled harder and part of the brim tore away, leaving a ring of fabric embedded in the cement. Confused, I knelt down for a closer look, but not before checking around for anything that wanted to jump me. The holes in my jacket were testament to how much more dangerous Oz had gotten in the last twelve hours, not that it was the safest country to turn your back on to start with.

With the coast clear I examined the cement but it looked the same as it had a few days ago. It wasn’t new and yet Aimee’s hat had been fused to the ground. There were threads sticking out of the ground as though the hat had been there when the concrete was poured. Well that’s bloody weird, I thought. How does that even happen?

As usual, the answer was magic. But what sort of magic was it? I looked around more carefully and found what I’d suspected. There were signs of a scuffle, gouges in the dirt, bark chips thrown about and, when I looked on the far side of the wall I found a half-spherical indentation where the material was just… missing. I had no idea how that had been achieved, it wasn’t burned or displaced. There was no rubble and the edges of the gap were clean but not burned in any way. So, not like our front window, I mused. Some sort of annihilation magic? Who would have that already? I eyeballed the depth of the indent and estimated. It would have been big enough to engulf a kneeling adult. In fact, it reminded me of the way the T800 appeared in the first movie. Ok, anything’s possible with magic, but I’m not going to start assuming terminators are running around kidnapping people. Could it be some sort of tavel magic though?

Not sure what else to do, I pulled up my MAP page to see if there was anything new. The only change, however, was that there were no more circles on the map. I tried zooming out, but even at the city level I couldn’t see anything informative.

Dejected, I headed home.

As I walked in the door I felt that ripple again and honestly, it was starting to grate. I locked all the doors and sat down in my most comfy chair in the lounge to get to the bottom of this stupid system thing.

MENU, I thought, bringing up the main page. Three tabs were flickering now, JOURNAL, MAP and ATTRIBUTES. There was not, however, a help option. Noooo, that would be too easy. Bastard.

I tried the JOURNAL first, thinking it would have the most relevant information. I was partly right. Now there were three entries and they’d been relegated to a sidebar with the headings ACTIVE and COMPLETE. As nothing was selected there was a big empty space in the main part of the menu.

In the completed list was:

WHISKEY. TANGO. FOXTROT.

In the active list were the two:

Seeking Aimee.

Welcome to The System.

The first was greyed out, so I didn’t bother with it. I’m sure it’ll let me know if anything changes. The second and third were slowly blinking yellow, obviously needing my attention. I opened the one titled “seeking Aimee”, because it was the most important one to me.

Seeking Aimee.

You awoke to find your wife gone. Better than waking up to a horse head beside you, but not by much. Search the local area for information.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

->You have searched the local area and found answers that beget more questions. Could there be clues closer to home?

Closer to home? I leapt out of the chair. She wasn’t in bed when I woke up, but there were already monsters in the house! I dashed into the front room again, this time not looking for threats but things out of place. I shifted the books and papers on the floor, and there, in the corner, was a broken off broom handle with the sharp end stained with unknowable liquids.

There hadn’t been any corspes in the rooom when I’d checked earler so I’d just assumed they’d broken in and come straight through to the rest of the house. Holding the broken bit of wood up to the light, I reassessed my inital conclusions. I slid open the door to the tiny ensuite and looked around. The frosted glass of the shower door was clear enough that I could see that there was nothing hiding in there but this time I opened the door and peered in.

Just like the wall over at the park, the walls and floor of the shower recess were missing bits. By joining the dots I could see that a sphere of material was just gone. The exposed concrete in the floor and gyproc under the tiles blended together when seen through the frosting but now with the door open it was obvious. I was once more reminded of the Terminators entrances in the movies, but now I realised it was more of an exit.

Ok, so Aimee learned Teleport. And her first instinct was to play Pokemon Go? I realised I was being neither fair nor rational, but I wasn’t exactly facing a fair or rational situation. Besides, I still had her phone so she wasn’t playing mobile games of any sort. Right, so she goes to the park. Gets into another fight there but this time without a weapon. Teleports again. Where to?

I felt rather jealous that Aimee had scored a spell on her first level up, but if she was scared enough to be randomly teleporting around the world I was less concerned about level ups and more about where she’d ended up. I paced back and forth in the room, kicking the books and paper that got in my way until I stubbed a toe on a particularly hefty tome and decided to clean up properly. Anything to get my brain straight. I’m guessing it was instinctual. Somewhere she felt safe. Her parent’s? Please don’t be Queensland. I hate that state. I should call her sister. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

I headed back into the kitchen and dropped the ruined books and random paper bits into the recycling bin before pulling Aimee’s phone out of my pocket. What’s her unlock pattern? Oh, yeah. I swiped my fingers over the surface and the screen lit up. I opened the contacts list and punched the entry for Veronica.

Brrt brrt. The electronic trill in my ear told me it was ringing. Brrt brrt. Brrt brrt.

“You have reached Veronica and Paul. We’re busy at the moment so please leave a message after the tone.” BEEP.

“Yeah, uh, hi Veronica, it’s Ace. Weird question to ask, but have you seen Aimee today? We’ve had a bit of an incident here. Not a fight, just, you know, a thing? Anyway, call me back please.” I hung up, not knowing what to do next. If I called her parents her Mum would answer and I hated talking to her. Aimee was even less likely to end up at her other sister’s place, it being just down the road from her parents and Aimee liked her sister even less than her mother. How does magic even work? Is there mana like in games? Spell slots like in TTRPGs? Oh, I’m a dumbass.

I had a damn tutorial quest sitting in my journal literally titled “Welcome to The System”.

I set the phone on the coffee table where I could see it, sat back down in the comfy chair and brought up the journal again.

Welcome to The System:

With the earth passing back into System controlled space, humanity once more has access to all that the System has to offer. In this quest you will learn the basics of navigating your Menu. Start by accessing your ATTRIBUTES menu. Do this by thinking the word clearly and concisely.

ATTRIBUTES, I thought and watched the page jump back to the one I had first seen.

CONSTITUTION 4

DEXTERITY 4

STRENGTH 3

INTELLIGENCE 4

WISDOM 2

CHARISMA 3

A golden edged box popped up over the right hand side of the screen. I read the contents as it scrolled down. These are your attribute scores as assessed at the time of induction. If you concentrate on each you can see a breakdown of the reasons for granting these scores. Yeah, I did that. Next, you can see this value at the bottom. These are your undistributed attribute points. For the purposes of this tutorial we give everyone a single free point. The rest must be earned. Wait, what? That’s new. I looked along the line extending from the tutorial box to a smaller box at the bottom that surrounded the words UNASSIGNED: 2. Two? Didn’t it just say I only get one? Whatever, what’s this bit? Before you can distribute your points into a sub-attribute, you must first have an equal or higher main attribute score. Makes sense.

As I watched, the menu opened my Wisdom list, showing the list of sub attributes. While I had a few, none were higher than two. Which was fair. I’d done some exceedingly unwise things in my life. At the prompt I attempted to add a point to Socialising, which is apparently a Wis trait and not a Char, and heard a quiet egh-egh noise. The line also pulsed red, as if the noise wasn’t enough. Well, that explains A LOT.

The system collapsed the Wisdom list without warning and opened the Intelligence one. There were a lot more entries in here, some I didn’t realise I even had. Hacking for example had a couple points, even though the closest I’d ever been to being a hacker was playing Try-To-Hack back before the turn of the century. Jury-rigging made a bit more sense, since I never throw away electronics if I can help it. Everything has a use and I can normally find a way to repurpose it. Aimee had a field day a few years back after we raided the hard rubbish for printers so that I could extract the stepper motors to build a 3D printer. I smiled at the memory, but had to shake it away when the buzzer sounded in my ear again. What? Oh, it wants me to add the free point here somewhere.

I looked at my hand and flopped the empty glove around. I wonder if this’ll grow back if I put enough points into Constitution? I flicked into the appropriate list but the tooltip didn’t inspire much hope. Maybe if I get enough magic I can cast regenerate? Oh, damn. That’s a Wis sub-attribute. Come on!

The system didn’t seem to mind me going back and forth between the lists, it only beeped at me if I sat in one for too long. With how the world was going to hell and how quickly my bokken was deteriorating I decided I needed a weapon I could carry around the streets without getting arrested but would still put down whatever came at me. My mind flicked briefly to the anti-riot quadcopters I’d seen were being made in South Africa but dismissed it for the moment. I’d test just how effective Jury-Rigging could be with the new world order later. For now, something had caught my eyes. Lurking below the Attributes list was another entry. Visible only as a > with no heading I almost missed it entirely.

I mentally selected the > and it turned into a V and displayed a new list. Rather than attribute related skills, this list was titled Aspects. It seemed to be a list of physical and personality traits both positive and negative. Many had a tick beside them and were greyed out, like Allergies and Childhood Trauma. More had an empty check box beside them and a value in brackets. Out of curiosity I tried unticking Allergies, reasoning that if I could get rid of my wattle pollen allergy I’d save a mint on antihistamines. A digital “egh-egh” noise sounded in my ear and the box stayed checked. Damn.

I decided to get on with it and dropped a single point into the top level of STR. I briefly considered using it on WIS or CHR, but honestly I wouldn't know what to do with the attributes. There was no way I’d naturally become a smooth operator or stop sticking my finger into electronics, but getting stronger I could understand.

The tutorial closed the menu for me and a wave of exhaustion washed over me. I felt like I had spent a month in the gym, but all in the space of a second. I staggered into the kitchen, tore through a packet of jerky in front of the cupboard, dropped the wrapper on the floor and clawed my way up the stairs on all fours. I didn’t even make it into the bedroom, pulling a cushion from the upstairs couch and crashing on the carpeted floor.

As oblivion claimed me, I hoped I’d remembered to lock the front door.