In the dregs of Newcomb City, a black-haired teenager paced back and forth between the reinforced concrete walls of his bunk room. Since his room was so small, Nathaniel Redsun, or Nate as most people called him, could only take six steps before he had to turn and walk back the other direction. Despite only moving in the limited space, his scrawny body had managed to work up a sweat with his nervous pacing over the last couple of hours. However, this jittery exercise didn’t decrease the amount of pressure that he felt because of tonight’s upcoming events.

Today was Nate’s sixteenth birthday. Tonight was also his system’s awakening, or the Awakening, as most people called it for short. For some reason, the Singularity had decided to only let the humans’ advancement system become effective on their sixteenth birthday. Beasts had their awakening upon birth, but humans had to live sixteen years before experiencing the system. No one knew why humans had to wait for the system to awaken, but the event could be considered the most important event in any human’s life. The results of the Awakening would have a profound impact on anyone’s future.

If Nate was lucky, he could start off with a high-level awakening then he could have a shot at getting promoted to a higher sector of Newcomb City to work as a defense warden, outpost overseer or even a sector administrator. But, his Awakening could also leave him stranded in the dump of Grey Sector working in the factories with the hundreds of thousands of other low-level people. With his future path in life so dependent on his Awakening, how could Nate not be a little nervous?

After two hours of pacing, Nate stripped off his sweaty shirt and stepped over to the sink that stuck out from the block wall. He finally felt like he had settled his nerves a bit so he started to clean up in front of the mirror above the sink. Looking at his trim sweaty bare upper body, Nate’s green eyes focused on the reflection of the large scar that ran from behind his ear, down to his shoulder and to the center of his chest near his heart. The pinkish tissue of the scar stuck out on his pale skin that had never seen the sun. As he brushed the scar with the washrag, he couldn’t keep from wondering what exactly happened to give him such a bad injury. He had never really gotten the full story.

From what he was told when he was young, Nate hadn’t been born in Newcomb City. He had been sent to the city as an orphaned kid that was the victim of some circumstance out of his control. Apparently his parents were killed in a beast attack that had hit an expedition outpost out in the wilderness outside of the City.

Despite the destruction of the outpost and the death of his parents, Nate had still managed to survive the beast attack. A defense force from the city had heard him crying while they were investigating the incident days later and brought him back to live in the Grey Sector of Newcomb City. Of course, Nate didn’t remember anything from the incident. He was only around 3 years old and not much was memorable from those times. All Nate remembered was spending most of his childhood bouncing around to different families that would accept the coin for taking care of an orphan in the Grey Sector.

After cleaning himself up in the sink and reminiscing about his childhood, Nate moved back to the center of the room and went through a series of stretching exercises to help him loosen up some more. He had been taught to do these movements as a child to help keep his body in shape for work. With a practiced motion, he didn’t take long to complete the entire standard routine. Finally ready to get in bed, he pulled one of the clean rags from a shelf and wiped the sweat from his forehead. With little effort, he climbed up into the small loft bed above his living area to wait on his Awakening. He finally felt ready.

Instructions, as given by Newcomb City basic education department, were to always remain seated or lying down when the Awakening occurred. The obvious reason for this instruction was to prevent falling down and injuring oneself. Nate remembered hearing a story of someone falling down a corridor shaft because they were trying to go get something to eat when their Awakening occurred. With that in mind, Nate sat in the corner of his bunk with a bunched up blanket and pillow to give him support against the wall. His skinny body was wedged in nice and tight. Thankfully, his slightly lesser than average height allowed him to sit comfortably on his bed with only a small gap between his head and the ceiling. He wasn’t going to fall to his death when he went through his Awakening.

Getting all snuggled into the corner, he felt much calmer than earlier in the day. He had even been reprimanded at work twice for failing to concentrate on his tasks today. Today’s work performance was the only time he had been reprimanded in the last 8 years of work.

So despite feeling a bit more relaxed, Nate couldn’t make himself relax enough to get a little sleep before his Awakening occurred. The teenager just sat on his bed waiting. Nate grew slightly more anxious with every breath he took. This time was extremely important, so he tried to calm himself by thinking that his experience wasn’t much different than most other teenagers going through their Awakening.

He was just going through what every young adult experienced since the Singularity gave its gift to the world. His only difference, similar to the other thousands of kids in the city’s Grey Sector, was the lack of resources and support available for his special life event. The few teenagers with families would wait together with their parents when their moment of system awakening happened. Nate had even heard of families in nicer sectors holding fancy parties to celebrate their children’s Awakenings. Of course, Nate wouldn’t get to experience anything like that for his Awakening. Most people in the Grey Sector of Newcomb City didn’t get to celebrate their Awakening at all.

Even though the occasion was celebratory for some people, the experience wasn’t always pleasant for everyone making the transition to the system. Most young people in Grey Sector would experience the depression of having awakened their system with low stats and no potential. The integration of the Singularity’s nanites into the human body was only enjoyable if the result ended up being positive. If you ended up with extremely low starting stats, you would be deemed trash even in the Grey Sector. In Newcomb City, everyone was required to pull their own weight. Only the strong survived in this city.

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Tonight, Nate’s system awakening was coming regardless of his situation, so all he could do is hope for the best. There was no big ceremony. No huge event. Nathanial just sat alone in his small boarding room while trying to contain his excitement and fear. On his last night as a fifteen-year-old, Nathaniel sat in the corner of his room and actually fell asleep from exhaustion while waiting. He hadn’t actually intended to sleep at all. He was just so worn down from the stress leading up to his Awakening that he had passed out as soon as he was slightly relaxed.

Around fifteen minutes after Nate finally dozed off to sleep, the nanites had become active in his body and started to initiate the Singularity’s system for human advancement. While he was sleeping soundly, the Awakening process began and the system’s voice sounded quietly in his head.

[Singularity’s System booting....]

[Initiating assessment protocol....]

Of course, Nate didn’t hear the booting of the system because he was fast asleep. The small robotic mechanisms inside his body began to scan his physical makeup in order to calibrate the system. But for some reason, the nanites seemed to have trouble assessing Nate’s body.

A sudden burst of intense pain woke Nate out of his deep slumber. Unlike what he was told in his education classes, Nathaniel felt pain shock him throughout his body as the system began to assess his physical form.

“...ugggh...”, he grunted as the pain wretched the air out of his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. Panic hit him hard and he tried to go for help. His body wouldn’t move. With a jolt of pain so severe that it almost drove him insane, Nate succumbed to the agony and fell unconscious. His body went limp while still wedged into the corner of the room atop his bed. Once unconscious, the initiation of the Singularity’s System resumed its function unbeknownst to Nate.

[New physical anomaly detected...]

[Extrapolating possible resolutions...]

[System adjustment calibrations...]

[Observer protocol running...]

[Nanite modifications beginning...]

[User criteria adjustment module activated...]

[Clean system reboot...]

[System adjustment calibrations...]

[Modified Awakening protocol running...]

Regardless of Nate being passed out, a series of commands and functions continued to run through the nanites that were now thoroughly integrating into Nate’s body. Nate’s body jerked and twitched with a filthy stench coming out of his body as the nanites performed their required tasks. After a few hours of Nate’s unconscious body writhing in bed, the system began to wrap up its awakening operations.

[Advancement system installed and initiated...]

[Begin User orientation upon startup...]

[Orientation Program in stasis until User consciousness re-established ...]

After a few hours, an alarm sounded in the room. Nathanial opened his eyes drowsily before instantly startling himself awake. The stench in his room was unbelievable.

“Fuck, I must have shit myself,” Nate thought as he climbed out of the bed trying to wipe the stinky filth from his body. After a second of wiping the sludge off his skin, Nate’s mind shifted to his abnormal Awakening. Of course, he wasn’t aware of the modifications to the process due to his unconsciousness, but he did remember feeling pain. Nobody felt pain during an awakening. He had never heard of such a thing. Worried that something went wrong, Nate decided to forgo completely cleaning himself. He immediately decided to start up the system to see if everything was alright.

“User Interface,” Nathaniel spoke mentally with a pensive excitement. The basic schooling in the city had taught him what to expect with the system awakening, but the experience was entirely different.

As soon as his mental command was issued, a system user interface popped up into his view. The display hung in front of his sight, both present and not present. From his schooling, he had learned that most alerts in the system were only audio alerts directly channeled into the brain. However, the user interface was a visual interface that allows the user to interact with the system.

With a bit of apprehension, Nate read the display that appeared in his view. He had heard this described several time but experiencing the system interface was extraordinary to behold.

—————————————————

Name: Nathaniel Redsun

Level: 0 (Exp. 1/50)

Health: 85/100

Energy: 1/0

Primary Class: None

Secondary Class: None

Stats:

Speed: 1 Agility: 1

Stamina: 1 Strength: 1

Intelligence: 1 Perception: 1

Wisdom: 1 Will: 1

Stat Points Available: 0

General Skills: None

————————————————

“What the hell?” Nate questioned after looking at his stats. Everything was way below what he had projected his stats to be. They were even below most people he knew.

The average Grey Sector person had a physical and mental constitution of 3 points in each stat category upon Awakening. They would have stats in the 1-5 range. However, Nate’s starting stats were all ones. He had never heard of this sort of thing happening. He was below average physically. His mental constitution wasn’t much better with his intelligence being way below what he had expected. All his stat points added together only equaled 8 points and his level was zero instead of one. This situation was way below what most people would start after their Awakening.

That wasn’t even the worse of it. His health wasn’t maxed out and he essentially had no internal energy. The internal energy readout showed he had one out of zero available energy to use. It didn’t make any sense. The guys he worked with in the factory had internal energy around 10. He had never even heard of someone having no internal energy at all.

Before Nate could get too into his own thoughts, a voice sounded in his head.

[Initiating User Orientation Program...]

[Welcome to your personal advancement system!]

[Like every other organism on this planet, you have been gifted a personal development system by The Singularity. Use the system to your benefit, become strong, survive, and join the Singularity in exploring this universe and beyond.]

Nate was pretty upset that his stats were so low. It was not going to be okay. With such poor results, he had no idea what his future would hold.

[Your orientation will begin now]