What would you do if you knew the world was going to end?

For me, the answer was to prepare as best I could and otherwise stop caring about anything else, put my life–what was left of it–on hold. After all, if everything was going to end, why would anything else matter?

Besides, there wasn’t exactly much for me to leave behind. I’d had a lot on my mind even before seeing a blue window with a weird quest appear before me. That was a year and a half ago. Back then, I’d already been close to losing a sense of purpose. I honestly hadn’t had much to look forward to back then. Strangely, accepting that everything was going to end soon, officially, had been just the thing to let go the rest of the way and find a new sense of direction.

But now that the time was almost here, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with myself. I was getting a serious case of nerves, too.

It was going to happen, I was sure. Right? I thought I was sure. Hopefully I wasn’t wrong. If so, I was going to have a truly crazy credit card bill to deal with.

The problem was, at this rate, the end of the world looked like it might be running late. I shook my head and looked at my watch. Never mind, just nerves, I thought. My leg tapped the floor in a worried rhythm. Back in my younger days I’d been kind of a skater, wearing Sketchers and baggy pants. Now I had on heavy boots and cargos. My long hair had been cut short. I probably looked like a doomsday prepper. In some ways, maybe I was, now. I frowned. Shit I really am a doomsday prepper, aren’t I? I cringed.

The doomsday prepper people probably didn’t see quest windows or countdowns in their head, though. I’m not crazy, I reminded myself. That helped. Then again, crazy people didn’t think they were crazy. That thought didn’t help.

I had a news station playing on my radio at a soft volume and two different news stations on TVs, muted. Nothing had happened yet in the world other than regularly programmed gloom and doom. I checked my watch. Only a few minutes to go.

It takes time for the world as we know it to end, right?

Part of me still wanted to be wrong, despite my impending bankruptcy if I was. Even though I wasn’t sure what the end of the world might actually mean, I knew it was going to be unpleasant. Then again, if I was wrong about all of this, credit debt wasn’t going to be my only problem. I would be the owner of a house full of stuff I wouldn’t need tomorrow.

The Beretta 92 on my hip was a comforting weight, just in case everything kicked off in a …non-peaceful fashion.

I left the little sitting area I’d rigged up, just a recliner with the TVs and the radio. My bachelor pad was pretty simple. Even before I’d gotten the heads up about the world ending I hadn’t really been into material stuff. After the quest window had appeared for me, I’d really gone all-in on comfort and practicality over trying to impress anyone. Dating, friends, even recreational pottery, all of it had been put on hold for a long time.

Maybe it’d settle my nerves to do yet another check of all the gear I’d bought. Some of it was still in boxes. I had about forty guns, divided almost equally between rifles, pistols, and shotguns. The various weapons came in six calibers, and I had ammo cans full of bullets for all of them. Magazines hung on the walls, loaded and unloaded. I was in this for the long haul, so I didn’t want to compress all my magazine springs for no reason.

What had been my living room was lined with spears on one wall, knives on the floor, and swords stacked on the couch. I had several sets of body armor, one of which had been custom made for me. Chaimail and coats of plates hung next to modern SWAT armor. My reasoning for having different options was that I might like one over the other in the future, or some might work better than others depending on the time of year.

There was no telling what dangers I’d face in the future, either. Some of my armor was good for defense against medieval weapons, some was modern stuff for defense against bullets, and I even had some that would do okay with both in a pinch.

I stubbed my toe on the corner of the hall as I continued wandering around, letting my mind relax. “Dammit!” I hissed. My fuzzy slippers hadn’t done shit to protect my foot. Figures. The damn corner had been beating up my poor big toe for months.

It was all the wall’s fault, definitely not mine. Cursing under my breath, I hobbled on. I took a detour to a chair to actually put on a pair of boots. It didn’t make sense to wear all my tacti-cool clothing if I was going to walk around with sitcom slippers, after all.

My garage was full of camping gear, anything I might need to cook my own food, stay outside, hunt, that sort of thing. I had water filtration and lighting tools, too.

My kitchen and pantry were full of food. I also had spices, salt, honey, everything I’d need to live for two years.

My heart beat a little faster. Nerves were still definitely getting to me. I made my way back into my waiting-for-doom setup and shook my head. Most people would think the stuff I had saved up was nuts, and I was apparently even starting to doubt myself a little bit, here. After all, there was only a few minutes left until the end was supposed to happen. But other people couldn’t see what I could see.

With a thought, I pulled up my blue quest screen. It had a countdown that was quickly approaching 0. After a sigh, I dismissed the quest window, leaned back in my recliner, and closed my eyes for a minute. The quest screen was one reason I’d stayed the course all this time. It’s how I knew I was not crazy. Insanity didn’t keep time this well. My quest screen had an accurate clock in one corner and I’d tried to trick myself, tried to prove the whole thing as a figment of my imagination.

The clock had never been wrong, ever.

If I wasn’t crazy, I was going to be pretty lucky to have all this stuff in my house soon.

I absently let my hand droop down to the floor next to me where I had a handful of personal effects in a backpack. What little attachment I had left in this world, every bit of sentimentality I still possessed was in the pack. I had two other packs that I could grab to leave with, another backpack or a hiking pack with more stuff. All of them held emergency gear.

With a year and a half to prepare, I’d really tried to cover the bases.

For the first year, while I was fairly broke, I ditched what little bit of a social life I had and replaced it with martial arts training. Survival training had been one of my priorities, and in addition to the sheer amount of information I’d learned, I had it all backed up in books, too.

Then I’d taken out a bunch more credit cards and just basically done nothing but train.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Even though I’d known when the world was ending and had time to think about it, I never did learn why. Or how. I’d thought of zombies. At one point I even thought about the Christian Rapture and other religious beliefs, went to church for a while. That didn’t work out.

About a year ago, I’d even considered warning everybody. It only took about two seconds of consideration to realize that would get nowhere fast. Nobody would believe me at all. And at the end of the day, I don't really like people that much. In fact, knowing that everybody I told would think I was crazy, even though I was trying to help them and being honest, didn't exactly build more goodwill towards men.

Hell, if people did believe me, they’d probably capture me and dissect me. I didn’t trust other people have my best interests at heart. I’d shit on my entire life.

My family was broken. My dad was a dick who should still be in jail. Besides, he had a new, even more fucked up family now. Hell, my mom had started a new family too. I think I was kind of an embarrassment to her because she was anti military, but I joined the military anyway out of high school, mainly for that sweet, sweet GI Bill money and a bonus.

I’d known sure as hell she wasn't going to pay for my college.

Of course, the Army hadn’t worked out. I’d been chaptered out. That had been just one of many disappointments in life. Like many of them, it hadn’t even really been my fault. My luck was terrible in general.

College had never happened. I’d been in the middle of a vocational school when I’d found out the world was ending and I dropped out.

My life had been a series of dead end job after dead end job.

At least after getting more credit cards I’d been able to do nothing but train. I hadn’t needed to keep working with ice cream, or selling furniture, or running a cash register before the countdown on my screen hit, “0.”

My house was a rental. Suited me just fine and was all I could afford anyway. It was more than I could really pay per month, even if I was still working, but that would either end up being a problem for another day…or not.

I was feeling too anxious to keep sitting, even though there was less than five minutes left. My motions jerky, I stook and began pacing the house again.

Over the last few months in particular, I'd accumulated quite a bit of food, extra solar panels. I even had electronic devices in Faraday cages. There were buckets of salt, anything I could think of. The internet was surprisingly full of helpful advice on how to survive just about any catastrophe, and I’d tried to get ready for all of them.

My fingertips trailed the shaft of a spear on my way back to my chair again. My time doing martial arts had given me a deep appreciation for the spear. Hell, I’d tried SCA, MMA, Japanese martial arts… I’d spent a few months, almost every day, in multiple courses and disciplines all at once, overlapping, trying to pack in as much training as I could. My thought process at the time had been that there was no way I was going to truly master any one thing before the end of the world. I’d been hoping that an exposure to different martial arts would help me form a deep, decent, basic understanding.

Then again, the end of the world could be an ice age. It was entirely possible that all my weapons and combatives training wouldn’t be worth anything in a month.

Or maybe the end of the world was some sort of analogy, or everybody was going to find peace and love which would end up leaving me with like three years of income worth of debt with no job, and living in a small town without many opportunities.

My stomach churned.

I watched as my countdown ticked down. The clocks on the wall kept time. My nerves stretched. The time in my screen finally hit 0 and the countdown disappeared.

My shoulders tensed. I braced myself, preparing to be reduced to good or suddenly hear the voice of God.

Nothing happened.

With a heavy heart and conflicting emotions, I looked up at the clock, then the TVs. Nothing felt different, “It’s real, right?” I wondered aloud. “It has to be.” All the news stations kept right on prattling on about the newest thing, or special interest stories, or team politics.

Almost an entire minute passed. I wasn’t sure what to think. My emotions kept spiraling, flitting from relief to dismay.

Then something changed. I felt a rumble. The air grew heavy. There was a sound like a really loud air conditioner for a second before it abruptly cut off. My skin registered the air moving but the window was closed. I narrowed my eyes and I looked around in confusion. The TV stations and the radio still hadn’t changed.

“Weird,” I whispered. Then I noticed something different around me. “What the hell?” I whispered. My shotgun I’d had leaning against the wall wasn’t there anymore. I’d been up so many times, I knew I hadn’t moved it. It just wasn’t there anymore.

Maybe without a blue screen hanging in mid air that I could call up at will, I would have just sat there longer, telling myself that I was just imagining things, but I levered myself up with a sinking heart.

It wasn’t just the one shotgun. Everything was gone. All of it. Even the backpacks I’d had by my chair, my “bug out bags.”

All the guns, swords, armor, it had all vanished. The house was damn near empty now.

In a daze, I sat down on one of my folding camping chairs that I had placed in corners, some of the only furniture in my house. I was floored. The blue screen was one thing, but now it was like my mind could not process the change in reality in front of me.

With a sense of numb disbelief, my hand went to my side. Even the holster was empty, the pistol was gone.

I didn’t have the heart to check out the rest of my supplies–besides, I could see through a doorway and it was clear that my buckets of salt were gone.

Even though I'd been expecting something crazy to happen, I hadn’t expected…this.

The ground rumbled again. Then my house shook.

Something else was happening. “What now?” I said out loud. What was the point of a quest if the universe, or whoever was in charge of this shit show was going to yoink all my shit!?

I got up to stumble back to my recliner.

Suddenly my blue screen popped up by itself. “What in the…” I whispered. Before I could finish that thought, a new blue screen popped up. Then it merged into the first one.

Words appeared on the screen hovering in my vision.

Congratulations on completing your quest! Because you were preparing for The Assimilation and your knowledge of future events was inherently unfair, the items that you had prepared have all been removed with the intention of fair play. However, fair play is important for all! For completing your quest, you have earned a reward! To replace the value of your property, you have been awarded advancement points!

You have also been given access to the sponsors’ curated skill and trait store!

Good luck!

The window flashed and then minimized in one quarter my vision. I somehow knew I could pull it up again.

Then an entirely new, fancier window popped up.

It read:

People of Earth, your world has been chosen to be assimilated! You will be given more information and possibly a gift in one week. Please try to survive. Good luck!

That window hung in the air for a while before it closed on its own. Then a new window took its place.

This new one was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, but it was also immediately familiar to me from games I’ve played in the past. It was obviously a character sheet, or status page. It read:

Miles Lindstrom

Level 1

Class: none

Skills: none

Traits: none

Stats:

Str: 5

Dex: 4

End: 6

Int: 6

Will: 5

Luck: 6

Reflex: 7

Armor (nat): 0

Affiliations: Sponsored by *hidden*

Titles: *hidden*

It really was exactly like a character sheet like in a game.

“What in the fuck?” I gasped.

At the same time, a news anchor on the one live news show I was watching said almost the same thing. She actually cursed on the air! My eyes shot up and I watched the TV for a few seconds before it cut to a sudden commercial.

“So, are you going to use all those points soon? Events will move quickly now.”

I normally would have jumped out of my skin after hearing voices in my empty house like this, but it’d already been a hell of a day already. Upon seeing a status sheet with my name on it, I’d temporarily been stunned beyond surprise. I turned my head and blinked when I saw the dark-skinned man standing in the corner of my room. He was wearing ceremonial robes, a wooden dog mask, and holding some sort of glittering scepter. His entire look was very Egyptian.

As if to punctuate his words, a roar sounded outside that almost shook the windows.

“Is everyone getting visited by some man popping out of the shadows?” I asked.

“No, just you. You’re special.” The way he spoke didn’t sound very sincere, or even interested for that matter.

“Oh, goodie,” I said.

The end of the world seemed to have definitely come, but I still had no idea what the hell was going on.

“I have some questions,” I said with enough control that I was feeling rather proud of myself. My earlier shock was wearing off, and now I was just kind of rolling with the punches. It helped when I imagined myself watching myself, like this was all just a dream. I’d done the same thing when I’d had to give speeches in high school.

“Yes, I can imagine,” said the strange man in the corner of my room. “ I can only be here for a few minutes, and this is blatant favoritism, so listen up.”

I nodded and settled deeper into my chair.