It has become really clear, really quickly that Mr. King doesn’t like to be ignored. He stomped up here so fast before I could start digging for information, he was upon us.

I’ve never seen someone’s face contort in such a manner. He grimaced and smiled at the same time, “How’s it going over here? I never got to introduce myself to you. My name is Max King, I own Power group and its many subsidiaries. I know you’ve heard of it. Don’t be amazed.” He smirked and continued on, “I noticed you walked away too quickly before I could explain to you our situation.” I won’t lie, I tuned him out after this statement. I supposed he was talking to me but honestly it felt like he wasn’t even talking at me more at the group over here. Judging by the side eyes, eye rolls, and sighs these people were thoroughly done with Mr. King. Day light was literally burning, and we didn’t have time to do a peepee measuring contest. Pulling off the best customer service persona I could muster, “Mr. King it was such a pleasure to meet you and hear about all your glorious accomplishments. I do have a quick question Mr. King; what should we do its about to get dark?” Right as he was about to ascend into the sky, he paused as contemplated it. With a quick back and forth wave the rest of the group caught my hand signal and quietly started moving a short distance away. In the middle of his pondering, “Mr. King, I know you’re so smart you know we need to get a fire going and build shelter.” He smirked up at me, “Of course I knew that, why don’t you start picking up sticks for the fire.” and swaggered away. I almost chocked on my sigh of relief when Mr. Konrad softly laughed behind me, “Well you handled him very well.” Glancing over at him and shrugging I walked over to the group.

“Not to hostile takeover or anything but it’s evening time, and I suspect it will get dark soon. I suggested it to Mr. King, and I’ll suggest it here. I think we need a fire for this first night. We don’t know what’s out here with us, and I for one can not see in the dark.” The chuckles, giggles and head nods were enough to tell me the idea I put forth was a valid one. “I also want to bring up that I believe we came over with stuff. I was asleep when the incident occurred, so my bed was brought over. It would probably behoove us to gather those items.” The smirks I got from a few of my fellow frontier men told me I was not alone in that thought. “Lastly, I don’t know how y’all feel but my bed landed in a clearing similar to this, so we could leave Mr. King to it?”

So off we went back to the clearing. I decided to split the mattress, box spring, and the bed frame so that we could all have somewhere to sleep that wasn’t grass. The next step was the fire. Luckily, James Duran, brought the fire. Well, he told us what to do and actually made the fire. He’s also the man who stared me down and decided I wasn’t a threat. He’s actually a retired army ranger, he got hurt during his rounds and was on medical leave. When his wife got sick, he just retired to take care of her. While he might not talk too much, he obviously loves his wife; the way I got him to open up was very much through her. As I watched him start the fire the others trickled in. It was almost like camping except the do or die situation we were currently in. Everyone was content to just be and stare at the fire, but I was not. “So, what are our next steps.” Everyone gave me this funny look. “We don’t even know where we are or what happened,” sneered Mira. What crawled up her butt and died, I will never know. However, what she said is simply not true. The tutorial told us what happened and what to do.

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“Didn’t you go through the tutorial?”, my disbelief made her bristle.

“What tutorial!” she almost yelled. Everyone else was drawing blanks.

“You didn’t see the blinking box when you woke up or read the tutorial?”

“Wait you saw that too? I thought I was going crazy, and it went away.”

So, you can dismiss the tutorial, good to know. Wait, that’s not good at all.

“Say status!” I jumped forward and urged immediately.

“This is not a video game are you crazy. That’s not going to do anything.” She sneered back. Sitting back and blinking. I think I might be one of the few people who read the tutorial.

I questioned, “So none of you know the name of this planet?”

Sasha questioned back, “And you do?”

Receiving rapt attention, I summarized the tutorial for them. Of course, I left out the vocation because I felt that was private. Secondly, I noticed the numbers didn’t match. The system said ten at first then it jumped to twelve, but I only met eleven. Someone’s not who they say they are. We need a revealing stone. Darn, I missed an opportunity I should have asked who all saw the blinking box. Only us Earthlings would have the opportunity being that were new to Altiria. Altiria would you be able to tell me how to get a revealing stone.

While everyone was processing, I tried to communicate with Altiria. Which was a flop. The tutorial said that Altiria didn’t care, I’m going to believe that is true. However, I did get the feeling that I could find the revealing stone. That being said it didn’t feel anywhere near here. I’ll add it to the list. Elated I mentally checked my list and realized it only had three task now all of which I could get help with as they meet the current task that Altiria had given. Given that I was the only one who read the tutorial I became the de-facto leader because I knew the most about our new world. Which was honestly only a little bit more than them. My first act of leadership was to clarify everyone into roles and tasks given their occupation. I got to take notes!

Notes

Aldrich Konrad

Studied Environmental Engineering and works as a Real Estate Developer

Becky Arnold

Studied Psychology and works as a trauma counselor

Sasha Webber

Studied Nursing and works as a R.N.

James Duran

Went into the army and is a retired army ranger

Mira Knowles

Ronnie Markson

Vincent Cain

Max King

CEO

Markus Rusker

Jennifer Richards

Mall Director

I honestly didn’t know them well enough to really start assigning tasks, but it was a great start. Becky told me the names of the other woman and man with Mr. King. I haven’t found out the occupation of Mira, Ronnie, and Vincent. This works though I run a tight ship. I just know we’ll build a great town and I’ll get to meet my family again. For now, though, I’m going to sleep and I'll worry about the rest tomorrow. I’m sad to say we don’t even have food right now.