Congratulations! For raising a Skill to Level 50, you have earned one free Skill Point.
Sarah held her breath for a moment, waiting for the congratulatory System message to fold away and be replaced by yet another red-tinged level correction. As nothing happened, and the soothing blue box sat motionless before her eyes, Sarah let out her breath in a single explosive exhalation that she just barely brought under control.
“Fffffiddlesticks!”
She didn’t like to swear, she really didn’t. It was partly a matter of her religious upbringing, partly a matter of her parents’ teachings and preferences, and partly a matter of personal pride that she had a diverse enough vocabulary to express herself without constantly resorting to the usual four-letter culprits. Sometimes, however, her ability to care about such distinctions was heavily compromised. This was one of those moments.
The flood of information she’d received when her Skill activated had been accompanied by a sensations (Physical? Emotional? Mental? A snippet of each?) that was somehow both soothing and invigorating, to an almost intoxicating level. She now suspected the usual Skill activation and level-up experience wasn’t supposed to be nearly that strong.
Actually, it wasn’t just a suspicion. At some point in the midst of all those correction notifications, her understanding of the System and its, uh, systems, had shifted. It was like some innocuous little scrap of information floating by had suddenly slotted itself into a subconscious puzzle, completing the picture and giving her a deeper understanding of…stuff; in this case, Skill and levelling stuff.
According to her new level of understanding, there was a reason her Skill activation experience had been so, uh, euphoric; two reasons actually. The first was that she’d received, in one go, the pleasant sensation that came with level-ups – the buzz, so to speak – from all fifty levels. The second reason was that she’d not received a single level’s worth of zap (as she thought of it), the unpleasant sensation that came with levelling up. She’d gotten all the good, with none of the bad…until the corrections kicked in.
Her subconscious had informed her (in that odd little way that suddenly clarified information pops into the conscious mind in what some people call “lightbulb moments”) that the System enacted actual physical changes, on a cellular scale, for every new Skill and level. She couldn’t quite figure out if those changes were made to the person’s physical body, to the aspect of the System that was present within the body, to both, or maybe to one or the other depending on the nature of the changes…kinda like upgrading a computer, she imagined, where sometimes you added to the software side, and sometimes you tweaked the hardware side…except in this case the hardware was a human body and the software was some kind of organic nanotechnology…or maybe it was the other way around? Or were the body and the System both part hardware and part software? Eh, the more she thought about it, the more the analogy broke down, but she couldn’t think of anything better so she decided to simply let that train of thought end; this of course made her feel very mature and she was proud of herself for so quickly recognizing and shutting down an unproductive tangent. And then she blushed as she realized her indulgence in self-congratulations was its own form of tangent.
So…where had she been when that first tangent took over? Oh, right, so, even though the changes the System made were minute, they still took a very slight physical toll, resulting in the zap, a brief moment of pain radiating throughout the body.
The buzz, which Sarah suspected was some kind of artificially induced release of brain chemicals (what were they called…endorphins?) or perhaps a release of artificial brain chemicals (how would that even work?), seemed to have been perfectly calibrated to do two things: mask, and reinforce.
By ‘mask’ she meant that…well, maybe ‘mask’ wasn’t the right word…hmm…how to explain it? Oh, okay, how about this? So, her newly gained understanding of the System was like a voice in her head that…no, not an actual voice, idiot, like…like what people called the “voice of experience.” (Wait, did I just call myself an idiot? Am I an idiot? Well, yes, we already established that, but do I really need to walk myself through all this as if I were narrating a story? Maybe? Is this a coping mechanism? Maybe?? Why do I need a coping mechanism right now? Is it because I just went through a rather shocking experience? Ha! Shocking…nice one! That’s…okay, yeah, maybe I do need a coping mechanism. I’m just going to shut up now and let my brain recover. Where was I? Oh, yes…) Like…if you stood up from a chair, turned around and looked at the piece of furniture, then considered retaking your seat, the voice in your head would tell you that, based on past experiences, that chair would hold your weight. Well, unless your experiences included a lot creaking and ominous shifting of parts, in which case the voice in your head would probably tell you to find a different chair.
Anyway, the voice in her head told her that during a normal level-up experience the pleasure of the buzz would mitigate (that was the word) the pain of the zap. Essentially, she would feel the pain, but she wouldn’t care about the pain. And then the buzz went just a smidge further, moving the levelling experience from being neutral to being a net positive, thereby creating and reinforcing a desire to gain levels.
Yeah, that sounded about right. It was a long tangent (Ha! So the previous tangents were tangents within a tangent? Hee hee, that was…right. Ahem) but Sarah didn’t mind because it was her tangent within her internal monologue…and right now she had a desperate need to work through things in a methodical manner because…well…thinking hurt.
Getting the buzz for all fifty levels in one go had been very pleasant (that’s an understatement), but then the corrections began and she received the zaps for all fifty levels. Individually, the zaps weren’t that bad, kind of like a very mild static electric shock except throughout her whole body at once instead of just finger to…umm, how far did the feeling of a mild static shock actually travel? She could remember feeling that flash of painful discomfort on many occasions (when they were kids her brother had gone through a very annoying phase of dragging his socked feet every time he went across carpet and then making a point of touching her before anything else) but now that she actually thought about it, she couldn’t remember how far through her body the feeling had extended. Huh.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Anyway, like those annoying little “gifts” her brother had gleefully delighted in bestowing on her at least once a day for over a year, the level-up zaps were, individually, not much more than a relatively mild discomfort, only just barely severe enough to actually be considered painful. Put all those zaps together, however, and well, suffice it to say that when Sarah finally worked out what was going on – right around the time the System stopped glitching and started spitting out proper correction messages again – she found herself suddenly and immensely grateful that the System was taking its time.
Getting fifty levels’ worth of zaps all in one fell blow? She shivered. That would have been nasty! Even going one level at a time, the experience was no Sunday School picnic. Without the mitigating effect of the buzz, each zap seemed to have a lingering echo, and since the level corrections were coming in thick and fast there was no time for one zap’s echo to fade before the next one struck, which promptly rolled the echo into itself so that each zap was more painful than the one before. By the time all fifty levels had been addressed, Sarah imagined she knew what it felt like to be struck by lighting…repeatedly.
Groaning, she eased her battered body back onto the lawn and threw an arm over her face to protect her eyes from the eyelid-piercing brightness of the late morning sunshine. After a long moment of quiet she raised her arm, opened her eyes, and turned her head, first to one side and then to the other. The children were nowhere in sight. She closed her eyes and dropped her arm back over her face. They must have wandered off at some point while she was busy twitching and staring into the middle distance.
If real people had abandoned her like that, without so much as checking if she was okay, she would have found it odd and a little bit rude. These kids, however, were the System’s equivalent of NPCs, so their absence made sense. They were incredible bits of software – interacting with them was almost like interacting with real people, so much so that she had started to wonder if somehow they were real people – but now she realized that they likely hadn’t been programmed with the ability to comprehend things like System glitches (that would have broken immersion, after all) so when she started receiving the correction notices, the System must have given the kids a digital poke and sent them off to do something else that wouldn’t create feedback loops in their programming…or however it was that those kind of things worked (a software engineer she was not).
This, more than anything else she’d experienced over the last few days (week? weeks?), was what finally convinced her that she was truly in a simulated environment, a virtual reality.
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Curious [Raptor Chicks] sidled slowly over to the very large (to them) and now motionless figure that crouched at the edge of the enclosure that allowed them and their mothers to be separate from the rest of the flock. A small, mostly flat surface had been extended a short distance from the figure at just the right height for the growing young lizard-birds to access a golden mound of kernels of grain.
The memories of the [Raptor Chicks] were nothing exceptional but nonetheless sufficient for each young creature to maintain a hazy recollection of this strange figure appearing before, each time with tasty treats. The memory of food, along with the figure’s reassuring stillness, finally drove the bravest of the chicks forward to sample the offering. Its siblings quickly followed.
Nearly half the grain had been eaten when one of the chicks suddenly flinched and squawked as a drop of water splashed off her face. Her startled reaction set off a wave within the group of chicks, and the entire group scattered and fled for the safety of their mothers’ wings, though most of them hadn’t the slightest idea what danger had necessitated they abandon the tasty treats.
The figure, who was in fact the young girl who had recently acknowledged the descriptive identifier “Little One”, hummed softly in amusement and tipped the last of the grain onto the floor of the coop where the chicks could find it later. Her amusement swiftly faded as yet another tear dripped from her face.
When the residents of her township had all completed the first stage of this strange “System Tutorial” that the Builders had devised, they had been given the collective opportunity to complete another stage called “Integration”, which would help them to prepare for the arrival of the newest species to fall under the protection of the Builders.
The opportunity was a great honour, they had been told, for only a few townships from each region was being selected for the Integration stage. Even so, the elders of her township had been uncertain if they should accept the offer, since they would be making the choice for every man, woman, and child currently under their leadership, until the Builders’ representative assured them that the experience would take place within virtual reality, just like the first stage, and that it would be very safe, possibly even safer than real life. Furthermore, the first stage of the tutorial had already proven to them that time within the simulation passed much faster than in real life and that their pets, and homes, and farms, and businesses would all be cared for and maintained until they returned. With such excellent reassurances, the elders no longer hesitated and accepted the offer on behalf of their township.
At first, many people had struggled to accept that they were in virtual reality this time, so excellently had the Builders copied every detail of their township into the simulation. A few short demonstrations from the Builders silenced the concerns, however, and the people of the community got to work preparing to welcome the first simulated “human” into their small virtual world.
Little One’s father had been flabbergasted by the sheer number of languages the Builders claimed were used by the new species, but he dutifully chose one and learned a few words before turning his focus to the upkeep of his virtual farm and the advancement of his System-given class and Skills. The Builders had promised that anything System-related that they earned while in the simulation would be granted to them for real upon completion of the Tutorial, and Little One’s father saw no reason not to take advantage of that promise.
The first tenday in the simulation had passed without bringing anything new to lives of Little One, her brother, and her father. She was starting to wonder if none of the simulated humans were going to come to their farm when her father came into the house before evening chores were complete with an unconscious person in his arms. They had treated her wounds and left her to rest, and Little One’s father had rushed back outside to finish up the chores before the alien woman awoke.
The first few days with her in their home had been very strange, but once she had started teaching them her language, and learning theirs in turn, the family had begun getting to know the woman who called herself Sarah. As the days passed, Little One and her brother had found themselves drawn more and more to Sarah. Life began to feel bright and full of promise again, like it did when their mother had been alive. Little One even found herself cherishing the secret thought that maybe the Builders were playing a joke on them all and there were actually real people behind the virtual human faces.
And then her hope had been dashed when Sarah suddenly froze, staring off into the distance and occasionally twitching but not once acknowledging the questions of the two concerned children. Little One had seen enough Builder tech in her short life to recognize the sight of a program avatar receiving an update, so, with a broken heart, she fled the fake woman she had hoped was real, took refuge in a dim, quiet corner of the [Raptor’s] coop, uncaring of the threatening looks sent her way by the [Raptor Hens], and allowed her tears to flow.
After a time her tears dried up, and her brother came and found her, and led her to the barn to play. He, at least, she could be certain was real.