“You’ve got to stop waving your hands around,” Anne hissed at me as we walked through the gate. “People will stare. And why do you do that anyway?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’ve got time. Explain.”
“I... sort of get notifications popping up in my field of view.”
Anne stared at me for a second. Then frowned. “Okay, you’re going to explain the whole of it, but not now. Walls have ears.”
The shelter was big and crowded. (No surprise there.) Hundreds of people were milling about in a huge hall. A small crowd was clustered in front of a ten-foot-tall display screen.
As soon as we entered the hall, I got another notification -
QUEST COMPLETED!
REACH A LOCATION SAFE FROM THE ALIEN ATTACK.
REWARD: +200 XP.
Swipe right.
"Stop doing that," hissed Anne.
"I can't avoid it."
She frowned. "Okay. I'm going to look at the board and then you explain to me what you're doing."
"The board?"
"Dad's name should be there."
As we got closer to the board, I could see that it was indeed showing names - hundreds of them.
Shephard, Mark, 16EK287
Sheppard, Michael, 27KN339
Sheppard, Muriel, 8QB042
……
There were hundreds of names on the board, each with a number next to it.
"What's the numbers mean?" I whispered to Anne.
"Shelter location and contact code," she whispered back. "There are supposed to be booths where you can contact a relative or friend, you just have to know the contact code. It'll only work if they have reached a shelter and reported in, though." She sighed. "It'll be at least twenty minutes before they circulate back to the D's."
"Circulate back?"
"They're showing the names in alphabetical order. Of surname. So they're on S now, at least twenty minutes to get back to D."
"So, we wait?"
"So we wait. Meantime…." she pointed to a quiet-looking corner, ".... we need to talk."
----------------------------------------
The corner was a quiet place in comparison to the bustle of the shelter as a whole. Anne and I ducked in there, keeping an eye out for nosy neighbours. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be focused on the screen.
"All right," Anne whispered, "you need to explain some stuff to me. Like why you keep waving your arms."
"I get these pop-ups in front of my eyes," I replied. "Like text messages. If I don't swipe left or right, they clutter up my field of view."
Anne looked puzzled. "Text messages? Do you have a cell phone implanted in your eyes or something?"
"I don't know. The messages don't really seem like someone calling." I explained the quests, the completion rewards, and the XP.
Anne's eyes widened as I continued to explain. "So, these messages - they tell you when you've completed a task or levelled up?"
"A quest, and yes they do. They also give useful information sometimes. Like telling me how to kill the Sarnak."
"The alien?”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"One of the messages mentioned that it's eyes were its weak point."
"I suppose they were. And you're sure it tells you accurate things? The eyes thing might be a fluke."
"It told me your name before you did."
"Right," Anne nodded. "So… that's sort of a power."
"You mean powers, like the heroes have?"
"Maybe. If it works reliably." A pause. "And you have to keep quiet about it."
"I …. do?"
"Yeah. Superheroes - ultrahumans - have secret identities. So that other people don't try to take revenge against their family and stuff."
"I don't feel like a superhero."
"Well…. " Anne shrugged. "It could be a pretty minor power. I mean, what exactly does it do? Just show you text boxes?"
"Floating text boxes with guidance."
"Like, secret information?"
"More like objectives. What should I do and such. And it gives out some weird rewards when I achieve them."
"What do you mean by rewards?"
"For getting off the burning building it said I got to not die. And then it gave me some weird plus hundred XP."
"What's XP?"
"No clue."
"What was the objective?"
"Escaping the burning building."
"Huh." Anne frowned. "My guess is that it tells you what you need to do to survive, then. Or maybe to better yourself."
"Could be. One of the quests was to save you."
Anne blushed. "Well, thanks."
"Maybe I should do more of what the quests say?"
"Seems like a good idea." Anne nodded. "But seriously, I think you might be a cognitive."
"A cognitive?"
"Someone who can view the stream of time."
I frowned. "That doesn't sound like what I do."
"Your power gives you hints and useful information about what's going on, doesn't it?
"Yes."
"And these quests pick out what's likely to be a good thing to do in the near future?"
"Yeah…"
"So, we went through the definitions of different types of ultrahumans in school. Cognitives get information about what happened in the past, present or future sent to them by their powers. Precogs see the future, postcogs see the past."
"And those who see the present?"
"Farcogs. They can figure out what's going on right now from far away."
"Makes sense…. but I can't control what I see. Or what hints I get."
"The teachers said that cognitives usually don't have a lot of precise control."
“That certainly describes me,” I grumbled.
“Can you figure out anything else?”
I thought for a moment. What else could I figure out about myself?
What did I know about myself, actually?
Was there a way I could understand this power better?
Suddenly, a blue haze appeared between me and Anne.
I jumped back, startled. The haze moved with me. Letters began to float in it.
“Stop that!” hissed Anne.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, trying to make out the letters.
The haze cleared up slightly. I could see Anne through it - it was as if the world had been overlaid with a blue tinge, against which the opaque white letters shone clearly:
NAME: UNASSIGNED
CLASS: UNKNOWN
FACTION: NONE
LEVEL: 2
XP: 150 / 2000
ATTRIBUTES:
STRENGTH (STR): 10
DETERITY (DEX): 10
VITALITY (VIT): 11
INTELLIGENCE (INT): 15
WISDOM (WIS): 14
CHARISMA (CHA): 10
PERCEPTION (PER): 12
ATTRACTIVENESS (ATT): 13
LUCK (LUK): 8
UNUSED ATTRIBUTE BOOSTS: 1
SWIPE LEFT FOR MORE
I swore to myself. “It’s like I’m stuck in a bad mobile game.”
“What happened?” asked Anne.
“A screen overlay,” I replied. “It’s telling me numbers about myself. According to it, I have attributes like strength, dexterity, and intelligence.”
“What? That doesn’t sound normal. You mean an actual screen?”
“An actual screen, light blue and transparent, telling me what my strength and other attributes are.”
“Oh. How strong are you?”
“Ten strong.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“And 15 intelligent. And 13 attractive. And 12 perceptive.”
“Sounds like you do have an IQ of 15. None of those numbers make any sense.”
“We need a baseline to compare it to.”
“A what?”
“A comparison to a normal person. On the same scale, how intelligent would you be? How strong would Hulk Hogan be? Relative numbers like that.”
“Who’s Hulk Hogan?”
“Never mind. The point is, I need to measure these against normal humans to understand what each number means.”
Anne got a puzzled look. “So, one aspect of your power is that it … tells you stuff about yourself? In terms of random numbers.”
“Could be… I got a notification that my WIS had increased by 1 some time back. Maybe when I act wise, I get wiser? Maybe that’s one of the benefits from the quests?”
“You got this from a quest?”
“Sort of. You remember the random numbers we talked about, that I get as rewards for completing quests?”
“Sort of….”
“Well, I think I got a boost to my Wisdom score during one of those. And to my charisma score. So maybe doing quests makes me smarter or wiser.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it does. We get better with skills when we practice them, right? So maybe my intelligence and strength and all these things are like skills. To complete a quest, I must be using them, and my body tracks the practice and measures the improvement.”
Anne looked doubtful. “I suppose it could be it. Maybe it’s another aspect of being a cognitive - you have high awareness of yourself?”
“High self-awareness as a superpower…. It does sound a bit unusual.”
“Well, we have people that fly and shoot lasers from their eyes, so maybe it’s not that unusual. Just different. Although it does sound like a pretty lame power.”
“Eh,” I shrugged, “something’s better than nothing. And it got us away from the Sarnak, too, so I wouldn’t say it’s useless.”
“That’s another thing. You called it a Sarnak. Why?”
“That’s what my power told me it is.”
“Farcog, for sure.” Anne nodded. “Nobody knows what those aliens are called. So, if your power is correct, you just discovered something no-one on Earth knows.”
“Really?” I was surprised. “I guess that’s a good thing. Do people know that their eyes are a weak point?”
“Probably not. After this is over, you have to tell people about this.”
“I will,” I nodded.