I don’t know how much time had passed, but when I came to I was sitting in an office chair at a desk in a large, featureless room. Aside from the desk, the room was empty, just an open floor with a one meter by one meter grid. Before me stood a tall, lanky and largely featureless figure. His face was human and he wore a wide smile as he introduced himself, “Hi Harris. Great to finally meet in person. Well mostly in person at least. I am Geeq and I am here to discuss the results of your evaluation.”
I was shocked and sat in stunned silence as Geeq continued, “There is a pad of paper and a pen available to you if you’d like to take some notes. I can add them to your file once the evaluation is over if you like. Well, first off Harris, I have been doing this for awhile and I have never seen anything like that. Just like wow. Unfortunately, based on the official rubric you only scored a 4%. It’s not a good score Harris. I know everything is probably a little wonky in your head right now, but to put it in terms that might resonate: that is a looooow F-. We’ve never tried, but I think that a pudding or someone who is in an actual coma could probably beat at 4%. Again to put it in terms that might resonate for you, you basically get 10% for signing your name on the test … you get what I am saying?.
“Getting into the details. You finished zero quests and did not complete a single segment of the tutorial class. Your 4% score breaks out as follows: you received 1% for the achievement Create a Unique Skill, you received 1% for the achievement Create a Unique Item, your received 1% for the achievement Complete an Advanced Class Trial and you got 1% for amassing the most faction in the final exam. That is it. Though I will say I like your style Harris.
“Usually this part takes a little longer, but I think that we may as well just just move along to the next part, your final character sheet. I know that you aren’t a big fan of our system, but I need to share it with you either way. Plus yours is kind of interesting.
Category
Value
Notes
Name
Harris Telmer
Race
Human
Origin: Earth
Class
Tactician*
ERROR: Value not found
HP
1000
MP
1000
Spirit
#####
ERROR: SPILL
Strength
150
Intelligence
200
Agility
150
Dexterity
100
Wisdom
200
Charisma
80
Discipline
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
200
Ingenuity
250
“Your card is totally borked. Even I am not sure how it got that messed up, though I can share a few things. Even though you did a quest that could upgrade any class, your class didn’t upgrade. It has been errored out for the whole tutorial. It isn’t on our list of classes from Oberous. Also, your spirit didn’t grow huge or something. The system failed when evaluating it during the initial process. We don’t even really have an error protocol for something like that, so mostly your tutorial was broken from there and we just had to kind of wing it.
“You did have really good stat growth. To have stats like those and get a 4% completion rate really puts the minus in F-. The rest of your party did super well, but even the members of the original party that stuck with the elves got completions in the upper 60’s and lower 70%. Queakers got a 97%, which might make this next part tough or not, I don’t really know/care. The dog will definitely be part of the executive leadership team for the rest of the voyage and the other members of your party, except you of curse, will be officers. They’ll take some of the spots vacated by Erin and the other tutorial elves.
“This tutorial was built to prepare magic capable individuals from unaligned worlds for immigration to Oberous. The awakening is real. Where you come from the density of magic particles is extremely low, in Earth’s case it is actually suspiciously, extremely low. All of the people in your initial group are actual people that you actually knew on Earth. When we find a cluster of magic capable people in a world like yours, we find that it is better to keep them together for a tutorial because it is less traumatic and fewer of them end up going insane.
“In any event, we are on a large transport ship, the Esperanto, that also does a bit of mining, trading and looting in this region of space. Our primary mission is to scoop up magic capable people on worlds with lower magic density and move them to Oberous where their talents can be used and their lives can be improved. It isn’t strictly voluntary, but it is definitely win-win because, as powerful as Oberous is, the population is actually in decline and they need people with the ability to use magic. The planet where you were living was a magic deprived dump, so everyone ends better off.
“Enough about Oberous though. You’ll be there soon enough and you already know quite a bit about it. Region Eleven is a real place that was copied in every detail for the tutorial program that you just completed. The people that you encountered were real people and acted largely like they really would during the time, about five hundred years ago, when the tutorial program was developed. We have variations for all of the major races. It is uncommon for humans like you to be more compatible with the fae tutorial, but somehow that is what worked out for your team.
“The only other individuals that you met during the tutorial that were actually on our ship participating in the tutorial were the elves assigned to train you all. It was their second runthrough. They had done well on the first runthrough and were looking to see if they could build on their gains to rank up. Some of them were cheating, but it sure didn’t help them too much, what with the way that you gunned them all down. They actually ranked down, mostly on account of you. You might want to avoid them on the ship and on Oberous, and pretty much everywhere really. They really don’t like you.”
I had recovered my wits by this point and had a moment to think. This seemed like it could be plausible. It could explain some anomalies from my year in Region Eleven. From experience, I know that it is important to get your complaints out early, so I interrupted Geeq there, “Well Geeq. That all sounds like total bullshit. Not that I don’t believe you, I am not decided one way or another as that is a lot to work through. If what you say your tutorial is broken and you let a bunch of cheaters run around and create a bunch of trouble. Not to mention that you are admittedly some kind of mass kidnapper. Seems pretty shady.”
Geeq just kept on trucking, “Harris. I have watched you for over a year and have an IQ over 6,000. Do you think that I couldn’t guess what you were going to say? Your last complaint is already in your file. Let me finish doing my thing and we can have a little chat.
“Anyway, Oberous is big on merit, so everyone is actually ranked based on the tutorial results and allowed to choose their post on the ship based on that ranking. If you had any doubt, your rank is dead last. The automated drones that maintain the hallways actually outrank you. Your tutorial completion score will also be used in the emigration process on Oberous, so this isn’t like a one and done,” explained Geeq.
“So, basically I am now going to get press ganged into service on your ship and I’ll get the worst job here and for my time on Oberous because I wasn’t part of your system. Doesn’t seem fair or appropriate or even very smart,” I groused.
“You aren’t wrong Harris. Your stat gains were really about the potential to improve and the classes and skills were like a trial run so that you can adjust and hit the ground running in Oberous. The knowledge that you gained is accurate and you’ll still be able to do what you learned how to do without the system. The magic particle density of the space we are in is low, but I’d venture a guess that with what I expect your Spirit to be you could gather enough magic particles to instantly disappear, steal control of some of the devices on board and/or go murder hobo on most of the crew. None of that sounds all that good to me, but neither does keeping you here.
“Fortunately, I have a better solution for your time on the ship. In fact, I already gave it to you. You’ll most certainly be getting the lowest ranking job, Technician. With your skills you are already over qualified. It is mostly fixing non-essential equipment, like vending machines, and doing odd maintenance jobs on the ship. You’ll be the only Technician we have and we have plenty of bots to do all that work anyway. I know that you wouldn’t really start killing people, but I have the ultimate authority to deal with threats to the ship and crew at my discretion.
“Don’t tell anyone else, they all think that they are in charge, but it is just another silly game. Anyhow, I’ll assign you to maintenance in the forward barracks. Once you are out there, you can do whatever you want. No one is going to wander out there on their own and I won’t send anyone that way. I’ll lock your records to prevent anyone from accessing them without my authorization and I am betting that you can make everyone forget about yourself anyway. You can explore down there all that you want and maybe even have a few adventures. It is mostly storage for objects that we “liberate” on our travels and for the mining operation.
“Might be kind of lonely, but it could be fun. We’ll be at Oberous in another ten months real time and ten jumps to get there. We’ll be picking up a few more “passengers” along the way and you can plead your case to the authorities when you get there or build your own robot army, whatever you decide. I will say that magical artifice has come aways in the 500 years since the snapshot of Oberous that you lived in was taken, so you may find some interesting things to study now that you are back in the future. I’ll throw library access into the deal. What do you say?” asked Geeq.