Adric cursed under his breath and stuck the finger in his mouth he had just pricked on the frayed end of a small stainless cable he was trying to splice. Standing from his hunched position on his back deck, he stretched. “I know, I know,” he told himself, “I should be wearing gloves.”
Adric reached into his back pocket, removed the black and yellow mechanic's gloves he should have been wearing, and put them on.
His hands now protected, Adric completed the eye-splice and hooked the end of the cable to a turnbuckle. Then he shackled the turnbuckle to an eyebolt he had secured to the support post of his back deck. Checking to make sure the cable length he just spliced was good. Adric turned the central part of the turnbuckle to tension the cable until it was taut. He spent the next three hours laboring until his deck railing, was comprised of six-millimeter aircraft cable guard rails, running horizontally around his deck.
Adric chuckled to himself, "Six-millimeter! Come on, man, you haven't worked outside the States in over a year. It's a quarter inch; get with the country you're in."
Satisfied with his work, Adric cleared out his tools, placing them in the bucket he used as a mobile toolbox and setting it by the back door so he would remember to bring it back to the basement later. Proud of his accomplishment, Adric popped open a beer and lounged on his outdoor couch, admiring his improved view. The thin cables he used to replace thick wooden planks gave Adric a better view of the lake his back deck overlooked.
Adric smiled as he relaxed on the thick outdoor cushions and stared at the water. “Now, this is paradise,” he thought for the thousandth time since he had retired from his unpleasant occupation over a year ago. Since then, he spent his days piddling around his property and pursuing his many hobbies.
Thinking of his hobbies, Adric looked from his second-story deck to the archery and pistol targets he had set out and considered shooting as his entertainment. After a brief mental struggle, he decided he was done for the day and opened another beer instead.
Seeing nothing wrong with the new cable railings, Adric brought his tools back to the basement and put them away before starting in on his second beer. “Better to get it done today. Otherwise, I'll just let them sit until tomorrow." He told himself as he stored his tools.
When he was done, Adric snagged a bottle of wine from the rack in his wine cave, where he kept his favorite bottles. It wasn't a cave in the real sense, just a room he set aside in his basement to store perishables. With no windows and a proper ventilation system, the constant temperature of the underground structure meant his wines and various pickled and fermented foods would stay fresh for a while.
“I feel like fish tonight,” Adric thought, walking up the stairs to the main level of his home. The massive glass and wood A-frame house was built into the side of a hill, with the front of the house at ground level and the back over a story off the ground. Leaving out his back door and descending the stairs from his deck, Adric took the meandering gravel path he had built down to his dock on the two-hundred-acre lake he lived on.
Retrieving his fishing tackle from the small boat house on the dock, Adric tossed some bass baits for a while, trying to entice a hit. He didn't feel like taking his boat out, so after half an hour without any luck, he decided to switch to trying for bream. Swapping his bass gear for a fly rod in the boat house, Adric walked out on the pier he had installed just for this purpose.
Tying a black fly with dark brown accents on his line, he started popping it close to the shoreline. His dock was in a narrow cove, so he could fish both shorelines from his pier.
Within ten minutes, he had four large perch in his bucket. He loved the feeling of the fish as they fought against the light line on his fly rod and wanted to keep fishing. He refrained though, figuring he caught enough for dinner and probably for lunch tomorrow. Adric stored his tackle and cleaned his catch, throwing the discarded parts from the fish back into the lake for the turtles and other scavengers to have dinner, too.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The sun was just kissing the water with beautiful violet and red shades as it dipped below the horizon in the early evening when Adric finished cleaning his fish and returned to the house. He threw the fish in ice water and quickly showered instead of starting dinner immediately. Happy to be out of his filthy clothes, Adric donned some comfy dark grey sweatpants and a thin, light grey Henley after toweling off.
He felt a chill in the air and decided to make a fire. He enjoyed the comforting warmth of a crackling fire in his fireplace for a few minutes. Then he started preparing his dinner. The recipe he knew by heart because he made it often. He baked the bream with cherry tomatoes and rosemary from his indoor hydroponic garden attached to the house. He made parmesan angel hair pasta to pair with the fish and tomatoes while they baked. Soon, the house smelled divine and cozy, and Adric felt it was time to pour a glass of the siryah he opened and had breathing on his bar. He was halfway through the first glass of the delicious red wine when the timer on the oven went off, signaling it was time to debone and plate the fish.
Adric enjoyed his simple fish pasta, eating it ‘alfresco’ on his deck, listening to the sounds of the nocturnal creatures and insects echoing throughout the forest as they awoke from their slumber to begin hunting and scavenging.
It was well after dark, and the message came as Adric cleaned the dishes.
Attention inhabitant of Sol-3! Your solar system is now primed for System integration. The initiation process has begun and will be concluded in three planetary rotations or days as you know them. Fully integrating your planet into the galactic network will take approximately one solar year. During this one year, your planet will be immune to outside influence from the greater multiverse. Your planet will be seeded with all manner of beasts and trials to determine its ranking among your local galactic neighbors through this one-year trial period. Use this time to your advantage by increasing your power to improve your planet's ranking upon full integration.
Adric could only stare in shock at the translucent floating screen in his vision. “Well, this is different,” he thought, waving his hand at the screen. When his hand passed right through the floating text without changing it, he thought, “How do I get this to go away?” As Adric thought about the screen closing, it minimized to the bottom right corner of his visual range. Adric focused on the small icon in the corner of his vision, and the message popped back up in his vision. Speaking aloud, he said, "Okay, I've gone insane. I've read about things like this in fantasy novels, but there is no way this is real!"
After a short freak-out session, Adric dismissed or, as he thought of it, ‘minimized’ the notification and finished cleaning his dishes. He took solace in the familiar act of performing house chores and used it to calm himself. After putting the last dish in the cupboard, Adric, still feeling stressed, pulled his yoga mat from a closet in the hallway. He took a seat on the mat and crossed his legs. Taking several deep breaths, he cleared his mind to meditate. It was more difficult than usual because the icon for the minimized message remained visible, even with his eyes closed. Still, after a few attempts, he managed to ignore the small icon in the corner of his sight.
His mind slowly relaxed as he focused only on his rhythmic breathing. Until…
Congratulations! You have acquired the skill Meditation Tier 1, Level 1 [Locked]. Use of this skill will be made available upon integration. You have reached the maximum allowable level in this skill prior to System integration.
"Okay, this is just ridiculous," Adric grumbled, standing up. Knowing he probably wouldn't get much sleep, he turned on the news, preparing for a long night on the couch. He was curious how the rest of the world would react to the message…assuming he wasn't the one losing his mind.
As soon as the TV turned on and he flipped to a national news channel, it became very apparent this was not a hallucination! The amount of chaos that the simple message had caused was incomprehensible to Adric. Vehicle and plane crashes, riots, looting, and general pandemonium were gripping the entire globe as every culture reacted in different ways to the message.
Suddenly anxious, Adric flipped to the local news channel and was thankful that the national networks' chaos wasn't reflected as bad locally. There was still panic, but at least it was panic buying, not looting. Seeing the fear on so many people's faces made Adric realize they could snap at any moment though. With that thought, he went to his 'cave' and opened his walk-in gun safe.
“Better safe than sorry,” Adric thought, pulling out and checking the chamber on one of his pistols. Placing the pistol back in its rack and grabbing another one with a resigned sigh, he thought, “It’s going to be a long three days.”