After we finished our humble meal, I checked the cup of hot water that I’d left out, and measured the temperature. I removed the cup in my inventory and checked the temp on that one too. I paused the stopwatch on my phone as well.

“So how’s your little science experiment?” Madeline queried.

“Weird, but I’m not sure why I’m surprised, given how strange today has been.”

“Mind explaining your findings for the audience?”

“Here .” I handed Madeline the mug of now tepid water that I’d been using as a control.

“It’s lukewarm.”

“Yep. Here’s the other one.” I gave Madeline The mug that had spent the last thirty minutes in my inventory.

“It’s hot.”

“Yeah, it's hardly gone down in temp by even a degree.”

“And?”

“I filled these mugs with hot water at the same time.” Madeline took a second to process that, and suddenly her mouth was agape.

“Holy shit!”

“Ehh.” I shrugged.

“Dude!”

“I’m just saying that it’s not that impressive. All we can really say is that my inventory is pretty thermally insulative.” Madeline chewed on that statement for a minute, before looking up from where she’d been gazing at a stained patch of carpeting.

“What about mine?” She asked.

“Well we’d have to test it, right?”

“Start boiling some more water then!” She urged me. I obeyed, but boiling water took time, of course.

“While we’re waiting for that, do you have a pocket watch or something?” I asked.

“You want to stuff a clock in your inventory and see if it stops?”

She’d seen right through me.

“Yes. . .” I said, a little embarrassed.

“Oh?” I saw Madeline’s lips start to curl into a smirk.

“I just think we should rule out all the possibilities here.” I said, at this point thoroughly flustered. “If we just start assuming things it could get us in trouble. I mean with all the weirdness going on, It would be easy to just chalk it up to. . . ”

“What?” She was now sporting a full on shit eating grin.

“You know!”

“I’m not sure I do, Leonardo.” Madeline raised a hand to her face, feigning innocence. She was clearly enjoying this.

I’d brought this upon myself, of course. The particular word I was dancing around was one that I’d personally bashed many a time in conversations with Madeline. You see, she was much more of a romantic than I was, and believed the world held many things not explainable with just the tools of science.

I took a hard stance of opposition on that. I wouldn’t call myself a cynic, per se, but semi-recent traumas had left me to assert that any belief should be backed by logic, science, and critical thought. To the extent that I’d been a bit obnoxious about it, honestly.

“Point is, It's not magic!” I yelped, mostly in shame.

“Leonardo. Look at what’s on your left shoulder.” Fry was still perched there. Mick-chicken had elected to wander around the countertops, and Four-arms was relaxedly sitting on Madeline’s left armrest.

I met Fry’s gaze. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this. I won’t claim to have it, but I’m sure that exists.”

Fry gave me a reassuring pat on the cheek.

“Riiiight.” Madeline rolled her eyes. “Let’s not even talk about the fact that I met a rotting medieval crusader with flaming willowisps for eyes. Or that your display warned about necromancers.”

“Look, Necromancer could just be a job description. Doesn’t have to mean that there are beings who use powers far beyond our imaginings to resurrect the fallen.”

“You're not fooling anyone but yourself, buster.”

I was silent for a while, not really having any counter arguments, but unable to accept defeat.

“I still think assuming everything works with magic is a bad Idea.” I asserted, moving the goalpost so that I didn’t have to reckon with changing my internal beliefs in the face of new evidence.

“Whatever. Let's just get to finding out whether or not we have the totally mundane and not at all supernatural ability to stop time.” she said.

“There’s a clock on the wall in the hallway. I’ll go grab it.”

She rolled off to do just that, setting Four-arms on her lap again so that she had full access to her wheels. Stopping just before the door to her bathroom, Madeline Looked up at her clock. She had to reach a bit to grab it, but after she knocked it down with the tip of a finger, she frisbeed the cheap piece of plastic at me.

Barely managing to catch it, I checked the time. It was an hour behind, but that didn’t really matter so long as it worked. I shoved it in my inventory.

“I say we check on it in a half hour. The water’s boiling, so let’s repeat the first part of my experiment with your inventory.”

“Sure sure.”

After some waiting, and some more chatter, the results were as follows:

Madeline’s inventory was as thermally insulated as mine, and the clock’s hands didn’t progress past the point they had been when they entered my inventory. Repeating the clock portion of the experiment with Madeline’s inventory yielded the same results.

“I’m pretty sure we have the non-magical ability to stop time.” Madeline said.

“I’m pretty sure we can make it temperatures remain constant and analog clocks don’t work. ” I responded.

“Frankly I don’t think there’s much of a difference, Leo.”

“There’s a huge difference!”

“How so?” She asked, almost rhetorically.

“Well if we assume time stops inside them, even if maybe they don’t, then it could lead to us doing something dumb and dying.”

“Dying seems a bit extreme, but go on with your bullshit.”

“I will, thank you. My point is: What happens if you store something like a hot meal inside? If temperature remains constant, but time still moves, we could very well end up making a decent plate of food into a breeding ground for botulism.”

“Ok, sure, that's a nasty hypothetical, but we have no way of knowing that’s the case. Also, you're assuming there’s an anaerobic environment inside our inventories. Clostridium botulinum doesn't get along well with oxygen. ” She replied.

“I didn’t know that. And wait, how do you know that?”

“Had to take a course on microbiology in order to get a science cred, and the segment on botulism stuck with me.”

“Cool. Where was I?”

“You were being generally nonsensically suspicious.” She said, poking at Four-arms. I squinted at her. While I had forgotten what I was talking about, I’m sure it wasn’t nonsense.

Probably.

“What should even be our plan here?” I asked, whatever manic energy keeping me afloat suddenly vanishing.

“Well, I’m thinking we hunker down. It's been a busy day, and I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.”

“Agreed.” The fatigue was hitting me pretty hard now, and my legs were even a little shaky. I sat back down. “What time is it?”

I checked the clock that had been left on the counter, only to remember that it was pretty useless at this point. I’d lost my phone too, or I would have checked it.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Madeline stopped tickle-torturing her captive robot to check her phone. “Five thirty. A little early to call it a night, but I’m not entertaining any Ideas leaving my domicile again today, and as I’ve already mentioned your welcome to the couch.”

“Thanks again for that. Do you think we’re safe though?” I asked.

“I’m choosing to believe the barrier’s gonna work, rather than stress about it.”

“Hmmmmmmm. . . I don’t really have any alternatives, so sure I guess. Hey, can I borrow your shower?”

“Sure. Try not to use all my soap.” Madeline crawled back into her recliner, still holding Four-arms captive. As cruel as it sounded, I didn’t really feel the need to rescue him. He’d figure it out.

I trotted over to the bathroom, and used the toilet before turning my attention to the shower. There was no shower curtain, or partition of any kind attached. A wand type shower head was mounted just a ways from the toilet, and a folding bench was next to it. The lack of any sort of separation from the rest of the bathroom made me feel a little exposed, but I’d have to get over it.

The real problem was that there was a large mirror facing the shower area. I didn’t really like looking at myself in the mirror to begin with, but I really didn’t like looking at myself naked. I’d have to face away from it.

Thankfully, the hot water blew away my concerns, and I quickly relaxed.

God, hot water is nice.

***

After I exited the shower, I walked out to find Miss Madeline watching an episode of a well known nature documentary. This doc was about the ocean, which was the only kind worth watching in my opinion.

Brilliant blue filled the screen, and I watched aquamarine light from the television play across Madeline’s face. Four-arms had relaxed into the crook of her arm, and the other two had settled onto the couch, watching the show with her. I joined them, careful not to disturb them too much.

After listening to the soothing narration explain dolphin hunting behaviors for a while, I spoke up. “So are you streaming this somehow, or. . .?”

“Nah, I have the whole series on blu ray. I got it playing on my console.” She raised a gamepad in her left hand.

“Neat.”

We were silent for a while again.

It was a good documentary.

. . .

Madeline called out to me eventually. “Hey, so I got a stash of snacks behind the protein powder in my cupboard. I’d be willing to share if you grabbed me some.”

“That sounds like a fair trade.” Walking back to the kitchenette, I removed the two massive tubs of flavored whey protein isolate and saw a couple different plastic jars of nuts, candies, peanut butter pretzel bites, and cheeseballs. It was an impressive stash, especially because I’d assumed she didn’t mess with junk food considering her physique and willingness to disparage my diet.

“What was that you said about eating sugar like it was going out of style?”

“Shush you. Today’s my cheat day.”

“The excessive drinking and festivities of yesterday didn’t count?”

“Not after the shit we just went through.”

“Fair enough. What kinda snacks do you want?” She took a moment to respond, clearly thinking on the matter quite seriously.

“A handful of chocolate toffee bits, a handful of macadamia nuts, and a handful of peanut butter pretzels, please.” Ah, she had full system for building her own snack mixes. I knew I liked her for a reason. I grabbed a bowl, and placed the requested morsels in it.

For myself, I went for an equal parts mix of salted almonds, cashews, and chocolate covered raisins. I went back to the couch and handed Madeline her order, before beginning munching on my own bowl. We ate and watched for the rest of the evening, only pausing once to grab another couple cans of bubble water.

It was nice.

Eventually, Madeline nodded off. I gestured to Four-arms to come over, and called a quick group meeting with my mechas.

“Can you guys keep watch for the night?” I whispered. They all nodded, and started playing rock paper scissors amongst themselves. All of them picked rock, aside from Mick-chicken who had unwisely selected scissors. He slumped in disappointment, before walking off towards Madeline’s bedroom.

That wasn’t the end of it, and the remaining two played another round amongst themselves. Fry lost that one, having played rock against Four-arms’s paper. He turned on his heel and made way for the front door, plopping down in front of it. Four-Arms jumped up to the ledge of the living room window, and peered between the slight gap in the blinds.

I hadn’t expected them to so neatly divide their roles like that. I wondered why the winners and losers ended up in their respective positions, but then I realized that the ultimate winner of their little tourney was also the closest to the TV. Apparently they liked the show.

I looked at Madeline, who was still thoroughly conked out. I didn’t blame her, I planned to do the same soon enough. First though, I figured I should cover her with a blanket or something. I walked over to her bedroom, and Saw Mick-Chicken perched on the windowsill there. Being the loser, he was stuck where the sound of the television didn’t quite reach. Taking pity on him, I grabbed an old MP3 player from my inventory, and set it next to him.

It was filled mainly with the questionable music taste of my teenage years, but at least it would give him something to help while away the hours. I handed him a set of earbuds, and he held one of them in each hand. They were comically oversized for his head, but he’d just have to deal.

I grabbed a blanket from Madeline’s bed, and used it to gently cover her. She stirred slightly, but did not wake.

I pulled my own bedding from my inventory, and arranged some bedding for myself on the couch. I queued up another episode of the documentary series and took my meds before laying down.

Soon, I started to drift off.

It had been a long day. Maybe if I was lucky, I’d wake up tomorrow to find out it was all just a dream.

***

There was a brief moment of confusion as I woke up. I couldn’t remember why I was on somebody's couch instead of my bed, and it took me a moment to regain my bearings. As my mind cleared, I remembered that I’d been in the midst of a pretty bad nightmare.

I’d been stabbed repeatedly and bled until my body dried and shriveled into a husk. The last thing I remembered from it was staring down at my lifeless corpse, a blue flame lighting in my empty eye sockets.

My subconscious had always had a flair for the dramatic. My dreams tended to be vivid, as did my nightmares of course. I tried to shake off the bad dream as I usually did.

I saw Fry’s glowing pink eye staring at me from across the room. He was looking over his shoulder at me, seated in front of the TV. Four-arms and Mick-chicken were grappling with a gamepad, and appeared to be playing a third person shooter of some sort on Madeline’s console. Mick-chicken was in charge of the left half of the controller, twiddling the joystick to get from one piece of cover to the next. Four-arms was in charge of the right half, delicately using his many appendages to aim, shoot, and reload. It looked like they’d messed with the game’s accessibility settings so that they could ignore the left set of triggers entirely.

Fry picked up the remote for the TV, deciding to turn up the volume now that I was awake. I was then treated to the noises of an absolutely brutal melee kill. An enemy's throat gurgled as a knife tore through it, and there was a wet thump as the corpse was casually discarded. I was starting to recognize the game now. Its post-apocalyptic setting and incredible fetish for violence hit different after yesterday, I found.

I sat up, and looked around. No sight of Madeline. I noticed that her blanket had been removed from the recliner, though the bowl she’d been snacking out of remained. I heard the sound of running water. She was probably in the shower.

I counted the fact that we still had access to basic utilities to be a blessing. Hopefully that would continue. I remember reading somewhere that coal and nuclear power plants typically shut down within 24 hours with no one around to run them, but we got our power through hydroelectric, wind farms, and some natural gas. Renewables required less maintenance to keep running, if I remembered correctly.

And that was assuming that there was no one to run them. Ideally, the military or government or whatever would be out and about fixing things. Though, looking at the strange tattoo on the back of my right hand, I had a feeling things wouldn’t be quite so simple.

I decided to check my display while I was at it. Maybe I’d finally have some more ATP to play with.

I did actually, though only a single pip of it. Examining my bar further, it looked like my bar was now divided in five sections instead of four. So at some point then, my max ATP had increased and I’d gotten a free point when it did. I wondered when I’d get the other four back, but given that it hadn’t regened after a full night's sleep, it was seeming likely that either it only came back only when certain conditions were fulfilled, or that I just hadn’t waited long enough.

I pressed the help button again, but it only informed me that it hadn’t been twenty four hours yet. Though that did cause a thought to occur to me; what if ATP was on a twenty four hour cooldown as well?

I’d want to run that Idea by Madeline when she got out of the bathroom. I swiped mindlessly back to my inventory, and was scrolling through its contents until I came across the finger. Just looking at its monochrome Icon made me nauseous. I swiped back to my stat screen. My pitiful body stat was the same, but my Capacity had increased ever so slightly.

I could tell because two charts were layered on top of each other on my display. Tapping on it would cause one of them to disappear. It appeared my chart was comparing my current stats to my old stats, though I still had to wonder when the change had occurred, and what had caused it.

Looking at the top left corner of my display, I noticed that my CR had increased substantially. I had six, compared to my earlier two. I knew that particular number increased with the successful destruction of monsters, but did increasing it improve my stats? Another thing to cross check with Madeline, but she was still occupied by her ablutions.

How long had she been in there? And what time was it anyway? I checked my pocket for my phone, but it was absent. I remembered that I’d lost it at some point yesterday. Probably during the scuffle with the blobtopus. I should have just kept it in my inventory instead of my pocket, but I’d slipped it into its home in the front left of my slacks out of habit. Finding it would probably be one of my main objectives today. I didn’t need it per say, but if we ever got service back, I was going to want it.

I stood up from the couch, and noticed just how sore I was. Many muscles were tender, and I was bruised in all the places I’d fallen on during the battle with that aforementioned many-tentacled-bastard. A healing potion might fix that, but I probably shouldn’t waste those things on something so minor, I thought.

Though maybe I should buy one with that extra point I got. I checked the shop, but the option was grayed out. Right, my maximum ATP had increased. 25% of that was slightly over a single point, meaning I couldn’t afford anything from the shop. Man, having everything priced at a flat percentage was kind of mean.

Madeline was still in the shower. I heard the noise of irregular splashing, so she hadn’t died in there. She was just taking her sweet time. I guessed I needed to find something to do then. I decided cleaning up a bit would be a good place to start. I probably shouldn’t touch her bedroom. That seemed like it would be a little rude, no matter how much it needed it. The living room had plenty that needed cleaning, though, so that’s what I focused on.

I picked up empty cans of brand name seltzer and bits of nuts or candy, sorting them into garbage and recyclables respectively. Dishes went to the sink, or rather the counter next to it because it was still full of the water. Looking at it, it felt a little silly, but it probably wasn’t a bad Idea considering that our rations hadn’t come with any sort of beverage. That seemed like a bit of an oversight. Military rations came with powdered energy drink mix at least, if not full on boxes of shelf stable milk or something.

If the water shut off we were pretty much fucked, honestly. Madeline’s sink was pretty shallow, so our reserves weren’t ever gonna be massive. We had our cans of sparkling water, and we could refill those from the tap, but that was little solace. We should at least get some more water bottles or milk jugs at some point. Though that would likely mean leaving the building, which wasn’t really appealing. Just imagining how many monsters were crawling around made me shudder.

Frankly I wasn’t all that keen on the thought of even leaving this apartment. Though looking at all the garbage I’d collected, it seemed like I was probably going to have to. I needed to at least get these garbage bags to the waste disposal room. Just letting them rot in there wasn’t an option. And it would be a good Idea to check and make sure nothing bad was creeping through the halls. I didn’t relish the thought of getting in another fight, but at the very least taking down monsters meant better stats.

I heard the sound of running water finally stop. Maybe we could have breakfast together in a bit. I was getting hungry, and cracking open another ration sounded pretty appealing.