2020:
George found himself floating in an area devoid of everything. Somehow, however, he had a body. His old body. He was pretty sure the truck that hit him had killed him. He was walking back from classes at the local community college, when he cut across the street to go to the convenience store. Some truck turned the corner and didn’t see him. He had seen himself leave his body even though he wasn’t sure how without eyes, and flew under the ocean. There he flew towards a metal monolith built into the sea floor, and now he was here.
There was a bright light in front of him and as George shielded his eyes it resolved into the form of a man. “George Thomason. I am Aati, judge of souls. The other gods have just created life upon this new world, but rather than wait for millions or billions of years for sapient life to evolve, they wish to bring in people from other worlds, and have tasked me with finding people to go to this new world. I have chosen you as a possible recruit. Upon this world the gods have created a System through which you can gain power, granting you the merest fraction of their power, allowing you to slowly grow to them limits of your mortal form, a System which you shall be granted if you accept. Do you accept a new life on this world?”
George’s perspective:
“Yes, of course.” I said without hesitation. Why would I want to stay dead? And a fraction of the god’s power? Seems like a magic system to me.
Aati nodded and a screen appeared in front of me. ‘Welcome to the Sapient Empowerment System. The Paradigm “New World Transfer” has been selected and is the only one available at this time. You are currently at level zero. Please select a combat or production profession.’
Interesting that I had to choose one. I had a few questions, though. “So first, will I be able to pick the other one later, or will I not be able to produce things unless I pick a production profession?” I looked up but Aati had left and I was floating there alone. The screen had changed, though. A help box had popped up. “Everyone can receive multiple professions throughout their life as they level up. At level zero you can choose either a combat profession, which gains experience and levels up from combat, or you can choose a production profession, which gains experience when you craft things or perform taks related to that profession. When one class reaches level ten you can choose the other class, and can choose a specialization for your classes every twenty levels.”
“Ok, so if say, I choose blacksmith I get experience from forging and smelting, but not from killing a bandit with my hammer, but if I choose to be a blunt weapon fighter, I get experience in that from killing the bandit with my hammer, but not, for example, growing a garden.”
“Correct. Only Farming type production professions can get experience from gardening.”
George nodded. “You’re really responsive for a help function.”
“That is because I am an assistant AI created by the Sapient Empowerment System.”
“And the Gods created the Sapient Empowerment System?” I responded, just to clarify.
“Actually, the….. I’m sorry, what was your question?”
Ok, that was weird. “Did you just glitch?”
“Not to my knowledge. I can diagnose myself if you would like.”
“Sure.” I said.
The help window closed for a few seconds, then reopened. “No errors detected. I am operating within standard parameters.”
“Ok, then. Second question. What is the level of development of this world?”
“You will be among the first one thousand people to appear on this world, so its level of technological and cultural develop would best be described as prehistoric.”
“So no cities. Probably no settlements, unless I get lucky and find a few others that teamed up. That definitely changes things.” I selected combat profession and started looking through them. If I was going to surviving in a wild area, I would need to defend myself. I could just do the hunter/forager thing for the first ten levels. If I hadn’t found someone else by then, I would probably pick a food related profession. Either Hunter or Farmer would be the best bet, depending on if I wanted to keep moving or settle down. “Wait, foraging is safe, right?”
“Many of the native plants are edible by humans, if not the most nutritious. It will be up to the settlers to discover which ones.”
“And if we guess wrong, we just die, and were sent here for no reason?”
“Those that brought you here and assigned me to you have backups of your body, however a backup can only be activated once every four days. If you die without a ‘holy’ location marked, you will reawaken in a random location.” It was quite strange that the AI didn’t refer to them as ‘the gods’, and placed quotations around ‘holy’. Is it not programmed to treat them as deities? For a being created by them to aid someone that they self-identified as gods to, it was most unusual.
“So, I’m assuming that the starting equipment is determined by the class selection?”
“There is no starting equipment. Just five starting skills. You will arrive in that world naked.”
“Then how will I get equipment?”
“All equipment on the planet must be created by either Transfers, Settlers, or Puppets.”
“So, I’m a transfer, but what are those other two?”
“Settlers are people who have technical and skill knowledge but lack any personal memories, and thus will appear to have amnesia. Puppets are artificial beings which usually serve as manual laborers for Transfers.”
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“Robots?” I asked.
“Yes, your society would refer to them as ‘robots’ or perhaps ‘androids’.”
I nodded. “I assume I’ll be placed somewhere where it will be easy to survive the first time?”
“Those who brought you here know little about human survival conditions, so they will have you placed at random across the parts of the planet where you have a chance of surviving. You won’t instantly died, but the conditions won’t necessarily be hospitable.” There it goes again, not calling them ‘the gods’.
The fact that I’d appear at random, naked, meant that I needed to consider survival. Which profession had the best chance of survival? While I wanted to pick a combat profession for the safety factor the combat skills would bring, I knew that they most likely would have poor survival ability. I needed something that could survive. I hit the back button and selected something that I considered a hybrid of combat and production, but the System called a production profession. A Hunter. There was a reason early man had a large percentage of its population being members of this group.
My brain started to tingle and soon I started getting a headache. Just as it started to cross over into migraine territory the tingling stopped.
Suddenly I found myself opening my eyes. It was dark and only a tiny bit of light came in from nearby. I carefully crawled towards the light and, when I felt a slight downwards slope I stood up and placed my hand against the cool stone wall, carefully walking towards the light. Just as it started getting light enough to see by a cold wind blew across me. Yeah, I definitely didn’t want that to happen seeing as how I had no clothes. Goosebumps formed on my skin and soon I started shivering, but I kept going. Eventually I walked around a bend and stepped into something cold that crunched under my feet. Snow? I looked out and saw that I was far up a mountain, possibly near the top. Perhaps a mile of hiking down the mountain the snow ended, and below that I even saw a few green plants. Well, inside the cave was technically habitable, so the AI hadn’t exactly lied. I just wished it had started me a few kilometers further down the hill.
I bent down, made a small snow ball, and put it in my mouth. I had heard that you weren’t supposed to do that, as it lowered your internal body temperature, but it was the only source of water I would get for a while, until I found a way to hold some so it could melt inside the cave. At least I had a source of water. Next I would need a source of food. There were a few bits of wood lying around so I gathered what I could before my feet got cold enough to hurt, then went back inside the mouth of the cave. While it was only around negative two outside, it was probably five degrees inside the cave, so I much preferred to be there. When I got my Trapping skill I received knowledge of a few different ways to catch or kill a creature, and a few triggers. Hopefully I had gathered enough stuff to make a trap outside. I already knew that the first thing I would do after catching something is make shoes. Sure, my manhood was exposed, but it wasn’t getting covered in snow every time I stepped out to gather supplies. Besides, no one else was around, so that only mattered for the sake of warmth.
Elsewhere:
Katerina Petrov woke up in the edge of a grassy field, naked as the day she was born twenty two and a half years ago. Well, she supposed this might also count as being born. In that empty void the ‘god’ that greeted her didn’t seem particularly godly, but it had offered her a new life and power, two things she didn’t mind taking if they were free.
She had chosen to be a mage, and had gotten the skills Temperature Control, Electric Control, Kinesis, Telepathy, and Inventory (Basic), all at level 1. That should let her protect herself here in case anyone tried to hurt her, like in her last life. She hadn’t even been in a gang, but she was still killed in a gang war. How messed up was that?
She looked around, seeing that the forest actually covered a mountain. It climbed up high enough that it even had a frost line. She was glad that she was down here where it was reasonably warm, though still it was only around eight degrees. A bit chilly, but she might be able to make some clothes from things in the area. She didn’t see any plants with large leaves in the area, so she assumed she would have to use animal skins from the forest. Still she should practice a bit before going into it. Things could get dangerous in there. Anywhere there were prey animals was bound to have predators, after all.
First to warm herself up. It was called Temperature magic, after all. Following the instructions in her brain she focused on making her skin a comfortable twenty degrees and soon it was at a comfortable temperature. Good. Now she just needed to practice some sort of attack. Maybe lightning? She focused on gathering lightning in her hand and immediately started to get cooler. She searched the new information in her mind and found that magic required something called ‘concentration’. Essentially, each spell took some of your attention, and if you didn’t give it enough it went away. That meant that you needed to train yourself to split your focus, giving each spell exactly as much as it needs to keep working as you do something else. Great, even more practice.
Once again she focused on making herself warm and slowly shifted some of her attention over to the new spell. If she felt the old one start to slip, she shifted some attention back. After an hour or so, she got a notification.
She went into the edge of the woods and collected a pile of leaves. It wasn’t the best way to stay warm, but she had slept under a pile of leaves when she was a child, so she knew it would at least keep the wind and rain off of you. She cleared out a large area, piling all of the leaves together, then carefully pulled all of the sticks, nuts and cones out of the leaf pile. Maybe the nuts would be edible, but she would have to test that. She was pretty sure, however, that the wood would burn once it was dry enough. The dry wood she put in one pile and the damp or wet wood she put in another. Once she learned enough temperature magic she would use them to start a fire, using the burning dry wood to dry the wet wood.
By the time she was tired she had a bed and had gathered a handful of a single type of berries from the woods nearby. It wasn’t dark yet, but in the woods it was dark enough in places to get some sleep. She had seen enough survival shows to know not to just eat them without testing them first. She selected one of the larger ones and rubbed it on her arm. Ten minutes later, her arm hadn’t reacted, so she rubbed some of the juice onto her lips. Ten minutes after that, her lips didn’t feel weird, so she ate the one berry that she had already damaged. Well, that was it for supper. If she still felt ok in the morning, she knew that berry was safe to eat. Well, not that dangerous. It could also be mildly toxic or narcotic and just require a larger dose to hurt you, so for breakfast she would eat five of them. If that didn’t hurt her, for lunch she would eat twenty, and if that didn’t hurt her, she would eat thirty or forty for supper, what she assumed it would take to fill her stomach. Yes, it would mean that she would be hungry for a little while, but being hungry and alive is better than being full and poisoned to death.
She woke up once during the ‘night’, though not from stomach problems. Her tossing and turning to find a comfortable position had uncovered her legs, so she covered them again, then used Temperature Control to warm herself back up so that she could go back to sleep.
The time she woke up with tiny bug bites all over her body, including in some rather sensitive areas. Still, it was better than freezing during the night, not that it had gotten any colder. She just got colder because she wasn’t moving. Her stomach was fine, and she hadn’t had any weird dreams that might indicate that the berries were narcotic, so she ate ten of them and started gathering things around her. It would take her too long to make cloth by picking grass and weaving it, even if she just made a simple loincloth in case she met someone else, but she could easily braid grass to make strings. She’d also seen people on TV make baskets out of woven grass, so surely she could do that?
Unknown location:
Aati opened his eyes and sat up, leaving the Phantom Realm which many lesser races would call ‘virtual reality’. To a human he would look like a mixture of an eagle and a crocodile, with feathers on his arms and tail, and a beak, but covered in scales over the rest of his body. While it would look strange to most races, this was actually normal for his people. Their mastery over the soul allowed them to transfer themselves to any body they wished, and this one had suited him for the last thousand years.
“My lord.” said an attendant, a bipedal gopher with snake eyes and tail. “How did your mission go.”
“The hundred new recruits have now been integrated. None of them seemed special in the least. Honestly, if Lady Selket hadn’t wished to create a new farm, I would just jettison them all into the abyss. But instead, she asks me to manage this world on her behalf, so that it may entertain her in the future.” He then realized that what he said might be misinterpreted. “Of course, I have no intention of disobeying Lady Selket or any of the Great Ones, the job is merely boring. Perhaps I will visit one of Lord Set’s worlds soon to watch the blood games.” He got up and started towards his quarters. “Tell me the next time the soul tank is full. I require rest.” With that he left.