Project Alpha

by R. A. Mejia

  One thing I work on during the walk back to the cave is figuring out what Absorb does. So, I use it on each of the bodies that are left over after the fights. I understand that by using the skill, I forgo any loot they may have dropped. However, figuring out exactly what this ability does, might mean the difference between winning a fight and losing it someday. I use the ability on the remains of each monster I defeat, but it’s not until I kill and absorb the last Blue Blob outside the cave that I finally get a something other than a ‘failed to capture the essence of the defeated foe’ notification.

  Absorb has successfully captured the essence of the defeated foe. You’ve learned the ability Roll.

  Excitedly, I look up my Abilities and see Roll sitting right under Absorb.

  Roll

  G

  Active

  Ready to roll? For a small TP cost, you can roll with increased speed when you activate this ability. To activate it, just think or say ‘Roll’ with the intent to use the ability.

  Well, I might as well test this thing out before I leave, right? I mean it would attract a bunch of attention if I tested it out in the mall. What if the ability gives me sonic the hedgehog powers and I can roll and spin in a little ball or something?

  As I face the cave entrance, I say, “Roll,” and feel myself fall forward. I think I’m going to hit my head but my body automatically tucks my noggin down, and I see the whole world spin around as my body rolls forward along the floor. I try to scream, ‘Stop Roll’ but it just comes out ‘Roll.' Again, I feel another burst of momentum as my body rolls forward again out of my control. I’m grateful when my body slams into the cave wall and comes to a stop. I think I see a red five float away from me, but it’s hard to tell since I’m upside down.

  I get to my feet with a bit of effort and have to put a hand out and lean against the stone wall of the cave to steady myself. Once the room stops spinning, I walk into the cave and make my way to the red door. I can’t see it at first, but I remember the arrow I made on the floor out of rocks. The door appears as I stand behind the arrow, and I walk through it.

  Chapter 16

  As I exit the red door on the side of the mall, I suddenly have a greater appreciation for air conditioning. The world on the other side of the door was a bit warm for my tastes, and all that walking and monster killing worked up a sweat. I hear the door close behind me, and I just stand there, my eyes closed, enjoying the cold air for a minute.

  Opening my eyes, I’m worried about how much time has passed. I mean I’m still supposed to make dinner for Marie and go to my evening classes, and I had to have been inside that dungeon for at least four or five hours. As I start to jog along towards the mall escalator, I catch a glimpse of a clock above the food court. The sight causes me to stop in my tracks and stare. The large clock face says that it’s only 3 pm, which means that only two hours have passed since I entered the dungeon. That can’t be right, can it? I mean, I climbed down the mountain, talked to that old man, and wandered through the forest fighting monsters. My sense of how much time has passed is usually pretty spot on. Then I remember one of the features that I can upgrade at my home base slows down time outside the base. Perhaps this is the natural characteristics of the dungeons? I shrug. Whatever the reason, I won’t turn my nose up at a couple of extra hours to get stuff done.

  I take a single step towards the escalator when another aspect of this world recalled to my mind. The home base key. Here I was, ready to take a long hour-long bus ride back home when I have a magic key that will create a portal to my home base, my bedroom. I elicit strange looks from the people in the mall as I do a little happy dance at all the time and money I’ll save not having to take a bus ride back home anymore. Hell, I could travel to faraway lands on a one-way plane ticket and return home instantly. I could make a killing as a transporter. I mean, assuming people only wanted to make a trip to my home.

  I backtrack and walk up to one of the empty shops next to the dungeon. Looking around to make sure that no one is watching, I take my home base key out of my inventory and insert it into the glass door. The transformation into a green wooden door only takes a moment, and when it’s complete, a blue box appears.

  Congratulations on using your home base key for the first time. Would you like to establish a connection to this location or a one-time portal?

  Unsure what the System message means, I look it up in the guidebooks. It takes me a minute to locate the information on portals, but it seems like I can create a semi-permanent portal between any location in the world my home base allowing for quick travel as long as the connection exists. That must be what Lillian did when she took me to her home base in New York. I was able to travel between the two locations without any problems. According to the guidebook, only one of these connections can be established at a time, and one connection between places has to be disconnected before another can be created. Otherwise, it’s just a one-way portal to my home base that disappears as soon as I walk through it.

  Well, that's reassuring. At least I know I’m not leaving some open door to my home base for anyone to walk through. I answer the prompt that I want to create a one-time portal and it disappears. Opening the green door, I see black beyond the doorway. Trusting that I’m not entering some black hole, I confidently walk through the door into the dark.

  At first, the all-encompassing blackness surrounds me, and I panic for a moment, thinking that something has gone wrong. Then slowly the darkness fades away, and I find myself standing by the open doorway of my room. The green door closes behind me and then transforms into the door to my room.

  Looking around my messy room, I can’t help but smile. Well, that is neat. A quick return trip from dungeon running. Then I remember how long it took me to find the dungeon and I realize I’m not sure which mall I was at. I slap my forehead at my stupidity. I rode around rather randomly on that bus for hours just using Dungeon Scan. Once I found it, I totally forgot to write down where the dungeon was. God, I wish my phone worked, I would have just looked at my map.

  I slap my forehead again. Duh, I used one of my skill points to get Mapping. Sure, I mostly got it because it is a prerequisite for the Dungeon Mapping skill. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been working this whole time. I say, “Map,” and see another map pop-up of my room and the house. I zoom out and see the parts of the neighborhood I’ve walked through since I got the skill. If I follow the non-blacked out area, I can see the places the bus took me. Even better there’s a red pin on the map marking where I found the dungeon. I do another little happy dance since I don’t have to figure out where that dungeon’s located again. Man, this System thing is kind of cool.

  My little dance over, I sit at the edge of my bed and pull up the System Store window and tap on the Sell tab to see what I can get for all my loot. Unfortunately, the loot isn’t worth as much as I was hoping it would be. The blob balls are only worth one credit a piece and the Goombie shoes are worth two credits. It looks like I picked up some trash items. Still, after selling them, I have a total of ten credits in my inventory. Looking for all the items in the store by price, I see I can afford to buy two more Super Ultra Wake Me Up Coffee drinks, or I can save up to buy a minor health potion for twenty credits. I opt for the two coffee drinks because I still need to be awake for class later and my current buff has a timer that says it’s only going to last another three hours. That sounds a little off until I realize that the buff continued to count down when I was in the dungeon. I drop the coffee drinks in my inventory and close the System Store. No use browsing through it without credits to spend.

  Instead, I pull up my character sheet to see how that level up affected me. Viewing the character sheet, I see that I now have four more stat points and a total of fifteen skill points to use. The only base difference that I can see that my new level has is that it increases my health, mana, and TP by ten points each. I already know that increasing constitution, intelligence, or wisdom will raise health, mana, or TP respectively by
ten points for every stat point invested. Since I’ve been using my Absorb ability so much, I figure I need to raise my TP pool. I know that when I play video games, I usually play as a caster and I’d like to learn some spells at some point so that I don’t have to keep picking up sticks and bashing things with them. So, I decided to invest some stat points in intelligence also. Two stat points go to wisdom, and the other two go to intelligence and see the difference in my character sheet.

  Anthony Tinoco

  Level 2

  Unspent stat points: 0

  Unspent skill points: 15

  Health 110

  Mana 160

  TP 140

  Strength8

  Dexterity8

  Constitution9

  Intelligence14

  Wisdom12

  Charisma9

  I say “Save Character Sheet,” and feel an intense pressure in my head, but it’s gone the next instant. My mind feels clear, and I’m suddenly able to connect little bits of information that I hadn’t thought of before. I realize that in addition to the boosts to mana and TP, increasing intelligence and wisdom also have real-life effects. That’s probably the reason I realized earlier today that there would be skills specifically for finding dungeons—I’d just increased my intelligence and wisdom, so I was able to see the connections.

  I’m rather curious about exactly how those two stats affect the human mind. I realize that I don’t have to guess. I can test it between now and my next level up. I pull out an old SAT prep book I have and start to flip through the pages. I chose math since I’m already pretty good at that and start to take a sample test. Already I find that the answers are coming to me a little faster than I remember them coming when I took it in high school. I remember theorems and formulas that I haven’t used in months. I also see patterns in the trigonometry questions that I remembered struggling with. By no means is the math section a breeze. I still have to write down calculations and proofs, but it seems a bit easier. When I check my answer against the test key, I get a score of 89%, which means even with those raised stats I still make mistakes.

  When I was preparing for the SATs, I wrote down how long it took me to complete each section, and when I finish this time, I realize that I’ve beaten my best time by a full ten minutes. I mean, I know that doesn’t seem like a lot but my best time was after I’d been studying for weeks straight and taking prep courses. I consider taking the other portions of the SATs but realize that I won’t likely get any more useful data form that. I can already guess that intelligence relates to information absorption and recall. Wisdom probably refers to the ability to connect that information to actual use and capacity to understand connections. It’s kind of cool. I briefly wonder if I’ve increased my IQ. Then I remember that I don’t have to wonder. I log onto our home computer and find a web page with an IQ test. I complete the test in a little over an hour and get a score of 112 on the Stanford–Binet scale. According to the results page that puts me at the low end of ‘high average intelligence.’

  Is it weird that I feel a little disappointed? I mean, high average intelligence is good, but that means that before I increased my intelligence and wisdom that I was likely just of average intelligence. I never thought that I was a genius or anything, but I’d thought of myself as smart. But then again, I’m sure everyone thinks that they’re smarter than they are. I shrug it away and make a note in the SAT book of the IQ test results and that I’m to repeat the test after I level up again to see if there’s any difference.

  As soon as I finish the note, I hear the front door open. I glance at the time on the computer and realize that I’ve been going through all this System stuff for over an hour. I bookmark the IQ test page and then close the browser and head to the dining room to say hello to my sister.

  What I see when I get to the dining room is not encouraging. My little sister Marie has already dropped her backpack in the hallway, gone into the kitchen, and is currently eating ice cream out of the container with a spoon. She sees me walk in the room and waves with one hand while the other spoons another bite of ice cream into her mouth.

  I lean against the dinner table and wave back. “Isn’t it a little early to be hitting the hard stuff?”

  She sticks her tongue out at me, and I see green from the mint-chocolate-chip ice cream. “Nope. It’s just the right time of day for it.” She frowns at me and continues, “I’ve had a bad day. That bitch Suzy is still harassing Becky and me. She keeps trying spread rumors about how the two of us jumped her with our chola gang friends.” She shakes her head and wags one finger, “But too many people saw me take her single-handed to believe that bullshit.”

  I walk up and give my sister a big hug. I feel her curl in a little as she puts her head on my shoulder. “I know it sucks right now. It never feels good when someone is making your life difficult and making fun of you. But I’m proud that you're not retaliating. It shows real maturity.”

  Marie pulls away from my hug and looks up at me, her nose crinkled up and her eyebrows drawn down. Well, that’s a guilty face if I’ve ever seen one. I ask her, “Oh, have I spoken too soon?”

  She shrugs and gives me a guilty smile. “I guess I’m not a mature fourteen-year-old. Becky is coming over in a little bit, and we are going to plan our ‘Stick it to Stacy’ campaign. We’re going to watch some old movies for inspiration. The internet recommends Mean Girls, Mean Girls the Reunion, Odd One Out, and Easy A.”

  Hmmm, I’m not sure where to go from here. I mean, yeah, I could lecture Marie about taking the high road and ignoring Stacy. However, the truth is, that girl Stacy is probably going to keep being a bully until someone makes her stop. So I take a step back and tell my sister, “Look, kid. You’re old enough to make your own decisions. I can’t officially condone what you might be planning to do, but promise me you won’t do anything to hurt her or get yourself in trouble. Mom works hard to pay for your tuition to that fancy school, and she'd be super sad if you got kicked out.”

  Marie wiggles her nose at me, sighs, and nods. “Ok. I promise not to do anything that will get me kicked out of school.”

  A blue screen pops up.

  You’ve learned the skill Guilt Trip, level 1.

  Oh, come on you stupid System. That can’t be a real thing. I mentally call out the name of the skill and another blue screen appears.

  Guilt Trip

  Level 1

  So, you’ve learned how to manipulate people with guilt? Well, you’ve joined the ranks of parents and authority figures everywhere. Don’t worry, the power to guilt doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s just another tool you have to manipulate people to do your bidding.

  Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. It is a real thing. My mom must be like level 100 in this skill.

  I tousle my sister’s hair, and she sticks out her green tongue at me but smiles afterward. She gets herself a small bowl of ice cream before heading to her bedroom.

  I get started on dinner for the three of us, since Becky is coming over. I make some simple chili beans since I know Marie and Becky can either eat them by themselves or use them for nachos or chili dogs. In a small pot, I put a few teaspoons of blended chipotle chilies with sauce, diced tomatoes that have been pulsed a few times in a small food processor, and rinsed red kidney beans. I add a couple of teaspoons of sugar to balance the heat from the chilies, some salt, and pepper to the mixture and bring it to a simmer. While that’s going, I take out our trusty skillet and on medium heat add some oil. Once that’s heated, I add in a large diced onion, some chili powder, cumin, and a little salt. Once the onion is cooked, I add some minced garlic and some ground beef. After the ground beef has browned at high heat and mixed with everything else, I add the small pot of diced tomato, chipotle, and beans to the skillet and let the whole thing simmer on low heat for fifteen minutes.

  The smell of the chili permeates the kitchen, and the food is ready in time for Becky’s arrival. I’m also pleasantly surprised to get a new skill, Cooking.

/>   The girls get bowls of chili and giggle their way back to Marie’s room to start their mean girl research. After eating a bowl of the chili beans myself, I store the rest away in the fridge and get cleaned up and ready to leave for class. Before I go, I make sure Marie knows there’s stuff for chili dogs and nachos if they get hungry later.

  The bus ride to campus is rather uneventful compared to my life-altering first day. When I think about it, it’s difficult to believe how much my life has changed in just a couple days.

  Once I’m on campus, I pull out the map and class schedule I printed up at home. This time I make sure to circle exactly where all my classes are located in advance on the map so I wouldn’t wander into any other abandoned buildings. My afternoon and evening classes aren’t that hard since it’s the first day. The afternoon class is an English course, and the evening one is Biology. I don’t have a major yet, so when I was picking out courses during registration, I decided to try out a broad spectrum of classes. I added in Anthropology as my easy A class based the comments I read about it online. Still, the day is mostly spent listening to professors reading their syllabus and waiting in line for textbooks and required reading materials. I’d planned on getting most of this stuff in digital format, but with my phone dead, I have to go with the physical copies. It costs a surprising amount of money to buy all the stuff I need for just these two classes, and I reluctantly put the expenses on my one credit card since my student loan doesn’t cover this stuff. Thankfully I don’t have to lug all these books across campus to the bus stop. I gladly use my home base key on an empty classroom door to create a one-time use portal home. As I enter my room and put down my textbooks, I think again about how cool the System is and how I’m already benefiting from it all after just two days. Lillian was right; this thing is going to change my life.