Chapter 3

  I don’t know why I was surprised when I woke up. But when my eyes opened, all I could feel, aside from pain everywhere, was an intense sense of incredulity. I looked around and saw that I was in Uncle Dave’s garage. He was seated at his HAM radio, hunched over the microphone with headphones on, rapidly writing into a paper notepad, before he started speaking.

  “Make sure everybody knows,” he said, “and we’ve already got a map of known System Terminals in the works. My nephew just woke up, over and out.” He took his headset off and turned in his swivel chair to face me. “Adam, thank God. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m alive,” I said, “how about you? Who were you talking too?

  “Oh, just a bunch of friends and contacts I’ve made over the years on the HAM. We’re networking and spreading information.”

  “Right, right. You seem, uh, tense.”

  “Well,” he said with a wan smile, “it’s been an extremely. . . it’s been something else. It’s not every day you accidentally cause the end of the world, you know?”

  “Uncle Dave, I’m not going to tell anyone about that,” I said, thinking he was worried I would tell people.

  “Ha,” he said softly, “I already reported that to the FCC. Turns out, I’m not the only one claiming to be responsible for this. I’m not going to hide from what I did Adam. I’m not a child, and if there are consequences, I’ll face them. I deserve to face them,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. Before I could argue my disagreement with his feelings, he clapped his hands loudly and somehow dispelled the bad emotions in the air. “So! Good news, we discovered what System Terminals were while you were asleep. The System had initiated a ‘Global Easter Egg’ hunt to discover what they were, which we solved about five seconds after the announcement.”

  “What are they?” I asked, because Uncle Dave clearly wanted me to ask.

  “They’re this, obviously,” he said, gesturing to his large HAM radio setup. “Well, not just HAM radios. Any kind of two way broadcasting equipment of sufficient strength can be used as a System Terminal. Speaking of,” he said, his voice taking on an oddly, suspiciously cheerful tone, “Adam! Come report to the nearest System Terminal to receive your first EXP Paycheck!”

  “Are you doing the System Lady voice?” I asked, face scrunched in disgust. In response, Uncle Dave kept his ridiculously cheery expression pasted on his face. “Ok, God just stop making that face already, I’ll go to the System Terminal.” If anything, his face got even more impossibly cheery, “I’m going!” I shouted at him, practically running over to the ‘System Terminal’. A blue window appeared in the air and I started to read.

  “What a scam!” I shouted, my eyes bulging in outrage. I pulled out my phone and did some quick calculations. “That’s like a 98% tax rate!”

  “You think it’s bad for you?” Uncle Dave said, shaking his head and grinning from pure schadenfreude, “The last time I saw a paycheck was thirty years ago, when I quit my job and swore to be self-employed or die trying. This is just insulting,” he said, shaking his head.

  “How did we even get into debt! This is complete-” I started to rant, but Uncle Dave cut me off.

  “You need to call your parents when you get a chance,” he said, and I forgot my outrage immediately, “They’re alive, but stranded in Phoenix, for the moment. As for your question,” he continued, “the planetary debt was incurred when The System installed itself without our consent, and the personal debt came from when the level system was installed in us against our will.”

  “That’s not right,” I said, scowling at the powered down ‘System Terminal’. Uncle Dave shrugged.

  “It is what it is,” he said, standing up and looking outside. The sun was still out, and he stood up and stretched without wincing. My eyes boggled when I saw the state of him, the ragged red bites, the bruises, the-

  “Ow!” I said aloud, eyes still wide and wincing in pure sympathetic pain. He rolled his eyes at me.

  “Wait till you look in a mirror kid, your mother’s going to kill me when she sees you. Speaking of, me and some of the other adults,” he stressed, preemptively excluding me, “are headed to the city tonight to bring people home. Oh!” he said, slapping his forehead, “Adam, I hate to tell you this, but goblins burned your guys’s house down. Me casa es su casa,” he said somewhat awkwardly, “so feel free to raid the fridge and touch all my belongings without worry.” He pointed at the ‘System Terminal’. “And feel free to use this thing as much as you want. I’ve kept it a, well not a secret, but the neighborhood is using the cell tower just outside of town as their System Terminal. You can use that one too, if you want, but there’s a line, and everybody is going to be reading your private information over your shoulder. Your choice.” He walked over to give me a very light, side arm hug, on account of our injuries, then left me alone in the garage.

  I stuck my hand in my pocket and felt my phone, then decided not to call my parents. Not yet. Instead, I took command of Uncle Dave’s swivel chair and rolled myself towards the System Terminal/HAM radio. The same status window reappeared in front of me, ending in the same question asking if I’d like to spend my EXP towards my next level up. Having reviewed my pathetic paycheck for a second time, my outrage was completely refreshed.

  “No, I do not want to spend my EXP on leveling up,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “At least it’s simple,” I grumbled, “Let’s see the ‘System Store’.”

  Welcome to The System Store! Our stock is currently extremely limited due to the catastrophically low levels of banked experience in The System at the moment. Items carried will improve over time.

  “No,” I said, then decided not to make a sarcastic comment about there not being a fee for accessing the store, just in case The System was listening. With a sigh, I pulled out the 25 EXP I’d gotten from the [Goblin Spawner]. With a thought, the glowing square vanished.

  I immediately purchased an Ammo Crate for 10 EXP, which appeared next to me in a flash of blue light. It was a decently large box, and contained hundreds of shells for my tactical shotgun in white boxes. The boxes helpfully had the image of the kind of ammo inside them, which was good. I immediately sat down on the couch and spent the next fifteen minutes or so trying and mostly succeeding at loading up some magazines for the gun, a helpful YouTube tutorial video playing on a loop in front of me. Then, once all my various aches and pains could be ignored no longer, I redeemed my Weekend Recovery Potion. If I understood the potion description right, I would be fully healed by Monday night, and mostly healed by Monday morning.

  It appeared next to me in another flash of blue light, and had the appearance of a tall boy. Like, a tall aluminum can emblazoned with an overly enthusiastic logo that read ‘TGIF! Weekend Recovery Potion! (Limit 1 per week)’. Without thinking too hard about it, I pulled the tab, listened to the hiss of released carbonation, and chugged it.

  I, well. . . I didn’t feel instantly better, but the Recovery Potion had a strong, sugary, cherry flavor, like liquified candy. “Uuuhh,” I said, the overpowering sweetness, along with the foam of the carbonation, lingering like the heat from a powerful hot sauce, and just as unpleasant. I started scraping my tongue with my teeth and went inside Uncle Dave’s house to find something to gargle. Soon, I was running, the sharp heady flavor of sugar continually amplifying itself. I found myself in the kitchen and turned on the faucet, swishing the water around my mouth, which was somewhat helpful. “Well that was horrible. Like mountain dew made cough syrup.” I said only to myself, wetness dripping from my mouth. I cleaned myself up, then in the silence between moments, I saw once again my own memories of the day, vivid and potent.

  I splashed my face and left the house to get some fresh air. The sun was setting and still shedding light on the aftermath of violence and bloodshed. Upturned cars and smashed windows, signs of fires recently extinguished, mailboxes knocked over and. . . and people wandering around with shocked, uncomprehending expressions on their faces. Everyone was injured, every single person sported massive bruises across their bodies, always at least one on the face. I saw broken noses and arms in slings, people hopping along with crutches and. . . With some hesitation, I pulled out my phone and turned on the front facing camera so I could get a better look at myself.

  “Oh,” I said, unable to even recognize my own face. Denial had kept me strong, but now my hand slowly lifted as if mesmerized and began to touch the taunt, swollen, purple thing that had once been my face. It hurt so bad, how had I not realized how much pain I was in?

  I didn’t want to be outside, I didn’t want people to see me like this. I went into Uncle Dave’s house and shut the doors behind me. It was as if the scales had been lifted from my eyes, because now I could see how trashed Uncle Dave’s house was. So much of it was smashed up, clearly the work of goblins, some of whom were in crystalized stasis in the living room. I scowled at them, then dragged a couch over so I could use their crouched, fetal position, crystalized bodies as a footrest.

  I cursed at them for a while, insulting them in all the ways I knew how, then pulled out my phone and called my Mom. I’d have called Dad, but he was just going to hand the phone to her anyways.

  “Son?” I heard my Dad’s voice on the other end.

  “Yeah, I’m ok,” I said, instantly sagging into the couch, stress momentarily forgotten.

  “Thank you God,” he whispered, “Son, I’m so glad you’re ok, we’ll talk when I get home. I’m giving the phone to your mother, I love you.”

  “Love you too Dad,” I said, rolling my eyes and wincing from the pain of it.

  “Adam?” my Mom’s voice was haggard, on the verge of panic.

  “Hi Mom,” I said, “I’m OK,” I emphasized, and I could practically feel the relief on the other end.

  “Oh thank God, oh thank you God thank you thank you,” she continued on like this for a little while, but I had to interrupt her.

  “Mom?” I asked, and she cut herself off immediately

  “Yes Adam,” she said, ready for anything.

  “Mom,” I gulped, “I had to. . . fight.” There was dead silence, but I knew she was still there. “I,” oh I felt so weak, so pathetic that I had to confess to my Mommy like a child, “I used a gun and I killed.”

  “I see. Tell me what happened.”

  What followed, I would never tell a soul about. Nobody needed to know.

  “I was at Uncle Dave’s place and he,” I was already having trouble talking, “the radio started, and then this goblin came out of his house and tried to kill me. It hit me across the face Mom, and then I started hitting it, and then it died. Then there were more,” I was crying now, and ashamed of myself. For crying? For killing? For everything, “there were goblins everywhere and I grabbed a big wrench and I killed more of them, then I met this kid Ray and killed a bunch of goblins attacking him, but then. . . oh,” I shuddered at the memory, and my mother gasped when I told her about the dogpile, about being buried under those horrible things.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, but I kept talking.

  “Then we got guns and just killed and killed all day. We saved a bunch of people Mom, we saved their lives, but then we got in trouble and we got saved too,” my story was devolving, my emotions muddling everything into incoherency, “then Frank got hit by a car and he was dying and there were goblins everywhere and he told us to run and leave him, but I couldn’t leave him to die so I ran at the goblins and. . . and I was going to die,” I finally admitted, the terror of it flooding out of me. For a while, my world consisted of my own sobbing and the sound of my mother comforting me over the phone.

  “Mom I want you to come home!” I begged, my own weakness offending me, but I didn’t care. Who cared what anyone thought of me, I’d almost died a dozen times today and I was scared and-

  “Adam,” she said, her voice wavering with emotion and conviction, “You did the right thing today.” Her words stopped me dead. “I’m so proud of you. No mother would ever want this for her child, but when the time comes to fight, I want you to fight with everything you have. When the time comes to kill those monsters again, I want you to kill them. I swear to God we are on our way home right now honey, just stay there and stay on the phone.” Her words lifted a weight from my heart, a weight I hadn’t even known was there.

  “Ok,” I said, no longer crying as much, a relieved smile on my face. I sat on the couch with my phone on speaker mode, and we just talked. I gave her a proper explanation of what had happened, starting with Uncle Dave accidentally causing all this, and ending with passing out on the grass and then waking up here, in the garage. During the story, her and Dad had been found by Uncle Dave and were on their way home. “Oh,” I said, having mostly calmed down now, “Uncle Dave said our house burned down.” I heard my Mom swear, then the muffled sound of my Dad saying ‘Language’, which made me laugh.

  “I’m sorry sweetheart,” she said, then her voice was quieter like she’d moved the phone away from her face, “Adam said goblins burned our house down.” I heard my father start cursing up a storm, “Language honey,” my mom said, then he calmed himself down. “Well, we’ll just have to sleep at Uncle Dave’s house until we can find a new place to live,” she said, and Adam could practically see her nodding her head to agree with herself. I could hear as if from some distance away, Uncle Dave swearing and then apologizing.

  “Oh God I’m so sorry, it slipped my mind through all the chaos. Yes, please, both of you, all of you, come stay at my place. I’ve got like three extra bedrooms I’ve been using for junk storage.”

  “Thank you Dave,” my mom said, then, “Adam my phone’s about to die, and we’re just five minutes away. We’ll see you soon, ok?”

  “Ok,” I said, “I’ll be waiting outside.”

  “Alright. Adam, have you heard from Bim?”

  “No, I’m going to text him after we hang up.”

  “Good, I’ll try to call before my phone dies. I love you.”

  “Love you too Mom. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  The line went dead, and I saw that my phone was also almost out of battery. I sent a quick text to Bim. ‘Phone about to die, you alive?’ I anxiously waited for a response. ‘Yeah, call me later.’

  I sighed and pocketed my phone, then painfully got up from my surprisingly comfortable couch stasis goblin combo, and practically ran outside. I was bouncing on the balls of my feet, looking up the street one way then the other, trying to spot where my family would come from. Time passed, and I started to get nervous. Had something happened to them? I felt a flood of relief when I saw Uncle Dave’s black Suburban carefully navigate the trashed roadway. The moment he parked, my parents burst out the back seats and ran over to me, crushing me between both of their hugs. My mom was sobbing, looking at my injuries and then sobbing harder, caught between wanting to hug me harder and not wanting to hurt me.

  My dad looked at me carefully, with steady eyes, taking in all the details. I was nervous under his inspection, waiting for his judgement. He nodded his head and brought me in for a strong, powerful embrace.

  “I’m proud of you,” he whispered, keeping his face carefully out of sight so I couldn’t see his tears. “I’m so, so very proud.”

  “I love you dad,” I said, squeezing him tighter.

  “I love you too son,” he said, and for the first time since the world had changed, everything felt right. It felt like everything was going to be OK.