Chapter 4

  Mom, Dad and Uncle Dave were inside, talking. I was sitting on the same couch I’d been using earlier in the day, scrolling through my contacts till I found Bim, my best friend. I sat in silence, smartphone pressed against my least swollen ear, listening to it ring.

  “Yeoboseyo?”

  “Bim?”

  “Sup dude,” Bim spoke perfect English, and, according to his terrible parents, absolutely unacceptable Korean. He had a deep voice that came from being really overweight, and in the background I could hear some kind of high pitched, fast paced anime music playing. Classic Bim.

  “You ok?” I asked, cutting to the chase.

  “Broken leg,” Bim replied, not sounding too worried, “but it’s already starting to heal. Those recovery potions taste like a mix between pure sugar and battery acid. How about you?”

  “They kicked my ass Bim,” I said promptly, then began recapping the day.

  “Yours went better than mine,” Bim said over the sound of crunching chips. “I was packing all my stuff when Mi and Soo,” his biological parents, “came in to check on me. They saw the bags and figured out the plan. We were in the middle of screaming at one another, and believe me they were screaming at each other more than just at me, when out of nowhere, like three goblins bust into my room and start wailing on us with those clubs.” Bim started laughing, giggling really, uncontrollably, “It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, and I was ready to die happy, but nah,” he said, and the laughter cut off immediately, “Mi found his spine and managed to kill a goblin. I think he was going to let me and Soo get killed, would have saved him the trouble of killing her later, but I got mine off and just laid on it till it died.”

  “You suffocated it?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Beware my girth,” Bim replied, “after that, we were all just running around trying to survive. Didn’t save any lives, never found a gun- ”

  “You’ve got to get a gun Bim,” I interrupted seriously.

  “It’s America, I’m sure I’ll have an entire arsenal by the end of the weekend.”

  “How much EXP did you make?” I asked.

  “Like one?” Bim said, “the tax rate is too high Adam, humanity’s doomed. I was thinking about it, right? We’re never going to be able to earn enough EXP to level up and get stronger, but I bet those goblins are going to just keep getting stronger and faster. We’re going to have to farm goblin spawners if we want to have any chance of survival.”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “Isn’t it weird how they burst into light?”

  “It’s just like a video game,” Bim said authoritatively, “For all we know, the goblins could be hyper advanced hard light holograms, not even real creatures. Dude,” he said suddenly, “you’ve got to check on something for me. When you were saving that Ray kid, you killed a goblin.”

  “Yeah!” I said suddenly, “I mean, I killed a lot of goblins today, but yeah. It was so weird, that one didn’t turn into light after I killed it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Bim said, and I could feel intent in his voice, “that’s unusual. Is it still there?”

  “Uh,” I said, standing up off the couch and fighting a wave of vertigo that made me feel like I was spinning, “oh my God,” I said, steadying myself, “I feel like I’m spinning Bim.”

  “Stop getting hit in the head stupid,” Bim replied mercilessly, “and put me on video chat. Come on, let’s go!” I hung up on him, and started a video chat. It rang once, then I saw his face.

  “Jesus Bim,” I said, unable to recognize him at all under all the swelling.

  “Christ Adam,” Bim said, then he started heaving into laughter again, “ahahaha I’m better looking than you, yes! You’re so ugly! Ahahaha!”

  “Shut up dude,” I said, walking outside into the dark of night, turned on my phone’s flashlight, and carefully navigated the trashed street.

  “Watch your step,” Bim said, “you don’t want to break a leg. Trust me on that,” he said with a grimace. “As a side note, don’t mention that to your mom, I may have glossed over the details. You know how she worries.”

  “Oh good she was able to get ahold of you. And good call on that.”

  “Yeah, just a quick check in call before her phone died. I can’t tell you how glad I am that she still has not figured out video chat.”

  “You and me both buddy.”

  “There, there!” Bim said suddenly, “It’s still there!”

  “Isn’t that weird,” I said, walking over to where the goblin corpse was still laying on the ground. It was perfectly preserved, not a fly or insect had even attempted to chow down on it.

  “Loot it,” Bim said, a dark humor in his voice.

  “What!”

  “Rifle through its pockets, see if it’s got anything good on it,” Bim repeated, his eyes squirming with laughter.

  “Gross,” I said, then, with some hesitation, I carefully lowered myself to be near the body.

  “Come on, get handsy with it!” Bim jeered me on, “I want to see you wearing that stupid Goblin tunic!”

  “No!” I said, laughing now. One hand holding a phone, I started patting the body down. “He doesn’t have much on him.”

  “What about the radio?” Bim said, “it can’t be a normal radio.”

  “Sure,” I said, and grabbed the radio from the goblin’s waist. It immediately popped to life, startling me away.

  “Error twenty seven, despawn failure,” the voice of The System sounded flat and monotone, and suspiciously disappointed.

  “Woah!” Both Bim and I said at the same time.

  “Adam, get closer to it,” Bim ordered, and I listened.

  “Error twenty seven, despawn failure,” the voice of The System repeated, and this time, it continued, “Please initiate manual corpse disposal.”

  “We don’t know how to do that,” Bim said loudly, motioning me to bring the phone closer to the radio.

  “Manual corpse disposal,” The System said, “is initiated by pressing the side button. Error twenty seven, despawn failure.”

  “I’m going to press the button,” I said, and Bim nodded his head vigorously, giving me two thumbs up. The goblin radio, I discovered when examining it closer, had a number of buttons on it, but only one on the side. I hesitated for just a moment, then reached out and pressed the button, then jerked my hand back from what felt and sounded like the pop of a firecracker. The goblin corpse didn’t shatter into light like the others, it imploded, sucking down into a small point of light resting on the ground where the body had just been. I picked up the fleck of light and looked closely at it.

  “That’s ten EXP,” I said, then brought it close to the camera for Bim to see.

  “Wait,” Bim said, then he grabbed a yellow notepad which was covered in notes, nearly all of them about The System. “That’s the exact EXP value of a Goblin, pre-system-tax.”

  “Yeah!” I said, pocketing the EXP, “that’s awesome!”

  “That’s a good exploit,” Bim said seriously, nodding his head, “This was the one you killed with a goblin club, right?”

  “Oh shoot,” I said, looking around for the club, but it had vanished along with the goblin’s body, “yeah, that’s the one. I lost the club though.”

  “No worries dude,” Bim said, “there’ll be more. Come Monday, you and me are going to be running some experiments. All we need is a monster lure now,” he muttered to himself, “your homework this weekend is to get a GoPro. You’re still good with tools right?”

  “Bim, you’re jumping from thing to thing,” I said, “Slow down dude.”

  “Adam, we’re going to be rich and you’re telling me to slow down!”

  “Bim, we’re going to be rich and you’re not making any sense.”

  “All right, all right,” he said, taking a deep breath, “here’s what we need to do. . .”

  Saturday morning came without fanfare or announcement by The System. Mom and Dad had slept in the same room as me, and when I woke up, I could tell the Weekend Recovery Potion was working.

  “Good morning Adam,” Mom said, and I could tell she hadn’t really slept much at all. “Oh,” she said, her features scrunching up in empathetic pain, “Oh your poor face.” She seemed on the verge of tears once again.

  “No Mom, I’m actually feeling really good!” I said, giving my face a light slap. She jumped in shock, but I laughed, “No really, it doesn’t hurt much at all! I took that Recovery potion, remember?”

  “I still don’t agree with your decision to drink something made by that horrible system bitc-”

  “Language,” my Dad said on pure reflex, still half asleep.

  “I think we can trust what The System says,” I continued, “it just doesn’t have any reason to lie. Plus, this is all like a video game, and healing potions are stock standard for this kind of thing.” Mom gave me a dubious look, like I was telling her Tide Pods were actually meant to be eaten. “The point is the potion is working. I might still look bad, but I’m healing very, very fast. I bet by this time tomorrow I’ll even start to be half-way decent looking again.”

  “You’re still handsome to me,” Mom declared, and I rolled my eyes.

  “I’ve got a face only a mother could love,” I shot back, and she very, very gently, grabbed me in for a hug and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Well, I’m your mother, so there.”

  “That’s right,” Dad said, getting up from the air mattress laid out on the floor, “and we both love you. I’m starving, let’s see what Davie’s got to eat.” I sniffed the air and got the answer to his question.

  “Smells like bacon and eggs,” I said, then noticed I was pretty hungry myself. “I’m starving too, come on, let’s go.”

  We got up and left the room, making our way to the kitchen. Uncle Dave was humming to himself, and as soon as he saw us, he immediately started showing off by flipping the cooking eggs into the air and catching them with the pan. He wiggled his eyebrows at me, and I rolled my eyes.

  “Good morning Adam! Morning Mom, Morning Dad,” he said, and they rolled their eyes at him too.

  “Davie,” my Dad said, moving over to the man and catching him in an embrace. “Thank you for keeping my son safe yesterday. Thank you.”

  “Keeping him safe?” Uncle Dave asked, incredulous, “that boy saved my bacon more times than I could count, speaking of, everybody grab a plate and load up. I’m not sure how much longer the power’s going to be on, so I’m cooking everything that needs to be cooked.” It was then I noticed the gigantic platter of bacon, and the modestly smaller sized plate of eggs. There were also no less than three large containers of orange juice, the fancy expensive kind, and at that point, I realized I was hungry. Not like, ‘oh I could go for some food’, but more like ‘I could literally eat that entire platter of bacon and eggs and still have room for more.’

  “Adam!” my Mom said, surprised when I began loading up my plate with a startling amount of bacon then eggs. To my delight I saw that there had been a secret, hidden platter of hash browns behind the bacon, and grabbed a bunch of that too before I simply took an entire container of orange juice. Before she could start to scold me, I started to ravenously eat. I was dimly aware that all the adults in the room had momentarily stopped everything to watch.

  “Uncle Dave this is so good,” I said between bites, the crispy bacon was perfectly salty, the eggs were runny and seasoned, the hash browns crunchy on the outside and softer in the middle. It was a simple breakfast, true, but there was a lot of it, and even I was surprised when I looked down to see I’d cleared the entire plate.

  “Honey, we’d better dish up before Adam eats everything,” my Dad said wisely, and I let them get some food before I went in for seconds. Uncle Dave looked at the rapidly diminishing pile of food, then at his fridge, shrugged, and started cooking more.

  “I guess after a day like yesterday, shouldn’t be surprised that we’d all have an appetite.” He grabbed a piece of bacon directly from the pan, blew on it a bit, and then took a bite.

  We all ate for a while, everyone possessing an appetite nearly equal to mine. Once we’d had enough we started speaking. My Dad looked up and nodded his head, likely agreeing with some thought he’d just had. “It’s quite a mess out there, isn’t it?”

  “No question,” Uncle Dave said, nodding his head in agreement.

  “Hmm,” Dad continued, “we’ll have to do something about that. Davie, how do you feel about-”

  “No question,” Uncle Dave replied, already on the same page. He pointed a thumb at me, and Dad nodded.

  “Son,” he said, “how’d you like to help us clean up the neighborhood?”

  “Uh,” I said, not really feeling like picking up trash today. But on account of all of us nearly dying yesterday, I realized that doing just about anything with my Dad was what I wanted. “Sure. Uncle Dave, where do you keep the garbage bags?” Uncle Dave gave me a strange, outraged look.

  “Garbage bags?” he asked, and my Dad grinned.

  --

  About an hour later I was driving an enormous five yard dump truck that I wasn’t even remotely qualified to operate, with Uncle Dave in the passenger seat. Dad was driving a different piece of heavy construction equipment, a front loader with tires taller than I was.

  “Uncle Dave, I really shouldn’t be driving this, I don’t even have my license!” I yelled because it was loud in the cab of the dump truck, and Uncle Dave had hooked his phone up to the radio and was blasting ‘Everything Is Awesome’.

  “Kid, back in my day you didn’t need a CDL to drive one of these things! Hell, I got started right around your age, and look at me now! A successful housing developer in a post-apocalyptic wasteland-”

  “No, I mean I don’t even have my regular driver's license!”

  “Great time to learn then, come on Adam, hit the gas and race your dad! You wouldn’t believe how fast this modern equipment goes!” Against my better judgement, I hit the gas, and both of us were pushed back into our seats as the huge piece of equipment accelerated way faster than it had any right to. We were charging across the desert flatlands that surrounded the Desert Bloom housing development with miles to go before we made it back. When I started pulling ahead of my Dad’s front loader, he pressed his horn and held it, accelerating until he was getting ahead of us!

  “Oh, it’s on old man!” I yelled, and for the first time since I’d gotten in the driver's seat, Uncle Dave looked nervous.

  “Now Adam,” he said, but was cut off by another burst of acceleration, and me blaring the horn in response. There was a handheld trucker radio installed in every piece of heavy equipment Uncle Dave owned, and it blared to life.

  “Oh, you fight some little goblins and all of a sudden you think you can take on good old Dada, huh!” Dad’s voice was borderline manic, and I picked up the radio and shouted into it.

  “I bet I killed more of them than you! HA!”

  “You little! It’s on baby boy! WOOOHOOO!” We were going speeds that, quite frankly, we shouldn’t be. At this point, Uncle Dave had taken control of the radio from me, realized there was no way to stop this race until it ended somehow, and started talking.

  “Uh uh uh hey look! See that big rock over there? That’s the finish line, first one there wins!”

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  His words were all the motivation we needed.

  --

  I was peacefully parked at the end of the asphalt road, still in the driver's seat of the five yarder, while my dad scraped the gigantic blade of the front loader’s bucket across the road, picking up all debris, big and small. He lifted the bucket high and dropped the garbage into the back of the dump truck. The trucker radio came to life as my Dad spoke into it from the front loader.

  “Fast Hare to Slow Tortoise. Slow Tortoise, do you copy?”

  “This is Slow Tortoise,” I replied, then shook my head, “I still can’t believe you beat me in that thing.”

  “You’ve got a long way to go before you can beat me son,” he said, laughing in good fun. “The street’s clear. Head up to 12th and Scorpion Ave, park on the north side of the intersection, blocking Northbound and Southbound traffic. You got all that?”

  “No,” I said confidently, then Uncle Dave took the radio from me.

  “We’ve got it, over and out.”

  “Over and out.”

  Uncle Dave rolled down the window and shouted to the crowd of volunteers who’d come out of their houses to help. They were armed with handheld litter pickers, orange hardhats and orange safety vests, all provided by Uncle Dave. They walked along the sides of the front loader and picked up all the trash it couldn’t get at and carried out the rubble and debris from inside homes to make them more livable. I watched it all with a faint air of disbelief.

  “Why is everyone just. . . helping?” I asked, and Uncle Dave nodded his head.

  “Well Adam, that’s because we’re doing the hard part. We’ve got this big, powerful equipment here, which means this went from a big, impossible job to. . . well, to something we can get done in a day, or an afternoon. Plus,” he said, pointing to the crowd of housewives and single women who were cheering everyone on, handing out snacks and drinks, both alcoholic and non. The level of flirting between the women and the men was almost indecent, and Uncle Dave grinned at me when I blushed. “Plus,” he repeated, “helping out here makes you look like a big damn hero. When we were kids, your dad’s the one who helped me understand that if you just lead the way to do the right thing and let people see you doing it. . . well, it’s like a kind of magic.”

  There was nothing left to say after that, except the most mundane kind of conversation; directions on where and how to drive. Uncle Dave helped me navigate to the intersection my Dad had told us about, and how to position the truck so it was easiest for him to load us up. While parked, my heart leapt for joy when I saw Kayla. I was about to jump out of the truck and go flirt, when I saw who she was with. It was, and I tried to deny it for long moments, but it was undoubtedly her boyfriend. They were walking together down the street, holding hands, her head leaning against his shoulder, and she looked so, so, so happy.

  Uncle Dave, who was perceptive enough to interpret the situation without me having to say anything, gave me a sympathetic pat on the back.

  “Ah Adam,” he said, “you survived the goblins, but got murdered by a girl.”

  “Man shut up,” I said resentfully, giving stupid Dave a hard punch to the arm. He just laughed at me, and somehow, somehow, he managed to get me angry enough at him that I forgot all about the girl. We continued working, and as the crowds of people swarmed around us, Uncle Dave took the time to point out every single remotely attractive woman in the neighborhood. At least all the single ones. That was. . . well, it was fine, I guess, if embarrassing. What wasn’t fine was when Uncle Dave rolled down the window and started shouting that his ‘Nephew Adam, who was a big damn hero, is single, heartbroken, and in desperate need of a girlfriend.’

  The worst part was, girls actually responded to that to come by and check me out! I watched as a couple of them rushed over to Kayla and started openly chatting with her about me, and though I couldn’t hear exactly what they were talking about, I knew exactly what they were talking about. Kayla was all smiles and nods, pointing at me and gesticulating wildly. They left the conversation looking interested and started immediately spreading whatever information they’d gotten among themselves. Apparently, it was good if I was interpreting the appraising looks I was getting.

  “Uncle Dave, I regret ever saving your life,” I said, trying to ignore the girl gang that had congregated outside the driver’s side of the dump truck, who were giggling and analyzing me completely without my consent.

  “Why?” he asked, honestly baffled.

  “Because my face looks like a cancerous plum!” I hissed at him, trying to do my best to be enraged, without making scary faces in front of the, well, the admittedly attractive if somewhat battered looking crowd of girls checking me out.

  “What! Man, you’re dumb,” Uncle Dave said lazily, picking his nose and flicking the booger out the window. Ew. “You don’t look like a cancerous plum, you look like that guy who saved a bunch of lives yesterday and fought. You look like a big damn hero, and I’d be shocked if you can make it to the end of the weekend without some very attractive, very single young woman stealing your heart. . . or virginity.”

  “Dave!” I yelled, and he laughed at me.

  “This is Fast Hare to Hambone,” hambone was Uncle Dave’s call sign, “do you copy?”

  “I copy Fast Hare,” Uncle Dave replied.

  “Truck’s full, let’s dump. Also, why is there a crowd of teenage girls goggling at my son? Actually, Fast hare to Slow tortoise, remind me to have The Talk with you later, over and out.”

  --

  Outside of town, arranged in neat rows, was a grid of dumped garbage. Each pile was around the size of the one that had become a [Goblin Spawner], intentionally. We were parked near our creation and having lunch, bacon sandwiches with lettuce, and some soda. My dad took a bite of his sandwich and then gestured with it towards the manufactured disaster.

  “Davie, I know you explained this to me, but explain it again. Why is this a good idea?”

  “I’ll say it slower and simpler this time,” he said, grinning at Dad, “First; the last time we destroyed one of these things, it dropped 25 EXP. That’s more than I got for an entire day of killing goblins, at least after the ‘System Fee’ bulls-”

  “Language,” I said lazily, and it was endlessly amusing to me that Uncle Dave actually apologized.

  “Sorry, after the ‘deductions’ we suffer. I was talking with some of my contacts, and the phenomenon seems to be universal. So, we’ve got, what, twenty of these piles?”

  “Yeah?” Dad said.

  “That’s 500 EXP if we play our cards right. Plus, when we destroyed the [Goblin Spawner] it made all the garbage vanish. So in addition to getting a massive influx of EXP, which we desperately need, we’re also going to make all the garbage magically vanish. Poof,” he said, making a poof gesture with his hands, “gone.”

  “Davie, to be perfectly blunt, that sounds great and all, but, uh, you’ve actually got to destroy the damn things first, and from where I’m standing, with the information I have, we just don’t have the firepower to destroy that many of these [Goblin Spawners]. It took you, Adam and that Ray kid like what, thirty seconds of sustained fire to kill the last one you encountered? The goblins coming out of there are going to be higher leveled, and therefore stronger, and who knows how fast they’ll be spawning. This isn’t a good idea.” Uncle Dave sighed.

  “It’s not great, no,” Uncle Dave admitted, surprising us both, “but the problem is there’s too much garbage scattered around. No matter what we do, this stuff is eventually going to be turned against us. This way at least we can build a big dyke around the hazard and lob homemade napalm at the spawners until they all die.”

  “Oh,” Dad said, looking at the future monster spawning piles of garbage again, “you didn’t mention we’d be doing that.” I looked from Dad, to Uncle Dave, then back to Dad.

  “What?” I asked, and rather than explain, they decided to show me. The next several hours were spent moving large, large quantities of earth around. Dad dug up the ground with the backhoe attachment on his loader, then scooped the resulting pile up into Uncle Dave’s dump truck. Once he was full, they brought it over to the monster spawning area and he dumped it. They repeated this process over and over, shaping and refining the piles until what they had left was a very tall, very defensible wall of dirt. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would have found it frankly unbelievable that so much work could be accomplished in such a short amount of time.

  By the time they were finished, late morning had turned into mid afternoon. We stared at what we’d made.

  “That looks incredible!” I said, amazed at their ingenuity.

  “Kid,” Uncle Dave said, “if OSHA’s still around, and they heard we intended to put people on top of this?” he shook his head, “oh, they’d ruin me. That’s a pile of loose, barely compacted dirt. It’s just dirt too, no real rocks, no real-”

  “Davie, it’ll work for what it’s supposed to do,” Dad said. “Who’s going to be manning this thing?”

  “I’ll gather up some volunteers tonight,” Uncle Dave said, “Jesus, just the sight of this is making me ill, let’s get out of here and call it a day. I’m beat.”

  We drove back into town to find it had transformed both in the wake of our actions, and our absence. Nearly everyone had a gun, and anyone who didn’t have one was quickly given one by a neighbor. We could hear the sound of gunfire and shouting, but in a good way, rather than a mass shooting kind of way. Through unspoken agreement we parked the heavy equipment and started walking towards the commotion. The closer we got, the more the sounds untangled themselves into something comprehensible.

  “Keep your finger off that damn trigger!” an authoritative voice screamed, then, “have you lost your mind don’t you dare sweep that muzzle around I ought to-” I tuned the verbal tirade out, because at that point the second-hand embarrassment was getting to be a bit much for me. Arranged outside of town in a different part of the desert wasteland that surrounded the Desert Bloom housing development, was a hastily constructed shooting range. It seemed like half the neighborhood had shown up and were in various states of firing their weapons. It was a complete hodge-podge, both in terms of weaponry and shooters. Men, women, teens, elders; rifles, shotguns, pistols; everything was represented here, and the level of focus was unreal. I suppose that the very real and very imminent threat of the goblins at 9:00 AM System Time, Monday, was a powerful source of motivation. And if that wasn’t enough. . . well, the instructors were. Several older, clearly disabled men were prowling around the area around the shooters, screaming out corrections, praise, and even threats when they saw something particularly offensive to their trained eyes.

  “Your weapon is jammed!” I heard one of them shout, “stop pulling the trigger and unjam it!”

  “Yes sir!”

  “My name is Kevin, call me sir again and I’ll pull your-” he began issuing the most improbable series of anatomically impossible threats I’d ever heard in my life, and the boy he was instructing, who couldn’t have been much older than me, was struggling to keep from laughing. He managed to unjam his weapon, and ‘Kevin’ stood up straight. “Very good! Hey!” he screamed, rushing over to someone who was pulling the trigger but not firing, “check your safety! You don’t know where- how about the little button right by your nasty booger hooker fingers!”

  It reminded me of Full Metal Jacket in some ways, but in others, it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Most of these were people who’d never held a gun in their entire lives, let alone ever expected to use one in self-defense. I gulped when I realized that the way I described them was a perfect way to describe me.

  “Dad?” I asked, and he looked at me. “Do you mind if I join them?” his eyes widened, but he quickly schooled his features and nodded. “What do you say Davie, how about we all get some practice rounds in.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Uncle Dave agreed, a sharp glint in his eyes that was normally absent from the jolly man. A short fifteen minute trip later, and we’d returned with our weapons. I had the tactical shotgun I’d grown used to, true, but Dad and Uncle Dave had both insisted that I get familiar with all the other main categories of weapons as well. We checked in with one of the instructors, who explained the rules of the range.

  “Listen to the instructors,” he said, “bring your own ammo and weapons, and if you can spare some EXP, we’d love to be able to build up a stockpile of ammunition for the community to practice and defend themselves with.” The man spoke through a bruised, swollen face, much like mine. He noticed me looking at him and grinned savagely, “you should see the other guy,” he commented, then, “how many did you get?”

  “What?”

  “He’s asking how many goblins you killed yesterday,” my dad helpfully supplied.

  “Oh, forty-six.” The man raised an eyebrow, then marked the number down on a whiteboard hidden under the desk. “What about you?”

  “Thirty-seven,” he said, but he said it with pride. “Good job kid.”

  “Forty-five,” Uncle Dave supplied without being asked, and the number was recorded.

  “Sixty-Eight,” my Dad said, giving me a friendly smile.

  “Damn Dad,” I said, honestly impressed. After that, we were herded around the range. I fired off considerably less rounds than I thought I would, my training time was instead focused on getting a good sight on my weapon, how to hold it, what to do if something went wrong and a dozen other minor skills that were imperative to at least know about during a sustained firefight. Much to my surprise, I had a bit of natural talent for gunfighting, and found that what I was being taught both made sense, and was easy for me to apply. All the talent in the world couldn’t make up for the fact that I was still a complete beginner. I was constantly being corrected, constantly being yelled at, constantly making some kind of mistake that could get me, or someone else, killed. When the sun finally set, the instructors started cleaning up and blowing whistles. The day was over, and they didn’t want a bunch of ‘Rank: Amateurs with two days experience shooting deadly weapons in the dark.’ Fair enough, I thought while picking up spent shells with Dad and Uncle Dave. We’d spent hours at the range, and as time passed, the two of them had gotten quieter and quieter. Once we’d finished cleaning up and were walking home, Dad came over to me and gave me a quick squeeze on the shoulder.

  “Family meeting when we get home,” he said, and though I hadn’t been thinking about it, it wasn’t unexpected. I nodded my head and looked back at the setting sun, the night slowly staining the sky black. We walked along the sidewalk through the darkening neighborhood, and all around us I saw other families out and about, standing close to one another against the encroaching darkness. A few work crews were still out and about, still dressed in the orange vests and helmets given to them by Uncle Dave. They were loading crystalized goblins into the back of pickup trucks, clearing them out of houses and driving them to the garbage pit destined to be lit on fire first thing Monday morning when they woke up.

  All the lights were on, that was something I noticed. Porch lights, backyard lights, every light in every window, on. Ours wasn’t the only family meeting, it wasn’t something seen, but something that could be felt in the stillness of night, a serious current, a kind of tense quiet occasionally broken by the sound of shouting or sobbing muffled by closed doors and thick walls. I wasn’t the only one in our little group to notice, if the way Dad and Uncle Dave were exchanging glances was any indication. They exchanged the looks with me too, and I realized they weren’t looking at me like I was a kid anymore. That my childhood had been cut short by brutal necessity, regardless of how I felt about it. I gulped, walked, and kept my thoughts to myself.

  We made it to Uncle Dave’s house and entered through the garage. The crate of ammo was still there, sitting open. We all saw it and made a note of it but said nothing. Inside, Mom was on the phone, having a tense conversation. She’d been working the landline all day, calling friends and relatives, gathering information and sharing what we’d learned with everyone we knew. She looked tired, and when she saw us, she quickly cut her call short.

  “Family meeting,” Dad said, and she nodded. We made our way to the kitchen and sat down at the table. We sat in silence, waiting for Uncle Dave, who came by a few minutes later with a half-filled pot of coffee, freshly made.

  “Thank you Jesus,” Dad said, pouring himself a cup of steaming black coffee and taking a sip. “Where was this during breakfast?” Uncle Dave shrugged, and then poured each of us a small cup, before exiting the room to brew a full pot.

  “Honey, I don’t think Adam should be drinking coffee,” Mom said, “he’s still growing.”

  “Sweetheart,” Dad said, “like it or not, Adam’s a man now.” He nodded to me, and I looked to Mom, who sighed and nodded her consent. I sipped the coffee, which was bitter, hot, and tasted terrible, but I was a man now, so I pretended that I liked it.

  “It’s good,” I said, taking another drink. Uncle Dave came back, sat down and took a drink of coffee.

  “I’ve been on the phone all day,” Mom said, “and it’s pretty bad out there. The cities are. . . well, it depends on the city. There’s been a lot of looting, but people aren’t attacking one another very much, at least not stateside. Pretty much everyone is open carrying right now, and thanks to The System Store, everyone is flush with ammunition. Outside the US. . . well, it just depends on the country. I know we already guessed it, but this whole System thing is happening all over the world, not just here. It’s all [Goblins] everywhere, all of them level 1 and armed with wooden clubs. A few places got hit really hard by the [Goblin Spawners].”

  “What did the higher level [Goblins] look like?” Uncle Dave immediately asked.

  “Like all the other ones, except instead of pinewood clubs, they were some kind of harder wood and their clothes were slightly nicer. Not any tougher than the other ones. The main danger was that they nearly doubled or tripled the number of monsters they had to fight, and a few places got completely overrun.” She scowled, “I hate to say anything good about that horrible System, but if it hadn’t shut off the monsters. . . well, we can count our blessings.”

  “Well, it obviously wants us alive and killing monsters,” Dad pointed out, “so that it can siphon EXP from us. For what purpose? I have no idea, but it clearly doesn’t want to just destroy the world.”

  “This is worse in a lot of ways,” Uncle Dave said, running a hand through his hair from stress, “we’ve been enslaved, as the System was so kind to inform us. We have basically no choice but to do whatever this System wants us to do, and the work we’re doing is being massively exploited. Worse, we’ve all become some kind of debt-slaves in a system that basically guarantees that we’ll never be able to use the meager EXP we earn to achieve anything more than subsistence. A thousand EXP to reach Level 2? What’s it going to take to reach Level 3? I earned 4 exp yesterday. 4,” he repeated, “and even if I’m being generous and admitting the fact that we only had a half day, and that I’ll get more efficient at killing monsters over time, my best projected EXP gains are around 15 a day. 10 of that is going to go towards ammo, and after five days of fighting, I’m very likely going to need a recovery potion, which puts me back in the single digits for EXP gain. Then, we’ve got living costs to account for. The food’s going to run out, sooner or later. Farming is going to be a nightmare with goblins running around five days a week, so eventually we’re going to have to start buying goblin meat from the System Store and eat that.” He was starting to work himself up, then took a deep breath. He said no more.

  “I think,” I said, hesitantly, “I’ve got an idea.” Nobody stopped me, so I kept going. “What about exploits or mob farming?” Nobody said anything, but they were clearly listening. “I mean, if the whole world’s turned into a video game, then there’s got to be a way to beat the game or exploit the rules.”

  “We’re already doing that with the garbage piles outside of town,” Dad said without correction in his voice.

  “No, he’s talking about something completely different,” Uncle Dave said, “We’re basically Spawn Camping with the garbage piles. We know when and where the monsters will show up, so we can always attack them with advantage. Mob farming. . . what, like in Minecraft?” Uncle Dave asked, and I nodded my head, “That kind of Mob Farming is designed to ruthlessly exploit the mechanics of how monsters behave to cause them to kill themselves. Like a stampede of buffalo running themselves off a cliff, or. . . well, that’s the only example I can think of off the top of my head. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “Last night, Bim and I found an exploit that would work too. Yesterday I killed a goblin with a goblin club, and it didn’t despawn. Instead, it made an error, and when I pressed a button on it’s radio, it turned into ten exp. I mean, I know it would be hard, but I just know there’s a way to do that at scale. If we figure that out, it’ll solve our EXP problem, we’ll be able to buy safe zones, and it’ll fix everything.”

  “It would,” Uncle Dave said, and at this point both my parents were letting us lead the talk, “Still, something like that is simple in concept, but actually implementing it in real life would be. . . well, it’d be very, very complicated. Like housing development, you know? Simple on paper but tricky to actually execute. Even in Minecraft, a mob farm is a very large and complicated building. Not the sort of thing we could build in a day. Possibly not even in a year.”

  “But what if I got Bim to come out-” I knew my voice sounded childish, because even I heard the note of whine in it when I started talking about Bim, my best friend who got left behind during the move. My Dad gently, but firmly, cut me off.

  “Son, we are going to get Bim. I don’t know exactly when or how, but we are not leaving him there. Now, I’d love to hear more about it, and I’m sure in the long term it’s going to be a great idea, but right now we’ve got a much more important job to do. For sure, I’ll spread the word around that when we can, we should be using a goblin club to kill them. That alone is going to vastly increase how much EXP we bring in as a neighborhood. Speaking of the neighborhood, we need to get to know our neighbors, and we need to make friends, and we need to make this place a community. Nobody looted Davie’s garage, and from what I’ve seen, the amount of theft and anti-social behavior around here has been little to none. It’s important we keep everyone friendly and working together so it stays that way. Your mom, Davie, and I will be out and about tomorrow shaking hands and offering help wherever we can. Son, you mentioned something about a kid your age named Ray?” I nodded my head, not bitter at all about my silly idea being politely set aside. Mob farm, pfft, this is real life Adam, get a grip. Mom and Dad know what they’re doing, just follow their lead and you’ll be fine-

  “Adam?” Dad said, a little louder than normal.

  “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head, “I was spacing out there. Yeah, I remember Ray.”

  “See if you can track him down and get the lay of the land around here. Make some friends. We’re all going to need to watch each other’s backs, and this is how we make that happen. But for now?” he stood up and gave me a hug, “get some sleep son. We’ll see you in the morning.”

  Like someone had flipped a switch, the second my Dad gave me permission to sleep, the heavy weight of exhaustion settled in on me. I sagged, nodded, and then trudged my way to the spare room I’d been in last night. At the last moment, I realized how badly I needed a shower, and how filthy my clothes were. If I was going to be socializing tomorrow, it would help if I didn’t smell like a homeless person. Though, technically I was a homeless person. Once I’d taken care of hygiene, I crashed my leaden body onto the bed like a captain running his ship aground, and the feeling of relief was utter bliss.

  I was out like a light, and morning came again far, far too soon.