Project Alpha_Book 1

by R. A. Mejia

  “It’s going well so far. It’s a big campus with lots of people.”

  Remembering that I’m still employed here, I recall some of the events that happened this morning before hearing about the System. It’s surprisingly easy to slip back into the role of convenience store employee. “Mr. Smith, Samantha left early, I told her it was ok since we weren’t busy.”

  Mr. Smith nods, “Yes. I got her message. That was your call to make since you were in charge, Anthony. Anything else happen during your shift?”

  I tell Mr. Smith about the rich kids that came through here and how I reported them to the police when I realized they were drinking and driving. I showed him the money they left to cover the mess they made.

  Mr. Smith nods at my story. “Yes, yes. A good decision. Man, I don’t miss the days when the cars jammed the roads, and every two-bit fool could drive any way they wanted. We don’t need a lawsuit for not reporting that kind of behavior either.”

  I quickly count the money in the register and make sure it matches the night's receipts before handing the keys to the convenience store to Mr. Smith. Before I leave, I remember that I’m supposed to bring home some supplies for Marie. I grab what she needs, but when I try to pay for them but Mr. Smith waves me away saying that I did a good job with the store and that I don’t have to pay. I thank him for his generosity and head home.

  —

  I catch the autobus home and walk through our front door, shopping bag in hand, by 6:30 am. The smell of a delicious breakfast greets me as I enter the house. I make a right after the entryway and down a short hallway into the kitchen. I can hear my mom clattering around the kitchen, the sizzle of cooking food, the smell of delectably fried potatoes.

  I come up behind my mom and hug her. She’s short enough that I can rest my chin on her puffy hair. “Hey, Mom, I’m home.”

  “Be careful. I’m cooking, mijo.” She puts down the spatula and turns around to give me a quick hug back, then returns to her cooking. “Breakfast will be ready in a minute. Sit down and tell me about your first day of college.”

  I briefly consider telling her everything—the weird dream with the slime, waking up in the hospital, the headaches, the blue boxes, the strange girl that came into the store with her explanations. However, looking at her tired yet excited expression, I know that telling her about my problems will just make her worry. She has enough on her plate as it is. “Oh, everything went perfect, Mom. The campus is huge, though, and there are a lot of people that go there.”

  “Did you get lost? You know you get lost easily. I remember when you were little, you got lost in the store and you cried like a baby until the manager found you and called for me on the speakers. Then you cried all the way home.”

  Man, you get lost in a department store one or two times as a kid, and they never let you forget it. “I almost got lost, but there are these maps all over campus that show you where all the buildings are.”

  “Well, that’s good. How were the classes? Are they hard?”

  Not sure how to answer that since I didn’t make it to any of my classes yesterday, I try to be vague. “I don’t know yet. It was only the first day; they didn’t do much.”

  “Oh, well maybe they’ll teach you something today.”

  “No, Mom. Today is a different set of classes. It’ll probably be more introduction stuff.”

  She places a big plate of fried potatoes, eggs, and fried ham in front of me. “Oh? Well, at least you’ll have a good meal before you go.”

  I thank my mom and eagerly pick up my fork and start to dig into the food. Oh, those potatoes are heavenly. Crispy on the outside and moist and fluffy on the inside. Mix it with the eggs and meat and each mouthful is a journey to food paradise. My mom places a tall glass of milk with ice in it in front of me. I can’t help but think that the cold drink perfectly complements the meal.

  I hear the sound of a door opening, and a few moments later a sleepy-eyed Marie staggers down the hallway into the kitchen. My sister rubs her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown and plops down onto a chair at the kitchen table. My mom quickly puts a plate of food in front of her, and the smell wakes her enough to move her to put food in her mouth.

  I nudge Marie with my leg, and when she looks at me, I point down at the Quickie Stop Mart bag then kick the bag a little towards her. Her eyes light up in recognition of the essential feminine hygiene products within. She gives me a quick smile and mouths the word ‘thanks.’

  My mom finishes up cleaning the kitchen and doing the dishes before giving my sister and I a kiss goodbye and leaving for her day job. Once done eating, I make sure Marie has everything she’s going to need for school and head towards my room. That is, until Marie reminds me that I need to call her principal to straighten out this whole ‘fighting at school’ thing.

  It’s late enough that the principal is already at his desk when I call and the two of us have a nice chat about appropriate behavior for young ladies. I assure him that Marie will be dutifully punished for hitting that girl. However, I also make it clear that Marie was acting to defend another person. The principal for his part assures me that the other girls involved will also receive punishment.

  When I hang up the phone, I see an angry looking Marie staring at me with her hands on her hips. “What do you mean you’ll ‘dutifully punish me’? I didn’t do anything wrong! All I did was hit that smack talking tramp Suzy in her lying mouth.”

  I wave my hands at her to stem the tide of righteous teen anger coming. “Calm down, kid. I told the principal you’d be punished. I didn’t say what I’d do.” Before she can react to my statement, I start to ruffle her hair and tickle her. She isn’t prepared for my tickle attack and starts to squirm and laugh. By the time I’m done with my punishment, she’s a giggling, laughing mess.

  “There, you’ve been dutifully punished,” I tell her as I sit down at the kitchen table to catch my breath. I motion for her to sit down at the table as she gets up. “Marie, you know you have to figure out a way to deal with this girl at school without using violence, right? I mean, I get that she attacked your friend and you were right to defend her. But that isn’t going to solve your problem with her. She’s going to come after you again. Maybe not with fists but with words and rumors.”

  Marie puts her head on the table and sighs dejectedly. “I know. But what am I supposed to do?”

  “I honestly don’t know. The rules for boys are different than they are for girls. If some guy had a problem with me, we’d meet somewhere private, fight it out, and that would be that. I don’t think that’s how it works with girls though. You’ll have to figure out how to deal with this. You can choose to turn the other cheek and ignore her, or you can go on the offensive and start your own verbal attacks. Though the last choice would make you as bad a person as she is.”

  “That’s your advice?”

  I smile and shrug. “Sorry. That’s the best I have for dealing with teenage girl problems. Not ever having been one myself, I lack experience dealing with those kinds of situations.”

  Marie gets up from the table and goes back to her room. It’s amazing how she can make even her walk look sulky. I know she’ll get herself ready for school and get a ride with Becky’s mom. So, I head off to my room.

  Chapter 13

  Walking into my room, I close the door behind me and lock it to make sure I’m not disturbed while I look through the book Lillian gave me—The Idiot’s Guide to the System. Vol. 1. I change out of my work uniform and sit on the edge of my twin sized bed. I take the book out of my pants pocket and flip to the table of contents. Where to start? I guess I’ll have to learn about it all at some point, but I’m not the type of guy who reads game manuals.

  Sighing, I decide to start at the beginning with ‘What is the System?’. Reading the first chapter almost puts me to sleep. It’s a lengthy description of what Lillian already told me except that it has the full, complicated details, including footnotes. I’m surprised by the length of the text
. It has to be at least 30 pages long. When I look at the book itself, it doesn’t look that long.

  Before I fall asleep, I skip ahead to the next section, ‘Your Character sheet and You’. This one is at least a bit more manageable.

  Your Character Sheet and You

  So, you’ve finally gotten bored with the section on the System? Don’t worry, everyone does. Here’s the good stuff—your character sheet. To call it up, you just have to think or say out loud “Character Sheet” with the intent to pull yours up. The intent is the key with the System. After all, you don’t want a bunch of blue screens popping up when you say System words during your everyday speech. Go on, try it now.

  Well, this parts at least a bit more interesting than the section on the System. I do as the guide suggests and say out loud, “Character Sheet.” Just like the guide said, mine pops up.

  Anthony Tinoco

  Level 1

  Unspent stat points: 4

  Unspent skill points: 10

  Health 80

  Mana120

  TP100

  Strength8 +

  Dexterity8 +

  Constitution 7 +

  Intelligence11+

  Wisdom9 +

  Charisma9 +

  From the few RPG games I remember playing, that’s a character sheet all right. If I recall correctly, Health is my life force, and if it reaches zero I die. Mana is some kind of magical energy. Does that mean that I can cast spells? I don’t have any idea what TP is though. The words below that are my stats—The numerical representation of my physical and mental traits. I wonder how health, mana, and TP are calculated in relation to those stats. Instead of guessing, I continue to read the section of the manual.

  By now you’ve opened up your character sheet. Congratulations. You’ll be looking here often, especially as you level and get new equipment. If you haven’t already done so, remember to distribute any unspent stat points that you have. Just press the little plus sign next to the stat you want to improve. Feel free to play around with the distribution of points. It won’t save until you think or say ‘Save Character Sheet.'

  I read the next section as it explains what each stat represents. It’s all relatively straightforward and as expected. I note that TP stands for Tech Points and is the technological equivalent of mana, fueling technological-based abilities. There aren’t any examples in this section, but it does suggest that I see the Abilities section for more information.

  Instead of jumping into another section, I play around with the unspent stat points. I add a point to a stat, then another just to see if there’s any change to the health, mana, or TP count. As far as I’m able to tell, every point added to constitution adds ten points to my health. Intelligence adds ten to my mana, and wisdom adds ten to TP for every point added to it. The rest of the stats don’t seem to have any effect that I can discern right now, so I add two points to the constitution, one point to intelligence, and one point to wisdom. When I say ‘Save Character Sheet,’ I see the changes made.

  Anthony Tinoco

  Level 1

  Unspent stat points: 0

  Unspent skill points: 10

  Health 100

  Mana 130

  TP 110

  Strength8

  Dexterity8

  Constitution 9

  Intelligence12

  Wisdom10

  Charisma9

  Well, I have that character sheet stuff sorted out. I’m definitely not going to be one of those jerks that forgets to spend his stat points.

  Since I already have a few skills, I decide that I want to know more about what they are and so I skip ahead in the manual to that section.

  Skills

  Skills, skills, skills. They’re the bedrock of much of what you’ll be doing with the System. There are an almost infinite amount of skills available. You can access the list of skills by thinking or saying ‘Skills.' You can refine the list by changing the display parameters.

  Bonuses from skills come in one of two forms: Active and Passive. Some skills need to be activated before being used. A common example is the Inspect skill. It will only activate and give additional information when a person is actively inspecting something or someone. A passive skill bonus will always be on and earn a small amount experience constantly. For example, the Run skill gives a bonus to movement all the time no matter what activity the User is doing.

  The most powerful skills have prerequisites so plan accordingly. You get ten skill points every time you level that you can spend on any skill to which you have access. You can unlock a skill and get it to level one by either spending one point on that skill or by performing that skill in real life. For example, want the Read skill? You can spend one skill point to get it to level one, or you can read until you get it. However, some skills like Telekinesis can only be unlocked by spending a skill point.

  Upgrading a skill is more challenging than it seems. Practicing a skill enough will raise its level, but the higher the level, the harder and more time-consuming it is to level that way. If getting a skill to level two takes about eight hours of practice, then getting it to level three will take sixteen hours, and getting it to level four will take thirty-two hours of practice. You can also upgrade a skill by spending skill points. However, the higher the level, the more skill points are required to upgrade it. To unlock a skill and get it to level one costs one skill point. Upgrading it to level two costs two skill points. Upgrading it to level three costs three skill points. Etc.

  Well, I guess it makes sense now. I learned Inspect when I was examining something and Inventory Management when I was taking inventory of the items in the store. That means there are probably a lot of skills I can unlock just by doing regular stuff.

  I say, “Skills,” and a new screen appears. At the top of the new blue box is a User interface that has a search function and ‘sort by’ drop-down menu. The ‘sort by’ menu can be modified to organize the list in descending or ascending order by name, skill point cost, current level, or by the group. The search function has an ‘and,' ‘or,' ‘not’ options with multiple boxes so that just about any combination of parameters can be explored.

  I see why they have a search feature while scrolling through the skill list. The full list of skills seems unending. Some skills have six or seven prerequisites. Including things like stats, race, faction, and other skills. Just a brief skim through the list amazes me and makes choosing something daunting. I mean, what the heck are Ablative Natural Armor or Elysian Time Fracture Repair? I use the search function to whittle down the list. I eliminate all the skills that have prerequisites, I mean I’m just starting out. No point in looking at stuff I just can’t use yet. There are a lot of skills left, so I organize them by grouping. There are combat skills, crafting skills, academic skills, magic skills, tech skills, stealth skills, and more. At least the groupings help me get a better idea of how to view all the skills. While I’m sure I’ll need a variety of skills if I plan to try to clear a dungeon on my own, the group that intrigues me the most are the academic skills. I mean, I’m supposed to have class this afternoon. What if there’s some super skill that lets me become a genius or something?

  I see some skills that initially sound like real duds, scanning through the academic skills Reading, mathematics, writing, analyzing, …?

  However, after reading the skill descriptions, it seems like each could help me out. The bonus from reading improves the speed at which I can read. Even at level 1, I’d get a 25% bonus. The math skill points out flaws in mathematics and at higher levels will solve math problems on its own. Writing skill stimulates the part of your brain that puts words together and increases the chance of breaking through writer’s block with a mini-game. However, Analyze seems like the broadest skill in the group. It aids in breaking down problems and information and seeing connections. According to the description, it increases the effectiveness of Inspect too.

  There are way too many options to choose from right now, and I realize that pl
anning out a path to optimize my skills so that I can get advanced ones and ones with prerequisites are going to take some time and maybe a spreadsheet. I might want to ask Lillian for some advice in this area, so I don’t waste any skill points.

  However, I suddenly realize that there are some skills I know I can use if I’m going to work out my plan to become rich by independently clearing out dungeons. I use the search function to look for the keyword ‘Dungeon.' There’s a long list of results that come up, including some kinky ones, but I focus on three skills that I think will help me with my plan.

  Dungeon Scan - Allows the User to scan for dungeons within a specified radius. Higher levels increase the radius of the scan.

  Dungeon Inspect - Sub skill of Inspect. Allows Inspect to work on dungeon doors, providing information about the dungeon.