Restart_LitRPG Series

by Dan Sugralinov

  I yawned. I needed some sleep. I clicked through some of the skills without much effect, then closed the window and went back into the kitchen to get some coffee. As the kettle was boiling, I opened the next icon: the one with the globe.

  A map opened.

  It was surprisingly clear, too. No dark spots; no unavailable areas concealed in the “mist of war”. It looked rather like an aerial view taken from a satellite or something.

  A golden dot shimmered at its center. That just had to be me. I recognized my apartment block and the area around it.

  I zoomed in on the scene. Now I was looking at our courtyard from a height of about a hundred feet. I could even make out a few human figures still lounging about in the playground.

  Heh! Fancy seeing you here, guys!

  This was crazy. I could even tell precisely who they were thanks to the name tags which hovered over their heads. Yagoza, my friend Alik, and all the others: Sprat, Vasily, Fatso... Alik was marked with a green dot and all the others, with yellow ones.

  I zoomed out to see the entire city. It was flooded with hundreds of shimmering dots: red, green, orange, emerald, blue and turquoise. Some of them were bigger than the rest, others considerably smaller.

  I focused on two especially large blue dots.

  A prompt popped up,

  Mom and Dad

  Aha. So the system indeed used my brain as a starting point. I was the only person in the world who referred to my Dad as “Dad”. To all the others, he was either Oleg Igorevich Panfilov, or simply Oleg.

  Wow, just wow. How’s that for an app? Compared to this, the Marauder’s Map was child’s play. Harry Potter, eat your heart out!

  I scanned all the other dots. These weren’t just my friends and acquaintances — no, they were actually all the people I’d ever come into contact with. That amber dot over there was Lola — or should I say Dr. Shvedova — whom I’d consulted at the clinic earlier today. And one of the red ones turned out to be Kostya, my ex co-trainee at an advertising agency a few years back. He used to hate me with a vengeance; you could cut the office air with a knife.

  And that orange dot over there...

  That was Yanna.

  I zoomed in. She was at her parents’.

  Relief flooded over me. Only now had I realized how much tension, bred from jealousy and the feeling of loss, I’d suffered over the last twenty-four hours. No matter how hard I’d been trying to blank them out, these thoughts kept growing like cancer cells, multiplying and assaulting my brain with vivid pictures of Yanna’s supposed infidelity.

  I zoomed out again until the map shrank back to the size of a globe. I was now looking at a view of planet Earth from space, with me still at its center. The continents’ outlines were dimmed as it was nighttime in our hemisphere.

  I could see more dots scattered all over the planet’s surface. I discovered one of my school dates, the popular Maya Abramovich, in Australia, no less. Another dot shimmered in the South of Africa, and this one was my sixth-grade pal Pashka Pashkovsky. I was surprised I still remembered his name. We used to go to the chess class together.

  Memories flooded over me. My school friends, fellow college students, my ex co-workers... What a shame I couldn’t access any more information about them, only their names, and some of the names didn’t even say anything to me anymore. It looked like I certainly needed the Insight skill in order to do that.

  I began to experiment. I turned the virtual globe around, trying various commands. Finally, I managed to sort the dots by their Reputation with me, removing all those whose status was below Amicability.

  I kept fiddling with the globe until I could find certain locations — countries, cities or objects — by merely willing to see them. Had the real Earth been able to rotate that fast, it would have long shaken everything off its surface, trees included.

  I kept traveling across the map. London, Hollywood, the legendary Lake Baikal, the Kremlin, my primary-school love Veronica, the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, Phuket Island, the Niagara Falls, Beijing, my parents, Yanna, the President of the United States...

  Warning! The current level of your Insight skill is insufficient to access the information you’ve requested!

  Okay, so Mr. Trump was off limits for me, then. Never mind. Did that mean that once I’d leveled up Insight, I could find any person on planet Earth? Anyone at all?

  My breathing seized. The possibilities it opened were mind-boggling. I could search for missing people. I could locate terrorists. I could track down every movement of every millionaire and top politician I wanted. Ready or not, here I come, you can’t hide!

  And what if I could locate objects, as well? All the secret stashes, the hidden treasures, the Aztec gold...

  Cool down, man. Get a grip.

  I closed the map and walked out onto the balcony for a breath of fresh air.

  I stared into the night sky. Somewhere up there coursed the super powerful satellite built by whoever had created my new abilities. The satellite which could rush to any location at my slightest whim just to show it to me.

  But what if the satellite didn’t even exist? What if I’d been accessing the information from — what was it called now — the universal information field?

  I gulped in the fresh air of May, unable to get enough of it.

  Leaning against the railing, I opened my interface and clicked the icon with the exclamation mark.

  Just as I expected, it was a quest list. But contrary to my expectations, it wasn’t empty.

  Tasks available:

  - make up with Yanna and move back in with her;

  - master the augmented reality control interface;

  - work out how to level up skills and other stats and come up with a leveling strategy;

  - find a stable job;

  - check emails;

  - check the freelance sites for any new jobs and apply for them;

  - call parents and ask if they need anything;

  - update the blog;

  - apologize to clanmates for my silence;

  - buy groceries;

  - give Boris a brush

  They had to be kidding me. These were all snippets of various to-do lists which I’d occasionally made on either my phone or computer. Nothing was clickable. I couldn’t open the tasks to read their descriptions or see the rewards.

  Then again, what kinds of rewards did I expect? Quest name: Find a stable job. Reward: A regular paycheck.

  Yeah right. Quest name: Update the blog. Reward: A new blog post.

  How stupid was that?

  Having said that... admittedly, it was quite convenient. This was every time-management freak’s dream: an automated logging in and prioritizing system.

  Wait a sec. What was that now?

  The window I was looking at was entitled Tasks available. I hadn’t even noticed that it indeed had another empty tab, marked Quests.

  And? How was I supposed to get them? Was I supposed to walk around town looking for any quest givers?

  Never mind. That could wait. I’d deal with it some other time.

  The only remaining icon was the one with the question mark. I had a funny feeling this was some kind of Wiki.

  I was right.

  Dawn was breaking.

  It didn’t look as if I was going to get any sleep tonight.

  Chapter Nine. The Crazier the Explanation, the Closer the Truth

  “You aren’t a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes.”

  John Wooden

  EVERY RPG PLAYER is used to the conventions of online games. If you take such a basic thing as a health bar which is a prerequisite in most of them, it allows players to always know their own health levels. Quite often they might also know those of certain other players, too. This is so normal that a player takes it for granted. Logical, really: if your char’s DPS is a meager couple of thousand, you’d think twice before attacking a monster whose hp is measured in millions.

  Now let’s imagine
that this characteristic becomes available IRL. Just think how many deaths from terminal diseases that could prevent. Think of a person who’s going happily about his or her life, considering themselves perfectly healthy while their health numbers are slowly dwindling... and once they see that, they go to the doctor for a check. And indeed, this turns out to be the early stages of cancer which are perfectly treatable and have a very favorable prognosis. How’s that for a good life?

  This also means that any magicless level-1 newb in possession of a non-dimensional inventory, a built-in map and a number of status bars could automatically become the next Forbes sensation in the real world. All he’d have to do was open a medical diagnostics center. And even if medicine wasn’t his vocation, he could always use his inventory to make a living pinching vodka in supermarkets. The possibilities were legion.

  Those were the kinds of ideas I was contemplating while studying my interface.

  The built-in Wiki had given me answers to quite a few questions. I still didn’t understand what had prevented the game’s mysterious creators from uploading all the data directly to my head. That could have been a simple solution for someone that powerful. Then again, it could have been technically (or biologically?) impossible. Probably, the information had to be acquired organically, via normal channels such as eyesight and hearing.

  The tab contained a standard brief menu,

  - About the program

  - Wiki

  - Settings

  - Available updates

  - Technical support

  I can’t even tell you how relieved I felt staring at these lines which looked so familiar to me from the countless other pieces of software I’d used before. Even though the first three entries were rather nondescript, the last two spoke for themselves: I’d somehow ended up with a computer program installed in my brain. Which meant that someone must have built it.

  Do you know what I did first thing? Checked the available updates, of course.

  Impossible to establish connection with the updates server

  It might be unavailable

  Check your universal information field connection settings

  The same thing happened when I tried to contact Support.

  Ignoring the Wiki and Settings buttons, I opened About the Program.

  My jaw dropped to the floor.

  Augmented Reality!7.2 Home Edition

  Copyright © First Martian Company, Ltd. 2101-2118

  All rights reserved

  Registered owner: Philip Panfilov

  S/N C4R-7702D-2102770

  One-year single user license

  Account type: Premium

  Activation date: 05.16.2018 09:00

  Expiration date: 05.16.2019 08:59

  I don’t know how long I spent just sitting there staring at the copyright line.

  When I’d been a kid, I’d read my fair share of time travel books where a humble student like myself somehow ended up in the future. How many times had I wished it had been me! I’d have loved to have seen our planet’s future and hopefully even travel to Mars. At the time, I’d have given anything for a peek at the awesome world of the future.

  As I grew up, I’d switched to dystopias and post apoc. Add to this all the zombie apocalypse blockbusters and my infatuation with Fallout games, and you’ll understand why I wasn’t so eager to see the future anymore. Still, even then I wouldn’t have said no to Gray’s Sports Almanac 2000-2050 or some such artifact.

  And now it looked like my pipe dream had finally come true. I’d just received a big tangible kick in the butt compliments of the twenty-second century.

  I crawled back in bed and lay there buried under the sheets like a snail trying to retreat into its shell. The super ability freebie I’d just received weighed heavy on me. It felt very much like stumbling across a briefcase containing a million bucks in a dark alley. On one hand, it made you deliriously happy; on the other, a find like that bode nothing good. No one was stupid enough to leave a million bucks in a dark alley which meant someone was already looking for it.

  The expiration date did nothing to improve my plummeting mood, either. What was going to happen to me and my brain once the license expired? Would they just unplug me? Or offer an extension? In which case, how did they expect me to pay?

  If, at some later date, I decided to write a book describing these events, I would have to omit this moment of weakness entirely. I’d begin the book with me working hard. I’d sign up for all kinds of courses and classes and start leveling everything from archery to cooking to online marketing.

  Reality wasn’t as simple as that.

  Unable to sleep, I stayed in bed till midday making all kinds of plans, then envisioning their sinister consequences. This fabulous gift from the future definitely came with strings attached. As a result, I received two mutually exclusive debuffs: Insomnia (duration: 12 hrs.) and Lack of Sleep. Between themselves, they’d decimated my Vigor, Satisfaction, Perception, Intellect, Agility and all the other stats for good measure.

  Whatever. I didn’t care anymore. All I wanted to do was continue researching this game system.

  I actually discovered that all that eye-rolling wasn’t really necessary. I could very easily control the interface by sending mental commands.

  I opened Settings.

  It allowed me to set up my system message preferences, play with colors and the interface layout by moving around bars and buttons, add a clock and a mini map, set up an alarm and change the task logging parameters. I could also enable the auto accept quest option (whatever that was supposed to mean), and activate some thingy which blasted an alarm whenever a certain person came within direct line of sight. Etc., etc.

  I could deal with all of that later. Now I had the best course of this digital feast staring me in the face:

  Wiki.

  Someone else might have opened it first, ignoring all the other tabs. It’s just like kindergarten kids who eat their dessert first, then move to the more boring dishes. Me, I’d always left the dessert for last. It was the only thing that could motivate me to finish my carrots and gulp down the sickening milk soup which Russian nutrition authorities believed beneficial for children’s growing bodies.

  The Wiki turned out to be very helpful. It was a proper virtual assistant: the moment I thought of something it offered me a page with answers, then read its contents to me out loud. Eventually, that became a problem because I kept thinking of new things as I read, which prompted an avalanche of new windows overlapping each other. Every time I thought of something, my virtual assistant would stop mid-word and switch to my new inquiry, which in the end became admittedly chaotic.

  At first, the assistant’s voice was devoid of emotion and even gender: it was too high for a man and too low for a woman. It spoke Russian with just a hint of an accent. Not that I paid any attention to it: I was too busy learning how stats were calculated.

  They actually turned out to be quite simple. I’d been right: the system adapted to the user’s understanding. Had I been some clueless newb without any gaming experience I might have received the following system message,

  Congratulations! Even though you’re not that strong (2), you’re very smart (14) and have enviable intuition (16). You’re quite observant but unfortunately, not too enduring (4). To make up for it, you’re agile and supple (11). And you have tons of luck (15)!

  Mind you, this was only my conjecture. Numbers would be no use to a clueless newb. He or she wouldn’t know what to do with them.

  One thing I’d managed to work out was that the stats numbers were in keeping with some average values — probably, shared by all human beings. How the mysterious game creators accessed those numbers was a different question entirely. Most likely, they extracted them from that universal information field they’d already mentioned. An average human being’s stats seemed to hover around level 10.

  In any case, what exactly did the system mean by Strength, Perception or Agility? How were they supposed to work an
d what were they supposed to affect?

  Strength stood for a user’s brute physical force. Using weightlifters’ language, it was the number of weights a person could lift using any given muscle group. The system summed up the numbers of all human beings on planet Earth in order to work out an average, which was then divided by 10 to calculate the value of one point.

  Which meant I was 40% weaker than an average Terran. Sigh. The good news was, Strength was one of the easiest stats for a newb to level thanks to the so-called “beginner’s effect”.

  Agility, according to Wiki, was “the ability to learn complex coordinated movements and use these acquired skills continuously in constantly changing environments”. Unlike Strength, it was calculated using some arcane chart of complex movements and their performance times.

  I had a funny feeling that the chart listed cartwheels and leg splits which I’d never mastered at school. Otherwise, why would I only have 4 pt. Agility? Luckily, it too could be leveled up with various exercises and gym practice.

  As for Intellect, it wasn’t as simple as one’s IQ reading. In fact, the game had its own IQ test which also calculated the person’s creativity and their ability to think out of the box. There were other contributing factors, too. Like Erudition which was calculated as the percentage of the user’s knowledge of the planet’s entire information database. Or the ability to generate new knowledge which figured heavily in the IQ calculation formula. There were also Life Experience, Problem Solving and other such factors.

  I indeed proved to have high Intellect numbers. Finally something I could be proud of. I could level it up even higher by studying, through learning the existing knowledge and generating new data — for instance, via my writing.

  Now, Stamina. Here the Wiki flooded me with data about my lung volume, respiratory metabolism and ventilation rates. I stared at columns of digits depicting my CO2 rates and metabolic heat production, trying to come up with questions which could explain it in layman’s language. Finally, I worked out that all those numbers could be improved upon by performing extended periods of certain types of physical activity such as jogging, swimming, uphill walking, jumping, making love, or pull-ups.