“We don’t even know if you spoke to him. You might have just found Hermann’s card lying around. Sorry, I really don’t have the time.”
He hung up. I just sat there staring at the screen.
The phone rang again.
Mother.
I cleared my throat, trying to sound calm. “Hi, Mom.”
“Where are you?” she demanded, her voice anxious and tense.
“I’m out on busi-.”
“Kira’s dead!” she interrupted. “Phil, my boy! Kira’s been killed!” she sobbed.
“Mom?”
The news came down on me like a ton of bricks. My heart exploded in my chest. I became numb. The phone reverberated with Mom’s sobbing.
“Phil, we’re at the Municipal Hospital Three,” Dad’s toneless voice finally said. “Come now.”
He forgot to hang up. I could hear him trying to calm Mom down. I listened to his clumsy attempts to comfort her as she went on sobbing. I felt like screaming.
“Sorry, chief, change of plans,” I said to the driver. “We need to go to the hospital. My sister’s just died.”
“My condolences,” he said.
He drove me there, taking shortcuts via some back lanes and dark alleys. I closed my eyes, trying to take my loss in. I needed some time alone with it.
Then I realized I’d forgotten to give him the address.
Before I could do anything, a syringe needle pricked my neck.
I passed out.
WHEN I CAME round I couldn’t move. My half-shut eyelids let in a piercing light irradiating from an impossibly high ceiling. The top edge of my field of vision was lined with debuff icons. Intoxication, Paralysis, Dehydration, Starvation, Feebleness, Mind Suppression...
“The subject has regained consciousness,” a dull emotionless voice said.
I tried to focus but I was numb. I tried to ask where I was but my tongue didn’t obey me.
“Ilindi, remove the DoT.”
I’d definitely heard this voice before but couldn’t quite place it.
A silvery veil of mist enveloped me. Its weightless touch penetrated my every skin cell, then was promptly ejected back out, tinted with red and black.
My entire body itched like hell. I vomited violently. It was a good job I could move again: I leaned over the raised edge of my bed and puked all over the floor, disgorging some sort of slimy substance.
“Give him some water,” the same voice said.
A flask appeared in my view, its cap unscrewed.
“Drink it.”
I gulped the water down without even bothering to rinse my mouth first. It felt like such a shame wasting even a drop.
“Feeling better?”
“Can I have... some more...”
“Make him another one, Ilindi.”
Someone handed me another flask. I downed it and felt slightly better.
I tried to focus again. My vision was still blurred. I could see some vague silhouettes which appeared human... but no, one of them wasn’t. It was at least ten foot tall. I tried to ID it but couldn’t.
“Don’t bother. Your Perception is debuffed. And your Insight is too low to work with senior races.”
“I’d like to sit up,” I said.
“Please do.”
Overcoming the pain in every muscle, I gingerly sat up. Now I could see Valiadis. A girl in a turquoise evening dress next to him must have been Ilindi. Her platinum blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders.
Valiadis stood half a head below her. His shimmering black armor reminded me of a high-level rogue set used in WoW. Black smoke billowed from under its pauldrons.
The room was large and well-lit. I couldn’t locate the sources of the light: bright but not blindingly so, it seemed to be seeping from everywhere without creating shadows.
The unhuman being peered me in the eyes, processing my mind. I could feel him rummaging through my head as he sorted through my memories.
I looked aside, breaking eye contact. His intrusion into my mind stopped straight away.
“Mr. Valiadis?”
“Yes, Phil. I apologize for this intrusion. Sorry about the debuffs. This is an abduction requirement set by senior races for all new candidates.”
“Senior races? Abduction requirement? How long have I been here? What’s this place?”
“You will receive answers to your questions soon.”
Then I remembered. “My sister’s just been killed!” I leapt off the bed. “I need to go and see her!”
“We know. We’re very sorry about your loss. Ilindi, cast Tranquility on him.”
Another mist enveloped me. This time it was emerald green.
After a moment, I felt great. All my worries, even my panicky desperation — they were now gone.
Valiadis gave me a close look, making sure I wasn’t trying to escape anymore. “I’d like you to meet Khphor. He acts as the official representative of the Vaalphor civilization. Or at least that’s how it sounds to the human ear. The Vaalphors are one of the three most influential races in our Galaxy.
I shifted my gaze to the giant. My debuffed Perception didn’t allow me to see him in every detail. Still, what I could glean was more than enough.
I was staring at a massive humanoid body clad in a seamless pressurized suit of armor streaming with the shimmering charges of a force field (or whatever it was). He had two arms, two legs and a helmeted head. He also had a pair of hooves and a tail. A demon if I’d ever seen one.
“Greetings, human,” Khphor’s voice echoed through my head.
“How do you do, sir. Sorry, I can’t say it’s nice to meet you though.”
Ilindi emitted a stifled giggle.
Valiadis smiled. “It’s okay. You don’t need to pay any attention to him. Khphor is here purely as an observer. Our conversation is a necessary vetting stage for you.”
“Are you here vetting me? Why, what for?”
“Allow me to start from the beginning. The three eldest races of our Galaxy form the Droh Ragg, or the Council of Elders which adheres to the Principles of Common Good of the Commonwealth of Sentient Races. The Council of Elders never interferes with the development of the younger races but keeps an eye on them from the moment the new race leaves its first informational imprint. As soon as the new race is advanced enough to independently discover and enter the universal information field, the Council makes an official contact with it.”
“Does it really?” I asked. “Because I don’t remember anything on the news about it.”
“It hasn’t yet but it will. The human race will discover and enter the universal information field at the end of this century.”
“Why?”
“Why what? Why would it do that?”
“No. Why me? What’s that got to do with me if it hasn’t even happened yet?”
“Ilindi, will you please renew his Tranquility? And make me some water. That’s a good girl.”
He took a few swigs from the flask which the girl had conjured out of thin air, then continued. “Phil, I’m going to answer your question in a moment. Please bear with me. When the human race discovered — sorry, discovers — the universal info field, that will allow them to instantly receive any kind of information, giving them access to absolute knowledge. It will allow us to colonize the Solar System and start the terraforming of planets and bigger asteroids, adapting them for human habitation. We’ll be able to teleport between planets. Humanity will enter the heyday of its history. But by entering the universal info field, we will also expose ourselves to other civilizations. The fact that we’re not alone in the Universe will deeply traumatize humanity because our civilization will prove to be the youngest and least developed of them all. In case of an invasion, we’d be helpless against some of the most incredible alien technologies. Only there’ll be no invasion. We’ll receive a greetings message from the Commonwealth of Sentient Races, complete with their invitation to submit ourselves to their standard diagnostics procedure which is to define hum
anity’s place in our Galaxy’s hierarchy of sentient beings.”
“Not just its place,” Khphor’s voice echoed through my mind, “but also its readiness. Such diagnostics will show if humanity’s ready to integrate into the Commonwealth.”
“These diagnostics are actually a series of tests,” Valiadis continued. “And if we fail them...”
“Then we’ll annul your race,” the voice in my head said. The visuals which accompanied his words showed a much more gruesome picture, though.
“...then we’ll cease to exist,” Valiadis finished.
I stared at the visuals unfolding in my mind. Deserted, crumbling cities long reclaimed by wildlife; the beginning of a new evolution; the change of landscape as natural disasters shifted continents and created new seas, new mountains and new animal species; and finally, a new sentient race entering the stage.
Telepathy was definitely the most efficient means of communication. The five words uttered by Khphor had unfolded into an instant movie in my head, revealing millions of years of the planet’s humanless future.
“Keep going,” I didn’t recognize my own hoarse voice.
“We need to select thirty thousand of humanity’s most worthy representatives. They will participate in the tests.”
“Twenty-eight thousand five hundred and sixty-one persons,” Khphor corrected him.
“We’ll have to select them from the numbers of the candidates who pass the initial screening stage.”
“So have I passed?” I asked, unsurprised. This was so surreal that I only spoke mechanically, keeping my end of the conversation going. “Why did you choose me, anyway?”
“You haven’t passed the screening yet, no. Like all the other candidates, you’ve been selected by the Council.”
I turned to the Vaalphor giant. “By you, then?”
“The best representatives of any race, or passionaries, are not qualified,” he replied. “We’ve already had the sad experience of entering some of the contender race’s choicest thinkers and activists into our diagnostics. As a result, the race’s potential was sadly overestimated. And as further developments showed later, it had been a fatally wrong approach. The bulk of any race is not capable of ever reaching high levels of its top specimens.”
“Which is why this time the Council has picked the most average and unexceptional candidates among those who've never been able to achieve anything,” Valiadis concluded. “Starting with our time period. They didn’t want to venture earlier in time — simply because before the advent of the Internet, the human mind wasn’t yet ready to adopt the augmented reality interface. There was a high risk of its failure and consequent mental problems.”
“But how did they do that? Did they arrive from the future?”
Once again, Khphor’s voice echoed through my mind, “Time manipulation is one of the Council’s most important achievements.”
Unable to hear him, Valiadis replied in his turn, “This is still beyond our understanding, I’m afraid. I’m only a candidate like yourself, the only difference being I’ve already made the final selection.”
“So you too,” I whispered.
That made sense. No wonder his sudden rise in the 1990s had appeared to have come from nowhere. An average engineer who’d lost his job, got a divorce, then disappeared off the public radar, he’d reemerged several years later as a new financial mover and shaker.
“In fact, it took me a year,” he corrected me as if reading my thoughts.
“So what do you want me to do? And what’s gonna happen if I don’t get selected?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. You’ll be back to your drab old life, stripped of the benefits of your interface. Naturally, your memory of it will be wiped out.”
“Well, I suppose it’s better that being annuled. So what do I need to do in order to be selected?”
“You should-”
“Enough!” Khphor’s voice rustled through my mind.
Valiadis and I looked at the alien in surprise.
“I have enough data now,” he said, then turned to me. “You can go now, human.”
I looked around me. The room had no exits. “Where do you want me to go?”
“But he still has tons of-” Valiadis began, then promptly shut up — apparently, on mental orders from Khphor.
Ilindi motioned me toward the far wall behind my back. “Don’t be shy, human.”
Cautiously I rose from the bed and stepped toward the girl. I wanted to take a better look at her. I took a couple more steps, then bumped into an invisible barrier.
Had she just called me human? Did that mean she was also one of them? I squinted, searching for something inhuman in her appearance.
Then I gasped. Her large rainbow-colored gaze was tinted with contempt. Her gorgeous head of glossy hair concealed two pointy ears.
“Phil, you’d better go now,” Valiadis said. “Ilindi’s known for her temper.”
I obeyed. The Tranquility she’d cast on me had already worn off. I couldn’t wait to get out of that place and go see my parents. The bitter memory of Kira’s death filled me with renewed grief.
I walked over to the wall which resembled the scaly hide of an albino crocodile. It gaped open before me, revealing a narrow bending passage.
As soon as I stepped into it, the opening closed, pushing me forward. I had no other choice than to keep going along the meandering tunnel.
After a brief while, I sensed a movement ahead. A large blob of gelatinous goo seemed to be creeping quickly toward me.
I hurried to ID it.
Acid Jelly
Level: 7
What, just its level? No social status, nothing?
The jelly filled the tunnel from wall to wall, reaching to my waist. There was no way I could walk around it. I couldn’t leap over it, either. I might have, had I bothered to level Agility.
It was predatory.
I took a few steps back, looking for something — anything — I could use as a weapon. I ripped the shirt off my back, wrapped it around my hand and waited for the goo to approach.
It didn’t take long. The jelly sort of tensed, then leapt toward me. Don’t ask me how it did it. Instinctively I closed my eyes, then punched it with my shirt-protected hand as hard as I could.
You’ve dealt 1 pt. damage to Acid Jelly (a punch)!
The creature’s health bar hadn’t even budged. Mine, however, plummeted as the jelly enveloped me, its heavy bulk pinning me to the floor. All I could feel was the unbearable agony of acid devouring me alive.
I screamed, choking on the gelatinous acid pouring down my throat.
I struggled for breath. The scalding pain in my chest soared way past my pain threshold.
My hands gnawed the floor as I struggled to get out, all the while realizing the futility of it all. My mind was going around in circles, thinking of the strange connection between my interface, the old Panikoff and today’s convenient arrival of Valiadis.
I fainted...
... but I wasn’t dead yet.
I could hear muffled voices reaching me though my slumber,
“Khphor, please! Why would he try to escape? And why the jelly, of all things? He had no idea of the elemental-”
“...premature contact with another candidate.”
“Didn’t he mention his grandfather?”
“Acid, yes.”
“He what? With his bare hands? Can’t you screen your candidates or something?”
“...just a surprise effect.”
“... indicates the object’s low levels of-”
The Augmented Reality interface has been uninstalled!
“HERE WE ARE!” Someone gave me a shove on the shoulder.
I opened my eyes.
“Here we are, son! Wake up!”
I was back in the cab. The mustachioed driver was holding on to my shirt collar, trying to shake me awake.
“Where are we?” I muttered, completely disoriented. “What’s this place?”
“Wh
ere do you think?” the driver barked. “You wanted the Tsar’s Grill, and that’s where I’ve brought you! There it is, look!”
“The Tsar’s Grill?” I stared in the window, confused. “How much do I owe you?”
“Six hundred[9].”
I paid, then scrambled out of the car, struggling with my numb body. The cab pulled away sharply and left.
The rain had stopped. I looked down, realizing I was standing in a puddle of water. I walked over to a drier place.
My pants’ pocket vibrated. I pulled out the phone and stared at the strange number.
“Yes?” I said.
“Where did you get lost to, time traveler?” Pavel’s cheerful voice demanded. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere! The boss wants to see you! It’s a good job Daria had your number marked down!”
“Is that you, sir? Sorry, but didn’t you say I didn’t need to come?”
“I said that? When? Why?”
He must have covered the receiver with his hand as I could hear his faint, muffled voice ask someone, “Are you all freakin’ nuts? Which one of you told Panfilov not to come?”
Then his voice was back, loud and clear. “Never mind. Where are you now? You think you could get over?”
I looked at the restaurant’s flickering neon sign and the open terrace packed with loud, happy people. There was something I had to think about... but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was.
I paused. “I’m not far away. I won’t be long.”
“Please don’t,” Pavel said. “We’ll be waiting.”
The phone went dead.
With bated breath I dialed Kira’s number. The phone kept ringing. I erupted in cold sweat and promptly received a system message warning me about my heart rate exceeding safe parameters.
Just as I accepted the fact she was dead, the phone clicked.
“Phil?” Kira’s voice demanded. “Do you know what time it is? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I released a long sigh of relief. “Just missing you. How are you?”
“I’m fine now. Can you imagine, I was very nearly hit by a truck!”
“No! How did that happen?”
Restart (Level Up Book #1) LitRPG Series Page 19
