Chapter 4

...

Floor 1 – Day 2

I lay there, sprawled out on my roof, as time passed. My mind wandered, circling questions I had no way to answer. There were a lot of things I didn't understand, and it was all a bit much.

Tired... I was tired, and I hadn't slept since I'd arrived here. But I hadn't been doing much productive either. My initial burst of activity, setting out to confirm everything around my property was as I remembered, had left me exhausted.

Surely, I could have been more aggressive about the situation. I mentally prodded myself to get up, to do something, knowing full well I could try and throw myself into understanding a bit more about what was happening. The how, or the why... But instead I simply lay there, occasionally pulling up the glowing text and rereading the unchanging messages, hoping for... I wasn't even sure.

Something.

Anything.

Time passed, as I stared at the giant mountain in the distance, and I pondered my fate. Looking out at what seemed to dominate the horizon.

I was supposed to climb that.

That.

The mountain which towered into the horizon. So tall, that I couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how large it really was. Rising up out above a huge forest, probably miles and miles and miles away. How the hell was I going to even get to it, much less climb it?

[Ping]

[Attention: Access to the Status Menu has been granted]

[Method: Survive 24 hours in the Trial]

[Bonus: None]

The message sounded again, as the floating text in my mind reformed as a menu.

[Status]

Name: John

Attributes

Class: None – Skills: 0/6

Titles: None

Perks:

Strength:

10

-

[Domicile] – 1st floor

Dexterity:

10

-

Constitution:

10

-

Intelligence:

10

-

Wisdom:

10

-

Charisma:

10

-

Well then.

I stared at it for a long while, as my brain adapted to the sudden intrusion of information. It seemed to move if I focused on it, or if I moved my hands as if it were some translucent touch-screen. Scanning the grid over, I supposed these numbers were the “Attributes” that Global message had mentioned.

All 10, right on though. There didn't appear to be any variation.

10…

Was that good? I wasn’t really certain if it was, but at the very least, it seemed I was average in all respects. Which felt a little unfair, considering I was the type of person who prided themselves on exercising in their free time, and also thought of themselves as at least relatively intelligent.

But maybe that was what everyone thought?

Oof.

Humbling... Was an 11 in one really too much to ask, though? Or should I just be glad there were no 9 or 8 in the mix?

After poking and prodding at the Status Menu for a bit, and learning very little, I decided that the Trial’s system probably just started things out at 10. I wasn't certain of this, of course, but it made me feel better, and I had to guess it was reasonable to assume these numbers were relative. This was probably normal.

In the Menu, though, there were some other pages, as well. Mentally pushing the Menu around, I could sort of see them... if that makes any sense. They were on the edge of my vision, if I reached for them. Almost visible, but not quite. I couldn't quite find a way to mentally pry them free, and look at them.

The chat network, for example. I could drag that down, but all I could see was the original message I'd gotten when I first woke up, and I couldn't see much else. The other functions weren't available. Pushing on that seemed to show there were other options hidden there, but it seemed that the chat network was still locked to me, and so I couldn’t find any real method to interact with it.

It also seemed that the message I'd recieved from "Runnergunner" was correct. I couldn't use whatever communication the screens might be able to offer to reach anyone. No matter how I fumbled with the Menu, I couldn’t get it to show anything more than the original global messages, and the Status grid. Everything else was locked, and the global messages were limited to that series of posts I had seen earlier.

But I could tell there was more, so it irked me.

Fighting with the menu gave me a horrible migraine, but pushing on the screens with what could only amount to tangible mental willpower, and I could tell there had been some messages before the ones I'd seen. Or at least, I thought I could tell. Grayed out and hazy, I could see there was something just out of reach. In combination with hand motions and thinking really hard, it almost budged...

But no, I couldn't get through. It was like trying to swim through fog. Eventually, I let my arms drop, shaking my head. Messages, or maybe features, hadn’t unlocked yet. Unreachable, but I wasn’t sure of much more than that.

Good enough.

Motioning by hand was tedious, so I'd been trying to just mentally will stuff around. My arms felt tired from aimlessly swiping at a mental projection, and even though I had already found that I didn’t need to actually touch anything, I knew it was going to be hard to break myself of the habit to poke at the screens. If this was going to be important from here on in, I'd need to practice a bit without them.

I pulled the menu back, willing it to move.

This was like getting a new phone, I told myself. Just a new operating system, that was unfamiliar. I could figure all this out, make it nothing more than a reflex. Really, all I just needed to provide some intent as I stared, and the rest would move along as expected...

But man, the headache was terrible.

I gave up.

The global messages from the user "Runnergunner" and the status menu were all I had to look at, and I’d spent far too much time eyeing them. It wasn’t getting me anywhere. As I let my head lightly thump back down on my roof for a moment, looked up at the pure blue sky that seemed too clear to be real.

Perfectly blue, endlessly blue: One continuous shade of color that stretched for as far as I could see. The sun, hovering as the same position it had been when I first made my way up, was warm and comforting as ever.

Hadn't it told me that a full day had passed? The menu had said so... I wondered if the day and night cycle were different in this place.

The whole situation was rather surreal.

I had so many questions. What would it have been like, if I had chosen one of the perks that gave me another 15 points to one of my Attributes? Would I feel different?

If I was at 10 strength and had added another 15 to that, logic follows that I would have made myself more than twice as strong as I was originally. Which seemed unbelievable, but so did sitting on my roof in the middle of unfamiliar territory. So, could I have been twice as strong? Or twice as smart?

I had to assume the answer to these question was yes, but it was still difficult to imagine suddenly having such a change happen.

Sitting back up, back sore and shoulders uncomfortable from the extended period of inactivity, I carefully climbed down and shut the ladder back in my shed. My mind endlessly running into walls where my ignorance stopped me flat. I was tired, and had no clue what the hell I was supposed to do.

Dusting my hands off as the shed door was latched shut, I considered my next move.

The temperature was level enough, I decided. It seemed like maybe a seventy or so degrees Fahrenheit, so it wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold either. Obviously the air was safe, as I was still breathing. The sun didn't seem to be going anywhere. Turning back to my slow inventory of things that might be useful around the yard, I eventually returned to my house, going back through the rooms to be sure everything really did come along with me since this strange arrival.

Yet, the sun did not seem to be moving.

A few hours more, and I was yawning. Time continued to progress and as I took a quick inventory for anything amiss, the day did not change. Instead, it seemed to remain as if locked in time, settling in as a beautiful afternoon…

Apparently forever.

Before I could bring myself to rest, though, I took the shotgun and took a slow stroll. Remaining within a few hundred feet from my home, I ventured in a wide circle. Not quite close to the forest, but close enough to take note of anything unusual. From a distance, I could see the edge of the neighboring trees. Thick trunks and bark, they stood tall next to the grasslands my house had appeared in.

Tall, and silent.

They waited, standing between myself and the mountain. They stood like an endless ocean. Trees covering up any chance of true distance that I could see. I wasn’t much of a woodsman, but there was no birdsong from their branches. There were no animal tracks, or insects, or anything.

No matter how I watched or listened, all I found were trees, plants, and wind.

Silence.

The sun still didn’t move.

I found it all strangely unsettling, and I soon found myself back in the familiar comfort of my home, locking the door shut behind me. My boarded windows were covered further, blocking the light that crept through as I lay down to sleep, mind racing but body so very tired.

A sun that didn’t move was wrong. A forest without animals felt wrong. A perfect blue sky entirely without clouds... maybe that could have been normal, but in context it also felt off.

The whole situation felt off.

And to top it off: at best I only had a few months left to live.