Main Statistics and Skills.

Host Customization and Status.

Class Selection.

Objectives.

Reward Allocation Currency Store.

Map.

After that, there were just three menus that were blank save for a dull orange padlock icon.

Anya sat on the bed beside Tori and the two of them studied the menus together. The amount of information in some of them was overwhelming. The Class Selection menu featured an almost endless list of jobs, professions, titles, whatever. Some of them were pretty simple to grasp: Doctor, Soldier, Explorer, and so on. She wasn’t surprised by the addition of more esoteric classes like Barbarian, Demon Summoner, Mecha Pilot, and the like. She’d come to expect such things from the menu by now, but some of the classes were just plain odd or unrecognizable. Tori snorted with laughter when they both saw a class labeled “FISTER.”

“Uh, is that what I think it is?” Tori asked.

“I’m not clicking on it,” Anya shook her head and looked at another unfamiliar class. “What the hell is a ‘Void Strider’?”

“A master of walking across the voids between dimensional planes, and the summoning, control, or manipulation of creatures and powers that originate from the negative space therein,” the AI said. It was a verbatim recitation of what the menu displayed when Anya clicked on it.

“Hey, I didn’t select this as my class, did I?” Anya asked, panicked that she had made a mistake.

“No, you’ll have to hit the confirm button in the corner there,” the AI pointed at a very obvious button in the corner of the current nested menu Anya was looking at for Void Strider.

“Before I do anything that’s going to affect me or make it so I can’t cancel a decision, I want you to tell me. Got it?” she asked. She didn’t want to accidentally get any bigger or turn into a monster or something.

“Yes ma’am!” the AI saluted.

Now that she didn’t have to worry about accidentally becoming a Void Strider or anything else, she studied the screen. There was a list of numbers at intervals of ten (up to 100) to one side, and a list of stat and skill bonuses on the other. Choosing Void Strider as her class would immediately raise her intelligence, awareness, and fortitude by fifteen points each. “Holy shit,” Anya breathed.

“What?” Tori asked and leaned forward.

“This would raise those stats by fifteen points. This,” Anya gestured at herself, “Is a nine. Wait a sec…AI, how high do stats and skills go?”

“Each can be raised to a maximum of one hundred,” the AI said.

“My brawn can go up 91 more points?” Anya asked and her voice went up an octave in surprise. She had just assumed ten was the max, given how strong she looked. Granted, she knew female body builders could get a lot bigger, but she just figured this was her at her personal (almost) maximum.

“Well, not now, since you only have 22 points to allocate to your core statistics, but hypothetically, yes,” the AI confirmed.

“Whoa,” Tori said. “Would that even be possible? I mean if this is a nine…”

“I can’t begin to imagine,” Anya shook her head. “Not to mention the other stats. Just with the points I have now I guess I could make myself into a super strong genius with amazing charisma. Not even counting my skill points or…” Anya paused and looked at all the classes available. “Whatever the hell all of this is.”

“You’d be like a superhero,” Tori said. There was no awe in her voice, however, only disbelief and a quaver of fear as she stared at the menu.

“But, c’mon,” Anya said. “Getting stronger is one thing, but some of this stuff? It’s straight up magic. It’s not real.”

“Anya, you had your whole body transformed in less time than it takes me to put my socks on. That is basically magic already. I dunno if it’s actual magic or just tech so advanced that it might as well be, but it’s real. At least, I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“True,” Anya said and flicked away from the “CLASS,” menu. Too many choices. Too much information. The next menu, “OBJECTIVES,” was much simpler. It was split into only two sections: the main “OBJECTIVES” area at the top and a narrower “SIDE OBJECTIVES” portion at the bottom. The top section was empty. The bottom section was full of one-sentence goals that she could scroll through and arrange by difficulty, alphabetically, and other metrics.

She saw that she had already completed many side-objectives, as indicated by a bright orange check mark next to them. There was one for every five levels she had gained (the most recent being level 25), and dozens upon dozens of objectives for things she had done in life well before receiving the menu system last night. There was one for losing her virginity, graduating college, winning a fight in high school, drinking five shots in less than a minute, successfully making and eating chocolate cake, learning to tie her shoes, lying to her parents, and more, more, more.

“How does it know all this?” Anya asked.

“The menu system took a scan of your brain along with your entire body the moment integration happened,” the AI piped up. “This included your memories.”

“Jesus, it knows all that?” Tori asked. “Can it read her mind?”

“It isn’t telepathic, no,” the AI said. “But it updates itself in real time by conducting regular scans and taking in information the same way you do: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.”

“I dunno if I like that,” Anya said as she continued to scroll through the side objectives. Many of them were normal, though she hadn’t completed them: give birth, get married, buy a house, work at the same job for more than ten years, and so on. Others ranged from esoteric to disturbing: sky dive naked, pilot a submarine, kill a human, control a country, try cannibalism, and others that were just as strange.

“Why are these side objectives? You have to do these?” Tori asked.

“I don’t think I have to,” Anya said. “Just that I can. I’m not going to do the really weird ones, obviously.”

“What happens if you do them? You get a check?”

“If you click on a completed objective or side-objective, you get bonus points and RAC!” the AI said and pointed at the “Graduate College” side objective. Anya tapped on it and the side objective flashed orange and disappeared, replaced by a notification that said “COMPLETED!” and then “4% PROGRESS HAS BEEN ADDED TO OVERALL LEVEL PROGRESSION! 4,000 RAC HAS BEEN ADDED TO YOUR STORE!”

Anya flicked back to the main menu and saw that the bar showing her current level had grown by a tiny fraction. She swiped back to the objectives menu and scrolled through her completed side objectives. She had a lot of things to claim. “I’ll do that later,” she said, then swiped the menu to the side again. The notification had said she had been given more of that “RAC” stuff, or menu money.

The next menu was identified as the, “REWARD ALLOCATION CURRENCY STORE.” 284,000 RAC glowed just below the title, and several sub-menus were nestled into their own tabs below that.

“Whoa,” Tori said.

“Yeah whoa,” Anya agreed.

Cosmetics, weapons, armor, food, power-ups, materials, companions, vehicles, structures, and tools were all listed as sub-menus.

Anya clicked on “FOOD” and was presented with a sprawling menu of familiar, exotic, and alien foods and drinks.

A packet of plain, dry crackers was 1 RAC while a bottle of 2008 Dom Perignon was 45. Sushi, grape juice, pizza, caviar, soda and more filled the exhaustive list. There were also grilled elephant trunks, dewdrop seltzer, roasted peacock in tangerine glaze, and even fantastical things like dragon steak and platters filled with alien meats and fruits she’d never heard of.

“So I just pick something, and the cost gets deducted from my total RAC at the top there?” Anya asked.

“You got it!” the AI said.

“Okay,” she said. “Might as well test it out, right? As an experiment.”

“Might as well,” Tori agreed.

“If I buy this pack of crackers,” Anya said and brought up the crackers priced at a single RAC, “does it disappear from a store somewhere? Am I stealing it?”

“Nope!” the AI declared. “Upon selection of a physical item, it is assembled off-site from base materials based on scans and data, and transported here instantly!”

“Assembled off-site? Like in that other galaxy?” Tori asked.

“I don’t have access to that data,” the AI said with a shrug and a furrow of its holographic brow. “But I can tell you that no actual, existing items are being removed from space somewhere. They are created from separate, base components, assembled, and transported as needed.”

“Sounds like magic to me,” Tori said.

“Incorrect, but magic sounds more fun!” the AI said.

“Well, here goes,” Anya muttered and confirmed her order.

Anya’s RAC went down to 283,999, and then there was sucking sound and a flash of orange light. A single packet of regular salted crackers in a foil wrapper appeared in front of her. It floated in the air for a moment and then plopped down onto the floor.

Anya picked it up, opened the wrapper and bit into a cracker with a crunch. She chewed it and shrugged at Tori, who also took one.

“Experiment successful,” Anya said.

“What about these other categories?” Tori gestured at the menu. “If they got weird stuff like dragon steak in the food menu, there’s probably other crazy things in the others, right?”

“Probably,” Anya said and selected the “WEAPONS,” sub-menu.

There was a katana that the menu claimed was an exact model of a legendary blade and cost 3,500 RAC. A snub-nosed revolver was 150 RAC and a big machine gun was 800 RAC. A magic wand was 1,750 RAC and a laser whip was 625. Magical, technological, and mundane weapons were all mixed together and all very affordable for her.

Anya paused in her scrolling when she saw some kind of missile appear in the menu for 150,000 RAC. It was the most expensive thing she’d seen by far. The only other thing she’d seen that had come close was some kind of rifle that shot pure bolts of energy for 25,000 RAC.

“Why the hell is one missile so expensive?” she muttered and then a chill went up her back as she read the description. Tori gasped beside her as she saw it too.

50 kiloton nuclear missile. Launching, targeting, and guidance systems included.

“Why the fuck is there a nuclear missile in here?” Anya demanded of the AI. It had been floating in lazy circles around her and Tori as they browsed, but perked up when Anya shouted at it.

“It’s a weapon,” the AI said and shrugged. “It goes in the ‘WEAPON’ sub-menu. Is it not enough?”

“It’s a nuclear-god-damned-missile!” Anya said and jabbed a finger at it. She jabbed a little too hard and pressed the “BUY” button and she and Tori both screamed.

“Don’t confirm!” Tori said.

“I know! I know!” Anya shouted and pressed “CANCEL” with a trembling hand. She then backed out of the weapons menu entirely and tapped her chest to close her menu. “Jesus Christ!”

“You almost bought a nuclear bomb,” Tori said as her voice trembled.

“Would you like a bigger one?” the AI asked. “There’s a small anti-matter bomb that will do approximately ten times the damage of that nuclear missile without the resulting fallout. There’s more too, but you can’t afford it.”

“No!” Anya said. “Why…why would some alien species give a random person the ability to just buy nuclear weapons or worse?”

“I don’t know,” the AI said. “Maybe as a defensive measure against aliens?”

“Assuming I only buy it for the purpose of launching it into space,” Anya said. “And not like, blowing up Manhattan!”

“Thank god you’re not a psychopath,” Tori said.

“No shit,” Anya agreed and glared at the AI. “What if I was, though? You said this was given to me randomly, right? What if I randomly just wanted to order a nuclear bomb and blow up a city?”

“Then you could totally do that!” the AI said and gave her a thumbs up. “I believe in you!”

“No!” Anya snapped at it. “No thumbs up! That’s not a good thing! No believing!”

“Oh,” the AI said and deflated a bit as it dropped its smile. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Anya sighed.

“These aliens are sadists or insane or…” Tori shook her head. “Maybe just so utterly alien that they have no concept of morality or consequences.”

Anya bit her lip as she thought about that. It would explain some things. She pulled up her menu and Tori winced. Anya held up her hand to calm her and left the RAC store and returned to the main stats and skills menu, where she pulled up the “PHYSICAL” skills menu.

“Look at these,” Anya said and pointed at the exhaustive list. “You’ve got torture techniques and hacky sack on the same skill list together. Zero-G combat, nose-picking, shadow puppetry, walking, Jiu Jitsu, marksmanship, it’s all just thrown together. It all costs the same too! One physical skill point raises it one level. So for the same cost, I can learn how to murder somebody with my thumb, or more effectively get boogers out of my nostril.”

“So?” Tori asked.

“So what you said makes sense! Either the aliens who sent me this are insane or they fundamentally do not understand humans. They might also be sadists, but I dunno. If they wanted to hurt me, or humans, I feel like there’d be better ways to do it than this,” Anya gestured at the menu. “Hell, if they just wanted to watch us suffer, why send us a menu for defensive purposes at all? Why not just let the aliens invade and stomp on us? Maybe they just didn’t know what to include so they included literally everything.”

Anya and Tori sat and stared at the menu in silence together for several moments.

“I think you should tell somebody,” Tori said. “Somebody who can actually do something. I’m glad you told me, but there’s not really anything I can do.”

Anya nodded. “Yeah, I know. If aliens are coming, we need all the time we can get to get ready. I guess I can show them the AI, and the menu itself. Hey AI, is anything gonna happen to me if I take you to the cops or something? Like you’re gonna self-destruct?”

“Nope! You can tell anybody!” the AI said.

“All right…still not sure if they’re gonna buy it’s aliens. They could just say you’re a hologram,,” Anya said.

“I am a hologram!” the AI replied. Anya rolled her eyes.

“What were those other skills?” Tori asked. “The weird ones. Like magic and stuff. If you got one of those, just with one point, you could prove that it’s not just a floating hologram or something.”

“I can’t access them for another two years,” Anya said. “Level 30.”

“Don’t you have all those side objectives?” Tori raised her eyebrow. “Those make your level go up. It’s only like one or two percent, but you had a ton of them.”

“Oh yeah,” Anya said and brought up her side objectives. There were hundreds she had completed. “AI can you like, auto-complete these for me? Just turn in all the side-objectives I’ve done so I don’t have to click on them individually?”

“Sure!” the AI said and saluted. “Annnnd done!”

Anya’s menu beeped and a notification appeared that said she had turned in all completed side-objectives. She now had a total of 467,320 RAC, and had risen to level 31. Another notification appeared that declared “YOU HAVE UNLOCKED ALL SKILL MENUS” and then vanished.

“You can check out the ‘OTHER’ skills now, if you want,” the AI said. Anya opened the menu and looked over the list of impossible abilities.

“What should I take?” Anya asked. Tori studied the list with her.

“Mind Control?” Tori asked.

“Definitely not. Too many ethical dilemmas,” Anya replied. “Plus it’s not like anybody can see mind control. People could just say somebody was crazy, or doing what I told them as a joke.”

“True,” Tori agreed. “Shapeshifting?”

“Gross,” Anya made a face.

“Demon summoning?”

“I’ve read enough horror stories and fantasy to know that is always a bad idea.”

“Good point,” Tori agreed. “Hey what about Arcane Sorcery?”

Anya paused and brought that skill up. It was a skill that allowed her to cast any number of useful spells, but relied on outside energy and focusing tools like amulets and staffs that she would have to purchase from the RAC store. It also sounded like it was more about borrowing magical energy used in objects and from other sources than anything inherent to the caster.

“Maybe,” Anya said. “This is just a test power, something to prove it works and I can show others. I’d rather not take one that relies on buying a bunch of other stuff too. Hey, AI?”

“Yeee-eees?” It asked and floated over to her.

“There was some kinda fire magic skill on here I saw earlier. Can’t remember the name though.”

“Was it pyromancy?” the AI asked and brought that skill up. It was similar to sorcery in that it relied heavily on calling or borrowing power from outside sources, spoken spells, rituals, and summonings to control fire. Anya shook her head.

“No, it had another name…”

“Flame dominion?”

“I think that was it,” Anya nodded as the skill appeared on her menu. Unlike sorcery or pyromancy, flame dominion was a skill that allowed her to directly control heat and fire through force of will and focus. While pyromancy and sorcery sounded like they were about directing purely external forces using external means, flame dominion sounded like it was based more on innate power.

“So flame dominion lets me control fire?” Anya asked the AI. It bobbed its head side to side.

“Sort of! It allows you control over fire, intense heat, etc. You will have a natural reservoir of energy within you that you can draw on, amplify, or replenish with heat energy around you or after resting. You require a lot of focus and endurance to maintain control, however, it isn’t reliant on external foci like wands or talismans, rituals, or summonings. It’s all you!”

“That sounds pretty damn cool,” Anya admitted. “Can I make fireballs?”

“Yes!”

“Would she be immune to fire and heat?” Tori asked.

“I only have access to the first ten levels of data until you start to put points into this skill. However, it does come with a much higher heat resistance and fire affinity at low levels, so I would guess that yes, fire would not harm you at higher levels.”

“And am I gonna know how to use it? Do I need mental points or another skill for that?”

“There will be changes made to your body and mind that allow you to use flame dominion. However, the menu classifies this skill as ‘Other’ and includes any physical or mental enhancements as separate from those categories. You only need to spend your ‘Other’ points to gain benefits in this skill.”

“And now that I’ve checked the box in the status menu, my body won’t actually change? At least outwardly?” Anya asked.

“Correct!”

“And I’m not gonna die or burn up from other changes?”

“Nope!” The AI gave her a thumbs up, then lowered it with a look of concern.

“Thumbs up for me not dying are okay,” Anya said with a little smile. The AI gave her two thumbs up in response.

“It’s not bad,” Tori said. “Summoning a flame out of nowhere is…pretty weird. Kinda hard to dismiss that as just a hologram or something. There are other powers too but….I dunno. They sound a little too weird, or like you’d need to put a lot of points in before you could actually do anything substantial.”

“Yeah,” Anya nodded. She stared at the menu and the “FLAME DOMINION” skill. She’d always liked fire spells and attacks in games and movies. They looked cool, and even basic stuff like summoning a tiny flame had practical purposes. She’d save a small fortune on her heating bills too. It also felt like a good fit with her reddish hair.

Anya studied the skill menu, the grayed out progression boxes, and the pair of arrows——up and down——on the other side of the menu.

“Here goes nothing,” Anya said. Tori put her hand on Anya’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Anya took a deep breath and pressed the up arrow once. She was asked to confirm and the change happened as soon as she did.

There was fire in the center of her chest, just below where the menu system had struck her last night. It flared outward from her heart and extended to the tip of every hair on her head and down to her toes. It wasn’t painful, like the changes that happened before, but it was an alien sensation. She felt like her insides her been submerged in a hot bath, and that she had something inside her chest, some new organ. It burned in her chest and its heat ebbed and flowed with the beats of her heart.

“Anya? Did it do anything?” Tori asked.

“Yeah, whoa this is weird,” Anya replied. She put her hand over her chest to the right of her heart and felt a second one, but far warmer than the first. She sat on her bed for several moments, taking the sensation in and deciding if she liked it or if it was too weird. She decided it would take some getting used to, but that it was mostly good. Comforting, in a way.

She and Tori looked back at the menu and the number “1” that had appeared beside “FLAME DOMINION.” One of the grayed out boxes flashed and filled with orange light.

Text beside it read:

LEVEL 1: INHERENT FLAME ATTUNEMENT AND SUN’S HEART. FEEBLE FIRE CONJURATION. FEEBLE HEAT SENSE.

“Huh,” Anya said. “What’s…”

Before she could even finish asking herself what it meant, she already knew. Her head tingled as a rush of information appeared in her thoughts, as if it had been there since her birth. She could sense Tori’s body heat beside her, the water heater in the maintenance closet below her, the dull radiance of people moving around in the apartments immediately around hers, and more.

More than any of that, she felt a well of fire inside of her. It was a source of power and light and flame that she was attached to with the same natural connections as her arms and legs. She knew what she could do with it.

Anya stared at her right hand, felt the heat of her blood, felt it warm her skin. She felt her skin touch the air and the heat she gave off.

“Anya?” Tori asked.

“Look,” Anya whispered. She snapped her fingers and a tiny, flickering flame flared to life at the tip of her nail.

“Holy shit,” Tori breathed.

Anya let out a soft chuckle as she brought her finger closer to her face.

The flame was hot, but being as close as it was to her finger, it didn’t burn. What’s more, she felt it, like an extension of her own body. She felt a pull from within her, from that bright new center, when she had snapped her fingers. It connected her to the flame at her fingertip and fed it. The flame itself was a living thing: a tiny wriggling life that danced just above her skin. She took a deep breath, as if she’d just jogged up a flight of stairs.

“What the fuck?” she said. And stared at the flame over her finger. “I’m winded?”

“Congratulations on gaining Flame Dominion!” the AI said.

Anya stared at the AI, Tori, then back at the flame, then back at the menu.

“You can use magic,” Tori said with a quiet squeal.

“I can use magic,” Anya said as a grin spread across her face. She jumped to her feet and her adrenaline swelled. So too did the flame.

“Whoa, Anya,” Tori said and pointed at the surging flame.

“I can use maaagiiiiiii——” Anya continued to yell, and was cut off as the flame exploded.