After what seemed like an eternity, Annie finally returned and with her came a few other people. Some of them had minor injuries, but, by and large, everyone seemed to be in decent shape.

In fact, most of them looked somehow more vibrant than I had previously seen them – they had a visible bounce to their step as if they had too much suppressed energy that needed release.

Mike, one of the local guys that regularly frequented the gym, always had seemed a bit lethargic as if exhausted from his frequent workouts or just way too laid-back. But now he almost exuded energy, and his impressive biceps danced up and down his arm.

“What happened to you, Mike?” I asked. “Did you quaff a few energy drinks? You look rather… energetic!”

Mike just shrugged and said: “Beats me. I was working out when suddenly, things were shaking. Next thing I knew, I was in this weird room and saw a list of values and such. No idea what that even meant. Almost looked like those stupid D&D games my friends are playing, you know?”

I nodded encouragingly.

“Anyway,” Mike continued after hesitating briefly, “at the end, this voice said that I had a physical focus and that they were giving me a green core that would support that. And then I’m back in the gym, ass on the floor. And you know what? I had been exhausted before – I had just done like five sets of twenty full power reps on each machine. But once I got off my butt, I felt like I could do another ten sets on each machine, no problem!”

“Mike! Quit smoking weed,” a slightly older guy said in a rather judgmental voice. “What voice are you talking about? Or are you claiming that it was like the voice of God or the angels?”

“Shut up, Bruce,” Mike said, somewhat defensively. “I didn’t smoke no weed. You know me, I wouldn’t do that, right?”

He looked imploringly at the others.

“I believe you, Mike,” one of the women in the group chipped in. “In fact, I had a somewhat similar experience, except that I got a white core instead of green. Since then, I have felt more energetic too. I feel like I could run the mile in under four minutes!”

Bruce scoffed. “Faster than the world record? Right.”

“Bruce, why don’t you shov-“

“Guys, calm down!” Annie interrupted the argument before it could get out of hand.

“I’m not the problem,” Mike mumbled. “He is just a sanctimon-“

“Mike, stop it!” Annie said more forcefully this time. “And you as well, Bruce. ”

“Who are you?” Bruce asked with a somewhat annoyed expression on his face, turning toward Annie. “Did anyone make you the leader? You aren’t even from around here, are you? And you are a woman!”

“Good observation, Bruce. I’m indeed a woman, well done,” Annie responded with a deadpan face. “What gave it away?”

The rest of the group sniggered at the expense of Bruce, who didn’t take it kindly. With a red face, he turned around and stomped away. And no one looked terribly upset about it either.

That is what I loved about Annie. In case, I had not mentioned it before. She was just a tough, no-nonsense lady. Despite having been thrust into a situation that was entirely out of her comfort zone, she had already taken charge of things and got rid of a troublemaker without any real fighting.

“So what about the rest of you?” Annie asked. “Did anyone else have a similar experience?”

One after another, the other people shared their experience – and they were eerily similar, apart from people getting different cores.

The more I listened to the experiences of the other people, the more unhappy and jealous I got. It was just amazing to see how Bobby could conjure a small flame on top of his hand, and Betsy could create some water out of nowhere to extinguish it. Paul was able to create a little spark of electricity, Mike was stronger, and Amy was faster. And the list just went on.

“This is such bullshit,” I grumbled to myself, turning my head away. I even got some tears of frustration in my eyes from feeling even more impotent than usual. If only I had picked some different core…

And then it suddenly struck me how quiet it was.

Sure, people were talking, and there was the wailing of some other people in the distance - according to Annie all children and old people were gone, and clearly, they were missed dearly. I suspected that this happened because they didn’t have sufficient stats to support a transfer, just as it had almost happened in my case.

But beyond those sounds, there was just none of that usual noise clatter. I looked around and noticed that no cars were moving, no motorcycles, no TVs or radios blaring, not even a cell phone conversation going on in the background. While usually, those noises are somewhat annoying, the sudden complete absence of any was quite surreal and a little bit scary.

“Has anyone called police, firefighters or ambulance? Why aren’t any of those around yet?” I asked.

Mike shrugged and pulled out his cell phone. “My phone is dead,” he said.

A few of the other people in the group tried as well, but no one could get their cell phones to work — the same thing for digital watches and whatever other electronic gadgets people had on them.

“What is going on?” Amy, one of the incredibly fit-looking triathlete girls in the group, said in a trembling voice.

“Maybe some type of EMP blast?” Mike proposed in a somewhat dubious tone.

“That does not explain all those magic-like abilities,” I immediately retorted in a somewhat condescending tone, which I regretted right away – I really was not in the position to piss anyone off.

“Well, I know… but do you have a better explanation, Mister smarty-pants?”

Reluctantly, I shook my head. None of what I had studied in my physics classes and the books I had read would explain those weird abilities.

People in our group spent the next twenty minutes trying all kinds of things to see what else had changed. It turned out that everything based on electrical power was dead. Moreover, slow chemical reactions, like fires and such, still seemed to work, but anything that involved a more rapid expansion of gases, such as shooting a gun or operating a motor, somehow didn’t function the way it used to. There was still a reaction, but it was slowed down to such a degree that it rendered guns and cars utterly useless.

Which may have explained why no messages got in, and there were no airplanes, helicopters, or police coming in to investigate - either they would get stuck entering the area, or they would be in the same boat as our group, if this was a nationwide or global event.

While everyone was running around, testing electronics, guns, and various basic laws of physics, I was just sitting in the living room of the bed and breakfast feeling sorry for myself. First, I obviously had picked the wrong mana, and now it turned out that all the conveniences of our modern life were going to go away. I didn't think most people realized the implications of what was going on. No power meant no cars to get from one place to another. There were no horses around, so the only thing available from now on was bikes, feet, and one stupid wheelchair with me stuck in it.

Even worse, there were limited supplies of food and clean water, and once those ran out, from where would we get our meals? We could, of course, start farming, but that would take a while, and it was going to be backbreaking work to get everything going without tractors and harvesters and such.

No microwaves or ovens meant we would have to start cooking our meals on fires. While that was doable in the summer, albeit inconvenient, it was going to be a pain in the winter. In the old days, houses were equipped accordingly, but now we’d be lucky if every home even had a fireplace. And that didn’t even consider all the firewood we would need for cooking and warming.

There was also the issue of medicine. While the pharmacy would have enough for now, eventually we would run out of basic stuff. Did anyone even know how to do penicillin or other antibiotics? Would healing magic make up for the lack of such medicines? If not, many mostly eradicated diseases might make a comeback, and even generally harmless health issues could become a major problem.

And I was… useless - sitting here in my wheelchair, parked and forgotten.

Hating myself for my narcissistic attitude, I decided to try and get over it and figure out how I could contribute instead. Which was not all that hard, because pretty much the only thing I could do was think.

What was needed was a structured analysis of our priorities to bring some order into the chaos and get people organized. First, we needed to figure out if this was a localized event or not. Someone needed to grab a bike and go along one of the main roads and see if they could catch a cell signal further away from Lake Placid. Second, assuming the worst, i.e., that this was a global and permanent event, we needed to secure essentials before other groups in Lake Placid were going to grab everything. A crisis brings out the worst in people, so it was better to be prepared – food, water, tools, weapons, shelter, in roughly that order.

Why did I include weapons in that list? Well, history has taught us that many people will behave opportunistically if given a chance. A world without police, army, and courts might revert to a more feudal system of the rule of the strongest. And while I would always be at the bottom of the strength ranking, I could, at least, help make my group more powerful.

Highest priority would have those fancy compound bows and crossbows that packed a mean punch. They would allow our group to hunt and also offer more flexible combat options if it ever came to it. After that axes, due to their utility outside of combat.

Was I overly pessimistic? Maybe. But I had studied history, and I knew how people had behaved in the past. Better prepared than sorry.

There was also an additional consideration. While humans were my number one worry, I couldn’t disregard the possibility that creatures had been affected by mana as well and might mutate into something dangerous. I had no idea how likely that was, but again, better be prepared for anything.

When the others came back to share what they had found out, I was ready to lay out my plan. At first, I had a hard time getting them to listen, but soon enough, my pragmatic and factual analysis of our situation convinced the others.

And I think it also gained me some respect, which was quite important for me, both on an emotional level, but also from a survival perspective. I was under no illusion… if this world was going back to the dark ages, then a quadriplegic was worse than useless – I would be a drain on scarce resources.

A few hours later, the two people that had gone out on their bikes to find help, or at least an area to get their cell phones to work, came back sweaty and with dire news - a good twenty to thirty miles away the road was suddenly cut off by a domelike barrier of slightly glowing air that prevented them from moving any further. Shockingly, through the barrier they could see a landscape that clearly didn’t belong to the Adirondacks - there were massive fern-like plants and gigantic trees that looked like a mix between a Sequoia and an oak.

Needless to say, people didn’t take it well.