Nik sat in his dorm room occupied by two things. He had been doing them for the last 2 hours. The first thing he was doing was waiting, for the postal delivery service to arrive and deliver the replacement chipset for his phone. The second had started out as a recommendation from his dorm roomie.

Lucid dreaming. Specifically, he had begun doing various exercises that supposedly helped with getting in the required state to start lucid dreaming.

Max, his roommate, had been talking about lucid dreaming and the exercises that had worked best for him for quite some time before leaving for his family. It was just the newest thing Max had to try in an effort to stave away boredom and it could be worse. He could be buying “Healing Crystals” or drinking “Crystal infused water”. He apparently had his first real lucid dream last night and went to dinner with some celebrity, he didn’t really care about that specifically. What had intrigued him was that Max had flown there and it had felt a lot like skydiving. Nik had stopped paying attention at that point, celebrities weren’t his thing, but the idea had lingered in his mind for a while.

Skydiving had been a fascination of his for some time. Flight, in general, was intriguing to him, which was the main reason for his focus on aviation technology in college.

After watching, what felt like 10 repair videos for his phone Nik landed back on the platform’s homepage. Trying to find something else interesting he had landed on video interspersed between the various clickbaity videos that had been recommended to him by Max.

Titles such as "Start Lucid Dreaming tonight with 3 easy exercises!!", “Lucid Dreaming has never been so easy”, “I will give you 1000$ if you can’t Lucid Dream after watching this video” and so on littered his main page after watching a single video.

“Obviously, it won’t be that easy. I hate clickbait,” he thought and just clicked on the video with the most views called “I will give you 1000$ if you can’t Lucid Dream after watching this video”. So much for his hate for clickbait.

After an entirely too long video of which Nik had skipped about half.

“Who cares about some VPN service and why does it matter what you did last weekend bro,” rather annoyed by the whole video. He understood the general idea now though. There were a lot of techniques that supposedly could be used to achieve the state of Lucid Dreaming. Two of the methods sounded the most promising. Sleep interruption was a technique where you disturbed yourself after falling asleep and Nik was definitely not going to do that.

The other methods were reality checks. According to the video they had super high reliability, topping the chart together with sleep interruption. The first technique he was going to try was sealing his nose and mouth shut while figuring out if breathing was still possible. Repeated testing of those methods would make the chance of them occurring during dreams more likely. The other technique he was interested in was finding out how your hands interacted with each other. Many examples were given eg. try to puncture your right hand with your left, count your fingers, touch all the other fingertips with your thumb. The video creator also stressed thinking about lucid dreaming before falling asleep. And that was how Nik had started counting his fingers while simultaneously touching each with his thumb.

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*Brrrrzzzz*

Nik looked up.

“Ohh fucking finally. I wish they could have been here earlier. Man am I happy that I only had to do that for 20 minutes. If that won’t get me to lucid dream imma be mad, and also have a thousand extra bucks in my bank account,” he thought with a smirk on his face, knowing full well that he was in delusion.

He stood up and went to his door, grabbed his keys, and jogged to the entrance hall where an annoyed middle-aged woman in brown overalls stood.

“Hey, I am Nik Thems, did you ring for me?” Nik asked in a hopeful tone and approached the courier.

She held up her scanner, squinted her eyes, and spoke with an almost familiar tone: “Hey Nik, it’s not like there is anyone else around here. How come you stayed here? Gotta be boring all by yourself. Last I heard most people are living at home during online classes. Please sign here.” And held her scanner with one of those iconic pens towards him.

“Ohh you know it’s alright. That way I can get some studying done. My whole family is currently at home and I have my final thesis coming up.” He said while signing, “Thank you much, I couldn’t use my phone for the last 3 days! It has been so utterly boring. Have a good one!” Nik proclaimed after receiving the package.

“You too, and good luck with those classes.”

Turning around he almost ran into one of the concrete pillars placed all throughout the lobby. The way up to the dorm was long. It felt long. In reality, one only had to walk up a single flight of stairs and walk to the sixth room on the left. The door was quickly unlocked. The phone had been previously prepared. A tab in the browser with instructions was already open. Nik had made sure that all the tools he didn’t have access to through his practical engineering classes – a pair of tiny screwdrivers - came in the box with the chipset.

Everything was prepared so he sat down and started the process outlined on the homepage. It took him a little under half an hour. He had also made sure to re-solder the old storage chip to the new chipset. That was accomplished with twelve quick solders. Anxiously he set his phone back together. 2 more screws to fixate the screen to the rest of the phone's body and he was done.

Eagerly he started up his phone.

|Updating Device software. Downloading 0.3/537MB |

“OHH COME ON!! You have got to be kidding me. This is so unfair. We have literally the slowest internet here. At least it’s a stable connection though. Might as well do something else instead of waiting 30 minutes for the update,” the thought, gritting his teeth and softly hitting the soft cushioning of his sofa.

Annoyed Nik almost threw his phone on his couch but thought better of it - worried it might fall off causing something else to break - and put it in his pocket. Lying down he put his bluetooth earbuds in and started playing music on his laptop. Excited to be able to listen to his own curated playlists instead of someone else’s soon. And so began the wait for his phone to update. Might as well do some of the exercises again. The finger tapping was kind of fun. He picked up were he had left off just before the chipset arrived. Touching and counting fingers.

‘One... two... three... ...’

If anyone else had been in his room they would have quickly heard “Chhhh zzzzzzzz” in a steady repeating rhythm.

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At one point Nik fell asleep. Not a deep slumber, quite unlike to what most would experience at night, but more than just a nap. That’s not what Nik thought when consciousness slowly returned to him. He felt as if he had slept like a bear during winter.

What happened to my couch?? This shit is hard. Did I fall off? Naa I would have noticed. Maybe Max is back and lifted me down to prank me.

He mused instead of just opening his eyes.

In other news, the floor was really warm which was quite nice. Way warmer than his dorm floor. And Nik was getting hotter by the second as well. What’s going on? I swear, if Max brought one of those red-light lamps in here, I am going to sleep with open windows for the next year. Should I open my eyes? That wouldn’t be too bad, actually, I want to listen to some music and my phone should be done with updating. So, I might as well get up.

Nik raised up his body and briefly enjoyed the warm sun shining down on his face before looking down. The floor he was now sitting on was not his dorm floor. It was in fact a huge boulder or rock. Nik wasn’t that well versed in rock names. The boulder was in fact not that impressive and thus not the reason why Nik was currently staring open-mouthed into the air like an idiot. Upon realizing that he quickly closed his mouth. The reason for his staring was the forest around him. Reaching far in every direction.

As he turned around Nik quickly went back on that statement. The forest was reaching far in almost every direction. After turning halfway round he saw a vast mountain range directly in front of him. It’s not directly in front, is it? That’s gotta be another 20 km or so out. And it just starts abruptly. How do those mountains reach so high?

After marveling some more on the vastness of the mountain range he was baffled. A stray thought crossed his mind. He was dreaming, wasn’t he? Damn so no 1000 bucks for him he mused and grimaced. Thinking back to the video he had watched he became increasingly irritated. You were supposed to count on your fingers to slowly realize you were in a dream, but he hadn’t done that. He reached lucid dreaming without counting. Maybe he was just a natural talent, or he wasn’t dreaming but that seemed like the more unrealistic option.

Excitedly he spoke: “Alright, whatever this is I should probably find out what I am dreaming up.” Inspecting the boulder he quickly realized that he indeed was dreaming. There was no way anybody could have gotten him up here without a helicopter and while Nik wasn’t easily disturbed while sleeping he would have noticed a chopper. Nik imagined himself being rushed to a helicopter and couldn’t help but yell “Get to da Choppa” in a horrible Austrian accent.

He did look around his boulder in irritation. He could probably get down without hurting himself, but it was far. He guessed at least 10 meters maybe more. What would happen if I were to slip and fall to my death? That’s gotta be interesting. Probably just wake up or maybe I would phase through the dirt.

“Hmmm.” What should I do now? Well, I am getting hot. Checklist item numero uno take of my sweater. And that he did. Great, I haven’t been that efficient in getting done with my checklists since starting my degree. Alright, I kinda have to go pee. I am a bit hungry as well. Eating should be an issue right. Maybe I will just eat some of my couch cushioning.

“Hahaha, that would be funny. Max would love that story.”

Definitely trying that. So, I guess I might as well try those other lucid dreaming exercises and afterward I am going to fly!!

“Guess I am starting with item number 4 of my checklist.” And that’s what he did. Nik started counting his fingers. He still had five on each hand. Might as well try counting toenails.

“Ahh yes, nine in total. Just as expected.”

His dreams would apparently not allow him to forget that incident. But nine is better than ten anyways. The fewer nails to cut the better.

“So what were the other exercises again. So I think there was one with breathing and another where you try to phase through your hand with the other.”

Gaseous hands were apparently also a no-go in his dreams so he moved on to trying to breathe with a shut mouth and sealed nose. And promptly both his earbuds fell out and down the boulder.

“Whaaat?? Damn, and they both fell down.” he hadn't even realized he was still wearing them.

He checked his pocket and surely there was also his newly repaired phone.

“Well, at least I got that going for me. A shame that I still have to breathe though. Ear clearing worked as well. This is so odd. No falling down steep boulders for now… but I am getting hungry.”

“Alright, I’ve got a quest.” Nik giggled, “Return the Bluetooth earbuds from unfathomable depths. Nik, you're cringe.”

With his vast rock-climbing experience which equated to going bouldering exactly 4 times in the last half-year, he inspected his abode.

“Quest Object one. Find a way to the unfathomable depth. Ok no, I have to stop this now. What if I am actually talking in my sleep? Shouldn’t have said that.”

After another 2 minutes inspection of his 40 m² boulder, he found a spot where he assumed getting down was possible and that was what he attempted. After about a 1-meter climb – the result of more than 40 poorly placed hands and feet he jumped down to a 1-meter ledge in the boulder, sat down and took a short breather.

“At least I only have to do this once.” He huffed and looked for the next similar descent where he could drop down. After some consideration he planned the next three ledges he would use to get down all the way.

If he didn’t mess up, he could get down in a couple of minutes, even below that if he really tried. Relaxed, since nothing was going to happen to him, he continued his descent. His speed improved by quite a bit with each ledge he took. For the last part of his downward trip he only needed 20 seconds until he felt safe enough to jump the rest. Quite a bit faster than the 3 minutes it took him for the first ledge.

At the base of the boulder, he reassessed his surroundings which were quite singular to his senses. He stood below a 15-meter tall boulder on a small hill. The hills peak had a similar height to the surrounding treetops if a little lower and thus about as tall as the surrounding trees. Resulting in 25-35m height. But Nik didn’t really care about that right now. What was more important were his earbuds. On that note Nik realized something, no one else is around so I can just play music on speaker. And he did.

“Man, I could have used ‘Eye of the Tiger’ during my descent. That could have been an epic montage moment.”

But his untimely thought did not prevent him from playing the song anyway. So instead of a climbing montage he would have a searching montage. His first earbud was located quickly. In his misfortune Nik stood on the peak of the boulder during his lucid-dreaming-verification-process which resulted in the earbuds falling in different directions.

Not too long after Nik found the missing piece of the pair and put it next to its twin in his pocket happily having rescued his second most valued dream-belongings.

“Quest successfully completed. Nope, not doing that I need to stop. Anyways, I need to go peeing even more now. Time to wake up. And I am thirsty and hungry. Flying is on my to-do list as well. And quite frankly I would start with that if all of the climbing hadn’t been so exhausting, and my natural urges weren’t so real.”

“I could really go for some strawberries or maybe blueberries. Foraging it is I guess.”

Nik turned off his music at that point, so he could hear anything in the forest around him. Inspecting his rock, he found nothing else noteworthy and left in the direction away from the mountains so he would have a chance to move in a general direction.

After walking past three trees he decided on a tactic.

“I feel alive so I should take this seriously. Orientation is important. Since I don’t have a digital map, I should at least mark my way. Stones are not obvious enough and I would have to search for them once I wanna get back.”

In the end, Nik decided to stick fallen branches and sticks into the ground every once in a while, so he would find his way. Additionally, he chose to orient the smaller branches in his walking direction so he would easily find the next branch.

“Yay, successfully overengineered walking through the forest.”

The well-thought-out part of his idea was that there were quite a few branches on the ground. Some torn off violently others looked to have originated from brittle trees. Looking for larger branches also forced him to look around a lot more and pay attention to his surroundings. The floor to be precise. In the search for sticks and branches to mark his path he found several different types of mushrooms in which he wasn’t interested at all. It was probably the only food type he really hated. The chewiness was just not his thing. Ignoring the mushrooms in his surroundings he set out to find something more to his liking.

Two hours later that tactic led him to the first bush with berries on them larger than a pebble. And they looked good. They were a deep red and about thumb-sized.

“Just to be sure I am gonna pick a bunch and take them with me, but I will only eat one for now. “

Picking the berries proved to be quite difficult. Pinching them hard enough to pluck them was next to impossible without squishing them. To work around that issue, he started picking the tiny branches that had each around 5-10 berries attached to them and it was a lot easier than the first attempt. Thanks to his earlier mishap his hands were colored yellow after picking only two.

Trying one of the picked berries made him ecstatic. Not only did the berries have a marvelous, sweet flavor, they also had a surprising albeit pleasant sourness when biting into the seeds. Against his better judgment, he finished an entire handful.

“Alright just three more things to do, go relieve myself, drink something and learn flying. I really should have thought more about that beforehand. Wouldn’t I have had a better chance finding water if I had walked towards the mountains?”

Not feeling like carrying some extra berries he went back towards the mountains following the branch-post-trail in search of water. Planting those trail markers was in retrospect the smartest thing he had done since waking up. A wolf or a bear might have heard the music. All was well for now and he was progressing quite quickly.

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During his hike back he found it more and more difficult to focus as dizziness spread through his brain, he had grown more and more tired, and his stomach was starting to hurt a bit. He hadn’t even noticed the dizziness until he reached the hill with the boulder on top. It was a bad sign and Nik was really hoping he would wake up soon. But in case he wouldn’t which became increasingly more likely; he would have to find a more secure shelter.

He was unsure about where he was. And that uncertainty had only grown on the path back. He had noticed many trees that did not look familiar at all. Nothing he had seen before. Truthfully, it wasn’t unlikely that he simply not seen the types of trees before, since he wasn’t a huge outdoor person, but it was disconcerting.

As a consequence of those facts, he chose to find a place to rest. Just a few minutes ago he had hoped to find a source of water to help his digestion and maybe remove whatever had caused his state, but he did not have any energy left for that. What really tipped the balance in favor of going somewhere safe was a sound out of the forest some halfway back to the boulder. He couldn’t describe it, but it woke a primal part of him. A part of his mind that made him want to hide in a room with no windows or run as fast as he could. Which he had also done. That was the reason why he arrived at the edge of the hill with a long arm thick branch and a two fist-sized stones.

Stumbling up the hill to the boulder he had two distinct thoughts in his mind. I need to get up there to be safe. I shouldn’t have eaten those darn berries. But what’s done is done.

Nik touched his forehead to the stone wall in exhaustion and took a few deep breaths.

“Alright Nik, you can get up there. Just take it easy.” He panted. Standing up straight again he deposited his branch on the floor and prepared himself to throw the rock up to the next ledge. He was not going to be defenseless! Squatting down, inspired by way powerlifters he had seen on the internet, he positioned the rock in front of his navel.

He jumped. Extended his arms upwards and in front. The stone flew and landed. Success! Next Nik pushed his branch up to the next ledge which was a lot easier than throwing a heavy stone two meters upwards.

He heaved himself upwards the first ledge following in the footsteps of his branch and stone. I should get at least one step higher. And so he went on and managed to repeat the entire ordeal two more times before passing out.

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*Ding*

A sound in his mind, not his ears.

New entity: Status requested

He knew that. He hadn’t heard anything he just knew. Stirring up all the sudden a box appeared in his face. Not directly in his face, maybe half a meter away from his face but it was the only thing he could see. The emanating glow of the box contrasted his dim surroundings.

New entity: Status requested

Status of Nik Thems

Race: Human

Class: None

Status: Child

It grew.

“Whats going on!! Am I still dreaming? I am not a child!!” he reeled back. As he did a new window appeared right in front of him.

Unique Circumstance detected: System Age does not match biological age.

Status Update: Status "Child" has evolved to Adult.

Status Update: Race “Human” modified to “Extraterrestrial Human”

“Whaaat?? I am not extraterrestrial! I am from earth you stupid box!”

Class Qualification determined.

- Nature of origin

- Material possession of own creation

Class and Skill assignment imminent