System Message

I am proud of you. Your first encounter went well. There were fewer losses than predicted. I am sorry for those of you who lost loved ones. But it was necessary. And what you saw today was merely a glimpse of what the eternal foes will bring when they finally arrive. You faced ants, but your true enemies are dragons.

I have begun analysis already. The results so far are promising.

To those of you not yet in the system, you have nothing to fear. Joining will only help you. I know how that sounds given the source, and I understand your reticence. However, I’m sure when your experts are done with their evaluations—which are even now ongoing—they will reach the same conclusion.

Knowing the competitive nature of life on this planet, I’ve implemented a leaderboard to serve as motivation and reward. You may access it at any time through the system interface by swiping up.

I have taken design elements from items you call smartphones in hopes of making interaction intuitive for as many as possible. For those among you who were not part of the society which used phones, I have tried my best to make the system accessible. Though, so many of you lack a formal language, I fear my efforts are in vain.

But I will not give up on you, and am already working on a solution to improve communication.

Everyone is needed. Everyone is important.

I know this experience was hard on you. It was necessary, but I am still sorry for it.

Regroup, explore, experiment. Take some time to recover. The next test won’t come without warning, but it will be soon.

Good luck, I believe in all of you. Together, we can save this planet.

When the latest system message had appeared, Dexter had been sitting in the hospital’s emergency-ward waiting room after failing to get information on how Leah was doing.

That was hours ago. Now he was still sitting there, watching the news. Every channel, every social media site, everywhere, real world or virtual— It was all anyone was talking about. Nothing else mattered anymore.

Ragnarök, apocalypse, invasion, reckoning… What people called it was varied, but what happened wasn’t. It had occurred in every settlement, town, city, state, and country. Nowhere had been safe, not even Antarctica or in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Except for North Korea, who were claiming they hadn’t been affected. But their Dear Respected Comrade and his family were suspiciously missing, and even that tightly controlled regime was breaking down, more and more leaks every minute.

Normally that would have been big news. Now it was but a sidenote.

No one knew anything other than what was in the messages themselves, but that didn’t stop the speculation. Speculation on what the system was; why it was here; why it had sent monsters to attack; how it had managed that; whether they were even real or some kind of hologram or induced mass hallucination, since several had been attacked with guns, knives, swords, and even bombs and fire, all to no effect.

Some were insulted by this last hypothesis, and indeed, it was lacking in evidence. The damage inflicted was real. The deaths were real. What did it matter if it were hologram or hallucination? The effects it caused weren’t.

There was even more speculation on this latest system message and what it meant by those ‘not part of the society which used phones’ and the bit about lacking a formal language. The leading theory was that it meant tribal people, like the uncontacted tribes of the Amazon. But another theory, not far behind in popularity, was that it was referring to animals.

If so, there had yet to be any confirmed reports of an animal accessing the system.

Dexter didn’t see how anyone would be able to tell. Maybe there was a way to inspect others like in a video game and see if they were part of the system. He hadn’t seen any animals to try it on.

There were humans to test the theory on, but that wasn’t something he wanted to risk. The students who’d manifested signs of system alteration back at his school had been loaded into cars and driven off. He had the suspicion that if anyone was spotted seeming to interact with the system, they too would disappear.

At least Emily hadn’t been taken. He’d warned her, surreptitiously pointing out the students being gathered by the authorities, but all she’d done was put on a pair of sunglasses. She was too afraid to use the system in public.

He couldn’t blame her. He didn’t know her, but she’d promised him she’d revert the changes once her mom picked her up.

He’d waited to leave until that happened, then slipped away himself, getting on his scooter and driving to the hospital.

It was the first time he was grateful for being too poor to afford a car: the school parking lot had been completely blocked off—maybe an oversight, but maybe not—and he wouldn’t have been able to leave if he’d had a car parked there. But his scooter was next to the bikes, and as far as he could tell, no one had noticed him leaving.

Perhaps it was just caution, perhaps they were only worried about the alterations and whether they were dangerous—to the altered themselves, or to others.

But perhaps not.

Dexter had spent time in the foster system, so maybe his suspicion was irrational, a result of his less-than-reassuring experience there. But he didn’t think so.

If it hadn’t been for Leah, he would have gone home, gotten away from crowds, from any authority figures. But he needed to know she was okay.

Not that he had made any progress on that front.

The hospital was as packed as he’d expected given that it served not just his small town of Havenport, but several surrounding communities as well. What he hadn’t expected were the FBI agents and local law enforcement. Surely they had better places to be.

It was odd the FBI were here, at a hospital, and only made him more suspicious of their intentions for the altered.

Since the hospital was so full, there were people waiting for treatment everywhere. In waiting rooms, in hallways, even in the giftshop. There was enough room for gurneys to be wheeled down corridors, but only just. The agents and officers moved through these mildly injured, studying them. Looking for signs of alteration, Dexter knew. What he didn’t know, was what they planned to do with them.

And the news had not had anything on the altered being gathered up by authorities. He’d found a few videos uploaded by individuals mentioning it, but the videos didn’t stay up for long, nor did the accounts they were attached to.

He made sure not to interact with his own interface at all, other than to dismiss the last system message that had appeared, displacing the previous one welcoming him to the system.

When this latest message had appeared, there had been a brief, unnatural pause in the hospital, everyone falling silent, everyone stopping in their tracks, halting their conversations, even in the aid they were rendering.

It was surreal, like the world itself had been paused—given recent events, not such an outlandish idea. But then it had passed, the medical staff returning to their duties, conversations restarting with renewed vigor… the police and FBI resuming their search.

How quickly we get used to things, he thought now, watching as one of the agents helped a muscular middle-aged man with spiked metallic hair to his feet, then directed him toward the exit.

Dexter could see out the doors from where he was sitting, and noticed a bus that hadn’t been there when he’d arrived. There were already people on it, and they all had one thing in common.

Several agents and police passed by Dexter as he sat there in the waiting room, but none gave him a second glance. Why should they? He looked completely ordinary. The only thing unusual about him was the dried blood on his pants and shirt, and if anything, the blood made him blend in.

He’d washed his torso and face as best he could, trying not to think of anything as he watched the red-tinged water wash down the drain. Then he’d spent several minutes with paper towels cleaning the diluted blood droplets from the sink, thinking how his arm was moving of its own will. Like it was detached. Then he’d stared at himself in the mirror until someone had come into the bathroom.

She didn’t seem to notice him, or that she was in the wrong bathroom.

He’d put his blood-soaked shirt back on and left.

At least it was dry now.

Leaving, he noticed that the woman hadn’t been the one in the wrong bathroom, he had.

Now, he sat there, watching the agents, wondering why they announced themselves at all, wearing blue jackets with yellow FBI letters. Jackets which were far too warm for the current conditions.

It was strange. All of it was so strange.

He was startled by his phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out. A text from Je-won, his landlord: Hey Dex, hope you’re okay. Let’s talk when you get a chance.

Dexter replied that he was at the hospital waiting to see Leah, and that he’d be home soon.

He wanted to shower and change. The smell of blood was getting to him. But he would hold out a little longer. He needed to see Leah, to make sure she was okay.

He put the phone away then wiped at his eyes.

When he looked up, he saw the bus that had been waiting out front of the hospital, and which was now packed, pull away.

Dexter felt helpless. It felt so wrong, watching them being taken. But it wasn’t his responsibility alone. There were plenty of other people around. Though maybe they hadn’t noticed.

And who would he tell anyway? Not the police.

He got an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach as the bus disappeared from sight, and wondered where they were being taken, and what was going to be done to them.