"The National Census of 2010 revealed there are 763 favelas in which 22% of the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro (circa 1.440.000,00) dwells. Subjugated by violent drug dealers and so-called ‘militias’, comprised of corrupt police officers, the inhabitants of the communities have to deal with constant police incursions — 1.296 in the year of 2019, stop and frisk policies, police harassment, illegal breaking-in their houses, stray bullets — including those shot from helicopters. Since the Unity imposed an Oversight Committee, numbers have began to decline..." (Sentient Rights Watch’s 1rst Terran Report)

It’s taxing to do two things at the same time even if our internal comps and chips allow us to. But I’ve dithered long enough and I guess I should get a move on in this unenviable task. They say we should practice multi-tasking to improve, which makes sense as I have many tasks to do as a Quartermaster. Endless situation reports, gear requests, register of losses...

I’ll focus on this infernal tale soon… I’m just finishing writing down the last of the gear requests on my leaf-tablet lying over a scuffed, large table and... someone decides to interrupt me. A very red-haired head pops into my roomy, but cluttered state-of-the-art tent. It’s one I recognize - I’ve met the young bahiano private before, as sedate of temper as Bahia’s people are famous for. Great, now you’ll have to bear with me through this exhilarating piece of my day.

“Can I help you with something, Private Rudá?” I ask, smothering a smirk at his hard time locating me amidst the tent’s scattered crates. After he pinpoints the nook where I’m at, I motion him inside. He enters, the flapping entrance allowing me to catch a glimpse of the red sun looming far too close to us outside; its sunbeams are just different enough from home to bother me.

Rudá grins sheepishly as he approaches, holding his hands uncomfortable behind him. I don’t spend much time looking over the private’s flame-red hair, elfin features or pale, wiry frame before I focus again on my leaf. It’s been a while since his kind was a novelty to me; It’s funny how fast we can adapt to the fact that folkloric beings actually exist - the mythics.

“I was… hoping you could help me out with something, yes,” he says hesitantly as I keep on jotting a few final considerations on my report.

“Please, be quick about it,” I prod him, throwing him a look when he’s silent for a moment too long. His facial features like most humans are just shy of human — I bet uncanny valley was an actual place — and I had to make an effort not to freak out at the beginning.

After a few seconds of woolgathering on my part (busy dictating this story), a thunk snaps me out of it as Rudá places a pair of boots on my table. They’re unremarkable, ordinary Unity boots; barely any of the local blue dirt is stuck on their soles, meaning it’s probably a quite recently issued pair.

“Is there a problem with your boots?”

“Yes— well, no. I mean…” He starts stumbling on his request, making my right eye twitch.

I breathed a heavy sigh, mastering the impulse to be curt with the man. “Breathe, Rudá. What is it?”

“You see… The boots are fine! Just not for us!” he answers, raising a foot to illustrate his point

Oh, yes. The particularity of his kind of mythic, a small detail that might have skipped my attention (and my telling of the event): the Kurupiras have feet who are turned 180º compared to ordinary humans. Yeah, they are naturally pointed backward, sans any need of a horrifying accident or torture. And they are pretty quick on their feet, if you can believe it, even with feet looking the wron—

**BZZT**

**Racial Sensitivy Violation Detected**

**Politeness Corrective Applied**

“Ouch!” I yelp, making Rudá look frown at the sudden exclamation.

“You alright, Lieutenant?”

“Don’t ask…” The racial sensitivity filter the Racial Equity Committee punished me with is a pain in the ass and its VI (virtual intelligence) has been wonky since I’ve had it installed on a visit to the main base for a task I can go on about later — the Market. The R.E.C. did warn me it might take a while before it was calibrated.

“As I was saying,” I clear my throat, returning to the pressing subject, “What’s the problem with the boots? Your feet might be different, but they still mostly match the format of ours, don’t they?”

It might seem like an alien feature, but no, the Kurupira are Terran, born and raised, just like me. Mythics are natives of Terra like humans, ignorant of them though we ‘ordinaries’ might have been for the last few thousands of years. They supposedly have their origin when mana influences heavily a person or creature, or rather a group of them, forcing the appearance of various new characteristics.

“Yeah, the format is fine… The problem is that it’s very hard to reach the shoelaces and tie them firmly when they’re behind you, in an awkward position!”

Oh, no. This is too much for my lacking self-control.

“You mean to say… you can’t even tie your own shoes?” I deadpan, face-palming at the latest problem to reach my table.

“Aw, come on, man,” he complains, slightly whiny. “It’s kind of racist — it’s not my fault! Everyone is having this problem. Will I have to complain to the R.E.C.?”

That sobers me up real fast. I’d better soothe the sacana quickly. I don’t fancy angering the Racial Equality Committee any further than I already have. Two penalties is enough for me — don’t ask me the reasons why. There’s no telling how many tedious classes I’ll have to attend to if Rudá gets worked up and reports me. You can’t zone out of a boring class beamed directly at your brain — trust me, I’ve tried. And for those that really, really can’t learn their lessons there are civility collars. Civil is the last thing I’d call them though.

“Take it easy, Rudá. I’ll talk to the lazy AI about designing some shoes better fit to Kurupiras, you can count on me. We’re all new to this, there will be growing pains…” I answer, putting an arm around him and starting to lament the unfairness of our situation. Eventually, I placate the mythic enough to finally get him away from my damned tent. Ah, I’m done sitting on this tent, I’ll take a walk as I continue explaining things.

This went way out of track, didn’t it? I was planning on a gradual explanation, but here we are. I should say a bit more about the mythics in Brazil - that was where I was planning to start.

The Kurupiras are a sizable mythic minority amongst quite a few in Brazil who were lucky enough to survive until the modern days, now that mana is making a comeback - courtesy of the Unity. They were lucky the inquisition never focused here in the tupiniquim lands; enslavement and diseases meant they were already in a pretty hard place during our ‘colonization’. As I’ve said, barring some… extreme characteristics and a few exceptions, the mythics are very close to humanity.

Shit, I’m kind of screwing this up, aren’t I? Now, you can wipe that smug ass grin off your face – or your ugly facial anatomy of choice, be it a muzzle, beak or whatever. I’m sure only a blind mother could love it anyway. I wish you could be in my shoes, then we’d see if you were still smiling after one fucking hour in this madhouse. I should give you some background to understand what the hell these chronicles are all about and why they came to be (tip: not voluntarily). I’ll make the use of the time I waste on the monotonous base-wide inventory Captain Castanho ordered me to do to dictate this beginning.

The fucking VI assistant on my internal computer is screaming to me as I write, wanting me to do this or that. If they wanted a perfect job, they should have shanghaied a writer into the task, not a quartermaster. Why should I care about writing to help easing other similar civilizations into the Unity when I’m having a very hard time with it myself? Nobody asked my opinion about it, but I get to share it with you. I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m not very enthusiastic about this.

VIs are better than AIs in my book because we get to shut the bastards down… and, done! There’s also the fact that AIs rule supreme over the Unity, so they kind of are my superiors. But with my VI deactivated, there’ll be no more damned red warnings popping up on my overlay anytime soon - I’ve enough of the blue screens already. A LitRPG nerds’ wet dream, according to said nerds. Screens keep popping up as if life was a game, but that's the reality of internal computers and chips working in tandem.

I reckon you’re curious now? If this looks like a game, I must have a status. I do and I can show you my Record, but it’s nothing to brag about. My only saving grace was my natural high Neural Omni Optimization Bus Chip synchronization - it was what allowed me to become an officer instead of a grunt. It granted me a mech-slot to begin with too, a lot more than most get. And yeah, you can guess: N.O.O.B. Chip is really how they call it and it’s unfortunately fitting — we’re as green as they come. Without further ado, here is it:

You might wonder why I became a Quartermaster of all things after discovering magic was possible. Oh, I’m terribly sorry if you weren’t aware before — they shouldn’t have left you read this, don’t blame me. There’s mana on the record, of course there’s magic. If you’re from a mana-developmental society, then you’re no fun. Humans are tech through and through. I’m sure a good majority of us would pick a magical role if one was available.

Now let me tell you a fun little story, pardon my digression — I did have to read Machado de Assis at school.

After joining the Unity Army, it’s mandatory to have the Chip implanted, and so I went through it, letting aliens put a foreign piece of equipment or two in my brains. After the surgery, I woke up to be met with a blue screen hovering on my vision, the initialization process, as I’d been briefed.

**Congratulations, high N.O.O.B. Chip Integration achieved!**

**N.O.O.B. Chip Level 2! (in the higher 13,74% of cadets)**

**Congratulations, you’ve been selected for Officer’s School! (5% of cadets)**

**Analyzing innate knowledge skills**

**Low-magic World detected. (34% of joining worlds)**

**Mental over Physical Attributes**

**Role Options Selected**

**Acknowledge with a simple mental or verbal command**

“Fuck yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!” I replied excitedly, doing the stupid things everyone does, trying to touch the screen (you can’t, it just gets transparent). All around me, in the beds holding other awakening cadets, there were whoops and groans — much more of the latter than the former. The instructors had us extremely anxious after the introductory classes.

I acknowledged the message, making a new one pop up.

**Role Selection:**

**Pick one of the three options**

**Mage Combatant (20% of applicants)**

**Combat Engineer (0,5% of applicants)**

**Quartermaster (0,015% of applicants)**

**You have 15 minutes to query the options and decide, or a decision will be made for you.**

**Choose wisely**

“Oooh,” I coed, spellbound by my obviously rare options — bad pun intended. The last one barely even registered, even if it was the rarest one. Higher rarity was clearly not necessarily better.

A timer began on my overlay, which put some pressure on me. But I was already losing myself in dreams of incredible spellcasting or building great structures. Becoming a magic-user was very appealing on a primal sense, but I reasoned that engineering would be awesome as well. I had settled for Accounting before all went down, but engineering meant prestige. But I knew I would choose Spellcaster over anything else.

“Hmm, I should be thorough anyway,” I said, thinking out loud, completely ignoring my neighbors’ own commotion. I did not feel the urge to join the ones discussing their options. I decided to be meticulous, even more than my AI partner-in-crime, Reads Meticulously, is. It cost me.

When I was about to answer the query, a couple of minutes still left on my timer, a new screen popped up, shattering my dreams. I was frozen solid, stupefied.

**Warning**

**Imbalance in the unit’s composition detected**

**Free Role Selection Override**

**Role Selected: Quartermaster**

**Congratulations!**

Yeah, fuck my life.

I’m getting ahead of myself. I suppose I should begin at the beginning - yes, very sage of me, isn’t it? Shut up and try to write your own story if you’re not satisfied. Our glorious AI overlords leaders commanded me to write about my experiences, and so that’s what I’m gonna do. They never mentioned the chronological order.

Pardon my French, but six months ago I was just another poor, working black man from Rio de Janeiro’s Mangueira Community; It’s how we prefer to be called because ‘favela’ carries such a stigma. A few cariocas - people from Rio, that is - say swear words as if they’re punctuation. I’m not so bad, but I do my fair share of swearing. You would too, sanctimonious *sacanas*, if you had to deal with half the shit that comes my way.

Let me get back on track (once more).

It was amateur astrologers who first brought them to the world’s attention; the observatories didn’t take long to confirm the information. By then, it had already went viral on the Internet - not that surprising; aliens were already a fever on the Internet before they actually came to visit us. There were three ships that we could identify - or so the government said. Later we learned it was something more in the order of three dozen ships.

We could not begin to fathom how they traveled between the stars (still can’t), and so we shivered at the thought of being in the position of American natives meeting the European colonizers. We knew how badly that went to the natives. Come to Rio and try to find a native - you’ll probably won’t. These lands once were theirs - now they have only 8 scattered villages left through the state of Rio.

Armies mobilized, people panicked and rioted throughout the world; back home, at Mangueira Community, people were in a mix of panic and resignation, pondering the lesson we’d learned through our lives: things can, and will always get worse.

“They’re here for us,” vindicated conspiracy nuts announced, their popularity soaring. “We should have been more careful,” others lamented our foolish unguarded emission of radio-waves, a beacon the aliens must have surely followed.

Discussions raged in the news channels populated by a host of peculiar figures, the so called experts: the conspiracy nuts, UFO-hunters, little gray men’s anal probe victims… At the time, people actually considered if these loons had been always right. Later someone did a compilation of their bullshit and uploaded it to Youtube: it’s golden, watch it when you need a good laugh. The Great Filter became one of Google's top search items.

That’s the scenario I was living then. I’ll share another funny little tale with you.

“Rafael,” the smug supervisor called me in the hall of the university I had just cleaned, smudging the spotless floor with her dirty shoes. “There’s a little situation on room L34. Could you take care of it?”

“Sur—”

“Ah, and the manager wants to talk with you after that!” she cutt me off, throwing a smug grin for good measure.

“I got it.” I really did. The sons of bitches had it in for me after three years dedicatedly working extra shifts for them, rarely getting paid for my trouble. A few other manual laborers had already forewarned me of what they were planning.

I decided to take a look at the room L34, just to confirm a wild guess: yep, the students had just hazed the (few) freshmen, leaving a stinking mess behind. Oh, yeah. I’ll get right onto it.

I closed the door and locked it, giving an evil chuckle at the thought of the smell that asshole supervisor would have to deal with after that mess fermented through the weekend. Instead of cleaning, I went straight to the manager’s office, knocking and entering.

“Did you call for me, boss?”

“Yeah, Rafael. I’m sure you’ve realized how this whole alien madness has got the fools running around like headless chickens.” The boss didn’t believe the aliens - he was too smart to trust the news. “But it has impacted our bottomline… You heard about that new law, didn’t you?”

The law allowing wage cuts of 75% or immediate, costless firing of workers for the duration of the crisis? “Yes, boss, I have,” I replied, showing no emotion.”

“I’m gonna need for you to sign here, then,” he said, handing me a paper.

“I already earn a minimum wage, boss,” I countered, looking around at his lavish office, his expensive suit and bejewelled watch. “Will you truly do this?”

“It’s business, son, nothing personal.”

I pondered my options. Accepting it was never in the cards, what I meant was if I told him to go fuck himself, punch him in the face, or just leave. He was a colossal prick, but he had allowed me to watch Accounting classes free of cost - I was only two semesters away from graduating.

“Fuck you.”

I turned my back on him and left, my dignity intact, cashing in my last measly paycheck on my way out, but full of worry for the future. I would not accept starvation wages, but they were far too common on Brazil, a country with a huge inheritance from its slavery days. Unemployment was on a record high, and I had few qualities besides being a hard-worker. Unemployment insurance might tide me over for 3 months, but after that…

The private university was far from the best ranked ones - those were public, but I never had the education to pass muster on their hard admission exams. As I caught an overcrowded bus, I stewed over my possibilities. I had to find a job and finish my studies somewhere else, but it would be hard. Maybe an accounting firm I had interned in might take me in on the down low?

I got off on my stop, only to see a deeply unpleasant scene. Loads of military vehicles were stacked in front of my community’s entrance. I already dreaded how the humble, unpainted brickwalls would get even more bullet holes on them. All I could do when shooting started - and it often did - was to get down and hope no innocents were mistaken for criminals or hit by stray bullets.

I hurried up - my house was pretty high up the mountain. Squalor and garbage abounded through the streets, weeks without a garbage collector coming around. I climbed the stairs carved by the first ones to establish the community, loosing a sigh of relief at reaching my humble home. I entered, gave my mother a hug and told her the bad news.

“We’ll make do, son, don’t fret over it!” Her good cheer was a balm on my worried mind. A hard worker, she raised my by herselfm a working single mother.

The military invasion of the community didn’t materialize that day, so I got a few friends together to talk about the latest happening. Talking about the aliens was the new weather-talk, but a compelling version of it.

We talked about of all places, the damn aliens decided to make first contact on Reddit. I shit you not. Thankfully it wasn’t posted in one of the really bad sub-reddits; the aliens actually hacked the site and took over r/firstcontact. Well, it could have been much worse; they could have chosen 4chan or something like it. I’m sure there are plenty around, there always are.

Their message had arrived three weaks earlier and had been pretty simple; it read: “We come in peace”. You can imagine people’s reactions. It was an impromptu Carnaval in the streets of Rio lasted throughout October. I would have loved it if I still had a job and money to partake in it.

But I didn’t and half the fucking public servants in the agency I was trying to get my benefits from weren’t there in the next few days I tried to face the humongous line, leaving me sour about it.

I’m sure a lot of babies were conceived in those three days; people let go of a lot of tension in spectacular fashion throughout the world. And you should never doubt man’s stupidity. There were already new religious scams’ brewing - the Pope was having a hard time explaining aliens, and some idiots arguing about alien gender - yes, really. Were they binary, or non-binary? Were you an alienphobe or alienphobic?

Christ, some people can’t give it a rest.

It’s obvious most of the governments weren’t actually sold on it. Some were already spewing bullshit about welcoming the aliens; others, bullshit about accepting no aliens (well, the alienphobic discussion wasn’t so stupid after all). Earth’s two big belligerent nations, America and Russia, were running against time to adapt their missiles to better reach the stratosphere if needed. Armies were being mobilized; generals in a tizzy.

The low-key military siege continued, but I had to run after my own business and had little time to worry about it. I arrived home late one day, but mother wasn’t home. Tired from a day filled with interviews, I thanked her silently for the dinner waiting for me in the oven.

As I ate, I noticed things were silent, really silent. I wouldn’t be the one to stick my head out to find out what was going on. As I said, I lived way high up Mangueira. We had poor access to water, energy and sanitation, but the governors and mayors never cared to grant us these basic rights. Even mail wasn’t delivered, I had to go down to a post office in Tijuca and carry my shit up the hill.

Imagine my surprise when I hear a knock at my door, and open it to find a public servant flanked by six uniformed and heavily armed soldiers. Though it was dark, I could see similar parties visiting other houses all around mine.

“Are you Mr. Rafael Barro?”

“Maybe. Who are you?” I replied, frowning.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Do you know how to read?”

I grunted in response.

“Then, you’ve been notified!” he said, chirpy, extending a letter towards me. I didn’t reach for it.

“No, I have not. What are you on about?”

“You’re conscripted!”

“No way, I’m no—”

My protest was cut short by the stock of a rifle on my chest, taking the air out of me. A few good slaps and kicks were added, bringing me down swiftly. The public servant three the conscription letter over me.

“I really don’t suggest trying to dodge the draft,” he said, before turning away to inform the next poor bastard.

The only fucking thing that they ever managed to deliver to me in person was the fucking conscription notice. The unbelievable cunts were biding their time as they reached an agreement with the drug dealers who ruled over our favela. They went up uncontested. Never count on criminals and the state - around here, they’re often hard to discern.

I read the damn letter after I got myself back together. Can you guess the best part? I would earn the same shit salary I refused to accept as a janitor. But now I had the opportunity to get shot - by fucking aliens, of all things. I don’t think I can’t express how pissed off I was without filling a hundred sheer pages with obscenities. Fuck, it gets me worked up just thinking about it. From hopeful accountant to a fucking underpaid grunt, meat for the grinder.

On the day the aliens finally reached orbit, I was already in formation under the grueling sun at 05:00 for indoctrination. Three fucking hours hearing some stupid fucks who had never before fired in anger against a human, much less against an alien - three fucking hours - with them spewing bullshit. Some idiots lapped it up. I never understood the need to be patriotic - what the fuck did Brazil ever do for me or my ancestors? They put us in shackles and dragged us from where we belonged. First, my ancestors in their sailing ships to Brazil; then me to this run-down fucking army facility.

No, sir. I was as far from as happy trooper as one could be.

With indoctrination going on, we took a long time to learn the aliens had made contact again. This time they sent the information to websites, newspapers and governments directly. Their message read: "Scans will begin shortly, the expected time of completion will be one week. Negotiations will then be opened with all Earth’s races and governments.”

They denied us recruits even the right to gossip and theorize about our possible incoming doom. The army sucks.

The discussions in newsrooms and on the streets came back with a vengeance. People tried to decode hidden meanings and the alien’s objectives from such a simple message. They focused on everything - everything but a kind of a jarring point. The bastards said had “Races”, and they sure as hell weren’t talking about ethnicities like white, black, latino, asian and so on.

You can guess what was it by now, I’m fairly sure. If you had told me I’d be talking today with a fucking Kurupira as if it was normal - hell, as if one actually existed outside of fairy-tales - I would say you were full of shit.

Okay, there were aliens, but anything more would be taking the joke way, way too far. I always was a skeptic bastard back. I often was (and am) completely wrong as well.