"We are all made of stardust." - Carl Sagan

Yeah, but so is everything else. So is shit. You're comparing everyone and everything to shit.

I sat there waiting for the clock hand to keep turning, counting down the minutes until I could leave this place and go relax elsewhere.

Boredom overwhelmed my being. Tensing and un-tensing my muscles gave nothing but aching. Spinning my pen even if for some visual entertainment earned me a silent but firm command to stop from the examiner. Sleep received a similar effect.

This was the perfect time to dive into fantasy though.

I pulled my conscience away from my eyes, and focused on the space in my brain where I could weave unimaginable beauties and unforgettable horrors.

I smiled to myself, internally laughing at my own idiocy. I am no creator, I just absorb knowledge, and mimic it. But it was still an easy way to pass the time.

I imagined playing as the avatars in an RPG, just fucking around with some mechanics I threw into play.

Gasps of surprise pulled my from my mind, and I focused my eyes to find that I obviously hadn't left my own mind yet.

Because there is no way that some message in my eyes is telling me something is going to shift.

Damnit. I was dreaming. I must have fallen asleep. But instead of waking up, I found myself curiously watching the timer, waiting to see where this dream would take me.

Nowhere apparently. As soon as the warning timer reached zero, my vision went for a second, and reappeared almost instantly.

Except everyone else was gone. No. It was far more likely that I had gone somewhere that looked just like the room I was in before, and everyone else had been left behind.

Welcome to the Reality Shift!

Your world has been chosen to undergo a transformation.

Hence, you must become a character.

Accept the change to begin creation.

A grin spread across my face. This was the most interesting my dreams had ever gotten by far. Going so far as to alter reality in such a believable way.

"I accept."

Confirmation received...

Calculations complete: Character status ready.

Proceed to creation.

At the front of the hall, a white doorway opens. My curiosity was sparked, now I just had to see where this would take me.

But the clinging heat, the uncomfortable clothes, the sound of my shoes slapping the floor. It all seemed so... real.

But I wouldn't let myself believe that thus was happening unless I had some concrete proof. It would prevent me from disappointment when I did finally wake up.

Upon reaching the door, I put my finger out to feel it. There was no substance to the white wall in front of me, but it did feel like it was cooler than the air. And it was like it was always in motion. Almost alive.

I put my whole hand through the white, and pulled it back quickly, trying to get a handful of whatever this barrier was made of.

I succeeded in displacing a small volume of it. It acted like a thick mist, swirling with the air currents. But since there was no air moving in the hall, I could only assume it was moving on its own randomly.

It was strange playing with this mist. It appeared to always rest in the doorway, and tried to keep a distance of several centimetres from me as I tried to touch it. But if I was fast enough, I could cup my hands and take some of it out.

The further away the small amount of mist was from the doorway, the more I felt a force pulling it back, and the denser it seemed to get.

I got halfway back down the hall before it was too much and I couldn't move it any more. The mist in my hands had become almost a solid layer. I wanted to know what it was, and couldn't do that if it was part of the door. So with one final effort, I pulled it back and with what an audible snapping sound, a small ball of the mist floated in front of my eyes.

As soon as it wasn't being pulled back to the door, it had reverted back to acting like a gas.

"Now. What are you?"

He tried poking it, but instead of the mist it looked like, it had the texture of jelly. It was almost slimy, but looked like it should be fluffy.

I pulled a small chunk from it. It was exactly like jelly but really cold. And it ignored the laws of gravity. But whatever. It was my weird brain making this weird dream.

I shrugged and put the small piece of the mist I had pulled off in my mouth.

I'm not sure why, maybe because I like jelly, and this was the first time I had found it in my dreams, or maybe I was just hungry.

Either way, it wasn't all that unpleasant. I swallowed with some difficulty as things that defy gravity don't easily just slip down someone's throat.

Spectral affinity + 1%

The text flickered in front of my eyes then disappeared.

"Well that's new."

I ate more of my little cloud of mist, but didn't get the words again.

"Shame. Affinity Is hella useful. Especially since ive never even hears of spectral being used in a game."

I was rapidly getting bored of the hall, so I ran through the doorway. On the other side was a white room, but I had no idea of its dimensions. The light was pouring out of every surface, so there were no shades. For all I knew, the room could have been infinitely large. As soon as I passed through the doorway, it switched off and everything became dark.

But there was no air flow in the room. I was warm already, and this wasn't helping.

A large white window appeared in my vision again. Obviously a character customisation screen.

Before I could mess with my stats, a smaller window appeared,covering most of the larger screen.

Special conditions met:

• Aether ingestion

• Emotional detachment

The following skills/spells/features have been unlocked:

• Skill: Spectral force (A)

• Feature: Social Chameleon (B)

I read each of the conditions I had met, easily gathering where each came from. I could only admire the intricacies of this system I had imagined. This must be what it meant by vibrant mind.

The window hovered there, and no matter how I moved in that space, it was always right in front of my face.

"So it follows my skull. Not my eyes. Interesting."

It wasn't really, but it helped me to focus by vocalising my thoughts.

I could get rid of the small window by imagining it being gone. Easy enough.

The screen behind was more in line with the customisation he knew, despite having some obvious flaws.

There was no obvious way to change how the display of my body looked. No sliders or anything.

If this was a lucid dream, I should have been able to make it change in an instant, but anything I wanted stubbornly refused to appear.

"Maybe they don't actually work like that."

I shrugged and turned my attention to the text side.

Status: Creation

Sam Herbert (M)

Age: 19

Class: -

Occupation: -

-----------------

Strength: 8 (+)

Agility: 8 (+)

Speed: 6 (+)

Endurance: 10 (+)

Vitality: 9 (+)

Intelligence: 12 (+)

Wisdom: 13 (+)

Luck: 10 (+)

Unspent stat points: (7)

Skills:

• Basic fitness [1] (D)

• Spectral Force [1] (A)

• Inspiring Aura [1] ©

Features:

• Rapid Regeneration (D)

• Social Chameleon (B)

Spells:

• Mana force (E)

It all looked cool enough. I suspected my only spell was a kind of manipulation. It would be incredibly difficult to find or develop other spells otherwise. That likely meant spectral force was also a manipulation skill. But I had no idea what it could manipulate.

Most of the skills and stuff were self explanatory, but I was curious about the Spectral Force and Social Chameleon ones.

There was no icon on them to tell me more, and I couldn't tap them because they had no substance. I could only see my hands waving helplessly behind the opaque white.

Trying to take the mental route, I just focused on one with an inquisiting thought. It worked.

Social Chameleon (Feature):

Unlocked by: complete emotional detachment resulting in a lack of concrete ethics or values.

Effect: you can now change your personality to fit in, or remove it to prevent you from standing out. Having no personality will prevent sentients from perceiving you as anything.

Almost insulting, but I moved past it. I had morals. Though they were based only on the law. Regardless, it would certainly come in useful to be effectively invisible.

Spectral Force (skill):

Allow the user to freely move the forces of beyond.

Cost: great

"Well now I just hate myself."

How pretentious did my subconscious need to be to make something so ambiguous as a great cost.

I sighed deeply. Oh well. It might be fun to try out. Find out exactly what this great cost is.

This system was doing pretty well at responding to my vocal cues, so I rolled with it.

"So how do I leave this place?"

Character creation:

Allocate stats and alter your appearance to create your character.

"Ah. Now how do I change the appearance of my avatar?"

Character appearance:

Focus on a specific feature of your body to change it.

Another vague answer, but it was enough.

I focused on my face, and instead of the whole body, half of the window was now an entire profile view of my face. In all honesty, it wasn't a bad face, but I was never what someone would refer to as classically handsome.

Cute maybe, but not handsome. I wanted to fix that.

It was easy to shift facial structure, altering my hairline so it was further forwards, moving my chinbones so they were more defined, and it didn't look like I had such a round face.

I opted to keep my eye colour the same; a light grey, but changed the structure around them so they were a bit bigger.

There wasn't a huge amount I wanted to change, but as a final measure, I made my hair a few shades of blonde darker.

Instead of the bright yellow-gold, it was now almost brown. Less eye catching.

In terms of my body structure, I was pretty much already happy. I was of average height and build. Physical activity meant that despite having little muscle, it was well defined.

Happy with my body, I remembered what it said about stats. I had completely forgotten I had 7 unallocated.

I ran through my memories of every beginning of a game. A high initial strength or speed would help me the most, so I could kill more and level faster, giving me a higher survivability.

All the points went into strength.

Creation complete: are you happy?

I crossed my arms and shrugged my shoulders.

"Eh. Moderately."

Customisation complete.

Initializing integration...

Hold on to something.

"Oooh. I like the showmanship. Well done me."

The window disappeared, and so did all the walls, leaving me above a cloud bank. At least, it looked like that. In a second, I could tell that I was high up. The air was thin, and despite there being no air flow, it was cold. But below me was just clouds. They appeared calm, but thick. Not unusual weather for England at all.

I felt a slight sinking feeling, and looking down, I noticed the black floor was becoming more like a liquid.

I raised a foot, leaving an imprint of the sole of my shoe there. It slowly began to heal, so I crouched down, sure I had time to take a closer look.

The platform was getting softer. It was like a melting plastic. I could pull off a small part of it as it became softer, But it curiously had almost no mass. If I balled up the small volume of black gel I had in my hand, I wouldn't have noticed it was there if I wasn't looking at it.

Though I was fully prepared to try and eat it, as the act of eating a jelly cloud was still on my mind, this seemed a bit more evil.

So all I did was put it in my mouth and keep it there.

By then I was up to my waist in the gel, and my straightened legs determined it was a thicker platform than I thought.

This was more like the dreams I had in the past, just odd nonsensical processes. I could add falling through black gel a hundred meters in the air, to the list.

As the gel reached my chest, I felt strange, like my chest was growing. It was an odd sensation that got worse when it reached my neck. The gel coated my face and I took a deep breath through my nose as i fell into it. The precautions I had made meant noting as the pain I felt in my jaw caused me to open my mouth and scream in pain.

This wasn't supposed to happen. Dreams are supposed to be safe. But the pain I felt was very real.

After only a few seconds, I could feel my feet freeing, and I panicked as I imagined suffocating before my head was clear. It didn't matter though, as I felt I could breathe freely. I wasn't inhaling the gel, but it was certainly in my mouth. The pain I felt determined that.

Again, I panicked as more of my legs were freed. What was beneath me?

I tried in futility to open my eyes in the gel. It was still too dark to see through. Besides, the areas around my eyes burned enough to keep them from staying open for too long.

After a tense few seconds, I was free. With the black block above me, I had a moment of peace before I remembered the gravity of the situation.

I began to fall, hitting the clouds instantly.

As I passed through them, my vision was altered again, with bars of red, blue and green appearing at the top of my vision.

I didn't pay attention to them as I was too focused on the fall. I had always wanted to go skydiving and feel the thrill it might have bought, but without the confidence of a parachute, all I felt was dread.

I suddenly broke through the cloud, revealing the area below. I could see the college immediately below me, and could identify most of the local landmarks too.

But some things were different. The college was a large building, and it appeared to have a dozen spokes branching from it tearing through the surrounding area. The spokes stretched for miles, giving the impression of a clock.

I didn't have any more time to look out for bizarre delusions because I shut my eyes, before I got to the roof of the building. This was where the dreams usually went to shit.

*SLAM*

But I felt my chair beneath me, and the aching inin my head from hitting my desk.

I didn't bother to lift it again, or even open my eyes. I knew it was a dream. I was awake now, and everyone in the hall was probably looking at me because of the noise I made.

I breathed out in frustration, cooling my frustration.

I fucking hate dreams.