The tablet had a generic RPG blue window white border interface that felt almost nostalgic to Daniel. Along the top was a series of tabs, with Status currently highlighted, followed by a Skills, Domain, Log, and then Notes tabs. In the top right corner were two symbols, an open padlock and then a cross symbol, which Daniel took to be lock window and close window buttons. Below this was a table:

Anne Laston Human(child) Age 4 Health 150 Strength 33(9) Agility 74(20) Dexterity 61(16) Intelligence 72 Wit 67 Wisdom 52(14)

Once he got over the age section being wrong and missing the three quarters, Daniel's attention was drawn to the intelligence number. He wasn't keen on people thinking they were smarter than him due to Alien Magic Jesus giving out scores. Mental capacity was something that should have more than three dimensions. Could he raise his intelligence and change his personality? He was uncomfortable with that possibility. Also, had his intelligence changed with reincarnation? He didn't feel slower or dumber, just younger and sillier. This made him consider wisdom, the only mental stat listed with a lower number in brackets. Human(child) and 52(14) implied a relation. But he would define wisdom as built-up knowledge. Something like life experience or accumulated learning. Not maturity or emotional stability. Maybe if he increased his wisdom stat it would give him more wisdom about the meaning of the word wisdom. He guessed and hoped that just as this display seemed to be out of an RPG, these statistics were following a game-like logic. Intelligence scaling arcane spells and Wisdom scaling faith magic was a fairly standard way to handle things that he would be happy with. Alien Magic Jesus was great and all, but sadly his wisdom score was too low to pick a build that involved praying to him for help anytime he wanted to do stuff.

He wanted to say he didn't like it. This gave him an inkling of answers to some of his questions but left him with a bunch of new ones. And increasing confidence that the bottom of the answer well was filled with stupid. But the truth was he liked RPGs. RPG systems applied to real-life sounded fun to him, he was interested to see what was possible with them. If whoever set this up could right this moment answer all his questions with 'I dunno, seemed like it would be cool' then that was something he could truly get on board with.

Ok, Alien Magic Jesus, let's make a deal.

I like RPGs. You like RPGs. This whole thing is kinda exciting. So I'm gonna go with it and just enjoy the game-like magic system you set up. And in return, if you have some longwinded nonsensical excuse for it beyond 'sounded cool at the time', don't come tell me about it. Add a skip dialogue magic, lots of games have them now so people can avoid listening to dumbass lore.

Although, thinking that makes me wonder how the lore would go.

Long ago at the start of time, the first ones were born of the stars. Few in number, and the only beings in existence, they quickly grew tired of life. Their king, Mightbeard, called on his greatest mage tooloo'g'tat, to solve the problem. Together with the rest of the starlord council, they filled the universe with life and created many humanoid races to rule over as immortal gods.

However, this angered the ancients, who had existed long before the age of the first ones. They granted chosen humanoids the power of dark matter. Those who wielded dark matter were cursed by reality itself and became known as N.O.M.A.D.S. Unfortunately, this had been Mightbeard's plan all along. He was in love with reality and ordered the humanoids to hunt down the N.O.M.A.D.S. in order to gain her affection.

Mightbeard married reality, who he named Charlotte, and she gave birth to his son, BigBang2. Mightbeard was getting old, and he declared BigBang2 to be his heir. Greg, the first son of Mightbeard, was jealous of BigBang2 and betrayed his father. He revealed that he was a spy for the space pirates guild and then teamed up with Shadow, queen of the ancients. They lay siege to Mightbeards starcastle, Neo New York for a thousand star years, blockading it to starve Mightbeard of the source of his power, beard juice.

tooloo'g'tat, on the run from space pirate hunter zombies, traveled back in time on his hyperbike to the desert planet htrae. In ancient ruins beneath the surface, he discovered a statis device containing the beautiful human princess, Jane Doe. Jane revealed to tooloo'g'tat that every time a choice was made a new dimension was added to the infinite realms of the multiverse. However, htrae was actually the planet earth and was from the prime dimension. The only way to stop the war was to defeat the evil ruler of the prime dimension, Beardmight. Beardmight was the prime version of Mightbeard and had actually been posing as Mightbeards court jester the entire time. Beardmight's only weakness was his love of earth computer games, specifically RPGs. In order to defeat Beardmight, they needed to change magic throughout the multiverse to reflect his favorite game-

Shut up Alien Magic Jesus! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

"Anne. Anne! Will you tell me what is happening with you? I thought you were excited to come out today? You certainly begged me enough times to take you."

Daniel bristled at the mostly true word begged. Then he realised they were outside again and his usually gentle mum was sounding annoyed.

"I got distracted playing at making a stupid backstory for the world."

"Well, you were quite rude to Addison Doctor. You didn't respond at all when he was speaking to you."

Daniel itched to explore more of the tablet that he was still holding, but she was right. He had talked his way into coming along, but he thought she had caught some of his enthusiasm for the outing. It wasn't fair on her to just zone out and turn into an unresponsive passenger for the day. Besides which she'd had a limpet grip on his hand the whole time, presumably to make sure he didn't get lost. Keeping the tablet with him, while pressing buttons with one hand, while being dragged around by a ticked-off mum, did not seem the way to go. Regretfully he let go of the thing again, and then pressed the x button in the corner, resolving to leave it for later as it disappeared. That will come back, right? Right? He shook his head, trying to put it out of his mind for now.

"I'm sorry Mum. I didn't mean to ruin our outing. I'll pay more attention from now on."

"I forgive you, poppet. Now come on, we're not done yet, and most of the shops close an hour after lunch," his mum said, her expression softening as she raised an arm in the same salute from before. "Let's go!"

"Let's go!" Daniel replied as they set out again. "Wait that was the doctors? I thought it was a shop?"

"You don't sell healing sweetheart. What if someone had no money?"

"But how does that work? If he doesn't sell, how does the doctor get paid?"

"The town takes care of him. That's why we have your grandfather."

"Hmm." That sounded fine to Daniel but he couldn't help but be a little skeptical about the objectivity of Mum's perspective.

They visited three more stores in the time they had left, the first being a clothing store where they barely had any clothes. The woman seemed like she was holding back when she corrected Daniel that the place was not called a clothing store but a tailor. He thought she might be going easy because of their connection to grandfather, but then remembered that people generally didn't start shouting at little girls. A group that he technically might be considered a part of if you were a moron.

Next was a book store if you could call it that. Daniel would not since their idea of selling books to children was to tell them they shouldn't read until after they got done with their education. Which seemed foolish to Daniel as both a teaching strategy and a sales pitch. Like the clothing store, they didn't seem much for displaying goods or enticing customers. The business model was more based on taking orders, with Mum leaving an order at the tailor and picking one up for Dad at the bookstore.

The last shop was a food store. Daniel's idea of a place selling food here would have been a farmer's market out in the open air of the square. This was closer to a deli. It was all prepared foods, so snacks he guessed. Mum supported this by buying an apple tart she said was a gift for her friend they were supposed to be visiting. Daniel was starting to think that they had been doing a tour of specialty shops for rich people. Mum had mentioned a food hall where everyone went for their meals, which made Daniel question the need for a shop like this. He would expect fantasy poor people to be half-starved, not buying junk food to eat in between their grandfather-supplied meals.

"Do all the shopkeepers work for the town like the doctor?" he asked his mother as they left the square and she started to pull Daniel back up the hill. Daniel let himself be pulled, being tired since he didn't normally walk around this much.

"Everyone works for the town. We all pitch in together to make life nicer for all of us."

"So Grandfather is their boss?"

"Yes you could say that."

"So I'm their boss?"

Mum laughed at that.

"You could say that, sweetheart. But I'm your boss, so don't be rude to the townspeople."

"Yes boss," Daniel responded dejectedly. Mum laughed again.

"Come on Agnes will be waiting for us."

When they arrived at the small house in the uptown area, Agnes met them at the door. She was a tall woman with long brown hair and warm hazel eyes. She was also visibly pregnant but not yet in the end stages of waddling.

"Hello, Laura I'm glad you came. And this must be Anne. It's very nice to meet you, Anne. Come on both of you this way."

Leading them into the house, she stopped at one door and then opened it and called inside.

"Ellory, come and meet my friend's daughter." A young boy appeared from the room and stood next to his mother. He was maybe a couple of years older than Daniel, was quite a bit taller, and had sticky-out ears. Apart from that, he took after his mother, who rested her hand on top of his head and started playing with his hair.

"Anne, this is my son Ellory," she said. "Since you are both the same age you will be going to church together in the spring. I hope you can become good friends like your mother and me."

Daniel cautiously met Ellory's gaze, annoyed that they were the same age. Am I short? He tried to tell himself that it was too early to tell, before noticing a similar height gap between the two mothers. Are we short? Daniel reminded himself he didn't need height since he had high agility. Perhaps he couldn't remember the exact value anymore, and perhaps he had no baseline for comparison, but that didn't mean he needed to let some overgrown slowpoke intimidate him. Agility was a stat, height was not, ergo Daniel was superior according to Alien Magic Jesus.

Ellory rudely hadn't said anything and was returning Daniel's glare with a guarded expression. Mum sighed, confusing Daniel until he realised that while he was clearly above Ellory, she was still losing out to Agnes. Inspecting both mums, he made a startling discovery. Agnes had her hair hiding her ears!

"Aha!" Daniel cried out. How sad! An entire family of jug-eared beanpoles, embarrassed by their low agility scores. Tactfully, Daniel decided to wait until later to let his mother know.

"Maybe we should keep going Agnes," Mum spoke up after a moment's silence.

"Alright. Ellory you go on now, go find your father," Agnes told him with a sigh, and then led Daniel and his mum into a different room with a small table and some chairs. They all sat down and Agnes soon had Daniel set up with a slice of the tart Mum had brought and some milk.

"Sorry about that Agnes."

"Nono, that's just how Ellory is, and you told me that Anne was shy with other kids so I should have known better."

Daniel disagreed with that but it was complicated and he was busy with tart. He felt a hand stroke his hair and looked up to see it was Agnes and she was gazing wistfully at him.

"She's a little Laurakin. I'm so jealous of you with two daughters. All I get is three sons and another on the way."

"I'm actually expecting another one as well. Although it'll be a while till we know the sex, we just went to see Addison today."

"Addison? Doesn't Frederick come to visit you when you call for him?"

"He does, but what do you think he did when he found out Beatrix was going to be a girl?"

"I don't know."

"He left the room to go tell my father-in-law the news before he told me."

"Oh dear lord that man. His brother is the same way. But still, I'm surprised, I mean, another one? already?"

Daniel snorted at that, having finished stuffing his face. That's what he had said. Unfortunately, that only drew their attention his way.

"You know Anne, if you wanted to I'm sure my boys would be happy to have you go and play with them," Agnes said cautiously.

Daniel made a humming noise as he thought about that. It didn't really appeal to him much.

"That's only if you want to, you are welcome to stay here with us if you want."

"Actually there was something I wanted to do if you don't mind?" Daniel said, looking between the two women. This might be a good opportunity, assuming this time he could avoid his imagination running wild and distracting him again.

"Of course, we won't mind, darling. Tell us what it is," Agnes nodded encouragingly

"Well...can I go sit over in the corner and stare at the wall for a bit without being bothered?"

"Err..is she...?" Agnes stuttered

"Go on then sweetheart," his mum agreed fondly.