“I’m here!” Slamming the door open with a bang, Joshua rushed into his classroom.

“No, you’re not,” Coach Beale corrected him.

“I’m not?” Puzzled, Joshua raised an eyebrow in puzzlement, before innocently asking, “Where am I then?”

“You’re outside on this bright wintery day, running two laps for being a late loser,” Coach Beale correct him, causing the rest of the students in class to snicker and laugh.

“Uggghhhh… Do I got to?” Groaning, Joshua turned and started heading back out the door before he even heard the answer. First period might be his physics class, but Coach Beale was also the head football coach, and his solution to any class disciplinary issue was always some form of physical exercise. Pushups, sit ups, jumping jacks… Any exercise could be his form of punishment, and true to Joshua’s usual streak of luck, this morning’s was running.

“AND DON’T THINK OF SLACKING OFF OR TAKING SHORTCUTS!” Coach Beale’s booming voice echoed down the hall after him, reminding the whole world, “WE CAN SEE YOU FROM OUT THE WINDOWS!”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” Sighing deeply, Joshua could only curse his luck as he scurried outside to start slowly jogging around the football field.

“Why... the... hell... didn’t... I... buy... stamina... instead... of... brains?” Gasping his breath, Joshua stumbled to finish his second lap. At about 400 meters each loop, Josh had just run close to half a mile, and he was really feeling it! “I’m not a… damn sports fanatic,” he griped, rounding the last turn and finishing up his lap.

“Ping!” As he crossed the starting line for the third and final time, the sound of a WRP alert echoed gently in his ears. ‘WRP show,’ Joshua thought, pulling the small icon back into view of his left eye, as he slowed walked over towards the water fountain to cool down. A single, bright-yellow exclamation point hovered warningly across the center of the ‘R’ in the ‘WRP’.

‘Expand Alert,’ Joshua thought, as he leaned in to get a drink of water from the fountain. Slowly, a couple of the small blue notification windows opened and expanded into view in the center of his vision.

Congratulations! You have completed the task, “Coach’s First Mission”. You have been awarded 1 MSP.

Congratulations! You have completed the your first task! You have been awarded 1 UP.

Congratulations! You are the first in the FCHS Region to complete a task! You have been awarded the title, “Trailblazer”.

“Pbbttbtt!” Sputtering water, Joshua blinked stupidly several times before muttering, “What the hell,” softly to himself. ‘Just what is MSP? The UP, I had before, which stood for User Points, or something similar, but I have no idea what MSP is,’ Joshua thought inwardly to himself. ‘Magic Spell Points? Manufacturer Suggested Price? Mice Slurp Pasta? And a title to boot, just for being punished and having to run a lap?’

Reminding himself that he could still be seen by those up in his classroom, Joshua slowly straightened up and started to lazily walk back into the school. ‘Expand user Joshua Campbell,’ he thought towards the little icon floating in the corner of his vision. It only took a small moment before he heard the same old, ‘Ping,’ and the window opened up in the center of his vision for him.

User: Joshua Campbell Points Stats/General Characteristics Skills/Abilities Items/Gear Titles/Awards Restrictions/Disadvantages Tasks/Quests

“There’s more information than before,” Joshua mumbled softly to himself, as he went up the steps and back up to the second floor, where his class was. “I guess it expanded for me too last night when I upgraded to version 13.”

Opening the door to his classroom, Joshua walked in and headed to his seat. “All done, coach,” he informed his teacher.

“WAS YOU RAISED IN A BARN??” Heading over to the door, Coach Beale yelled as he slammed it hard enough to make the glass pane in it almost fall out again.

“Not a barn, coach,” Joshua replied back playfully, while taking his seat, “but I was raised in a county where the cattle outnumber the people. Didn’t you know we’re out backwood hicks here?”

“DAMN STRAIGHT I KNOW IT! I WAS BORN AND RAISED HERE TOO! HOORAH!! GO BUFFALOES!”

“HOORAH! GO BUFFALOES!!” Half the jocks in class — mainly all those on the football team — immediately joined in on the shout, proving why there was a reason why Coach Beale’s door was always shut.

“Page 123,” Coach Beale told Joshua, in a slightly more normal tone. “We’re talking about GPE and KE.”

For a brief moment, Joshua’s heart leapt up into the back of his throat, first hearing a list of abbreviations. Instantly his mind leapt to thinking about ‘WRP’, and he had to take a moment to convince himself they were discussing something else.

“Since you so kindly decided to finally grace us with your presence today,” Coach Beale told him, “why don’t you tell us all what GPE and KE stands for?”

“Umm… Gross Petroleum Exports and Kinetic Exercise,” Joshua guessed?

“One out of five,” Coach Beale laughed, “just like your last test, I believe.”

“Hey, I got a 72 on my last test,” Joshua corrected him.

“You’re just dyslexic,” Coach Beale assured him, smirkingly. “You read the numbers backwards.”

“Then does that mean I scored good with my 001 last time, Coach?” Brandon, one of the largest linemen on the football team joked.

“No, it just means you’re an idiot.” Maria, one of the hippiefied emo girls told him.

“GRAVITATIONAL POTENTIAL ENERGY AND KINETIC ENERGY!!” Booming out his voice like an army drill instructor, Coach Beale yelled to reign in everyone’s attention and get back on topic.

While everyone else was learning about GPE and KE, Joshua was opening up and studying all the various options now available in his WRP menu. The points now had four different categories which he could earn — User Points, Companion Points, Minor Status Points, and Minor Companion points — and the Skills and Abilities menu now had a submenu for “Minor”.

Opening either the Minor Skills or Minor Abilities menu, was another almost endless list of almost petty modifiers. Some of the abilities were almost laughable in Joshua’s eyes. Enhanced facial growth (beard). Reduced facial growth (beard). Reduced odor (breath). Reduced appetite. Enhanced hair growth (head). Enhanced hair strength (head). Alteration (Hair color, head).

Tons of little abilities and worthless skills, in his opinion. Everything from Ability: Adapt Accent to Zero Hair Loss. And, as if those weren’t enough, there was even a category called “Custom Minor Ability” and “Custom Minor Skill”, which could apparently be used to create specific talents that weren’t part of the normal mass listing.

‘But the absolute worst part of this damn system,’ Joshua thought to himself, ‘is the fact that it already lists so many things about a person. If you can access someone’s character menu, it tells you just about everything you’d ever want to know about them. It lists things that people really seem to like with some sort of “Enhanced” with them. Enhanced Enjoyment (Extra cheese pizza II). Enhanced Enjoyment (Late sleep). It’s one hundred percent an invasion of privacy, and if it’s real, then what the heck does that say about a person’s personality?

‘Can I just spend a few minor points and suddenly enjoy eating peas?’ The more Joshua thought about all the possibilities, the more he really didn’t like them. This “New Human” system made it seem almost as if people could just tweak and alter themselves to become just about anything they desired. It was almost like the whole array of human DNA was rewriteable, and that the twenty or thirty thousand genes which a person had inherited from their parents was nothing.

‘Acquire Enhanced Resistance (Cold),’ Joshua thought towards the WRP icon, even as he was frowning slightly to himself. He’d never been one with much liking for the cold weather, and the fact that it was currently wintertime helped him quickly decide on how to spend the single MSP which he’d acquired.

By the time he’d finished browsing through the whole insane list of skills and abilities, the bell had rung, and it was time to move on to his second period class – Biology. Since both Physics and Biology were considered to be “Sciences”, the two classrooms were right beside each other. Most students only take a single science class each school year, but Joshua had doubled up on them this time, in the hopes that next year he’d only have to attend half a day of classes to get enough credits to graduate from high school.

“Mr. Campbell, I’m happy to see you here so bright and early.” Mr. Babs cheerfully greeted him at the door, motioning for him to come on in. “I’m sorry to have missed you yesterday evening,” Mr. Babs, informed Joshua, holding out his phone. “I expect you’ll be wanting this back.”

“Umm… Yes, sir.” Nodding stupidly, it took Joshua several moments to remember that it was Mr. Babs taking his uPhone yesterday which led to him getting wrapped up in this stupid ‘End of the World, New Human’ crap. “Umm… I stopped by the room after classes were over, but you weren’t here and I had to rush to catch the bus,” Joshua told him, while waiting and watching carefully to see if Mr. Babs would show any indication at all that he knew about the WRP Phone which he’d taken off his desk.

“Yeah,” Mr. Babs coughed slightly, and shrugged apologetically, “as I said, I’m sorry about that. I got called down to deal with an issue in the office a few minutes before classes ended, and I didn’t make it back up here for almost half an hour after. I hope you didn’t miss it too much overnight,” he said, smirking slightly. “I know how you kids go into withdrawal without having a phone in your hands for five minutes, nowadays.”

“It was hard,” Joshua lied, taking his phone back, “but I managed somehow.” If Mr. Babs wasn’t going to give any indication whatsoever that he didn’t know anything about the WRP Phone – and he didn’t – Joshua certainly wasn’t going to be the first to bring it up. If he even could, that is. After all, wasn’t Olivia bound by some sort of restriction? ‘Bound by WRP-Beta EULA and NDA’, if he remembered correctly, and for something like 336 days?

“Well, I hope you’ve learned to stay off it while in class,” Mr. Babs told him, seemingly oblivious to the stray thoughts that were running so rampant through Joshua’s mind.

“I sure have,” Joshua promised, sliding the phone into his back pocket. “I’ll make certain you don’t see it in here again.”

“Not that I won’t see it,” Mr. Babs corrected, laughing lightly. “That you won’t be using it while in here again. I don’t have any problems with seeing a student’s phone, as long as it’s face down and just sitting on their desk. It’s when I see them trying to make use of them that I have to step in and take them away.”

“Yes, sir,” Joshua said, forcing himself to smile slightly. “No more using the phone by me. At least not in this class,” Joshua promised.

“Good. Now go take a seat and get ready for a test.”

“A test? What test?” Blinking stupidly, Joshua tried hard to remember if there was some sort of test scheduled for today. To the best of his recollection, there shouldn’t have been.

“You’ll see,” Mr. Babs told him, smirking lightly, as Joshua worked his way back and took his seat.

Luckily, as Joshua did see after everyone shuffled in and settled into the classroom, there actually wasn’t any test. With Mr. Babs, smirking as he started his normal lectures, Joshua couldn’t help but chuckle slightly to himself – his damn teacher had got him again! After thinking about it for a few moments, he realized, ‘Mr. Babs never actually said we were having a test today. He just told me to get sit down and get ready for one!’

Even if he wasn’t involved with the WRP Project, Mr. Babs was still Mr. Babs. After all, it was his irreverently picky nature which had led Joshua to thinking that the phone he’d picked up was just some game development app which he’d been working on. Never once had he ever even considered the possibility that it might be something real – at least, not until this morning when he awoke with a floating icon in his eye and a notification that he’d been “upgraded”.

‘I wonder what the hell these restrictions and disadvantages are,’ Joshua thought to himself, while opening the menu to browse them while Mr. Babs was going over something called the “Scope Rule”.

Trying not to groan out loud, Joshua was almost instantly disappointed to see that there was now a menu option for “Minor” listed under this subheading as well. If it was anything like the skills and abilities, it too would probably be a hundred pages long, and full of all sorts of trivial and worthless stuff such as “Enhanced Odor (Feet, bad)”, or “Dislike Taste (Peas)”. People really weren’t going to be “people” anymore if this New Human system actually got implemented on a widespread scale. Children of the future are going to be raised hearing stuff like, “Honey, do your chores so you can earn enough points to like peas like everyone else.”

‘At least I now know what the hell was wrong with my mouth,’ Joshua thought to himself, tuning out the lesson going on in the classroom. ‘Right there it is, in translucent white on blue – “Can not deceive, betray, or harm Eternally Loyal Companion”, and “Bound by WRP-Beta EULA and NDA (336 days)”.

‘The only difference between my restriction and Olivia’s,’ Joshua sighed, ‘is that mine doesn’t have a “or disobey” with it. I can’t lie to her, betray her, or deliberately harm her – and I saw from earlier this morning how strong those restrictions actually are.

‘It’s all real,’ Joshua finally admitted to himself, laying his head down flat on the table in front of him. Part of him had been wanting to still believe that it was all some sort of game, or some sort of dream, but now it all made sense. He had wanted to deny knowing anything until he’d had more time to sort things out – instead, he blabbed away freely when she asked him anything. Even if his heart wanted it, his body wouldn’t let him deceive Olivia with false information.

And the worst part of all?!

Even though he knew he was saying and acting differently than he intended, it still felt natural. Where his brain should’ve been screaming in warning, instead it just kind of nuzzled him with a small little, “that’s weird” type feeling.

‘Is that how Olivia felt when I told her to take off her top and stand there in front of me?’ Was it natural for her too? Honestly, except for a very slight tremble, it hadn’t seemed as if it’d bothered her too much to stand and let him stare at her, in just her bra. Was she actually the same person she was yesterday, or was that old Olivia dead and gone – replaced by a version 13.0-beta?

Joshua didn’t know, and he really didn’t like that he didn’t know. How much of them now, was the same as them yesterday? Exactly how much had this damn WRP system already changed them? And how much more was it going to alter them in the future?

Lost in his own thoughts, Joshua just laid there with his head down upon the table until the bell rang. When it did ring, Joshua got up completely lethargically and unenergetically, and shuffled almost zombie-like to his next class — History — with Coach Hawkins.

Getting in the classroom, Joshua once again simply placed his head down upon his desk and pretended to be going to sleep. He knew, as everyone knew, that Coach Hawkins wouldn’t bother him for sleeping in class – at least, not unless he started to snore. Coach Hawkins had one cardinal rule in his class – do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t bother the people who are actually looking to learn in his class. Want to sleep? Fine. Want to do you math homework before the next period? Fine. Want to play a game on your phone? Fine – as long as you did it quietly and didn’t drag the other people around you into it.

By laying his head down and closing his eyes, Joshua was more or less guaranteed not to be bothered in History class. Heck, the coach wouldn’t even bother him if there was a test to take, if he went to sleep. He’d simply just give him a minus 10 for a grade! (Yeah, it didn’t make sense at first – How the hell can anyone ever get a negative 10 for a test score – but the coach had a remarkably simple policy which he always enforced: Don’t put your name on your paper, you lose ten points off your test score. If someone slept through a whole test, then chances are they turned in a blank answer sheet, meaning a scored a zero, and if they didn’t sign that blank sheet, then they’d end up with a negative for their final test grade!

Thankfully, after listening to the lecture for a few minutes, Joshua realized he could at least rule that worry out of his life. There wasn’t any test in History today either, luckily. Apparently they were discussing how some trade agreement somewhere, at some time, led to somebody getting mad at somebody else, and that leading up to some conflict over something.

‘Basically just the same old same old’, Joshua thought to himself, quickly tuning it out so he could wallow in his own troubles. ‘After all, history wasn’t going to really matter in another 336 days. From the little opening text I’d read,’ Joshua told himself, ‘the world’s going to be destroyed once again, like it had been during the flood of Noah’s time. What use is learning about how Whocaresastan betrayed Whoeverastan back in the dark-purple ages?’

Sighing deeply, Joshua slowly opened up his list of minor disadvantages and morosely scanned up and down them. ‘These make me seem like such a totally petty little asshole,’ Joshua thought to himself. 'Intolerance (Jocks). Intolerance (Popular Figures). Intolerance (Authority).’ At least it didn’t seem like the system considered him to be a racist, or a chauvinist – but he’d never actually considered that he was the one who didn’t like the others. He’d always told himself that it was the jocks who didn’t like him, or that it was the popular kids who were looking down their nose at him. Never before had he actually considered that he might be the one looking down on them.

And yet, still, the question nagged at him, deep in his core: ‘If I spend a single point to buy off one of these minor disadvantages, would I suddenly feel different about these people?’

Exactly how much did the system affect their personalities? How much could it change a person? ‘I need to test it somehow,’ Joshua thought to himself. ‘Something petty and which wouldn’t have any true effect on life.’

‘If the world’s going to end, then I can give myself a disadvantage which really wouldn’t affect anything in an apocalypse. Something like…. Acquire dislike for underwear,’ he thought towards the small WRP icon floating which only he could see.

I’m sorry, you can not purchase new disadvantages for yourself, at this time. Would you like to give this disadvantage to your Eternally Loyal Companion instead?

‘What the hell? Can’t take it for myself, but I can give it to my companion? That’s bullshit!’ Snorting, Joshua had to remind himself to remain calm while in the classroom. Adjusting his position of his head to lay his bookbag under it, he slowly closed his eyes once more and thought, ‘Sure. Do it.’

A moment later, a ping sounded in his ear, and when he cracked open his eye again, there was a new notification waiting.

Eternally Loyal Companion Olivia Davis now has the minor disadvantage: Dislike (Underwear) I. You have acquired 1 MCP.

‘Fine,’ Joshua thought to himself. ‘Upgrade minor disadvantage: Dislike Underwear for Olivia Davis to level 2.’

With a ping, the announcement window updated once again.

Eternally Loyal Companion Olivia Davis now has the minor disadvantage: Dislike (Underwear) II. You have acquired 1 MCP.

‘Again,’ Joshua thought. ‘And again. And again. And again. After all, does it really matter how much someone dislikes underwear? Isn’t it more important, at this time, for us to know exactly how many ranks there are for a disadvantage?’

The system responded with a ping, a ping, and then two buzzer sounds, as the notifications changed.

Eternally Loyal Companion Olivia Davis now has the minor disadvantage: Dislike (Underwear) III. You have acquired 1 MCP.

Eternally Loyal Companion Olivia Davis now has the minor disadvantage: Dislike (Underwear) IV. You have acquired 2 MCP.

I’m sorry. Eternally Loyal Companion Olivia Davis’s disadvantage: Dislike (Underwear) IV cannot be increased further at this time.

I’m sorry. Eternally Loyal Companion Olivia Davis’s disadvantage: Dislike (Underwear) IV cannot be increased further at this time.

‘So, four ranks,’ Joshua thought to himself, ‘and I got a total of 5 MCP for it. Now, I’ll just have to talk to Olivia later and see if it’s actually making any sort of change for her. If it’s something terrible, which I don’t see how it can be,’ he assured himself, ‘then I’ll just spend the points back and pay it back off. At least we’ll get to see how much of an effect these “minor disadvantages” have over us, and how much they might be able to influence us.’

Convinced that he’d done a good thing to help them learn more about this “New Human, End of the World System”, Joshua perked up a little bit and slowly sat back up and tried to pay a little attention to the rest of the class. Now, he was looking forward to meeting back up with Olivia to talk to her, to see how much – if any – the minor change was affecting her.

The end of class couldn’t come quick enough now, as far as he was concerned.