By the time I got back to my base, night had already fallen. Unfortunately, I was also starting to get a splitting headache. It was like someone was trying to claw their way out of my head. As I stumbled to the bathroom, where I kept the aspirin, I wondered if I could just… edit away my headaches since I was an Administrator.

Administrator Alert

You have 4,348 unread messages.

You have 34,270 System alerts to review.

Open Administrator interface?

Yes / No

I groaned as the thought brought up another blue box. However, the pressure on my head suddenly went away, like it was never there. I knew this administrator thing was likely going to be a headache, but I never knew that would be literal!

Administrator Interface

Section

Description

Messages

Read and respond to System Administrator messages.

Alerts

Read and respond to alerts caused by System conflicts, errors, and other aspects out of accepted boundaries.

Admin Configuration

Configure defaults and establish controls for Administrator interface, including notification systems.

System Configuration

Configure defaults and establish controls for local System boundaries.

Quarantine

Review status of quarantined variables to determine whether they are to be released or deleted. Includes interview space where relevant.

Actions (Global)

Available actions that can be taken on a global scale by System Administrators.

Actions (Group)

Available actions that can be taken regarding groups by System Administrators.

Actions (Individual)

Available actions that can be taken regarding individuals by System Administrators.

Right. So, I guess I should have expected that there’d be a whole menu of things for me to look through. I knew enough about computers to know that being a ‘System Administrator’ basically meant that you were there to keep things running, so it made sense that I had some controls that let me do things. But if splitting headaches were how the System wanted to alert me to things, that was the first thing I was going to change.

Notification Modes

(Modified for Administrator Species)

Psychic (Current)

Psychic messages delivered to administrator to notify them of messages and alerts.

Audible

Projects sound in the administrator’s area to notify them of messages and alerts.

Visible (Area)

Projects images in the administrator’s area to notify them of messages and alerts.

Visible (Individual)

Displays images visible only to the administrator to notify them of messages and alerts.

That explained a couple things. I didn’t have any psychic ability, so the psychic messages were just building up without actually telling me anything. Since my role as a thief and assassin would be made far more difficult by random sights and sounds showing up, I chose the Visible (Individual) option, and spent a few moments customizing the resulting images into something resembling a Heads-Up Display, like you’d see in some video games.

I also made sure that it would not be visible when I closed my eyes, or was sleeping. I didn’t remove access during those times, just made it so that the HUD wouldn’t show up then. Trying to sleep while a HUD was flashing madly in your vision, even when your eyes were closed was not my idea of a good time.

System Alerts

12,342 instances of attempted temporal movement outside of bounds.

20,240 instances of attempted reality alteration outside of bounds.

1688 instances of aggressive behavior towards the System.

I looked at the timestamps on the alerts. Those were all in the few hours the System had been online! Clearly, I needed to do something, or someone would do something stupid, and cause even more trouble.

The time travelers were the easiest to deal with. Upon reviewing the alerts, they were all attempting to go back to times before the System activated. Why? No clue. But that wasn’t going to happen.

The default System Configuration did not allow time traveling outside of System parameters. I reinforced this, and basically cut off all time travel to eras before the System restarted. I also put in a default message, stating that this was to prevent instability in reality. Further attempts to break reality would result in punishments at the discretion of the System Administrator.

Next, I looked at the reality warpers. Those types were always troublesome. When the laws of reality were more ‘guidelines’ or ‘suggestions’, it tended to leave people thinking that they could do whatever they wanted. And that usually ended up bad for anyone on the receiving end.

Fortunately, the System also didn’t immediately allow people to just ‘turn off’ the rules anymore. But that didn’t stop people from trying, unfortunately. Especially when, as I said, they weren’t used to following the rules. Luckily, the number of true reality warpers in the world was low, just fifteen out of the entire population of Earth.

I decided to quarantine them all, until I had time to go through the more ‘fine-tuned’ options I had for dealing with people. I’m sure that, as the Admin, I had a way to edit whatever the equivalent of user information was. I wanted to be very careful when I did that, though, for obvious reasons. Editing people was not something to do on a whim.

That just left the people who were being rude to the system. Looking through the logs, it looked as though most of those could be written off as people being more than a little freaked out about the System coming online. I cleared those. Thirty-nine of the instances were due to twelve of the reality warpers I’d just quarantined, so I cleared those, too.

Surprisingly, that left just one instance to deal with. Apparently, someone going by the handle Web Mistress decided it would be a great idea to try and use her technomancer powers to try and hack the System itself! Fortunately, she only tried once, and then stopped. I didn’t clear the alert, but I did mark it as read, and made a note to keep an eye on her, to make sure that this Web Mistress didn’t try again.

As a villain, I had to appreciate the audacity to try and use control over computers to attempt to hack reality. That kind of gall, when married with skill, could lead to big things. Of course, if you didn’t add in some wisdom, then it led straight to big failure. Since she only tried once, that meant she recognized the danger, and backed off, probably to figure a safer way of doing whatever it was she wanted.

At any rate, with the alerts handled, I began checking out the messages. Of the 1688 messages, over a thousand were some variation of “I want to speak to the manager.” Those were deleted, without even a response. Another hundred were people who actually had the balls to try and send a Nigerian Prince scam using the System, apparently not noticing that the System messages used their real identity, and their real ‘account’, rather than some fake. I sent replies to all of those people, informing them that they had all been ‘randomly selected’ for an in-depth audit and readjustment of their abilities. Even if I didn’t end up doing anything to them, they’d be sweating for days.

There were some sincere information requests, which I marked for future attention, once I knew more about the System myself. Some reporters were hoping for interviews, but that wasn’t going to happen, since I really didn’t want anyone knowing that I was the System Administrator for Earth. That would just add to my headaches, after all. (Not literally, at least, since I’d changed that damn setting. Thank god.)

That just left one message that was looking really interesting. The same Web Mistress that had tried to hack the blue boxes had sent a message to me, as the System Administrator. That made me curious, but also concerned. I was no hacker, but I knew that viruses could be set to open through mails, and those viruses could then take over computers. I didn’t know if the System had an antivirus installed, much less whether it would be up to the task of taking on a super-hacker!

That made me crack open the options for dealing with individuals. I needed to know more about this Web Mistress, and now. I had just been handed potentially unlimited power, so long as no senior administrator caught on, and I was not about to let someone take it away from me that easily!

Basic Info

Name

Crystal Mollen

Aliases

Web Mistress, Lady Lolth

Height

1.59m

Weight

74.8 kg

Eyes

Brown

Hair

Brown

Base Points

300

Total Spent

450

Max Disadvantages

150

Disadv. Used

150

XP Earned

0

XP Used

0

Whatever I was expecting, when I opened up her basic information panel, this was NOT it. Crystal Mollen was a name I had not heard in a long, long time. In fact, it was a name I had never expected to hear again, especially like this.

Iceblade’s KS (Superhuman World) Check, (8-): 11

After all, when I ran away from home, my little sister was barely in high school, and she certainly hadn’t developed any kind of superpowers! This status screen, however, told me that, not only was my sister a super, but she was on the more powerful side of things, too. And I had never heard of a ‘Web Mistress’ before, which meant that either she was either new, or had been very quiet about her activities.

Or, she could have been living as a ‘civilian’, ignoring her powers. Her identity showing as Crystal Mollen instead of Web Mistress, except when she was using her powers certainly suggested that, at the very least, she had a strong separation between her ‘normal’ self, and her ‘super’ self, and the ‘normal’ self was who she was, most of the time. I spent most of my time as Iceblade, so the System recognized me as Iceblade, first and foremost. If she spent most of her time as Crystal, then it made sense for the System to recognize that.

Knowledge Skill (The System), (14-): 3d6 = 10 (Success)

My Knowledge of the System kicked in with a bit of a jolt. Aliases all linked back to the same ‘account’ in the System. For those who had separate identities for different actions, their actions would be recorded based on the identity being used, but, as far as the System was concerned, it was like using the same email address and signing your name at the bottom as two different people. Of course, most people didn’t have access to the System like I did.

This just reinforced how important it was to keep my newfound powers quiet. If word got out that I could now read anyone’s secret identity, including real names and all of that? It wouldn’t just be heroes that would be after me. All the villains would be after me as well, either to protect their own secrets, or to try and get blackmail information on their rivals. And it only took one attacker getting lucky to put me out of commission.

Yes, it was definitely easier to dodge questions than bullets. Eventually, it would be too much, and I’d be toast. And I was allergic to the idea of getting dead, so that was not an option!

Which brought my mind back to my sister. As far as I knew, she didn’t have any idea that I was still alive. Our parents had died during the Greene Revolt, when a bunch of nutjobs in Georgia led by a Congresswoman protesting a presidential election tried to assault the state capitol in Atlanta, to prevent the state government from certifying the results. When riot police stopped them from getting to the capitol building, the insurrectionists spread throughout the city, trying to cause as much chaos and confusion as they could.

Eventually, the National Guard had been called in, and they used lethal force to put down the rioters, but not before my parents had been caught in the crossfire when my father’s office building was bombed. The leaders of the group escaped the city, but I couldn’t let them get away with that, so I headed down to Georgia for the first time in years, and went on the hunt. I found them all, and delivered them to the State Police.

They were still alive when I dropped them off, but they probably wished that I had been merciful enough to kill them. After all, life doesn’t look too good when your arms and legs are cut off at the torso. That’s going to make doing anything really difficult. And they weren’t going to be spewing their particular brand of crazy any more, either, since I cut out their tongues. No, they were condemned to live the rest of their lives as little better than fleshlights with a heartbeat. Such was my mercy.

I shook my head, to clear it of the old memories. Those thoughts still ‘angried up my blood’, as people in the South would say. I turned my attention back to my sister, and checked her data in the System. To my surprise, she was still living in Atlanta. I checked the weather forecast. Supposed to be relatively cool and cloudy for the next few days. Not too hot, which was rare for Georgia in this time of year. Perhaps it was time to go pay her a visit?