July 18th, 2022

When had I changed? As I thought back over the last three years that had flown by far too quickly. I realized that I had noticed some small changes. My memory had grown sharper. Also, I felt like I had more energy, was stronger, and a little faster. I can honestly say that the closest analogy I could come up with as to why I hadn’t noticed the massive changes I had gone through during those three years was akin to Neo finding out about the Matrix from Morpheus; “It's what we call residual self-image. The mental projection of your electronic self…” except in this case my mental faculties had kept my physical body at a level that I believed myself to be at. Since I believed I could only lift a little over my body weight, that was all I could lift. Also, once I’d learned that I had a luck attribute I figured it was high enough that it’d probably prevented anything bad from happening to me, or as Domino from Deadpool 2 said it best; “I’m Lucky.” In this context, my Luck prevented me from being hurt or having encounters that would have forced me to notice the changes in my other attributes. I’d gone to school, surfed the net, played video games with my friends, and went on the occasional trip home to visit mom and dad.

I’d shied away from relationships. I believed I didn’t have a chance, so I didn’t. I had only noticed two major changes. The first was that my memory seemed to be even better than before. I practically downloaded information off the internet into my mind after school every night when I surfed the internet. The second was that I’d started sleeping a lot less. I’d go days with only three or four hours of sleep and feel fine. Then one day I would feel a little tired, sleep for eight hours and I’d be good for a few more days. As time went on, the time I needed between each full eight hours of sleep increased as well.

So here I was at home on one of my breaks. Saturday had been my 21st Birthday. I’d been home in Clovis to enjoy a week with my parents before I started my summer semester. We’d gone out to eat at the local steakhouse and my first official, and legal, alcoholic drink had been a beer. Not really a fan of beer I’d tried a Long Island Iced Tea. That drink was awesome! I’d had two before my parents called it a night and they’d decided it was time to go home. They’d thought I’d had enough even though I’d felt fine. My parents had ‘known’ that I wasn’t fine so we went home. They were a bit surprised when we arrived back at the house and I really was fine. We sat down and talked for a bit about school and how I was progressing towards my bachelor’s in computer science, but it was just small talk. Eventually, I’d went up to my room to watch TV.

More accurately, I’d been flipping through channels looking for something I hadn’t seen before when I came across a Public Broadcasting Station (P.B.S) show concerning meditation. As I settled in to watch the show, I realized that I hadn’t meditated in just over 3 years, not since going to college. Hopefully, this show would have information I hadn’t already learned. I left the TV on and listened. As I listened, I’d felt myself becoming more relaxed. In a very soothing almost whispering voice, the female speaker continued slowly.

“Okay, close your eyes and relax. “

“Let all the stress of the day flow from your body.”

“That’s it.”

“Feel the stress leaving your body.”

“Good.”

“Now focus on your breathing.”

“In.”

“Out.”

“In.”

“Out.”

“Good.”

“Next, I want you to visualize that you’re at the top of a carpeted staircase. You can feel the carpet touching the bottom of your feet.”

“Good.”

“Wiggle your toes.”

“Do you feel the carpet brush the bottom of your foot, reaching up between your toes?”

“Good.”

“Now you’re going to make your way down the staircase. As you walk down the stairs you are going to feel all your stress, anxiety and fear leave your body through the fibers of the carpet.”

“Breath In.”

“Breath Out.”

“Good.”

“Now we’re ready for that first step.”

“Stepping down with your right foot, feel the energy leave your foot and enter the carpet. Now bring your left foot to that step.”

“Good.”

“Let the stress flow from your feet into the carpet…”

The voice kept this up until I visualized myself stepping onto the basement floor at which point my focus was utterly and completely internalized to the point that I couldn’t hear the voice on the television speaking anymore. I felt like my body was floating in a gentle open void. In the distance, I saw what looked like a computer monitor rushing toward me which stopped when I was only a few feet away. A new message was appearing at the top every second then scrolling down.

You have earned 1000 experience, total experience above level cap.

You have earned 1000 experience, total experience above level cap.

You have earned 1000 experience, total experience above level cap.

Attempting to scroll up, would be idiotic. The last time I’d seen something like this had been when I passed out when mom and dad showed me the car. If I’d received a message like this every second since, wow. That would mean I had a minimum of 90 million messages to review. I figured that this was in my mind. I should be able to control the interface. I willed the information to be categorized by type and was pleasantly surprised when it did. A second later I read the five categories listed:

Experience Gain 87,713,280 messages, which was increasing by one every second

Leveling Messages: 4,999

Warning Messages: 4,999

Informational Messages: 4,999

Message from Unknown Source: 1 message.

Ignoring the experience gain messages I focused on the Leveling messages and willed the 4,999th message to display.

Congratulations, you have reached level 5,000! You have been awarded 4 attribute points which may be distributed however you wish. Level 5,000 is the maximum level that any creature can attain without choosing a path of ascendancy in this dimension. All earned experience will be stored for later use once a Path of Ascendency is chosen.

Say what now, Level 5,000? What the hell? I have levels, Like in a game? Putting those thoughts out of my mind for a minute I willed the 4,999th warning to display:

WARNING you have reached a new level without allocating your attribute points. You now have 240 unspent attribute points from previous levels. If you do not allocate your unspent attribute points within the next seven days, they will be randomly allocated for you.

Again, with the unhelpful information. Attributes? Like Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and the like from Role-Playing Games. What was this message referring to exactly? Maybe there would be another clue in the last informational message:

It has been seven days since you leveled. your attribute points have been distributed as follows, 4 points have been placed into the attribute Luck, Total Luck attribute 1,820.

One thousand eight hundred twenty Luck? Again, with the unhelpful information what exactly does that mean? Without a frame of reference, I had absolutely no clue what these numbers meant. I scrolled the last twenty-four messages in that category quickly. I was able to determine that I had ten other attributes: Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Endurance, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Willpower, Perception, and Charisma. Each of those attributes had a value of 1,818, whatever that represented. It looked like that automatic distribution ensured that my attributes stayed level. I wondered if that was mandated by some other mechanism, as I still didn’t know what I was looking at. Sighing, I put my question thoughts on hold and opened the one message from the category “Message from Unknown Source”:

I have reviewed all information I have been able to form from your subconscious. When you finally access this prompt, please respond by answering this question, would you like to know what is going on? Yes or No?”

Without hesitation, I thought, “Yes.”