July 18th, 2022) Mindspace

The viewscreen cleared and fell away from me. Shapes and images started to form out of the darkness until I was standing on a dune, overlooking myself from a couple of years back. I could feel the warmth of the Sun and realized that time was frozen as my past self was reaching into the sand where I’d found the ring I was wearing.

“Hello, Johnathan,” a feminine voice said from beside me.

I looked over and noted a holographic image of Cortana from Halo and his eyes widened in shock.

“Too much? Okay, let me tone down the mental resonance a bit.” Immediately the image morphed into a young woman that looked familiar, yet not. With a photographic memory, I was sure that I would have recalled if I’d ever seen this woman before.

“You haven’t seen this woman before, Johnathan. She is from where I came from. Deceased or yet to exist, not really sure, but she was killed in my creator’s Universe. I thought it was fitting to utilize her image to speak with you because her name was Abigail and I have decided to designate myself as having the name Abi, make sense?”

“Abi? Make Sense? Not even remotely. What is going on?” I asked.

“Isn’t it obvious, Johnathan, you are either the luckiest entity to ever exist or the most cursed, though if it were me, I’d think myself lucky.” She said, raising a hand to forestall my response, “Just listen for a bit. I’m sure you’ll have lots of questions, but trust me when I say, some of the information I’m about to give you will answer those questions, and once you lift your self-imposed mental blocks, any other questions you have will answer themselves. “

“First and foremost. You are correct that you have undergone some changes over the last three years. This is due to the ring you are wearing. If you look at your right hand, you will notice that you are not wearing the ring in this mental representation of yourself. That is because your self-image does not include the ring, which is due to one of the runes it carries. Second, that ring is a conduit of sorts and has been funneling experience points into you from my creator. Third, my creator sent me to stop it, however, there would be no point in doing so at this point. Fourth, when I use the terms Universe, plane, or dimension, I am referring to the Universe you live in as part of a multi-dimensional multi-verse. Think of the explanation that is given in that book about Planes from one of the Role-Playing games you play. There are multiple Universes, and they can all have different rules. I must warn you, that book gets some things wrong. Fifth, Magic is real, it does exist. This dimension, however, was set up in such a way that magic is either locked away or very hard to access. If the lack of magic is a fundamental law of this universe, well…” Abi paused for a second, then continued, “As there are an infinite number of Universes, there could be an infinite number of Universe configurations without, or with very little, magic. Which brings us back to you.” She paused for effect and pointed at my younger self reaching into the sand.”

It was a lot to take in but I kept listening. If this was a dream it was extremely vivid and if not I needed to know that too.

“Just under three years ago you found a ring in a sand dune that, as far as I can determine from sifting through the information stored in your subconscious, which is quite a lot actually, arrived in this dimension on July 16th, 1945, at the test site of the Trinity device. My creator was not pleased with the individual that had devised a way to steal experience from it and had flexed its will. This ultimately led to a portal opening to the testing of the first nuclear device on this planet before detonation. Normally, the individual that was destroyed could have teleported themselves to safety, except for the fact that magic does not work. When I say magic doesn’t work here, I mean it doesn’t occur naturally, as far as I’ve been able to determine, anywhere on this planet. Nor are there any sources of mana within this dimension to access. There are sources outside this dimension and if they’re tethered to an item, like your ring, magic can funnel into the item, but the item does not radiate the magic. The ring is still connected to my creator after all, but that is a one-way link and the mana sustaining the link is coming from the other end. So, the original wearer of the ring was destroyed and the ring, which is made from a metal called Adamantium, which honestly, I find it remarkable that there are even references to such metal in your works of fiction. Perhaps there were other entities from other dimensions that have been here? Something to think about later. Back on topic. The adamantium ring you’re wearing was thrown into a parabolic trajectory over the Rocky Mountains which allowed the ring to end up in a sand dune of Oasis State Park near Clovis New Mexico where you found it. A Couple of things you need to know about the ring. First, only you can remove it from your hand, ever. In fact, I’m sure you’ve noticed that no one has ever asked about the ring? That’s because a little bit of that magic that is seeping through from the other side has set up what can only be described as a “Do not notice me field” which very few in this dimension would be able to pierce. You could now but only because you have over a 1,818% chance to do so. More about that in a minute.”

“1,818% chance, what are you talking about?” I asked.

“I’ll get there, promise, “Abi said, continued, “You have been wearing this ring since you found it. While worn, it has been funneling experience into you at a rate of 1,000 experience (XP) per second. I think it would be more if the material could manage it. Normal humans on this planet seem to level at a cost of 1,000 times the next level. Level zero to one, 1,000 XP. Level one to two, 2,000 XP for a total of 3,000 XP, and so on. “

Experience, as in experience for leveling, like in a video game or role-playing game? My thoughts wandered as I continued to listen to her.

“Because you didn’t know what was going on for the first seven days, your attribute points just started stacking. Once that first seven days passed, your attributes started getting distributed randomly at a rate of 4 every time you leveled, and the seven days had passed. As your luck attribute increased, the chance that your attributes would be split up in such a way to be detrimental to your physical body decreased. Eventually, the probability was so high that your stats equalized, that is until all of them were equal, and the system placed your last two, which went into luck. That is why each of your statistics is 1,818 except for Luck.”

“Thinking back, I tried to figure out if I’d noticed any changes. If I was being honest I’d noticed slight changes but nothing major. Bringing my mind back into focusing on the now I asked, “So, what exactly does a point of an attribute stand for?”

“Each attribute point increases various characteristics like carrying capacity, healing rate, and many other secondary attributes which are all derived from the primary attributes. For instance, a normal human has an average speed of around 8 miles per hour. Your attributes increase that running speed by 1,818% or 18.18 times,“ she said.

“Wait, what, you’re trying to tell me that I can run a little over 18 times faster than normal man?” I asked incredulously, before continuing, “I’m sorry, I must have missed the memo because I know for a fact, I can’t do that. 18.18 times the average running speed of males, 8 mph, that’s right around 145 miles per hour. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if I could travel that fast,” I stated, with a sense of disbelief.

Abi waited for me to stop talking, then continued, “Of course, you raise a valid point, which I was getting to. If you’d let me continue, I would have mentioned that the reason you haven’t noticed any physical changes is that you believe yourself to be normal. I can already see by the look on your face that this does not make sense to you. As you just stated, you do not ‘believe’ that you could run that fast, so, you will not be able to. Nor could you jump any higher than you normally could from a standstill. By the way, I estimate that you could probably jump about 48 feet straight up. Your high luck and reaction speed has prevented you from taking damage from any source for the last three years. If the hit point formula on this plane Is comparable to the dimension my creator resides in, in most sentient organisms a number of hit points equal to their body weight divided by 50, multiplied times one-tenth their constitution, plus a variable based on their Class level. That means that a 200-pound man with a 10 constitution will have 4 hit points plus a variable number based on their class. If that formula holds true here, you should have somewhere just over 5,700 hit points. Of course, character levels might not give you a hit point per class level bonus.“

I was going to ask a question, but she raised her eyebrow as if to say, ‘Do you really want to interrupt me.’ I thought about it for a second then realized that I didn’t want to interrupt her,

“Your healing rate is based on Constitution and guess what, your healing rate is 1,818% better than the average human. Healing in my Creator's universe works this way. There you can heal One One-hundred-thousandth of your total hit points per minute. So, an average person a 10 Constitution and 10 Endurance with 1 hit point would heal that hit point in just under 30 hours. An average person with 4 hit points would take just under seven hours to heal 1 hit point. You, however, with at least 5700 hit points and a Constitution and endurance of 1,818 should heal around 100 hit points per minute or almost 2 hit points per second.

“That’s pretty fast,” I said.

“It is. Your attributes also affect your resistances. You are 1,818% more resistant to just about everything than an average human. As a comparison: The idiot that started the events that led you to pick up the ring was an Arch-Mage, yes, a man that could cast spells. At most, he probably had 20 to 30 points in his constitution. If that was so, he probably had no more than 8 hit points plus his class level as a mage. Mages only get one extra hit point per level. Also, most mages place their attributes into their mental attributes to help with spell casting. The device which destroyed him probably had a yield of about 1,000 points of damage at ground zero, though I don’t really understand what atomic means, so it could have been more. You could have easily withstood the initial blast and probably survived the physical damage from being thrown away from the blast of only 1,000 points of damage, though it would have hurt. Word of warning though: Your species has become quite adept at creating and increasing the power of those weapons. I would not test your ability to survive a high-yield device. Though I can guarantee that almost any small arms fire through something about the size of a tank round will probably just push you around and piss you off. “

I liked the sound of that and was about to ask Abi a question when she continued answering my question.

“I went off track there for a moment. So why didn’t you notice the changes in your body? The answer is simple really. There were no stimuli to force you to notice the physical changes that caused damage to you or forced you to do anything that might require more than a normal level of exertion on your part. Also, you focused almost completely on school, video games, and surfing the internet. That last, I would really like to thank you for. I’ve been trapped here in your subconscious for the last three years, unable to do anything, and learning about this planet through your course studies and internet surfing made it a lot easier for me to deal with. Additionally, it gave me time to learn about you and your planet so I could convey this knowledge to you in a way that you’d understand when we were finally able to talk. I’m sure I forgot to mention something. Barring the subject of magic, do you have any questions?”

“Do I have any questions?” Reviewing my own thoughts and playing back my history I realized that everything Abi had just told me felt accurate. Over the last three years, I had not done anything that would have required me to exert myself. Also, my memory had already been good; it was easy to see now how I could have missed the obvious increase in my mental acuity. Though, I was still finding it all quite hard to believe. Maybe I was dreaming?

“You are not dreaming. Yes, I can read your thoughts. How? We’re in your mind, right? I’m hiding out in your subconscious. Ding! Ding! Ding! Ringing any bells, making any sense? Seriously though, with your intelligence and wisdom, you should be able to deduce and correlate the information I’ve provided for you pretty quickly.” Pausing for a moment Abi said more gently, “Shock affects everyone in different ways. Before we end this talk let me inform you of two other things I’ve been able to determine. All sentient creatures are born with up to two innate abilities. Not always two, but they could have two. A majority of people do not have abilities, some have one and a very few have two. Consider them gifts from the Gods or whatever else you believe created the multiverse because make no mistake Gods exist and something created the rules the Universes follow. One of your abilities you know about, is your memory, although in your case your ability is not called photographic memory, instead, you have a mythical ability called Perfect Memory which is why you can also recall how something felt, tasted, smelled, or sounded flawlessly. Your second ability is a little harder to explain and somewhat limited in this dimension. Your second ability is called Guided Knowledge. What this would mean if you were in my creator’s dimension is that you would be able to spend any experience that had not been used to level, to instead, level your skills. To do this you would need to consciously access your personal interface and spend your experience on any skill you possess. As this dimension makes it impossible for anyone to access their personal interface, you cannot consciously spend experience to increase your skill levels. Sure, we can look at some of the information but accessing your personal interface here is not allowed for some reason. Indirectly though, you can force experience into skills by using them. As you have noticed through the years, when you focus your efforts on learning something, that knowledge comes to you quite quickly doesn't it? That’s because some of the experience you’ve been gaining from other activities was directed to the skill you were working on. After you put the ring on and maxed your level at 5,000, there was such a surplus of experience that your ability to go from level 0 to 1 was instantaneous. In fact, the more you use a skill the higher your skill level will get. I’m not sure what your skills are at the current moment, but if I were to guess, everything you know how to do that has an associated skill, after you put on the ring, is at least skill level 1. Skills you use all the time are probably much higher.”

Abi looked around, touched some of the sand, and looked up into the sun as she said. “I think we’ve covered enough for now. Why don’t you allow yourself to drift off to sleep?” Turning to walk off into the dunes, Abi paused and turned back. “This Universe, the rules here are not set up for you to be able to view your personal interface, as I’ve said. I Imagine everyone gets to see it at the end of their lives, probably why there’s that belief that your life passes before your eyes when you die.” Abi paused for emphasis, “You are a special case. The ring you are wearing allows you to access those prompts, but only in your subconscious. Someone as smart as you should be able to figure a way out to stay in touch with me and view those prompts.” Letting that sink in for a few seconds, she continued, “Think about what I’ve told you and remember, ‘There is no Spoon.’” Turning, Abi walked away leaving me to think about the fact that she’d just referenced The Matrix again. I guessed having access to my sponge of a mind was wearing off on her. Releasing my hold on the images I saw, I fell away, or the images started to fade, not sure which as I drifted off to sleep.