The Art Of The Popup Dungeon

Mickey stared at the generic government building with visible reluctance.

“Just get this done and then you can have cake.” He told himself

“It’s just your power re-certification, no big deal. Uuuurrgh”

Mickey walked through the sliding doors into the Department of meta-humans and metaphysics. After waiting briefly in the queue, Mickey found himself in front of a touch screen kiosk. Scrolling down past 'Registration', 'Report Metaphysics Event' and 'Claims' he found his desired button and tapped 'Certification' followed by ‘Re-certification’ the machine spat out a slip of paper with a number and letter, C23. Mickey grabbed his number and took a seat and waited patiently. Before long his number was called and he went up to desk ‘C’

“Michael McRae? you’re here for your re-certification? Please wait in room B. Someone will be with you shortly.”

“Thanks.” Muttered Mickey following the directions to a soulless room reminiscent of a doctors office, with a desk piled with papers and professional bric-a-brac to one side and an examination bed to the other. Shortly after Mickey sat down on the lain chair in front of the desk an older gentleman walked into the room looking up from the tablet he was holding.

“Michael McRae?”

“Yeah but please call me Mickey,”

“Sure thing Mickey, now this is just a standard power re-certification and you already proved you had a power when you registered so we shouldn’t be too long. First, could you tell me what your power is? In your own words.”

“I have a personal pocket dimension where I can store things. I can store solids and liquids but only if I'm touching them and they can’t be moving around too much.”

“I see. And how much can you hold in general.”

“Aaah, quite a bit now. Roughly a tonne or two and a small shed in volume. Whichever maxes out first. I could hold a tonne of lead or a hundred litres of feathers if that makes sense.”

“It does. And you have to be touching to store objects.”

“Yeah. Store and retrieve. Not perfect skin contact but thick gloves will stop it.”

“But not thin gloves?”

“No thin enough gloves work fine.”

“I see. And how quickly can you store or retrieve objects?”

Mickey hesitated.

"Not very, a few seconds for something small, but the bigger things take more time. Liquids also take longer for the weight and size.”

“So it’s dependent on mass and volume and liquids take proportionally longer than solids?”

“Yup.”

The assessor noted this down.

"It says you can't store anything alive?"

"Nah too much moving around. All that blood and heart business. Also it shorts out most electronics."

The assessor made a couple more notes

“Anything else?”

“When I’m ‘grabbing’ something, you know getting ready to store it, it’ll get wrapped in dark gray smoke, and it’ll make sorta faint piping noises?”

“I see. And does your power in any way present a danger to you or other people around you, in either a private, public or professional setting.”

“Aaah no i wouldn't think so. It got tested and it’s not putting off any radiation or exotic energy or meta-particles, and I don't use it to store food so…”

“Why not food.”

“Well I figure if it's something in food it would take a while to show or maybe something that builds up over time, and since I can just carry things normally anyway there's no reason to risk it right?”

“That's understandable, now it looks like it has gotten a little stronger since your last exam, any other improvements?”

“Nah just that and a little speed boost, but i might be imagining it.”

“I see. Now your assigned trainer will be in contact through email if you want to see about training additional certificates but aside from that we’re done here today. Thank you for coming in and you have a lovely day.”

The assessor stood and shook hands with Mickey while directing him to the door.

Soon, at a nearby cafe. Mickey takes a seat across from an aggressively average woman whose only distinguishing feature was a pair of faintly glowing bronze eyes. After summarising she looked at Mickey critically and asked "So you told them an enormous pack of lies?"

"Not enormous. Two or three."

"You didn't tell them about the portals or the stationary pockets. Or passive effects. Those are big lies. Real game changers for your power."

"Hey Elly, I'm not breaking any laws. They only need to know about power that could be dangerous. And Privacy laws mean I can keep anything harmless private."

"And what you're planning isn't dangerous? People are going to get hurt. Some may even die. Are you prepared for that?"

"The risks will be obvious. And so will be the rewards. Any 'victims' will make their choices. Technically they're hurting themselves. You don't stop people from drinking, gambling or skydiving. They trade risk for the reward of pleasure. I'm just offering power instead."

"That's fair. To the bold the rewards. Just be prepared. It's unlikely to go as you intend. These things rarely do."

A series of beeps come from Elanore's hip.

"Look, I have to go on duty soon. I'll see you tomorrow. Be safe, okay."

She stands from her seat and gives Mickey a quick kiss on the cheek before leaving.

“Welp, time for cake.”

Midnight that evening.

Mickey placed his hand on the bare concrete wall. A thin dark smoke billowed out of his wrist and hand clinging to the wall like soot. The smoke grew darker and thicker as it spread into a circle. Mickey smiled as he felt his pocket dimension split into two parts, a full large one and a small empty one. He then proceeded to create in the thin air another portal to the pocket filled with materials. Over the course of several hours Mickey transferred several tons of gravel, dirt, broken pallets and junk from one pocket into the other.

As the night drew to a close Mickey vanished his airborne pocket. Then with a serious effort of will forced the pocket attached to the wall to stretch into a thin line, blending in with the crack separating two concrete slabs.

His task for the night completed, Mickey returned home.

Mickey pushed the pallet of stacked boxes down the warehouse aisle, racking of plastic wrapped boxes looming above him and a mix of opened and unopened cardboard boxes waiting at shoulder height and below.

D2050… D2550. D6050 ah D7050 there it is.

Checking the box number against the pull order, Mickey placed a nondescript box labelled ES83-tb7 onto a collection of other cardboard boxes sitting on the pallet. Another box becomes another pallet picked, another order filled and finally another day done.

After stopping by his home for a quick shower and dinner, Mickey found himself waiting impatiently for it to get late enough that he would have no witnesses for his midnight deeds.

Finding himself back at the overpass Mickey reopened both portals and spent a couple hours transferring the last of the resources he would need from his pocket into his nascent dungeon. Now he had one pocket for his personal use which was almost completely empty, and another much larger Pocket dimension tethered to the concrete underpass which was completely full of the raw materials he would need.

After dismissing his personal portal he proceeded to create a hollow in the remaining pocket dimension, linking it to the portal so it would draw air from the outside world. Stepping through the portal mickey found himself within a cave the size of an average lounge room. He could feel his influence over the material expanding and solidifying allowing him to directly alter the wood and stone to fit his needs.

Using his power to meld gravel into stone, Mickey flattened the floor and walls shaping the spherical cave into a modest stone room. he then melded a pair of stalagmite and stalactites to hold a glowing spherical “gem” at roughly chest height. the gem he made out of glass and glow stick fluid. Below the “gem” he placed a sign reading “Touch Gem For Risks And Rewards''.

He then created two tunnels branching to the left and right, one to the future obstacle course and another to the combat chambers. for the first level obstacle course mickey shaped a deep pit with pillars you have to step across to get by. The pit was slanted at the entrance side to allow challengers to retry. After that was a sheer wall with rocky protrusions that would have to be climbed, followed finally by a series of horizontal poles forcing people to crawl or climb through to get past in order to get to the finish and the reward pillar.

The first combat chamber was simply a circular room with an exit and entrance. Hidden from the challengers would be the rat breeding terrariums supplying opponents for the combat trial. He placed the reward pillar in a small room at the end.

Mickey discovered he couldn't simply open a pocket while inside his "dungeon" so he had to briefly leave to remove his starter rats. With some difficulty he moved them into their terrariums and hooked up the feeding system. He suppressed the momentary surge of guilt and sorrow for those poor doomed rats.

"Eggs and omelettes" he mused.

Next he placed a "control centre" in an isolated room behind the main entrance. This is where he would store all the physical archetypes for loot, obstacles and opponents. In addition to this he placed a shelf for his design notes and message templates and a desk with a laptop for work.

Next came the little details. Cosmetic touches like carvings, stray rocks, moss and dirt that gave a eerie atmosphere. Lighting was interspersed throughout the dungeon by way of luminescent stones here and there. Enough to see clearly but still dim.

The final task was rewards.

A complete non-issue since he had no "loot" beyond the future rat corpses and no way to automate it anyway.

As he left the dungeon to go home and wait for the first challengers, he spray painted a sign pointing to the entrance proclaiming “Terrible Risks For Terrific Rewards!”