After yet another terrible stressful experience, we dropped our plans to head back home and decided to stay the rest of the afternoon with Erza and Lyra.

And as if fucking nightmare creatures weren’t bad enough, the highly probably nuclear detonation was a terrifying sign that things weren’t going well for the country, possibly the world.

Would we even be able to make it back home? I don’t think we could anymore..and would the area even be safe?

I had reached around 250 seconds before stopping counting, which meant that ground zero would have been around 250/10*2 = ~50 miles away.

That was pretty much smack bang central London from where we were.

There was a troubling question that remained.

What the hell made that leviathan grade roar?

During our discussions regarding this, Erza raised a surprising and very observant point, which was: could the source of the explosion be a monster or person if they got powerful enough?

I had been taken aback by this, mainly because I couldn’t argue against it.

There were too many unknowns.

But also because I hadn’t thought about the possibility of monsters getting stronger, but it would make sense.

And with a population density like London….it would be like an all you can eat buffet.

Fuck.

Erza insisted we should stay for dinner and the night which we agreed to gratefully.

We had an absolutely amazing buffet of tinned foods such as sweetcorn and corned beef with pineapple for dessert.

It sounded plain, but it tasted so damn good after living on protein bars for almost a week.

Sleepy yawns started appearing so Lyra, Erza, Marri (and Lone!) decided that they would all be more than happy to sleep in the same room on the top floor master bedroom, with en suite of course.

Wow Erza haven’t you done well! A three floored house, how luxurious!

Even when Marri warned that Lone might wake them up during the night, Lyra and Erza had no problems with that. And to be fair, Lone had been an amazing baby. Giving us plenty of cues, only crying to wake us up at night for feeding. Marri always kept him right next to her at all times and that made him very content, evident by the lack of crying.

Erza admitted they just felt safer in numbers and I couldn’t agree more.

So while I felt left out, I was just happy to be in a comfy house that didn’t have any resident ghoulish fuckers creeping about.

Well, none so far..damn. I’ll need to barricade the house if I’m going to get any sleep.

Much to their subtle relief, I had offered to be on guard on the next floor down. Camping in the hallway but also giving them privacy to clean up and…

Hmm.

Piss around apparently.

There were girly giggling noises making it through the ceiling with Erza half heartedly trying to shush Lyra and Marri cackling.

I grinned.

What a lovely sound to hear after such a brutal few days.

What a normal sound.

I got to work barricading the ground floor, just light temporary things like moving tables on its side up against any large windows and then pushing sofas up against that.

A chest of drawers blocking the front door and some chairs stacked against the backdoor.

The rest of the house had been triple checked to make sure all windows were shut firmly and locked.

Whilst I was finishing up, I started thinking about how it is human instinct to want to not be alone, especially in times of crisis.

I’d seen a lot of movies where the world had gone to shit and everyone just started murdering and killing each other, which made for entertainment, but in reality I always felt that would be only as a last resort for desperate people.

Why kill your neighbours when you could work together and grow food or protect each other?

I’ll probably have to keep that optimistic view in check. I’m sure we’ll come across some vile bastards at some point. The kind that would do unspeakable things to women…but surely the good outnumber the bad..surely?

I let out a long sigh.

We’re actually living in true, cataclysmic times.

We’re actually having to start thinking about dark age bullshit and long term survival.

Thinking back to some of the dinner conversation where we briefly discussed longer terms, we hadn’t really come up with anything we felt comfortable with.

But I got the feeling our ‘temp group’’ was becoming more of a ‘permanent group’.

With Erza being terribly unsubtle about the prospect of us sticking around for as long as we like, ergo, indefinitely.

And Marri not really seeming to have an issue with that at all, happy for female company and good people.

They’d really hit it off.

I didn’t care where we plonked ourselves to be honest. As long as it was safe and I could keep my family safe.

If I was being honest, part of me already felt like that included Erza and Lyra…they could certainly grow on you fast.

Don’t get ahead of yourself now, hErO.

I chuckled to myself thinking I could be this great protector.

Well, I’ll do my best at least, since I know if something happens to me, they’ll look after each other.

What else can I do right?

I smiled. I’d always had a bizarre twisted pessimistic view that gave me the ultimate gift and provided the ultimate comfort.

How to let go and not give a shit.

Of course I cared about things and pain was very real.

But in the grand scheme of things, we were just specks of dust in a 13.9 billion year cosmic explosion, who simply have a modicum of self awareness and choices.

Success and failure were two different sides of the same coin and as long as you were flipping the coin, you were experiencing something. Doesn’t matter what it is, even if its torture, you just keep on existence and experiencing because what else can you do?

ANYTHING is better than the finality of non-existence..although on that note, you could argue that if space-time is truly infinite and we’re just a complex pattern of atoms and quantum mechanics, structured in a very specific way..

Well that would suggest that eventually, after an enormous infinite amount of time, that same complex pattern would randomly reappear and your self aware consciousness would re-emerge.

But that begs the question…could two identical structures appear in the same time frame??...

Goddamit I’m doing it again! Go to bed man!

Halting any more existential paradoxes, I checked the candles we’d lit in a few rooms and the long since drawn blackout curtains and blinds.

I was ready for bed and satisfied with the fortifications, so I blew out the candles on the bottom floor and carefully moved upstairs with a single candle.

I blew my candle out and waited for my eyes to adjust.

The moonlight couldn’t penetrate the thick clouds too well, so I opened the blinds a tiny bit more and the lack of electricity meant all the streetlamps were dead.

There, that's better.

My eyes were adjusted enough for me to make out the landing and a single mattress with a duvet was in front of the set of stairs at the back of the landing and the window was on the opposite side, which was the front of the house.

I peeked out the blinds and in the distance I quickly noticed quite a few other houses showed faint flickers of light moving inside.

Thankfully, there was no sign of anything stalking around the dark roads.

Candles! Wow, so there are other people around! Something to check out tomorrow that's for sure.

Seeing signs of other humans fired off some positive neurons, but I made sure to remind myself that not everyone would be friendly.

Nothing is getting into this house with making enough noise to wake me up…on that note, I should hit the sack.

I flopped onto the bed.

Oh sweet bliss, this was the comfiest and most softest bed I could remember.

I laid there for 5 minutes just in absolute heaven.

What if someone is watching the house or looking to steal the car…they could be outside right now..was I sure I didn’t see anyone in the roads?..

I grumpily shot back up to satisfy a paranoid feeling that something was watching the house.

I peeked out the blinds…nothing was out there.

The feeling faded away after checking and I went back to my bed.

I never made it back up this time as I conked out completely.

***

I was beginning to really like this place.

Even if it was pretty confusing and abstract, it was starting to radiate a nice soothing and relaxing atmosphere.

Like a zen garden, except you were the growing plant..so to speak.

The Garden of Growth.

Cool. Yeah that's a neat name for it, I’ll stick with that. Trademarked.

There was a new addition next to the maelstrom.

Okay then, let’s get down to business.

It was a monolithic, tall looking rectangular object, the same height as me.

I walked up to it and some small text materialised.

NaV + 25

NaV + 50(25 x2)

NaV + 10

NaV +26

Sum: +106

NaV! - [Null].?

Nice. Looks broken.

Upon reflection, it was possible that I wasn’t a high enough level or I needed to unlock something further.

…usually with these things, it’s because the character doesn’t have a high enough intelligence? Wow, that would be rude.

The situation made me ponder the question, how does nature represent numerical values?

Humanity has come up with arbitrary systems to quantify things, but does nature have a native system that shows a value or number? No, I don't think so...

I realised that the only thing I could think of was how the number of protons, neutrons and electrons define an atom and the number of atoms define a molecule.

But even that wasn't even quite what I was thinking about.

Anything that is defined by a value in nature, is dictated by countless micro interactions. Such as a heart beat is not timed based on seconds, but is based on a cycle of chemical changes.

Imagine a chemical triggers an electrical signal that causes the heart to pump blood once, then a lack or abundance of a chemical causes another chemical reaction which starts the whole process again.

Is brain activity just an extremely large amount of micro chemical reactions, reacting from the environment?

If there was a computer that could simulate a sentient entity perfectly via micro chemical reactions, would we consider the system to be conscious, or the simulation itself conscious?

And if we think of reality in the same way, is the universe just a physical construct, hosting chemical reactions to simulate existence??

Woa woa woa.

I felt extremely uncomfortable, as if my thoughts were being molested and perverted.

Like I was being forced to watch footage of the universe being conceived and it turns out to be a porno of a higher being’s one night stand.

They do say science is stranger than fiction.

Ethereally shrugging, I moved on to the familiar maelstrom, eager to put those alien thoughts behind me.

There were 3 tiles this time.

The one on the far left had a green outline and inside the tile was an animated outline of a humanoid, performing a shoulder tackle on another. With a shimmering outline that covered the person until the point of impact where it folded and wrapped around the target.

The next tile was the familiar potatoe processor Regeneration tile showing a I->II in the top right corner.

And the last was the Fist tile for the Physical Combat tile that showed the same I->II in the top right corner.

Not knowing wtf I was doing, I decided to touch the green outlined one.

Maybe it was some kind of rare or uncommon skill?

But nothing happened when I touched it. It just wobbled slightly then returned to its original position.

…Ok.

I slapped the potatoe. Nothing happened.

So I slapped the fists.

Again, nothing happened.

“ARE YOU BROKEN OR SOMETHING?” I complained out loud.

I nearly shat myself, metaphorically speaking, when the tiles blinked out of existence and a line of text appeared in its place.

WARNING: ERROR. AUTOMATIC DISTRIBUTION OF (?) POINTS..(?) [NuLL]..+? [!eRROr!]..COMMENCING IN ?..ERROR.

Oh Shit. Definitely broken.

I felt a searing headache which quickly escalated to ‘Please end me right now’ pain levels.

But then did a switcheroo and quickly became a ‘wow I feel A.M.A.Z.I.N.G’ almost to a sickly vomit inducing level.

Then I was forced, not compelled, into this loop of standing still, then snapping into a shoulder attack over and over until I was acutely aware of the minor adjustments needed in order to do it better and faster.

..

..

A few moments later I started feeling exhausted and overall it didn’t feel good.

It felt like it was taking too long.

Ughhh I feel sick.

I was starting to feel really bad, but I couldn’t stop repeating the same series of movements.

..

..

It is starting to hurt really bad.

But I kept getting waves of joy.

THIS ISN’T RIGHT.

The pain was coming back tenfold and my mind was not coping.

I WANT TO STOP. HOW DO I STOP!

I HAVE NO CONTROL!!!

I started to panic and scream.

“ARRRRGHHGGGGGGHHHHARRRGGGHH!”

Dropping to the floor I started convulsing but still I couldn’t stop the movements repeating over and over.

Which, whilst lying down, made for a terrible learning experience and I could feel my bones and muscles constricting beyond their normal capacity.

I heard an insanely high pitched screeching, like metal grinding on metal as I started to lose sense of everything.

My body disintegrated and I tried to scream but I had no voice or physical presence to do so, but the pain stopped.

What even is pain?

Everything stopped.

***