Homegrown System

"Doesn't that sound a little powerful for a first class?" Alice asked after Titus finished reading the description. "I mean, even the name 'Eternal Predator' sounds like final boss status."

Titus just shrugged. "You're asking the wrong person. It does sound awesome, though."

"That's true. It seems like we need to find enchanted weapons for you, and you need to learn how to make mystical traps. Assuming that's not flavor text." Alice mused. "Not sure how much the description goes beyond the skills and stats you get."

Titus shrugged again. "The class came with three skills on top of the three I already have from my general skill selections. I didn't get to choose them, but I have a feeling I could swap them out for other skills the class offers. Assuming maybe we get more eventually, but the class wasn't just about the points and skills. There's something else..."

Alice looked confused as Titus trailed off without explaining further. "Yeah?" she asked after a moment.

"Yeah," he said. "I can feel something inside me that's different. Something has shifted in tone, almost as if the class is showing me the way to something deeper. I wonder if it has something to do with the magic that has always been here, that the System has tapped into."

Alice nodded. "That kind of makes sense, but not really. We're going to have to experiment with that."

"Of course," Titus agreed. “Oh, and my skills have levels now.”

“Of course they do,” Alice replied and the two of them fell into a thoughtful silence. "Hey, Titus," Alice said cautiously. "Before all this, did you believe in magic? It seems like it's easy for you to accept all these changes and that there was always magic in the world."

Titus looked around. "Unless this is some bizarre dream, in which case I'm probably in some insane asylum somewhere, I would say that it's hard not to accept what's in front of me.

"Oh. Um.” She trailed off.

“I got sidetracked, but I was thinking while you were—" He waved toward the corner where she had been crying, and Alice flushed slightly, grateful that he didn't throw that in her face. "I, uh, wanted to apologize in my own way," Titus said. "Like I said, I should have probably listened to you. I still think I made the right decision, but it really wasn't my decision to make. We could have been faster. So, just so you know, I am not incapable of understanding when I did wrong and when I believe I've done wrong. I have been working recently to make it a habit to apologize and let you know."

Titus spoke with a profoundly deep sadness that made Alice want to know more. At the same time, she was afraid to question what had happened that made him feel so. She just nodded and gave him a slightly forced smile, though she was sure the redness of her eyes ruined it.

"I appreciate that, and I'm glad to know I'm not in this alone. I really don't know what I'd do without your help," Alice said.

Titus smiled. "Well, hopefully my help will be worth something eventually," he said with a self-deprecating laugh.

"Yeah, about that," Alice said wearily. "I may have an idea….."

She trailed off, considering how to phrase the crazy thought brewing in the back of her mind. "Oh, it's stupid and could possibly make everything way, way worse," she said, throwing out qualifiers in defense so that he didn't laugh her off before hearing everything out. But if anything, this egged Titus on.

"That sounds like my kind of idea," he said with a grin. "Now I have to hear it."

"Well," she held up the bag with her laptop in it, which had somehow survived. "I still have the core code that caused all this."

Titus raised one eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate. "And?"

"Well, there was a good deal of luck involved, but I might be able to replicate this," she said, gesturing at the supercomputer center burning behind her. The light of the burning building a couple of blocks away was now one of the only ways they could see, as the campus lights hadn't come on as night fell throughout their conversation.

"I can see how you would think this is a stupid idea," Titus said. "But please go on."

"Well, really, when you think about it, with AI, machine learning, all that jazz, there are really only a few parameters that need to be changed to control the outcome in a very much dumbed-down way. While the learning algorithm I made was—is—the same and could be the same, I think I could repurpose it."

Titus grinned. "I think I see where you're going with this."

"Yes, well, we would need a lot of other things. Like another supercomputer center."

"One that's not infected or one that is infected?" Titus asked.

Alice frowned. "Hmm. I don't think we're going to be lucky enough to find one that isn't infected by the System, but one that I can access and steal away compute cycles for a moment or two. It really didn't need much more to explode past everything that I'd tried to limit it to."

"Hmm," Titus mused. "Okay. I don't think this has a high chance of succeeding, but it's better than literally anything else I could come up with."

Alice nodded. "Yeah. I don't have high hopes for this either, but it's the only thing I can think of. Fight fire with fire or tyrannical superpowered AIs with tyrannical superpowered AIs."

"So what? You're going to make something that turns everything off and puts it back to how it was?" Titus asked.

Alice shrugged. "I don't think I can be that precise. Probably all I can do is launch something that will try to fight the System as much as possible and maybe promote human survival. But yes, in the best case, it shuts the System down, returns everyone, unscrambles the world, and removes every monster."

"Unscrambles the world?" Titus asked.

"Things are weird," Alice said. "GPS is not working like it should anymore, and yeah, I think something happened to geography."

"That's concerning," Titus said.

"Yeah, well, when I was searching for GPS, I noticed that there were several signals that weren't where they were supposed to be. For example, I'm pretty sure the signals coming from government buildings that should be in Washington, D.C. don't belong in Antarctica, but I kind of ignored that."

"Understandable," Titus said. "I do think you have some merit."

"Yeah, and that's why I think we need to hurry," Alice said. "I have a few locations we can choose from that have computers that would fit my needs. Unfortunately, I don't necessarily know where all of them are. I have located a few, but I'm not sure which ones those are. And I really don't know what's in between here and there."

"So you're saying we could head off towards one direction and then find an ocean between us because Earth has changed?" Titus asked. "Couldn't you plot where all the GPS stuff is and try to get an idea of what is there and what isn't?"

Alice nodded. "I could. Uh, that might take a little bit of time, but it's worth thinking about. Though I'll probably need to get another laptop because I'm not sure how long this charge will last," she said, indicating her bag again. "Even then, though, there are large swaths of the planet where there's no activity. It wouldn't be impossible, but we might be able to get some idea. Assuming the satellites keep working without help. I don't know anything about that, so I have no idea how long that will last."

"Okay," Titus said. "I'm all for this. I'm in."

Alice blinked. "Really? Just like that?"

"Yeah. What do we need?"

"Well," Alice said, "I mostly just need to get there as soon as possible. I don't really know about anything else."

"Okay. Hmm. I think we should make sure we get any spare power bricks we can and get you a few backup laptops. Also, we want to make sure you copy down your code to a thumb drive as soon as possible so that it's not tied up in something you can't access without electricity powering up your laptop," Titus said. "We should see if we can find supplies, a better car, weapons that aren't improvised, and maybe any firearms left behind by campus security."

He went down a list, thinking of a dozen things Alice had never considered. When he started getting into camping supplies and other survivalist contingencies, Alice started to tune out, overwhelmed by the number of things.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, okay. I trust that you can take care of all of this."

Titus smiled and added, "Yeah, I think that's something I'm actually well-suited for." He closed the distance that had been maintained between them, stepping forward the ten paces or so around the tables, and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I know that this can't be easy for you, and you probably blame yourself for a lot of it. I don't think you should, but there's probably not much you can do about that."

Alice watched him, wondering where he was going with this.

"I just want you to know that I believe in you. You are the only hope we have of fixing this. I would have no idea where to even start. I have enough trouble operating a phone or logging into a computer. Excel was hard enough to figure out as it is. So you let me worry about surviving and us getting there, and you do your magic when you get there."

She blinked. Excel was hard for him to figure out? It was older than he was. Was he some sort of Luddite? He did say he had a phone…..

Alice smiled and nodded. Titus sighed and gripped her shoulder a little more firmly, giving it a small shake before letting go. "Think of me as your bodyguard or, no, personal escort until we get this fixed. I swear I'll do my best to make sure you are where you need to be with the tools you need. But," he said, holding up a finger as he stepped back, "I think my point from earlier still stands. After everything I've learned from leveling up to the next grade, we need to get you stronger and faster. I don't think you're going to get more intelligent or quicker, but you'll become physically more capable in every way. You'll need less sleep and be able to go for longer and harder. And that will help in every possible way.

"Besides," he continued, "As you mentioned, the odds of this working or this fixing it entirely is incredibly low. So we need a plan for the case where this doesn't work. And if this doesn't work, you don't want to be low-leveled. Everyone else is getting a head start in the tutorial."

"Presumably," Alice muttered but didn't interrupt him.

"And you don't want to be behind the curve when they come back, so we can't ignore your personal power."

"Fine. I'll level as we go. But we won't slow down significantly until we at least try this."

Titus nodded. "Good. I think a compromise is making sure you get into the E grade."

"Okay. Fine. But maybe we can stop by my dorm room and get me a change of clothes," she said, picking at the shirt that was falling off of her and the jeans that had developed more and more tears as the day went on. "I think I also have some power bricks we can use and a spare laptop."

"We'll make sure you have plenty of spares," Titus said. "But yeah, lead the way."