System Architect

You know how they say mistakes aren’t the end of the world? Well, let me tell you the story of how my mistake ended the world.

My head felt like a hangover that had gone and gotten plastered enough to end up with its own hangover. I felt every heartbeat in my brain like a drum feels its drummer. I rolled face down and buried my head into the pillow.

“Fuck!” my rather high-pitched voiced yelled into the pillow.

My breath caught.

Why does my voice sound like that?

I struggled to roll onto my back slowly enough to not aggravate whatever was going on with my head. It proved harder than it should have. For some reason, I lacked the coordination I was used to. Once I had, I opened my eyes expecting to see… something? What I saw instead of my familiar apartment bedroom—or even a hospital given how my head felt—was nothing. I could clearly feel that I was on a bed of some kind, but actually seeing? Nothing. Pitch-fucking-black. Well, almost.

Right in the middle of my vision were words on some kind of floating screen. It remained there no matter where I looked or turned my head. Closing my eyes made it go away, but reopening them revealed the screen-thing again.

“Ugh,” I groaned.

Normally, I wouldn’t have minded reading something, but it was the middle of the night, the thing I was meant to read was all freaky-looking, and my brain was rather busy fighting a baseball bat. I negotiated with myself to pull off the metaphorical bandage so I could maybe go back to sleep. I counted down from three and then opened my eyes.

Your wish has been granted. Time travel is not the easiest thing, especially when your memories need to be crammed into your old self. Upon assumption of your memories into your new body, your system will activate. Be warned, however, that in gaining this system, you have brought magic to Earth. The cosmos at large will eventually take notice of this. The more you use your system, the stronger their response will be. I have taken the liberty of adding a screen so you can check not only how long until the cosmos comes knocking but also how forceful they will be.

If you want to avoid a grisly fate when the cosmos comes knocking, build a system for humanity and not just for yourself.

As soon as I read the last word, the screen disappeared. My eyes scanned the darkness around me before I gave up and closed them. I was vaguely aware of memories just beyond the reach of my conscious mind, but nothing that was of any help presently. I mentally shrugged and tried my best to ignore my headache so I could sleep until morning. I’d figure things out then.

Soft light and the sounds of birds is what I woke to several hours later. My head felt a lot better. The mild confusion of not immediately recognizing my surroundings was replaced rather quickly with a rapidly hardening knot in my stomach as the memories of the night before slammed into me.

I’d been hanging out with friends of mine at one of their houses. The house’s owner—Josh—was wealthy. He’d made his money gambling on crypto because he had some hacker buddies who swore it would be big one day. That wealth bought the usual stuff—a big house, a fancy car, arm candy—but also some more unusual stuff. Curios. Things that should be in a museum’s collection. He had all of that and then some.

Well, in the course of the night, we drank a bit too much—he had an impressive alcohol collection as well—and Kevin got on him about some of the strange things he collected. That’s when Josh got mad and brought out a stone bowl that he said had been used for ceremonial sacrifice by the Aztecs.

He filled the bowl with wine and dared Kevin to drink the ‘blood’ from it. Kevin apologized and declined so Josh offered it to the rest of us. One by one, my friends declined. For some reason, I accepted. I don’t know if it was to show them up or because I was rather drunk, but I downed the wine completely.

What happened next was a blur, but somehow I ended up having some kind of deity or djinn or whatever magical thing it was look through my mind and grant me my greatest wish. That was—apparently—to live one of those returner stories I’d been reading, which brought me to my present circumstances.

I vaguely remembered reading some kind of message while half awake and in pain. Something about monsters coming. That was bad. Worse, it was my own damned drunk-ass’ fault. I took solace in the fact that it had been a complete accident that I had no way to foresee. However, the stark reality was right there in my face: billions were probably going to die if I didn’t do something.

My first problem was a lack of information. A casual glance at my now-hairless arms confirmed that I wasn’t an adult anymore. I needed to know where and—maybe more importantly—when I was. I’d moved around a lot as a child, especially after my parents split up. My first move, I decided, was to just use the mark one eyeball.

The room I was in was something I immediately recognized as the room I’d been in for the first six years of my life. It was memorable because of how small it was. In fact, it probably didn’t count as a bedroom since—as far as I could tell—it had been a walk-in closet for the majority of the hundred years the house had existed. It had a window that looked out over the tiny front yard opposite the door.

Crammed into the tiny bedroom were a mattress without a box spring, a night stand with a light on it, and a freestanding book shelf. What floor space was not taken up by the furniture was instead covered with a rough fabric rug. The walls were painted dark blue, as was the ceiling. The ceiling also had little silver stars painted all over. The ceiling curved downward from the door towards the window. It was short enough that I could almost reach the ceiling with my arms while laying on the bed.

I sighed. At least I knew the where—and had a rough time-frame for the when that I’d be able to narrow down later. With that out of the way, it was time to tackle the bigger unknown: the system. I tried thinking status, menu, and a few other common keywords I remembered from stories, but none of them worked. Next, I tried expressing the intent to have a status screen pop up. That did the trick.

Name: Milton Edward Teller III

Exp: 1

The screen told me little except to remind me just how much I hated my first name. I went by ‘Eddy’ for much of my life as a result. That I had one experience was strange.

“Huh?” I wondered aloud.

Immediately, the experience counter ticked up by one to 2. I was thoroughly confused by this behavior but ended up dismissing the screen after being unable to figure it out. The next screen I pulled up was the one detailing the monsters I’d been warned about.

Average Monster Level: 1

Monster Strength Tier: 0

Exp To Next Tier: 100

Time Until Apocalypse: 14 years, 7 months, 12 days, 19 hours, 10 minutes, 44 seconds

I read over the screen a couple of times. The timer made sense right away, but the other lines did not. I tried to focus my intent on each line to see if I could get some context. The first and third lines were a bust, but the second popped out with another screen.

Cumulative Monster Strength Bonuses: None

Next Tier: Average Monster Level +1

I nodded internally. I still didn’t understand how—or why—experience would be spent to make monsters stronger, but at least I understood there was some kind of logic supporting it. I’d need to figure that out so I could make informed decisions rather than flailing about in the dark as I was currently doing.

My first test was to see if I could have multiple screens open at one time. They stacked on top of each other in such a way as to make them all unreadable. I then tried to separate them to have them in better places, but a red screen replaced the opened screens.

The action you are attempting requires unlocking a feature.

Feature: Status Screen Manipulation

Unlock Personal Use: 1 Exp

Unlock For Universal Use: 1,000 Exp

I tried probing the two options. Both opened up screens listing all unlocked features for each type—there were none under ‘Personal Use’ while ‘Universal Use’ had two: Milestones I and System Store. I wondered what those two entailed, and that gave me an idea.

The action you are attempting requires unlocking a feature.

Feature: System Help

Unlock Personal Use: 100 Exp

Unlock For Universal Use: 100,000 Exp

The nickel-and-dime-ing of this system was already grating against my nerves. I didn’t know how easy—or hard—getting experience would be, but having a way to get more information was of paramount importance. While closing all the screens, I nodded. I had my first goal.