System Architect

Through the rest of the week, I worked on my quests and my writing. Grandpa Joe gave me the go-ahead to start posting the story on a couple of the websites I’d found. Even if it didn’t do well, it would help me to hone my craft for the future.

I considered whether I should do that with other skills as well, but for the time being, writing was just what felt easiest—and cheapest. Most of the rest of what interested me cost money in materials and equipment, so I put those off for another time when I could afford them—or if Grandpa Joe let me use the crypto.

Sunday afternoon, I packed up everything I would need for a week at Mom’s place—backpack, laptop, notebook, etc. I sat with Dad on the front porch while we waited.

“I’ll miss ya, kid,” Dad said when Mom’s car came down the driveway.

“Me too.”

“Be good to your mother and call me once in a while.”

“You got it,” I smiled.

I gave Dad a hug. With my backpack nearly tipping me over, I bounced to Mom’s ancient beater of a car. Mom wasn’t overly particular about what she drove with two exceptions. First, the car had to work, and, second, the car had to be safe if it ever ended up in a crash. Other than that, it wouldn’t bother her if it had five different colors and dents all over. Well, it might bother her some, but not enough to spend money on fixing those cosmetic things.

Mom got out of her car and helped me get the backpack inside before I lost my balance. I got in and buckled up.

“Hey, Mom,” I said.

“Eddy,” Mom smiled. “How’s school?”

“Really boring. Did you get to check into the college thing you mentioned might be an option?”

“You were the one who needed to decide on that,” Mom cocked an eyebrow as she began to back the car out of the driveway.

“Was I? Well, I’ll do whatever I can to get out of kindergarten and skip grade school.”

“Maybe they have scholarships for kids,” Mom laughed.

“Maybe,” I chuckled. “There might be some scholarships or grants that would help. Probably would have to go to community college for a couple of years before transferring. It’d be cheaper and also be a good way to make some connections to actually fund the more expensive part.”

“That makes sense. I’ll need to do some more research. Do you know what you want to study?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’d rather learn something new and something practical. I’ve done IT work for long enough that I can probably skip that. Maybe do something finance or economics related?”

“Why finance?”

“No real reason. Throwing it out as an option. It’ll help with what I have that I could unlock soon to get me more experience. Then there are things that fall under hobbies that I would like to learn just in case. Stuff like smithing, weaving, sewing, farming… well, you get the point. All the basic stuff that might be hard to figure out when everything goes to shit.”

“Language, Eddy.”

“I think that’s a rather justified use,” I grumbled.

“What did you say?”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“What about trades?” Mom smiled.

“At some point, probably, but that won’t get me out of school, right?”

“I think that’s true.”

“What other things might be useful for what you could unlock?”

“Hmm,” I thought. After a few seconds, I had some ideas, which I shared. “Besides the economic one, exploring, making things, and gathering are probably the easiest to accomplish. The main issue with those is that there aren’t really good majors for them. Exploring takes money and time, more than anything else. Crafting would be those just-in-case hobbies. Harvesting would be a combination of foraging and farming, I think, so not really a thing I could major in… which brings me back to something economic-related. Oh, there is social, too, but I’ve got no idea on that one.”

“Maybe debate club and political stuff?”

“Probably. Might be something to work towards, eventually… but I don’t think it’s right for now. I’m a rather introverted person so it’ll take some effort to get there.”

“Makes sense. Well, I’ll do the research and let you know what you’ll need to do.”

“Awesome!”

Mom and I continued to talk for the remainder of the drive. She lived close enough that getting me to school wasn’t going to be a huge problem. Eventually, we arrived outside the townhouse Mom moved into a week previously.

The townhouse was an older one built twenty or thirty years back. The roof looked like it had recently been redone, and there was work being done on the siding. Inside the heavy front door was a two bedroom and two bathroom townhouse. The lower level had the kitchen, laundry room, living room, and one of the bathrooms, while the upstairs had the other bathroom and both bedrooms. I vaguely remembered this place because Mom had moved after only two years, but it really was only flashes of memory here and there that had been distorted with time.

Mom helped me bring my backpack to my room. Although there were plenty of boxes left to unpack, she had bought a new bed for me to use. It had been put together recently—I could smell the freshly off-gassing chemicals from the cheap furniture. I took my time unpacking and getting everything just so before walking downstairs to hang with Mom before dinner.

Mom roused me early the next morning. I threw on some clothes and followed her downstairs to find a bowl of parent-approved cocaine and some milk next to it. It was certainly better tasting than sand, but I knew it was Mom’s way of showing how much better she was than Dad. The problem was that Dad just didn’t care. Since she couldn’t get a rise out of him, she would try it on me instead. The problem was that I also didn’t care.

I checked over my quests while I shoveled the brightly colored cereal into my stomach. They were relatively easy except for one that needed me to do pull-ups. Without Dad’s pull-up bar, that one was a no-go. The rest were doable by the end of the day. I accepted what I could.

Looking at my experience, I saw that I was getting close to unlocking Harvesting Experience with 801 experience. I did some quick math in my head and it looked like I was gaining around 750 experience per week—not nearly enough to get much of anything permanently before I had to reset. I hoped that the new experience features would help a lot.

Shaking my head, I ran back upstairs to grab my backpack before riding the banister back down to Mom’s consternation. After a mild tongue-lashing, I joined Mom in her car. Off we went to school.

“Have a good day,” Mom said as I closed the door behind me. I waved.

I’d been rather lucky in having a reading and writing task for the week. The writing I’d take care of at home, but the fifty minutes in the library was plenty to get through all the books I needed for the quest. A nice bonus was getting 64 experience from reading 1 million words. That brought a huge smile to my face.

The rest of the day was rather straightforward. I kept to myself and worked on the physical tasks as I could during recess. The big negative came as soon as school let out. Normally, Dad would have picked me up and I’d be home to do whatever I needed to do. Not this day. Nope. I was stuck in the dreaded daycare.

By the time Mom picked me up about two hours later, I was certain. I hated daycare. It wasn’t just the annoying and whiny kids who had no concept of personal space. No, it was also the people running the infernal thing. They didn’t give a rat’s ass about any of us other than to corral us into a small section of the school to mind us. It was just so boring! Even worse than that, it took away so much time from what I needed to do for my quests! I told Mom as much, and she shrugged, explaining that there wasn’t much she could do about it and that I’d have to suck it up for a few more weeks.

Thankfully it was spring and the sun was out for another hour when we got home. While Mom made dinner, I busied myself with completing the rest of my quests. It was harder to do than at Dad’s—the space outside was flat and there weren’t a ton of open areas to move around in, which made running rather difficult. Although, I was able to get most of that done at school, that kind of difficulty was something I noted in the back of my mind about what to prioritize.

Dinner was good—boxed mac and cheese. Mom and I talked about nothing for the twenty minutes it took to finish our meal. I retired upstairs to my room to write and get through the last of the quests for the day.

I had made a discovery a few days back that made the puzzle-based quests possible to complete. With my laptop, I could load up really simple minesweeper levels and finishing each one counted as completing one puzzle. I could finish them quickly—with a little practice—and that meant less blockers to experience gain!

By the time I got to bed, I was sitting at just over 900 experience. I’d completed all I could for the day and I was exhausted from my efforts. I fell asleep almost as soon as my head touched my pillow.

I awoke Wednesday morning to find that I had exactly the 1,000 experience I needed.

Feature Unlocked: Harvesting Experience

Current Exp: o

When I checked my quests for the day, I saw that the new month had ticked over and there were new monthly quests to choose from. This time around, there was one for completing a number of quests and another that cared about me moving a certain amount of steps. I accepted both and the usual daily quests.

Throughout the day—while working on other quests—I tried to figure out how to get experience from Harvesting Experience. Picking up rocks and picking grass didn’t give me anything. Picking flowers did but not every time and I wasn’t sure why. It could have been because each flower gave less than one experience point and together they would give one sometimes. Or maybe I had to pick a flower that was the right maturity or the right way. It was a mystery to me, but at least I had something to work from as a starting point.

I managed to get 12 experience from gathering various things by the time I went to sleep at the end of the day. It wasn’t nothing to be sure, but it was a pretty small number. At that same rate, it’d take three months to recoup just what I’d spent on the skill! That wasn’t an acceptable state of affairs, and was something that I very much needed to figure out. Outside of getting more experience to unlock Exploration Experience, figuring out how to best use what I’d unlocked was at the top of my list.