System Architect

The next day, I sat down with Dad at the table in the hallway. We ate and chatted.

“I’ll need your help today with taking apart some of the furniture for tomorrow,” Dad said. “I talked with your mother and she said you helping with the move might trigger a quest or whatever. So you’ll be here today and move with me tomorrow.”

I nodded. Figuring out what was a quest—and what wasn’t—was a craps shoot. It could be worth a decent amount of experience if it worked out or it could just be a waste of time. I had no idea going into it what the outcome would be.

The house felt both empty and full at the same time. The walls were bare and the curtains were packed away. The floor was stacked high with boxes. Dad had brought as many of them as he could onto the main floor by the front door. What didn’t fit there spilled into other rooms on the first floor.

I took the morning to finish packing away the last of my things into a couple of boxes. I brought them carefully down the stairs and placed them with the rest of the boxes. Then in the afternoon, Dad wrangled me to help him disassemble some of the furniture.

The easiest ones were Dad’s bed frame and several tables—the legs unscrewed from the top. The most time-consuming one was my dresser. Yes, it could be moved in one piece, but it was screwed together and easy to assemble so taking it apart to save on room was a good plan.

That night, we ate pizza on paper plates and used a couple boxes for chairs—the real chairs were wrapped and stacked for the morning.

“We’re gonna be busy tomorrow,” Dad said, taking a bite of pizza.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“My friends Justin and Steve are coming over to help out tomorrow. Don’t know if you remember them or not—“

I nodded.

“—but they’ll take care of all of the heavy stuff before you and I drive to the new place. They’ll follow and help unload, too.”

“When are you getting the truck?” I asked.

“In the morning when they get here.”

We talked more as we ate. When I was done, I tossed my plate into the garbage. I turned to go upstairs.

“Don’t stay up too late,” Dad cautioned.

I blew him a kiss and went up to my room. I didn’t need him to remind me that I was going to need my sleep. I went to sleep a couple hours later when I was done doing some quests on my laptop.

I woke with the first light of dawn—the lack of curtains a significant factor. I put on the same clothes I had worn the previous day and wandered downstairs to find Dad already sipping his coffee.

“Mornin’” I yawned.

“Hey, kid,” he said.

“Breakfast?” I asked.

“Cold pizza’s all that’s left.”

I shrugged and walked down the stairs to the basement where the fridge was. I took the last slice of pizza and began to eat while walking back to where Dad was. I sat on a box next to him. The pizza was rather mid without a way to warm it.

Almost as soon as I finished my breakfast, Dad’s two friends arrived. I said hi to both. They acted like I was meeting them for the first time—even if I remembered them and their kids from later in my past life. They rode in their work van behind Dad and I in Dad’s truck to the truck rental place.

The lot had a handful of trucks of varying sizes. We parked in the customer lot and I sat in the car while Dad went in to handle the paperwork. Justin came and sat in the truck with me. He didn’t say much but mostly kept an eye on me. I figured he was going to be the one to drive the pickup home while I rode with Dad in the big moving truck.

When Dad came out—keys in hand—he helped me down from the truck. The moving truck he’d chosen was a medium-sized one. Dad had to lift me into the cab of it as the place to step up into it was at chest-level for me. The inside of the truck was much like Dad’s pickup—there was a large bench seat with a stick-shift in the middle. Unlike dad’s truck, the moving truck had a proper seat belt for me to wear.

“Buckle up,” Dad said when he jumped into his side of the truck.

I clicked the seat belt in place and he did the same. He turned the engine over. With a grinding gear—and a curse—we were off. The truck was slow to get up to speed and I bounced against the seat belt with every bump and jolt. Without the seat belt, I might have received experience for being the youngest astronaut!

The drive was a bumpy one because Dad was not used to driving a truck so large. He struggled to make the sharp turns on the smaller streets—the ride down the big hill and onto our street was especially precarious. He needed his friends’ assistance to back the truck down the driveway. Once he parked, I hopped out and began helping to load the truck.

Get a Move On

Help Milton Teller Jr move

Success: Experience gained based on the proportion of items moved

Failure: N/A

Expires: 14 hours, 32 minutes, 55 seconds

I accepted the quest and let Dad know about it. I planned on helping anyway. Even so, I wasn’t going to break my back lifting things I had no business lifting just for a handful more experience. I also didn’t want to alert Justin or Steve that there was something strange going on with me.

Dad let me use a dolly to bring boxes out of the house and to the truck. From there, Justin or Steve would be waiting to bring them up the ramp and into the back of the truck. I started with the biggest boxes—Dad helping me to move them outside onto the dolly—while Dad and his friends moved the furniture.

Most of the boxes were doable on my own with a bit of finagling, but there were a few that were heavy. Like ridiculously heavy. I guessed those were filled with books or similar items. Those ones I did not touch as I did not want to break any of their contents.

After two hours, we were done loading the truck. It was time to go. I got into the cab with Dad. Justin drove the van while Steve took Dad’s pickup. Dad drove even slower now that the truck was filled and secured. We took a circuitous route out of town that minimized the steepness of the hill. It ended up still being a challenge for Dad to get going after a light turned green while he was at the top edge of the hill.

Dad’s new place was in the same town as his parent’s house. It was a large trailer home at the edge of town. He backed the truck in diagonally so he wouldn’t block the gravel road that passed in front of the trailer.

The trailer was in a trailer park that had about fifty such trailers. Each section of the trailer park was connected with a gravel road to a central gravel road that—in turn—connected to a paved main road. The trailer itself was in good shape and looked well maintained. A thin forest surrounded the trailer park and included space for small yards for each trailer. The same was true for Dad’s trailer.

We began the process of moving but this time in reverse. Justin or Steve would help me bring the boxes down from the truck and I would put them on the dolly to move them up a shallower ramp and into the trailer. While that was happening, Dad and Steve or Justin would be moving the furniture into the correct room.

As we went, I noticed that Dad had more stuff than he would be able to keep in the trailer—even if it was a larger trailer. The plus side—for me at least—was that my room was actually large enough to house my bed and my dresser this time. It was downright spacious!

Break-time was called just after noon when the pizza arrived. The men cracked a beer each and ate a couple slices of pizza. They even tried offering me a can of my own, but I declined. Never was a fan of alcohol. I did, however, eat two slices of the pepperoni pizza before going back to what I had been doing. Dad and his friends chatted for a while longer before they joined me.

All in all, it took about two hours to unload everything and get them into the correct rooms of the trailer. Dad gave his friends a six-pack of beer each when they left—and a hearty thanks. Once they left, the notification chime alerted me that the quest was complete.

Get a Move On Complete

Reward: 48 Exp

I smiled at the news.

“Why don’t you unpack your room?” Dad suggested.

I shrugged and slowly trudged to my new room. The bookshelf, bed, night stand, and dresser were all placed in the room. I gave the room a critical eye before I went to get Dad.

“Yeah?” he said when I approached.

“Can you help me rearrange my room before I put things away?” I asked.

“Sure.”

Dad followed me into my room. We—Dad, really—moved the furniture around into a configuration that made more sense and which maximized the available usable space. When he left, I tore into the boxes. I placed the books where they belonged, plugged in the lamp, and organized the dresser with my clothes. I didn’t yet have a fresh bed sheet—who knew where those ended up—so I considered the room finished.

I wandered the trailer, helping Dad put away everything. It was a laborious task that took many hours and left me feeling wrung out. Though we didn’t finish by dinner, we’d completed enough that Dad was ok with calling it quits for the day. After dinner—and after finding the bed sheets—I lay down in my bed and worked on what mental quests I could until I was too tired to continue.

When I woke the next morning, I was confused by my surroundings. Not only were they unfamiliar—Dad had moved somewhere else originally—but it was also much darker out than it had any right to be at that point in the morning. I peeked through the curtains and saw that it was snowing. While we’d gotten a dusting a week earlier, this was the first significant snowfall of the year that heralded a period of constant accumulation and large piles. I also smelled opportunity.

I remembered how much money I’d been able to get from raking leaves. I wondered if shoveling driveways would net me some decent cash as well—if Dad cleared it with the landlord, of course. I brought the idea to his attention and he told me he’d ask. I figured that I wouldn’t be able to do anything for that snow fall, but maybe the next one if I were allowed to.

Instead of worrying about it, I got my snow gear on and went outside to play. One of the best things about being a child was just how light I was as compared to when I had been an adult. I could much more easily get on top of the deep snow and crawl through it instead of getting stuck like I would if I were bigger and heavier.

I was like an old band on its final tour playing all the hits—I made snow angels, a snow man, and a snow fort from which to have a snowball fight. I even used a garbage can lid to sled down the shallow slope of the back yard. When I grew tired, I just lay on my back with my eyes closed and my mouth open. The snow gently fell on my face and melted on my tongue. I was happy.