System Architect

I awoke early the next morning to the sound of a notification. It was the one I had expected—2 experience for sleeping 10 hours in total. I did my best to go back to sleep, but instead, I tossed and turned for another hour or so before coming to grips with the fact that I was not going to be rested that day. That being said, adrenaline was a hell of a drug and would keep me going for a while. The excitement of quests giving experience would help some, too.

Speaking of, that was the second things I checked—after the mandatory system notification, of course. There were five new quests available which all expired at midnight, same as yesterday’s offerings. The good news was that I would be able to complete more than one of them. The bad news—if you could call being disappointed ‘bad’—was that one of those quests was impossible for me to do. The quest was asking me to complete 50 pull-ups, and I had no good way of accomplishing that. The other four quests were doable.

Daily Learning

Read 1,000 words: 120/1000

Write 500 words: 0/500

Success: 20 Exp

Failure: N/A

Expires: 17 hours 55 minutes 1 seconds

Daily Arithmetic

Solve 50 problems: 0/50

Success: 10 Exp

Failure: N/A

Expires: 17 hours 55 minutes 1 seconds

Daily Steps

Run 2,500 steps: 0/2500

Walk 2,500 steps: 0/2500

Success: 20 Exp

Failure: N/A

Expires: 17 hours 55 minutes 1 seconds

Leg Day

Climb 100 floors: 0/100

Jump 100 times: 0/100

Squat 100 times: 0/100

Skip 100 times: 0/100

Success: 40 Exp

Failure: N/A

Expires: 17 hours 55 minutes 1 seconds

Reading over the list, I was stoked! Picking up the Quests feature had been a great choice. I’d be close to having enough experience for System Help by the end of the day! I accepted all four and got started by reading the rest of the book I’d started the day before. By the time I was done, not only had I finished the reading portion of the daily quest, but I’d also hit the 10,000 words read milestone, netting another 16 experience.

While I planned out my day, my stomach alerted me to the fact that I had yet to eat. I was used to skipping breakfast most of the time as an adult, but my smaller body craved food more often, it seemed. I grabbed the paper with the tables on it and raced downstairs to the table where Dad was already waiting for me, coffee in hand.

“Mornin’ Eddy,” he said without looking up.

“Good morning,” I replied.

“Have a seat and eat. Made you some waffles.”

“Thanks.”

I took my seat and stared at the waffles. They were of the pale, frozen variety that had been heated up in a microwave—thoroughly floppy and sad-looking. On the plus side, they had melted butter all over them, so that partially made up for their rubbery consistency. I shrugged mentally and ate them. They were better than the sandy beach cereal I had yesterday.

Dad did whatever he was doing on the phone while I went back to planning my day. The physical stuff I decided to break up between morning and afternoon. I considered the reading and writing requirements as well as the arithmetic ones. For all of them, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a few things with what little money I had.

A couple notebooks for writing would be better than using printer paper for all of it. Easier to store and search though, too. For reading, the handful of books I had were not going to cut it. A trip to the library would fix that and give Dad the opportunity to start his homework. Finally, getting a simple math workbook would—hopefully—meet the requirements. A book of puzzles also would be worthwhile, if only to pass the time.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, getting his attention. He looked at me questioningly. “Can we make a trip to the book store and the library? There’re a few things I’d like to pick up and I’ve already exhausted the books in my room that are worth reading.”

He sat and thought before assenting to my requests.

“I can get you there, but I’m kinda broke right now,” he added. “See what you have in your piggy bank. If that’s not enough I can spot you five but that’s all I have.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know times are tough.”

He nodded. I took my plate and walked it over to the sink before heading upstairs. In my room, I pulled out a little house-shaped box that I stored my money in. Most of the currency inside was coinage I’d picked up off the ground with the occasional bill floating in the sea of metal. I plucked out coin after coin and organized the mess by value. A quick count revealed I had around twenty dollars. I hoped that would be enough for everything. I pocketed the money and went back downstairs.

Dad was waiting for me by the front door. I slipped my shoes on and followed him outside. The front of the house had a small, heavily-sloped yard ringed by bushes and a couple small trees. A stepping-stone path ran next to the sun room to the driveway and garage. Dad’s red pickup sat in front of the tiny garage. The garage was stuffed with odds and ends—including the too-large-for-my-room bed-frame—that otherwise would take up space in the house.

He turned the engine over while I hopped into the front seat and buckled the lap belt. The truck itself was ancient—both in form and in safety standards. A relic of the ‘70s, it came with some pretty thorough—if unintentional—weight reduction that made it cheap enough for Dad to buy. But, well, it worked and that was the bottom line.

We backed out of the long driveway, passing another house before we got to the road—the house Mom and Dad had rented shared the driveway with that other house. It was a driveway—not a private road—because, at one time, both houses had been a part of the same property. From what I could remember, the other house had been servants’ quarters or something similar that our landlord had renovated a couple decades back so they could rent out both houses separately.

Once on the road, it was a short drive of about two miles to the book store in town. An older, smaller store that carried mostly specialized items and cost more than the bigger stores that were farther way. Maybe he figured it was my money and he could save gas or maybe it was just more convenient. Either way, buying what I needed was absolutely going to wipe out my meager savings.

I stepped into the store and went through it quickly. It wasn’t very big, after all. I paid attention to the prices, knowing that I would only have somewhere a bit more than fifteen dollars to spend once tax was factored in. The first thing I picked out was a bound notebook that felt solid in my hand for eight dollars. It wasn’t too big, either, so I’d feel comfortable writing in it. The next was a soft-cover mixed-puzzle book for ten dollars. The price scared me a little, but the book was almost an inch thick and had several hundred puzzles in it. Finally, I found a math workbook of mostly easy problems for five.

I waited in line at the counter with Dad. When it was my turn, I reached up and placed both books on the counter that I could barely see over.

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” the cashier—a young woman—asked.

“Yes,” Dad answered.

I almost said something, but thought better of it. It was already hard enough explaining my mental age to Dad, let alone a random cashier.

While the woman rang up my purchase, I dug out my money and passed it to Dad so he could pay for me. Thankfully, the cashier didn’t notice—or if she did, she didn’t say anything. I barely had enough to cover the three books with tax and Dad handed me the change, which I stuffed into my pocket.

“Have a nice day,” she said with a smile. “You have such a cute son!”

It took significant effort to keep from blushing too much at the attention.

“You too and thanks,” Dad replied, taking the bag holding the books.

We left the store and hopped back into the truck.

“Cute girl, huh?” he teased as he cranked the engine.

“Both too old and too young at the same time,” I said, shaking my head. “But she’s more your age, no?”

Dad rolled his eyes.

We arrived at the library ten minutes later. The drive took us past our house again to the other side of town. The library was located across the street from one of the middle schools. It wasn’t a huge library, but its two floors carried enough books to satisfy my needs for now.

The library had a mid-century modern look to it both inside an out. The style had gone from fashionable to archaic before enjoying a bit of a revival. It was a complete accident that the library still looked as it had when it was first built, one I understood to have been due to the money not being in the budget year after year. And when the town did have enough money, the place was practically a historic site and they couldn’t change it.

“Dad,” I said once we were inside, “I’m going to go see what they have that looks interesting.”

“Right,” he said. “What was it you wanted me to ask the librarian about? Something about dungeons?”

“Thanks for reminding me! Fantasy books that have a lot of the classic monsters and dungeons and stuff. Hopefully they’ll be able to direct you and give some suggestions.”

He nodded and we went our separate ways.

While he tried to find a book that might tell him the difference between a goblin and an orc—or even what those words meant—I scoured the young adult section for some light and easy reading. If I was going to have to read thousands of words, it might as well be as easy as possible… and books I hadn’t read before—or in a long enough time that I’d forgotten all about them. That was a somewhat difficult proposition given the fact that my young brain was a sponge that didn’t understand the meaning of ‘forget’. Sure, I might lose track of a task or something similar, but I would not—could not—forget something I’d read or experienced.

Ultimately, I settled on some mystery novels. I’d read a lot of fantasy over the years, and if the system was to be believed—and I did believe it—then fantasy would meld with reality so reading about the future felt wrong somehow. It just wasn’t the escapism I wanted in a book.

Dad used his library card to borrow the handful of books I wanted and the two that were recommended by the librarian for him. I got a raised eyebrow from the librarian for my choices, but nothing more. I laughed to myself at what kind of face they’d have made if I had chosen something more difficult to read. With the receipt setting a due date three weeks in the future, we headed home. I was looking forward to the challenge of completing my quests for the day.