The Charismatic Glass Cannon

I don't mind getting sappy for a moment–that night, I had the best four hours of my life. Not one family fight. Not one tantrum. We played board games and laughed. It was better than I could have dreamed. I was a lucky man to have such a great family–which made me even more god damn upset I had to leave them to go fight for their very right to exist. So, I tried to make the most of our time together. Get as much quality time in as I could. Somehow, we were able to forget about what tomorrow would bring. We kept playing, pretending to be pirates, slaying imaginary dragon after imaginary dragon until we all passed out on the couch.

We skipped the tooth brushing. The water had been shut off anyway.

At some point, I woke up. It was still dark outside. I was on the couch, holding Clark in my arms. Candice was next to me, with Bastion, still asleep. It was colder than usual–I figured the gas and power were off. Another clue was the dark clocks on the microwave and oven. I pulled out my phone, 57% battery, which I thought was pretty good. Guess I didn’t need to charge my phone as often as I did. It was 3 AM.

I pulled up my interface. 14 hours and 17 minutes left until the cave entrances closed. I started to panic. 23 hours had seemed like so much more time. I only had 14 hours left with my family. I may never see them again. Once we were all awake, we raided the fridge still cold even after being shut off for at least the last few hours. Cheese sticks and yogurts for the boys. Some leftover chicken and veggies for the adults. It was a weird breakfast. A fitting start for a weird day.

“So, we’ll go with you to the cave,” Candice said tears welling in her eyes, “Then will enter stasis. You better bring us the fuck back, Kent,” she gave me a hug. “You better be safe in there.”

You will find out soon enough why, so I'm going to skim over the part where I planned and stuffed my inventory to the brim with anything that could be used for my survival. Maybe “brim” is the wrong word because, not sure about the physics here, I learned that there didn’t seem to be a weight capacity of my system inventory. I tried first with an apple on the counter, and with a thought, the apple vanished from my hand, appearing in my inventory. The system put a nice cartoonish rendering of the apple in the inventory grid space. I could mentally select the apple from my inventory screen, and it would appear in my hand again. I did it over and over again. It was a crazy experience having a real-life inventory. It would’ve been really useful to have this in my life pre-AI doing the whole forcing humanity into a game for its very survival thing.

I learned a few more things as I tested out how this inventory system worked. First, I realized that as long as I could pick something up from the ground, I could add it to my inventory. I’m still not sure what my plan was with bringing a chair, but hey, you never know. My wife gave me a strange look as she opened the door to the garage and saw me sprawled on the floor. I had just barely managed to make our large, solid metal, and heavy ladder disappear into my inventory in time, as I was losing my footing. The ladder was seconds away from pinning me to the ground, making me glad of the physics or un-physics of how this inventory worked. Second, I discovered that if my hand was closed or if the space above my hand was obstructed, depending on the size of the item I was trying to retrieve from my inventory, the item would not transfer from my inventory to my hand.

I was taken out of my inventory testing as Clark came up to me with tears in his eyes.

“Dad, I think Ford is gone,” Clark said.

Ford was our dog. Our pets had disappeared, the dog and two birds were gone, vanishing like all the other animals did when the douchebag AI came on.

“I know bud. I’m sorry. I hope we get to see him again,” I said to Clark giving him a hug.” About time to get going. Go get your mom and brother.”

As I manually lifted up the garage door and it locked in its open position, a strange silence hit me. Not having animals added to the silence outside. No birds, no squirrels, nothing. It was an eerie sort of silence. I also expected to hear more noise in my neighborhood, but it was quiet. I expected to see and hear other frantic neighbors. Did they already leave?

We got in the car. 27 miles to empty blinked. I really should have kept the car more full in case of emergencies. It didn’t take long before cars blocked the streets. The roads could be used to film the latest apocalypse movie. Things burned; people were on the street scared. We saw accident after accident as we zig-zagged through until we couldn’t zig zag any further. At one point, I even drove on people’s lawns. At another point, I even drove through a school field, glad, in that moment, we had this behemoth of a car that I had fought not to get. Our normally 15-minute drive took about an hour. We finally arrived at my brother’s house with nine hours left on the count down.

Jace came out as he saw us pull up.

“We almost came and got you guys,” Jace said. “Glad you made it here alright. How is it out there?”

“Apocalyptic,” I replied.

“Fitting,” Jace said with a forced smile.

“Hang out here for the next few hours?” I suggested. “Then we’ll go at it from here?”

Jace nodded. “Sounds good.”

We went inside Jace’s house. I’ll summarize the next few hours quickly. The kids had hot chocolate, we talked about this impossible situation, and Jace and I kept stuffing our inventories full of stuff we thought may be useful. But, as you can imagine with limitless inventory space and having no clue what was coming, most of Jace’s house was empty by the time we left.

Sunset was just starting as we made our way out. The sunset gave a cruelly beautiful red, lighting up the clouds, giving way too much beauty to a time that was so dark. Inspecting our map in our interface and generally knowing the area, it looked to be about a 15-minute walk to the cave entrance.

“I guess this is it,” Jace said taking a deep breath outside of his home.

Our group made our way walking down the sidewalk. As we approached a major street, we saw others walking down the sidewalk heading in the same direction we were. Our trajectory was taking us towards the group which consisted of one guy, two girls, and a middle-aged woman. They looked like they belonged in the same family having similar features. I would place the older lady in her forties and the three kids in their early to mid-twenties.

“Hello,” Jace said as he made eye contact with the older woman of the group.

“Hello,” she said with a wave. “You guys heading to the cave?”

“Yeah,” Jace replied.

“We still can’t believe all of this is real,” She said, “and I can’t seem to get my stupid boy here,” she gave her son a smack on the back of the head, “to not try and gamble his life away.”

“Gamble his life away?” Jace asked.

“Yeah, he wants to take the chance and try to get better starting gear. Spent too much time playing those damn video games. He could become a monster. Idiot! I didn’t raise you to be a fool, Diego,” she said, smacking his head once more.

“Yeah, I can’t think of anybody who would purposely make that choice. My brother Kent here clicked it on accident,” Jace said pointing at me.

“You did?” Diego said quickly looking at me excitement clear on his face.

“Yeah, my son here accidently bumped me,” I replied gesturing to Clark.

“What did you get?” Diego asked his body buzzing.

“Not really sure yet. Looks like a better starting class. Don’t find out until we get in there,” I said.

We made it to the main street and our groups naturally started to separate.

“Good luck!” Jace called out.

“Good luck to you too. Maybe see you in there,” The older lady said with a wave and a worried half-smile.

After just a few more minutes of walking, it came into view. A huge cave entrance that both went underground 50 feet and above the ground 50 feet, a huge mound of dirt making the top of the cave mouth. The cave was right smack-dab in the middle of the street having partially taken out a gas station on one side and an office building on the other. The cave was like an explosion that removed all matter in a circle.

Further down the giant cave hole, I could see something shimmering. It was blue and swirling clockwise. It looked like a portal from a video game.

Again, I’ll spare you some of this sappy stuff. We delayed for a few minutes not wanting to part with our family. Nobody said it out loud, but I assume the adults was thinking the same thing I was, this could be the last time we all see each other. We gave our farewells to the children first. We decided it would first be Clark, then Bastian, and then Candice and Laquisha. I knelt down, holding my son Clark by his shoulders.

“I love you, bud,” I said to him. “I am going to see you again.”

“Okay, Dad,” Clark replied as we stared into each other’s eyes then embracing into a big hug.

“I got something for you.” I said wiping away a tear. “I expect you to hold onto this and hand me my half once I get you guys back.”

Two Oreos appeared in my hand from my inventory, and I handed them both to Clark. For context, most nights we would split two Oreos. Clark would eat the cream insides, and I would eat the chocolate cookie outside.

We pressed his button, and he vanished. Fuck was that hard. Then it was time for Bastian. I didn’t think I could go through with it. What kind of fucking choice was this?

“Here I got something for you too that you can give back to me,” I said as an action figure toy of Buzz Lightyear appeared in my hand.

I pressed its button on its arm and the toy played its recording “to infinity, and beyond!”

“To infinity, and beyond Bastian. That’s where you are going. I’ll get you guys back from beyond infinity,” I promised.

Next was Candice.

“I love you, babe,” I said to her.

Candice had tears in her eyes.

“Get us the fuck back, Kent,” she said through sobs.

She clicked her button and was gone.

It had been at least 15 plus years since I had last cried. Man did I cry. I never cried so much in my whole life. I looked over to see Laquisha giving Jace a kiss. Her crutches dropped to the ground as she vanished.

Not going to lie it took us both a few minutes before we could compose ourselves.

“Well, it looks like we’re going on an adventure!” I said, resolved.

A notification appeared as we approached the cave.

[Would you like to party with Jace? Partying up will ensure party members start at the same starting location.]

We both selected “yes” and now saw each other’s names in our party interface tab.

There weren’t as many people around as I had assumed there would be here. With millions of people in Denver and only a few caves, I was expected chaos. Maybe people weren’t taking this seriously? Or maybe they were just content to sit on their couch with their loved ones until the end. Maybe I should have thought longer on that choice.

Approaching the cave, we looked up. Random bits of dirt fell from a hundred feet high, pushed by the breeze. We could hear sobbing from behind us as other families made the same decision we had just made.

“Alright,” I said as we stood mere feet away from the shimmering portal.

Jace gave a firm nod. “Alright.”

We looked at each other and both stepped through the portal at the same time.