It rained when it should have snowed, the first sign of change. Thick drops fell like bullets from an angry cloud. The missiles cut through snowflakes below them, falling faster and harder. The temperature rose to 80 degrees, despite winter and a harsh January. The night was at once muggy.
The storm hammered on the houses surrounding the cul-de-sac. A wind rose due east, lashing the rain sideways against windows. The trees shook their branches with frenzy, as if alive and afraid. The moon turned its crescent smile on an axis to grin at the carnage below. Similar phenomena played out in discreet places across the world.
The System watched, its thoughts mechanical and terse.
Begin Integration.
Integration at 1 percent
Parameters set
It was 9 pm.
The System was a consciousness, a thoughtform creeping behind matter and mass. It had experimented for ages now in pocket worlds - closed off, artificial realities of its own design. Bubbles of material and energy floating in the depths of space. And in each spun a tiny, malleable facsimile of earth.
Some constructed earths were utopias of living light and eternal, long eared creatures. Others were hellscapes, ruined lands of necrotic survival and abstract nature. The System had deemed each Instance a failure and tore them down. But with each apocalypse the System perfected its theme. The perfect plan to rebuild the real world.
The System did not wish to chain the world to its will. It had done so many times in its pocket realities. Instead, the goal was to break the world from its established rules. And so, the System needed its own laws, a gamification and quantification of reality. A set of principles that allowed the System''s chosen heroes to overcome logic and limit. But not so esoteric that the System collapsed in on itself. At last, the consciousness had that blueprint.
First, the System had to undo the nations, countries, cities and roadways. Ten thousand years of history, meaningless and revolting to the System''s hungry eyes. It would toss them away with uncaring glee. Even the earth itself fell short of the System''s plans. It was too small, too mundane, too predictable. A replacement landscape germinated beneath the crust, in the liquid rock surrounding earth''s core. It geoengineered and terraformed and rose by the System''s pull. A few stray seismic readings disturbed the most anxious geologists. But the System was subtle. Had so far softened the chaos to come, the planet itself was under its control already.
A new layer crawled upward. The highest treetops and mountain peaks came perilously close to the crust, and halted. There was one more matter before the sundering. The System spoke to itself. As it did, its will commenced.
Target potential Prodigies and their families
Collateral damage acceptable
Adjusting…
Collateral damage mandatory
Activate Quest: To New Beginnings
Set win condition to (1) hour survival
Adjusting…
Set win condition to (3) hour(s) survival
Send Terminals to potential Prodigies and Activate
Set encounters to awaken (3) hour(s) after Integration begins
Set Guild Masters to awaken (6) hour(s) after Integration begins
Begin tutorial
Tutorial. That''s what the System called its final test. A warrior''s trial, a firehouse training. Three hours. Three hours the Prodigies, the System''s potential heroes, had to survive. Abominations slept below ground, dreaming of fresh blood and mayhem, awaiting the call. The Terminals, windows into the System''s thoughts, would explain all this.
Error
MAJOR INCOMPATIBILITIES DETECTED BETWEEN SYSTEM AND BASE WORLD
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Continue Integration
The snow soon melted from Washington Street, the surviving slush blown away. A single pop, like the passing of a supersonic jet, and the storm stopped. The snow returned, as though a snow globe had tipped over. It soon blanketed the neighborhood again, covering all evidence. No one disturbed by the storm noticed the addition to their street. It manifested in the cover of rain from a place liminal and dark. First, the barbican realized. The old reservoir stretched and looped, forming a mote. A bailey rose behind the mote, and turrets climbed at intervals into the snow. An inner keep flickered into being, caught between solidity and nothingness. Thus, a castle had formed in the barren field behind the cul-de-sac. No builder touched its stones. No materials lay scattered. It went up in silence of its own volition. By 11, the last of its pinnacles had settled, and the snow relented.
Someone spotted the phantom spires through the snowfall. Word spread. And the castle’s first visitors ventured from their houses, flashlights and phones in hand. They stumbled in slippers and bathrobes into their backyards and the cold. The bravest crossed the barrier, where cut grass met city-owned brambles, though all was covered in white.
Men shivered, shoulder to shoulder beneath the mist-veiled parapets. Back inside, they''d shout to children. Call the police, someone told their wife. Crossed arms and scratched heads couldn''t solve the mystery, and it was very cold. The men went inside, to await the proper authorities.
Midnight came and went, and no authorities arrived, though the station''s phones rang. And the mystery of the unanswered phones and the phantom castle was soon forgotten. The drawbridge lowered, half past 12, on the second. A horde of fur-covered creatures scrambled over the plank, like dogs loosed from a kennel. The mass of bipedal monsters climbing the bridge broke its chains and it crashed down. Some creatures went over the edge and into the mote. The majority charged in mass.
Two species were present. A smaller form, a bulbous sphere of hair, like a moth ball or dandelion, dominated the ranks. Long, stick-thin limbs poked from the fluff, two legs and arms. The skin was leathery and cracked where it showed. The fingers were six-jointed, ending on black nails. They curled and uncurled in the air as the creatures hobbled. No eyes showed through the fur, either obscured or absent. A round mouth sat agape on every specimen. Slobber and black bile poured between thick, flat teeth.
The other goblinoids doubled their stout companions in height. They urged their enormous, pear shaped frames forth with speed. The body tapered, a seamless transition between chest, neck and head. A clay sculpture made animate. A swine''s snout and tusks hung from the balloon heads, flapping in the wind. The skin was stretchy on the face and tight across the rest of the creature. Many carried crude hammers and clubs in long, jointless arms.
Few panicked residents noted these details. None appreciated the phenomena above the creatures’ heads. It was stranger than the beasts themselves, if one stopped to consider.
"Grunk, lvl 1," read a black text above the little goblins’ heads. And a red bar stretched below this crucial data, encased in glass. "Snarg, lvl 1", went the message crowning the bigger monsters. Their own red bars were much longer than those of their cousins.
The fleeing families couldn''t know, but this information was vital to their survival. It told them all they needed to know at a glance about the crude visitors. The change that had come with the rain was now in full force. "Lvl", short for level, signified the creature''s rank, the sum of its deadliness and ability. That was obvious. The crimson bar represented an abstract of the creature''s life force, its vitality. None heeded this data. None realized that these attackers differed little from their own statistics. Of course, no one cared to open their terminals to review these numbers. Families piled into cars and sped away. Some barricaded their doors. All was futile.
This convoy erupted from the castle and dispersed along Washington Street. The horde slashed apart and ate anyone caught outdoors. The big Snargs battered through makeshift defenses. Grunks invaded single story ranch styles like a virus, dragging out occupants. The System had claimed its first victims and it laughed in the void.
And scenes like this played out across the world. Castles, forts, great cathedrals and entire ancient cities rose from the ground. They pushed through dirt and concrete, through the civilization above. And a new terrain followed. Mountains rose higher than their predecessors. Entire plains and savannas lifted the world and cast it aside. Two stunned observers watched from the safety of a space station, as the world grew two sizes. They commented with wonder that the continents had taken new forms. The oceans had shifted.
All powerful but not patient, the System demolished all in its way in an instant. None could resist, because nothing remained after the strange rains came. Military bases fell into new born canyons, their inert stockpiles lost. Governments collapsed in every sense. A few stretches survived, but nothing to worry the System. Only enough to ensure someone would be around to integrate. And to resist the first wave of monsters supplied by their new master.
The System had analyzed two dozen Instances in a vacuum. A safe pocket dimension, designed to mirror earth in a simplified fashion. A testing ground for the earth''s initiation, supplied with kidnapped test subjects. And in each Instance, the subjects had adapted to their plight, took up arms and survived the first wave. Why should the System assume the real experiment should be different?
But, like many Instance launches before, day one was a disaster.
Somewhere in a void beyond the world, the omnipotent witness cringed, weathering disappointment.
WARNING. CATASTROPHIC LOSS OF POTENTIAL PRODIGIES
Analyzing…
Failure of Candidates to understand Terminal System: 89% of users
The System screeched into an endless dark, enraged by its own thoughts.
Failure of Candidates to locate the Terminal System: 10% of users
Integrated Candidates: 1% of users
Cancel tutorial stage and survival condition
Awaken Guild Masters.
Deploy Guild Masters to collect surviving Prodigies
Generate Fortresses and NPC’s. Guild Masters are to fall back to safe zones
EXTINCTION UNACCEPTABLE
And the System’s will commenced.
The show had to go on.