Over the following hour I explained the situation to them with the game stats and all of that, and made it known that for the next week we were going to be setting watches and roving guards to keep us all safe.

 

Their only real job would be to rouse me and Eric when trouble came, and we’d scare it off, or punch it to death. At least until I got them some levels and had a good feel for which of them could engage without getting themselves killed.

 

Then I let them run their elections, figure out their leaders, and report the results back to me.

 

One of the cool things that I very much appreciated about the system was that, as I went through and figured out the rank structure and hierarchy, my menu options flitted about, reorganizing themselves to my desires and wants. A command structure emerged visually, with myself at the top and then a larger and larger spread of names along with the ability to contact them and send messages or commands. I saw my slew of LTs, their corporals spreading out beneath them to sprout into the names of the residents they were in charge of leading.

 

And when my stomach started growling, I took a lunch break in my new apartment, ordering and eating a bit of everything. I’d never been so hungry in my life. 200 credits worth of food, probably 4 of Jacks meatloaf surprises worth in calories, and yet when I checked again, I was up 75 credits.

 

I marveled at the number, watching it slowly tick up, roughly a credit and a quarter per minute. Rolling into my 4X Guild screen, I saw that it was coming from the overall income sources of East Gojira-X.

 

Very nice. I suspected, though, that it wasn’t a lot. I’d better quest and adventure some, and find ways to upgrade that income stream, if I wanted to beat this borough.

 

While my people went about getting more organized, I figured I would try set up the real people in various specialties based on both their desires and what worked best for us in this game.

 

I mean, I wanted soldiers, sure. But if the game had crafting ability, like I suspected, I wanted a set team of crafters as well. Diplomats. Assassins. Thieves. Whatever fit the person and the game was cool by me.

 

And I was already thinking mechanization. If I could get people crafting, I could streamline it all into a series of factories, pumping out high-quality weapons, armor . . . hell maybe even these cards if we were able.

 

I figured these were the sorts of loopholes that would have us be OP in no time.

 

It was heading into the evening by the time I finally got around to running my quest. I cursed myself for not doing that sooner — in a game you hit that asap because you never knew when and where you might get the crap kicked out of you and every level up and special item helped.

 

But this stuff here, it was long, it was hard, and I just didn’t think of it until things finally seemed to settle.

 

Opening up the interface, I checked the command diagram, thinking of what I should say or tell them to do.

 

One name among the residents caught my attention immediately. Dragon Dees Nuts. Nope. Wasn’t going to have ridiculous player names. This was too serious. I looked for others. Turtle Juice. Phil McCrackin. BluntMachete . GhostFaceGangsta .

 

I actually cracked a laugh.

 

Then I shook my head. No, this wasn’t joke-off time. I had a quest to send out a command, and now I knew what it was going to be. I hammered out a mental message.

 

Get your stuff together guys, gals. All of this is serious. If we goof off, we die. I want to see proper names by the time I wake up tomorrow morning, or else I’m going to make you five into a proper combat-drafted suicide squad. Because if you think this is fun, I’ll give you all the fun I can muster.

 

A notification popped up and I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling almost guilty. As quests and prizes went, that one felt almost like cheating.

 

Quest Completed – Ready to Work

Look at you. King Stuff, Lord of the Roost. The people quaver to hear your words, their eyes downcast as you approach. All shall understand the might of your tongue or else perish beneath the blades of outward enemies.

 

Rewards: +100 xps. One random common card draw. The constant target of local gossip, and the designs of other local warlords within your region. Joy oh joy!

 

There was a blinking notification, a symbol with a card laid upon a card laid upon a card, and I selected it. A mess of cards filled my vision, all of them face down on the invisible pane of my vision.

 

Choose wisely was all the system prompt said.

 

Great advice. Thanks buddy.

 

I tried to see if there were any differences between them, but they all looked exactly the same. I was starting to get that angry trill in my head that told me it was time to just select and simmer down, though, so I resorted to the best way I knew how.

 

Eenie-meenie-minie-mo.

 

Skipping down the rows, syllable by syllable, I selected a card and held my breath in anticipation. The AI did this whole fancy showy flip screen, with the card rising up, the rest of them slipping away into oblivion. Fireworks played at the edge of my vision.

 

Veilborn

Level 1 (Uncommon)(2CP)

 

Activate to trigger phasal cascade, a buff that skips you in and out of existence 5 seconds at a time, for 2 minutes. 5-minute cooldown.

 

‘The first of their portals opened to a sewer, and for this we have never been forgiven.’

 

 

Learn Chance 70% Would you like to study this skill now? Y/N

 

It was an interesting card. I wasn’t sure what I could do with it. It seemed like it might be good for confusing enemies in battle. But at the same time if I was skipping out, wouldn’t I also be hella confused? I imagined such a fight and grimaced. I’d need to train with this card a lot before ever actually using it.

 

I selected yes, and let the numbers do their thing. And then I cursed when they settled on 73. The new card faded to oblivion.

 

I shrugged, surprised at my lack of loss over the thing. It had truly looked metal despite its inherent difficulties.

 

But on the flip side I really hadn’t done much to get it anyways.

 

Everything was sorted, the day was done, so I sat down on the sofa in my living room and I turned on the TV to see what was going on in the world today.

 

Most of the channels were showing different genres, real people going about and trying to survive their new realities. I saw a place called Grimdom, where the entire expanse of the Wisconsin Northwoods had been transformed into a series of city-states, dungeons, and marauding monsters.

 

Without their trusty rifles the population wasn’t faring too well. I didn’t blame them. Their swords, shields, and crossbows seemed so tiny compared to some of the enemies that were savaging their homes and villages.

 

And Washington DC was immediately recognizable by the transformed ruins of the White House. It looked like it had been made over into a zombie apocalypse.

 

The soldiers, citizens, and politicians all looked just as they had before the change. But around them everything was crumbled and broken, hordes of the wandering dead marching to any loud noises.

 

The death count there had to be horrific. I wondered if it wasn’t intentional, maybe a hit by the AI Deus Ex to take out the former leader of the former nation. Kinda like what had happened to Doctor Kevin.

 

RIP.

 

And there were still real channels from the outside. From them we could all see that although water didn’t stop the nanobots, the depth and expanse of the oceans seemed to have slowed its advance a lot.

 

Off the Eastern Coast of the US were now seen massive sea serpents, gigantic sharks, a plethora of new beasts as well as the gargantuan shining skin of a white whale. From under the waves gleamed the lights of civilization and I wondered if maybe some oil rigs hadn’t become vast underwater metropolises, filled with hundreds of thousands of NPCs, and probably a dozen or so real people.

 

No one would be left without the game, it seemed.

 

It pissed me off.

 

To be fair, pretty much everything pissed me off if it went on long enough. But this was cosmic anger, the sort of thing that got Lucifer cast out of heaven and put in charge of the pits of hell.

 

Who the hell was this AI to take over the planet and put everybody under the control of its tiny little robots?

 

I huffed and curled my hands into fists. The day had been so much talking, so much blowing smoke, so much standing around and making little lists and charts and all of that stuff.

 

I thought about how it felt, running through the halls with Eric Joel, pulling people out of harm’s way. Kicking the crap out of that dragon. Really sticking it to the AI.

 

It felt like real agency. The means to change things. And looking at the television screen, I knew that it wasn’t time to sleep. It was time to get up, get out, and gain some levels.

 

It was time to take a stroll and wreck some random encounters.

 

Patches was hanging out on my feet. I hadn’t even noticed him down there. He’d felt like a pair of warm, heavy, fuzzy slippers. And Eric Joel was just standing there, licking his arm hair clean. He was a far cry from the freaky, trashy mess I’d met at the elevator.

 

“Hey, Patches, Joel, you guys wanna bite the fingers off of some monsters?” I reached down and gave Patches a pat on the head, perking him up and getting him off my feet. He cocked his head and lolled his tongue.

 

“Wanna beat up some jerks?” I asked, raising the pitch of my voice and getting him all excited. “Yeah you do. We’re gonna rock their world, yes we are!”

 

His tail was thumping back and forth quick as could be, a veritable helicopter whirl. Meanwhile, Eric had stopped cleaning himself and had walked on over, not a sound in his step.

 

It was kinda creepy how stealthy that cat man was, to be honest.

 

“Yeah, boss. I’m in it to win it. Got some plans? Some sort of mission?”

 

I thought about what to say. He was an NPC, so not really in the know in terms of the metastructure of this place. If I sat down and explained it all to him, what exactly would happen? Doctor Kevin had said that the NPC went catatonic when we all talked game around them, and that obviously wasn’t true.

 

Not anymore at least.

 

So I decided to play it safe for now and maybe slowly indoctrinate him into the reality of the game system over time.

 

“We’re just going on patrol. Looking to see if other people need some people, or if we can get some contacts around this place. Seems like the police are kaput here, yeah?”

 

Eric Joel knocked, hacked a cough, and spit a wad of fur onto the carpet. “Sounds good boss. Let’s go.”

 

The three of us grabbed an elevator and cycled through the building. I noticed that the residents awake and on guard were alert and also chatting and generally taking things in stride. It was a good sign. I’d been half worried that most of them would break or somehow go crazy.

 

We passed through the checkpoint at the entrance to our building, and I stepped out into the darkness of Gojira-X. The dark sky held a light haze that obscured most of the stars, but the ones I could see seemed to be in the right spots, so those hadn’t changed.

 

And I noticed something fun about the place. It was misting, light little droplets of rain swirling about, layering everything in a nice wet sheen. It felt good. Clean somehow. The pockets of smog that hid about the city previously had all been pushed to the dirt.

 

Maybe there to stay, I realized, looking at all of the various electric vehicles parked all over the place.

 

The roads here were the same as they had been yesterday. Or at least the same shape. But they felt different. Instead of a hard clamshell sort of half-ass slapdash asphalt job jaunting through the local hills, these things felt durable. Tough, like the armor of a fricking M113 troop carrier. I stomped it hard with my backheel, a move that would have flaked the edges of the roads yesterday.

 

Nothing happened.

 

“So, boss, we just come out here to kick roads? What are we doing here?” Eric Joel’s face was downcast, his head and shoulders slumped. The cat man didn’t like the rain, I realized.

 

“Let’s say we go figure out where the clothing district is and get ourselves some awesome trench coats. Hats. Maybe you can get an umbrella to protect your precious hair, or whatever the heck it is that has got you looking so grim.”

 

Patches barked, his tail flip-flapping about. He didn’t understand a thing I was saying, but he was happy I was saying it.

 

Probably he could smell the adrenaline on me because I was gonna smash something as soon as I was able. Grab some levels. Get powerful.

 

We started heading down the road, a light decline that got steeper as we went. If this Gojira place were situated like the old city had been, there was a small crummy strip mall at the foot of the hill.

 

Five minutes by car. Thirty by walking.

 

Watching those vids had me thinking about random encounters. I was guessing that this Deus Ex AI would be rolling dice or spamming integers over and over again, eventually rolling snake eyes.

 

And that was when some of those nanobots would swarm together into something evil, pop up into sight, and start swinging.