The day the world turned into a video game, I was arguing with a vending machine.
That's not a metaphor. I'd fed the machine on my apartment landing a dollar fifty, punched B4 — sparkling water, my one vice — and the machine had responded by dropping a packet of fig cookies that no one, in the entire history of the human race, has ever asked for on purpose.
"Not again," I told it. "Not again, you piece of junk."
I slapped the glass with my palm. And it was right then, hand flat against the plastic, standing there with the face of a complete idiot, that the sky turned blue.
Not sky-blue. Screen-blue. That very specific shade of blue that things go right before they ruin your entire day.
And then, in front of all eight billion people on the planet at once, the same message appeared, floating in the air:
[WELCOME TO THE SYSTEM]Integration has begun. Your reality has been updated to version 1.0.Thank you for your patience. It was not optional.
There was about three seconds of worldwide silence.
Then the entire building started screaming at the same time.
I'll spare you the panic part, because you can probably picture it and because, frankly, I didn't understand most of it either. People ran. Mr. Halloran from the third floor — retired, seventy-four, in his underwear — leaned over the courtyard railing shouting that this was the Russians. A woman was crying. And, weirdly, a teenager was clapping.
The important part came after, when the sky faded from catastrophe blue to a calmer sort of blue, and each of us got a second window, in front of us and for us alone:
[CLASS ASSIGNMENT IN PROGRESS...]Analyzing subject. Please remain still. Or don't. Honestly it makes no difference.
And this is the part where the System, in its infinite generosity, started handing out superpowers.
I heard them before I saw mine. Because — turns out — when someone gets a decent class, the System announces it with a little triumphant jingle, a cosmic ta-da, and a column of golden light drops down from the ceiling like they're the chosen one of some ancient prophecy.
Mr. Halloran, still in his underwear, got a column of golden light.
[CLASS ASSIGNED: FLAME WARDEN]
"BUT I'M SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD!" he yelled, as a respectable fire wrapped itself around his right fist. He stared at his hand. Then he looked up. "And how do I turn it off? SYSTEM. HOW DO I TURN THIS OFF?"
The System didn't answer him. The System, as I'd come to learn, loves not answering.
The teenager on the fourth floor: [Shadow Tamer]. Column of light. Jingle.
The guy from the gym on the ground floor, the one who parks his motorcycle on the sidewalk: [Seismic Berserker]. Column, jingle, and as a bonus, a tremor that cracked the salon's front window.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
And there I was, on the landing, holding a packet of fig cookies in one hand and my dollar fifty gone forever, waiting for my column of golden light.
Waiting.
Waiting.
[CLASS ASSIGNED: ...]One moment.Verifying....this can't be right. Retrying.No. It's right. Huh.
No jingle. No column. There was, at most, a sad little flicker from the landing light — the same one that's been about to burn out for three years.
[CLASS ASSIGNED: COPYIST]Class Skill unlocked: [Copy] (Level 1).Congratulations. I guess.
I stood there reading it for a good long while.
"Copyist?" I said out loud. "Seriously? You give the kid living shadows, and I get to be a — what — a photocopier?"
It is not a photocopier.
I nearly dropped the cookies. The System was answering me. When it had left Mr. Halloran — fist literally on fire — completely on read.
"Then what is it?" I asked, with all the hope a man has left after losing a dollar fifty.
And the System, very kindly, opened the description for me.
[Copy] — Level 1Upon observing a skill used by another being, the user obtains a permanent copy of that skill.Restriction: the copied skill is acquired at 1% of its original effectiveness.System note: yes, one percent. That is not a typo. We checked twice.
I let that settle.
Okay. Let's review. I could copy. Any. Skill. I. Saw.
On paper, that sounded like the most broken class on the planet. Every cheater's dream. See a fireball, have a fireball. See someone fly, start flying. See the Shadow Tamer, and boom — shadows for the copyist.
The small catch was that little "1%."
Because a 1%-effectiveness copy of Mr. Halloran's flame wasn't a flame. It was, generously, the temperature of a dying lighter. A 1% copy of the berserker's tremor wouldn't level a building — at most, it'd tickle the sole of your foot.
In other words: the System had given me the power to steal every superpower in the world... converted into versions so pathetic they'd make you sad.
"Okay," I said. "Okay, okay, okay. So I'm useless."
Correction.You are useless with scaling potential.It's different. Slightly.
I was about to say something very dignified — something worthy of the historic moment we were all living through — when the landing shook again. But this time it wasn't the berserker.
It was something coming up the stairwell.
Something breathing hard. Something with too many legs for the number of legs you expect to hear on the stairs of your own apartment building.
And above that something, floating, appeared a red label I did not like at all.
[Threshold Straggler — Level 4]Hostile creature. Reward on defeat: 40 XP.Survival probability of subject COPYIST: calculating... lol. Calculating.
Mr. Halloran, two floors up, leaned over the railing with his flaming fist.
"Kid!" he shouted. "Don't you worry, I've got fire! Look! FIRE!"
He hurled a jet of flame down the stairwell. It was magnificent. It was epic. It was, in fact, so magnificent and so epic that it missed the creature entirely, scorched the second-floor welcome mat, and set the vending machine on fire.
My vending machine.
The creature kept climbing.
The fire crackled beside me.
And a horrible, stupid, suicidal idea started forming in my head as I watched the flames devour slot B4.
"System," I said slowly. "If I look at Mr. Halloran's fire... do I copy it?"
Technically, you're already copying it.
[Skill copied: Minor Flame (1%)]Effectiveness: dying lighter, like I told you.But hey. It's a start.
I looked at my hand. I looked at the creature. I looked at the fig cookies, still in my other hand, because apparently not even the end of the world can free me from the fig cookies.
Thirteen seconds. That's how long it took the universe to hand me the worst skill in existence.
It was going to take a whole lot longer than thirteen seconds to turn it into the best one.
But, well.
You have to start somewhere.
I dropped the cookies, lit a little flame the size of a sad birthday candle on the tip of my finger, and headed down to meet my first monster.