Chapter 3

  Yaz’s feet hit solid ground, though it was unlike anything he had felt before. He took stock of his surroundings, noting a dim light directly above him that revealed an endless dark expanse in all directions. Distant flashing symbols floated through the air, text and diagrams seemingly suspended in the air glowing like stars. The scene was totally bizarre, but after what he’d just been through, he felt like he was numb to shock at this point. A voice resonated within his mind, and a notification appeared in his vision.

  [Welcome to the System.]

  He felt something pressing on his brain. It felt like the early beginnings of a headache, and its potential seemed to expand as he stared at the notification in front of him.

  [Your world has been assimilated. You are now part of the Greater Framework. Inhabitants of this sector will now undergo Imprinting]

  Yaz barely finished reading before he shouted in pain. A splitting headache overtook him in a moment. It was agony, his head felt like it was being forced through a blender, and his initial shout transformed into screams. A flood of knowledge was crashing into his mind like a tidal wave, not letting him think about anything else. Classes, Attributes, Titles, Ascensions, the Imprinting itself. He wasn’t being taught, he was being force fed the knowledge. It wasn’t perfect though, the information was vast yet impersonal, an outline with no detail. He understood what Strength and Endurance did, but not their nuances. He grasped the concept of Classes, but had no idea how to get one or improve it. It was a guide, nothing more. In just a few more moments, the headache receded, leaving no residual pain. Yaz lay on the floor, curled up in a ball, in fear that he would suffer the mental assault of the Imprinting once more. He steadied himself as time passed. 1 minute. 2 minutes. 5 minutes. He groaned as he slowly unfurled and opened his eyes, instantly noticing the single enormous window before him.

  [Imprint Complete. System Integration: 0.0003%]

  Another notification immediately followed.

  [Generating Avatar…]

  Yaz backpedaled quickly, he wasn’t sure what an avatar was but he was not in fighting form right now. If it was hostile, he’d be in a very, very tight spot. He turned to run when he hit something. He turned to see the air shimmer before him, and a humanoid figure took shape. It was featureless, save a pair of glowing blue eyes and a faint outline that curled into an unmistakable grin.

  “Finally awake, huh?” the figure spoke, his voice carrying an unmistakable tone of amusement. “You handled that about as well as a fish learning to walk.”

  Yaz blinked, staring silently at the newcomer, it was clear that he was overwhelmed by all that had transpired.

  “Oh right! Introductions! You can call me Sage,” the figure said, gesturing to his body with grandeur. “I’m the system-generated guide assigned to answer your dumb – uh, mhm, reasonable – questions before you're tossed back to the meat grinder. Congrats on completing your Imprinting, by the by. You looked way worse than nearly everyone else’s.” Sage cackled.

  Yaz’s eyes narrowed, frustration evident after hearing that he was one of few to go through such a painful experience.

  “Why?” he said flatly.

  “Because you, my friend, are special,” Sage said, mimicking air quotes. “You have a special skill that I’ll tell you about later, a one-in-a-billion kinda deal. So you get the deluxe Imprinting treatment. All the extra Essence that comes with an Echo has to be downloaded into that tiny little noggin of yours. Anyway, you’d best start asking some questions. Not Echo related. I’ll brief you on that right before I send you back.”

  Yaz was dumbfounded. Echo? He wasn’t an idiot, it was clearly related to the only skill that he had, and what triggered the event with the monster he killed right before he was spirited away to this “Imprinting” thing. To be totally honest, Yaz felt like he had a general grasp of the system just because he’d played video games on Earth. The one thing that he wanted to know more than anything was about this skill, and why the hell he went through such a painful Imprinting because of it. Would it cause other problems down the line?

  “Nuh uh, no sir,” Sage said, wagging a finger, “I see those cogs turning. Slowly, but turning. I’m not answering Echo related questions till the very end. So go ahead and think of some other things. You’re behind the 8 ball fella, lots of other people are already chatting me up, taking notes and preparing to return back to Earth.”

  Yaz exhaled, he didn’t know if he appreciated this happy-go-lucky attitude or if it made him really want to punch this guy in the face. He started mulling over some things that he wanted to know.

  “Why are we being educated about the System after spending some time on Earth? Some of us have already seen and even used it. It doesn’t make sense, shouldn’t I get a warning before being dropped into butt-fuck Egypt with nothing but a backpack and lunchbox?”

  Sage tilted his head, amused. “It may seem like a video game to you, but it isn’t. You don’t get a tutorial here, this is your life now. The Imprinting is a failsafe.”

  Yaz frowned. “Failsafe?”

  Sage nodded. “What do you think the System is? You enter your favorite game is dandelions and roses? Nah. The System is just a set of rules, pure and simple. This is your life now, don’t think of the System as something to barter with. Treat it like you did gravity or inertia back home, it just is and will be. But what basically happens when you get dropped is you generally get let loose and the System analyzes how you adapt. Some of you picked up on how it worked naturally, some of you didn’t. Let’s be real, gamers had this stuff figured out before it was real.”

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  Yaz couldn’t argue with that logic. He had to admit that a lot of the concept felt familiar.

  Sage continued, “But not everyone had the same experience. I’m not gonna lie, some of you got steamrolled,” he chuckled, “Panic, not enough time to process what was happening. That’s where the imprinting comes in. It crams enough baseline information into your heads so that even the dumbest of you have a fighting chance. Or at least know how to check your stats before dying horribly”

  Yaz didn’t know what to think of the avatar’s clearly morbid humor. When actual human lives were part of the discussion, he felt bad, but he had to admit that Sage was growing on him. A little dark humor never hurt anyone after all.

  “So it’s not really about teaching anyone anything, it’s about preventing too many casualties.”

  “Bingo” Sage pointed finger guns at him. “The System doesn’t give a flying fuck if you live or die, but it does need enough of you to survive long enough to actually contribute to whatever comes next. It’s like a minimum viable product, gotta have some functionality before rolling out the full experience.”

  That was… honestly kind of terrifying in its own way. That meant that enough people died in what short time he’d spent in the post-Assimilation world to trigger a worldwide history class.

  “How many people died to trigger the Imprinting? I mean this seems like a bit much.”

  Sage scratched his non-existent head, “ Well, you know, I can never really remember. There are so many different worlds, I haven’t found the exact number or percentage yet, but from what I’ve seen over several millennia… the System seems to recognize a minimum baseline of 1 billion beings with autonoetic consciousness as the sweet spot for the Imprinting. I think that’s about the best answer I can give.”

  Yaz’s blood ran cold. 1 billion. That was a massive number, yet in the scope of the nearly 8 billion people that were alive not that long ago. His mind immediately went to his family and friends. They were few in number, but stats didn’t lie. The odds that they survived appeared to be 1 in 8. Yaz believed in his father, he was a resourceful man, but he was also old fashioned. He wasn’t sure if his dad would be able to cope with the radical transformation that came with the Assimilation.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Ah don’t sweat it man, you’re gonna see a lot more of that where you’re going next,” Sage said.

  “Next? What’s next then? What happens after this?

  Sage’s grin widened. “Aha! Probably your first good question all day. And the answer? You’re about to find out soon. But let me give you a tease – this was just onboarding. The real fun starts when you get back. You’ve got about five minutes before you drop back into reality, and trust me, things are gonna be a little different.”

  “Different how?”

  Sage wagged a finger. This guy, Yaz thought, can he say anything without doing some goofy-ass gesture.

  “Nuh uh. No spoilers. But I will say this – when you get back things aren’t gonna be quite as ‘Earth-like’ as when you left.”

  Right, not ominous at all, Yaz thought.

  Sage clapped his hands together. “Alright, enough chit-chat, you’ve got about four minutes left according to the time keeping system you guys used back home. Time for your special education class on Echoes before I boot your ass back into reality.”

  Yaz straightened. He was curious. Who wouldn’t be? Everyone wanted to be special, and despite his risk averse lifestyle, he was no exception. He’d been inundated with mind boggling event after mind boggling event that shattered his worldview.

  “Alright,” he said. “Hit me.”

  “Love a can-do attitude,” Sage grinned. He flicked his wrist and a serious of the glowing symbols that hung around the pitch blackness swung forward and appeared in the air between them. “Echoes are something of a… unique evolution. Every so often, in a newly assimilated world, some people have the capacity to manifest an Echo”

  “Potential?” Yaz asked.

  Sage snapped his fingers, the symbols beginning to spin through the air. “Precisely, the potential. They’re typically tailor-made to the person that has one. Something you do a lot, or are passionate about, they usually relate. And yet, there are thousands upon thousands of unique people, so why do only some get the Echoes?”

  The symbols rotated at an even higher pace as Sage continued, “Thanks for asking. I have no fucking clue. Thousands of assimilations, and yet I have found no consistent explanation. Yet, that’s fairly irrelevant, isn’t it? You have one. So act accordingly.”

  The symbols blurred through the air, their forms now indistinct, and they began to flash.

  “Welp, that’s my queue,” Sage said.

  His grin flickered in the dim glow as the rotating symbols became a flurry of color and light. They spun, each ring of glyphs now pulsing with energy. The space around them began to hum.

  Yaz squinted, shielding his eyes, “Your queue?” he asked, half-annoyed that Sage was bailing before he could ask him anything else.

  “Yup,” Sage answered. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” He paused, tapping his chin. “Well, maybe not fine, but at least not… bored.”

  Without warning, the swirling lights converged into a single blinding flash. When his eyes cleared, Sage was gone, leaving behind the fading sound of the hum of the glyphs.

  “Unbelievable,” Yaz muttered.

  Once more, he looked around, and noticed that the void-like space felt overwhelming without Sage’s casual confidence and awful sense of humor. Yet, even after Sage had left and the glyphs stopped spinning, they now floated around aimlessly. He cautiously walked towards one that was hanging lower than the rest, and held out a hand. As the symbol brushed against his fingertips, it sparked at the contact, sending a jolt of energy up his arm. He quickly withdrew his hand, concerned.

  He braced himself, half expecting to be pulled into some other plane of existence. That seemed to be the common theme of the past several hours of his life anyway. The darkness around him rippled, the parted, revealing a faintly lit corridor of black stone archways. Yaz stared at the newly materialized corridor, before taking a few tentative steps forward.

  As he began walking through the passage, each footfall echoed in the silence. The corridor’s began to take on a faint hue as he walked further down.

  Before long, the stone pathway began to shudder under his feet. With a sudden lurch, the corridor practically dissolved all around him. Yaz tumbled through the darkness – letting out a frightened yelp at the top of his fall, and another loud grunt as he landed with a jarring impact.

  He groaned as he pushed himself up from the ground. This is some serious bullshit, he thought, I have been getting used and abused for the past 2 god damn hours. When will I catch a break.

  For the second time, he was in a new area that he did not recognize. Did the System scramble everyone around again? What the hell is going on…

  Towering, ancient-looking trees loomed above him, their leaves filtering in twilight. The ground was soft under his feet, a comforting contrast to the hard dirt that was at his initial spawn point. As he scanned, he realized that he was once again alone. He noticed that once more, he had his backpack and his gun. While it seemed insignificant, it was a small comfort in this new world. He remembered Sage’s cryptic parting words about things being “different” when he retuned to Earth. Yet, he hadn’t the faintest clue what that meant and would not dwell on it for now.

  Yaz gathered himself. The forest around him was silent, and his loneliness was beginning to weigh on him, for the simple reason that he wasn’t sure if he could survive in these conditions alone. The few people that he had interacted with had shied away from his pragmatism. He never considered himself a person of unyielding resolve. Disciplined? Sure. But given the circumstances, he truly could not comprehend why everyone would jeopardize their own safety for a person that had no chance at survival.

  He knew that if he was to survive, he’d need to come to terms with solitude. He sighed, taking everything in. The trees overhead created a natural cathedral of shadow and light, and he decided that he needed to setup a camp. He looked around, minding his surroundings to ensure some monster didn’t creep up on him. There was a relatively flat clearing beneath a tree whose gnarled branches would offer him some cover. Unloading his backpack and checking his gun, he arranged a modest sleeping area. Per knowledge bestowed to him by the Imprinting, the System had stripped away the need for food and water, but sleep still remained a necessary anchor. Despite the potential vulnerability, he somewhat yearned for a moment of peace in the wake of the past several hours.