Changing World Draft 1, CH 3 (Patreon)

Chuck tapped the steering wheel to the rhythm of Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again, glancing that the clock. A little past nine am, if all went well he’d make Watertown before he ran out of hours, then tomorrow it would only be a couple of hours to Cornwall, not counting the order, but his papers were in order so the only delay would be other trucks, and Sunday mornings were rarely busy.

He glanced up and out the passenger window as a flash of light caught his attention, then back ahead as the truck’s engine died. Cursing, he maneuvered it to the shoulder, having to use more and more strength as the truck slows and the power steering went with that, but strength he had in spades. He was lucky the highway traffic was light this morning as he didn’t have time to worry if cars would maneuver around him.

By the time the truck stopped moving, he’d made it on the shoulder, and the sky was darker, no, redder. He leaned forward to look up the windshield and the entire sky was red, and the clouds had vanished. He put it out of his mind; he needed to deal with his truck, he could worry about the sky later.

He turned the key, and the engine turned over but didn’t catch. Had the fuel line ruptured? He tried to remember where his fuel gauge had been as, but he’d fueled last night and hadn’t paid attention to it.

He exited the cab, intending on at least looking for fuel pooling under the truck as confirmation, but paused as he saw cars on the highway, also stopped, with people looking under the hoods, some trying to start them, most were looking and pointing at the sky. A dozen cars and one camper. If they were all stopped, then the problem might not be the truck.

He looked up. The sky was the red of a sunset, but evenly, not changing to blue toward the east, and it was morning. Why would the sky be red?

He looked east, trying to recall if that flash of light had coincided with the red, but his attention was taken by the deeper red that seemed to be approaching. He focused, yeah, a wall of red was coming toward him. Toward them.

Cursing, Chuck backed away and looked around. “We need to take cover!” he yelled and pointed to the overpass. “Under there.” Without waiting to see if anyone followed his instruction, he ran toward it. Others had; and had been closer.

“What is happening?” a mother asked, holding her teenage son close to her.

“It’s the end of the world,” an older man with darker skin said.

“It’s just some meteorological phenomena,” a lighter skin young man told him, and an argument ensued. Which Chuck put out of his mind.

It wasn’t his problem, and he was more interested in what was coming toward them. It was definitely a wall, a red wall touching the ground and going as high as the sky. It couldn’t be further than a couple of kilometers away and still coming.

“Hurry!” he yelled at the older couple. He didn’t think they would make it. “Come on,” he urged them. He debated running to them, and… what could he do? Be out there when the wall reached them? He didn’t even know what would happen. If the overpass offered any protection.

Maybe they were just fine where they— the wall reached them and kept going.

System Initiation

Chuck shook his head at the words in front of him. They remained in place. Looking around to make sure no one was paying attention to him, and seeing everyone was reacting to something in their field of vision, he swiped at the words. His hand passed through them.

This was beyond weird.

“Have we been drugged?” a Latin woman asked, sounding fearful.

“Do you see ‘System Initiation’ too?” the Caucasian woman next to her asked.

So again, they were all affected. The problem wasn’t with him.

Others from the other side of the overpass joined them. “Any of you know what’s going on?” a black man asked, holding his child in his arms.

The words vanished as someone told him that no, they didn’t. And a sigh of relief went up. Chuck stopped himself. He didn’t think it was time to feel that yet. The sky was still red, and even everything had taken a red tint after the wall passed over them.

Please create your character

The words were replaced by what looked surprisingly like a character sheet from a tabletop role-playing game. Along with it, a timer in the upper right of his field of vision ticked down to fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds. So he had an hour to do it or… he didn’t know what would happen.

Again, people were reacting to something in their sight. He could make them out through the character sheet, shaking their head or brushing whatever they saw aside. So the problem still wasn’t with him.

“If I’m not the problem, I’m going to take this seriously,” he whispered to himself. “Worse comes to worst, I’ve just wasted an hour of my time.” The people closest to him, which included the Latin and Caucasian woman as well as the older couple who’d reached them after the wall had passed, looked at him strangely. “Just talking to myself,” he told them as he climbed the incline on the shoulder before sitting. His behavior couldn’t be any stranger than having messaged and sheets appearing in front of them.

Name: Charles “Chuck” Dorval

Race: Human

On a hunch, he focused on the word Human. Others were tapping at what he expected was the sheet before them, and swiping up or to the side, as if they were in a virtual world. Maybe that was it? He shook his head. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that he wasn’t going to look like an idiot if he could avoid it.

The word highlighted and options appeared next to it. Elf, half-elf, dwarf, Orc, half-orcs. The list went on and on, he’d never seen a game with so many races available. He didn’t know all of them, but they all had a vague sense of familiarity to them; like he’d seen them in passing somewhere. Maybe they were from legends? His eyes fell on Dragonborn. Nope, that he knew was from a video game.

He should his head, the motion closing the options window. He focused on human again and it reopened. He wanted to check something, but he was worried that anything he focused too much on would become his selection.

Could he find human in the choices?

The choices shrunk until he was left with twenty or so possibilities, all of them human plus something else, like Caucasian, Spanish, African, one of them was Paradine, and it was so familiar Chuck dug in his memory for where he knew it from.

Andromeda, he remembered, that was the race of the main character. He tried to remember who played him, but he only remembered him as the guy who’d played Hercules on that campy show he loved to watch when he was younger. How was a fictional human race included?

It didn’t matter. He focused on human, Caucasian, since that was what he was.

Do you want to select Human, Caucasian, as your race? Yes/No?

I’d rather have information on it, Chuck thought.

Human. Humans are a race whose survival had been possible because of their ability to adapt to situations, even when those situations seem as they should exterminate them all. Humans come with a multitude of sub-races, most of which are nothing more than cosmetically different and are only included here due to the human's intense desire to separate themselves along the lines of those differences. Humans do not start with any modifiers to their statistics, but learn skills and spells one point five times faster. Human exclusive class: Jack of All Trades.

Chuck focused on the class.

Do you wish to set Jack of All Trades as your class? Yes/No?

Give me information on it first.

Jack of All Trades is a human exclusive class. As such it can be purchased by other races, but at a cost of double the experience required to go up in level. The Jack of All Trades is someone with an ease at learning. This class will learn at double the normal speed, but cannot have any skills reach the Master Skill Level.

Chuck chuckled. Jack of all trades, master of none. Of course.

He shook his head and the information on the class went away. He shook it again, and the list of races also disappeared. He was happy being human.

Next was class, with a blank field. He’d expected it to be automatically filed with Trucker, or Truck Driver, since the others had been filled. He focused on the space ad a list appeared. A very long list, he suspected.

Show me the trucker classes, he thought. Everything choices vanished. Was there not a class called trucker? Show me the driving classes. Again, nothing. He looked at the cars on the highway, his truck that had suddenly died. If the lack of driving and trucking classes were any indications, their uses were uncertain at best. Riding classes, he thought.

He had a long selection, about the only of which he recognized was Knight. What was an Argonal Rider?

The Argonal rider is an Argonal exclusive Class, as such it can be purchased by other races, but for double the experience required to go up in level. The Argonal Rider—

Stop. He shook his head to dismiss the description.

Any of the riding classes would be riding an animal, and as much as being a knight tickled old childhood fantasies, he was an adult now. If he wasn’t going to drive, what were his options? Should he go off the wall? Or behave as if this was real? How much technology had failed? Would they come back? Should he go full basic and just pick fighter, or get something fancier?

He checked his watch, a little past nine-thirty. He didn’t remember when this had started, but the timer in the upper right told him he had forty-one minutes and change left. On a hunch, he took his phone out. The screen was blank, and it wouldn’t come on.

“Excuse me,” he said to the older woman. “Does your phone work? Any electronics?”

She shook her head. “Do you know what’s happening? What this character sheet is about?”

“No, but I’m filling mine. The fact there’s a timer attached to it makes me think it’s something we should all do.”

The man snorted. “This is what happens when all this technology gets in the air. Mary. I told you that 5G thing was going to be the end of everything.”

She winces and escorted him away, giving Chuck an uncomfortable smile.

“My phone and my watch are dead too,” the Latin woman said. She offered her hand “I’m Jasmine.”

Chuck hesitated. This was how it started he knew, nice and friendly. Then they started asking for more, demanding, forcing and the next thing he knew— Shut up, he told his paranoia. Not everyone was out to take advantage of him. The incident at the truck stop yesterday had left him on edge.

He shook her hand. “Chuck. You think it’s all technology this has killed?” He motioned to the sky.

“Does your watch work?”

He nodded. “It’s an old wind up model.”

She smiled. “Then it’s now all technology that’s dead. What are you going to be?”

“Excuse me?”

She motioned before her. “The character sheet, I’m thinking of picking Orc as my race. Being thin and delicate is all nice and good, but it would be better to be able to punch guys who think that because I look like this, it’s okay to get grabby.”

Chuck looked at her and past her being Latin. Her face was elongated, her eyes had that wideness to them that he saw on a lot of magazine covers. She had some makeup around her eyes, lipstick. She was thin but healthy-looking. She wore a tank top and jeans that might on the tight side. He’d take her word for it that men found how she looked desirable.

“Grabby’s never fun,” he went with as something to say. “I’m sticking with human. I’m going through the classes since Trucker isn’t a possibility.”

“You look like you should get a physical class. You know, fighter, barbarian, you’d make a great bodyguard the way you look.”

He eyes her suspiciously. Was she asking that he protect her? He tried to read her expression, but she was looking ahead again with her brows furrowed. Focusing on her sheet.

Physical did make sense. Did he want to be a damage dealer or a tank? He really didn’t want to get into fights. He’d used his size to discourage fights, not initiate them. A tank felt more his speed.

Tank Classes, the thought, and hoped the gaming language would be recognized. The list shrank to include the Knight, which he did think of as a tank class. They weren’t in alphabetical order, maybe they were in order of tankness? The top one being the Batterer, whatever that was. The Knight was in the top ten, as was the Guardian. What was that one?

The Guardian is the protector of the general population. They place themselves between citizens and dangers. They are most often found among city guards, surrounded by other fighting classes, such as the fighter, the archer, the commander. Historically, many Guardians have been wandering defenders, traveling to town or villages without the ability to defend themselves. Guardians are known for their ability to take damage more than to inflict them, although an experienced Guardian can be a force to reckon with in a fight.

Guardians receive one point in Strength, two points in endurance, two points in health per level, and one unassigned attribute point. Each level they also receive one point to put in their talents and one in their skills.

He liked the build, although he didn’t know what the talents were, and at this point, he didn’t think it was important. He did want something that could also do magic.

Aetheric Guardian. A subclass of the Guardian, the Aetheric Guardian as the ability to infuse many of their talents with Aether, affecting how the talent will work. On top of other bonuses, the Aetheric Guardian gains a point in Aether per level and a spell point.

Chuck smiled. Yeah, that was what he wanted. He still had twenty-nine minutes. Did he want to look for something better? No, this would do.

Do you wish to choose Aetheric Guardian as your class? Yes/No?

Yes. Aetheric Guardian appeared as his class, and next to it a box with what the class gave him.

Per level
Strength +1
Endurance +2
Aether +1
Health +2
Unassigned Attribute point +1

Ability points +1
Skill points +1
Spell point +1

Experience needed modifier 2.1

Next to the bonuses were up and down arrows. He could keep customizing his class? He gave himself an extra skill point, and the experience modifier went up to 2.6. He took it down and added a spell point. The same thing. With the ability point, it only went up to 2.4. When it came to his attribute, each point increased it only by point one, and the unassigned point by point two.

Chuck realized he could spend a long time customizing the class. But decided against it. He’d rather be done early than late. He brought them down to their starting numbers and waited. When nothing happened he thought, Done.

Do you way to accept the modifications? Yes/No?

Yes. Next came his attributes.

Attributes
Strength: 13
Dexterity: 10
Endurance: 12
Intelligence: 11
Charisma: 10
Aether: 10
Health: 12

Without any details, this felt accurate.

Chose an ability.

Switch (bodyguard level 1)

Wall (crowd control Level 1)

Charge (Offensive level 1)

Switch: as a bodyguard, the Guardian gets to switch place with a target to protect them. For the ten seconds following the activation of the ability, your Endurance and health are doubled, and your target heals one point per second per level for fifteen seconds. Range: 10 meters plus 10 per level. Cool down, fifteen minutes. If the target is designated as the one being guarded, the range is doubled and line of sight is not required. As an Aether Guardian, aether can be used to alter the range or cool down.

Wall: as a Crowd Control Guardian, you can great a wall the is five meters wide and hight plus 5 meters in width and one in height per level. The durability of the wall is ten times your endurance and can not be crossed in any directions, making it good to protect people no matter on what side of the wall you are. Duration, one minute per level, cool down five minutes. As an Aether Guardian, aether can be spent to increase the duration, reduce the cooldown, or alter the dimensions of the wall.

Charge: As an Offensive Guardian, you can activate a charge that will double your strength for the purpose of the damage you cause, but your endurance is reduced by half for the next minute. Cool Down, one minute. As an Aether Guardian, you can spend aether to alter the strength increase and endurance decrease as well as the cool down.

Switch was a no-brainer for Chuck, and not because of the woman’s comment about being a bodyguard. It would make him valuable, but keep how his ability was used under his control. And since there were no indications it had to be used in combat, if someone bothered him, it would be a quick way to get out of it and leave someone else to deal with them.

The list of his skills wasn’t as long as he’d expected, Strength level ten and Endurance level eight. He was pretty sure he knew far more, but was it because most of what he knew was technology-related that they appear? If computers no longer worked, knowing how to fix one wasn’t going to be useful.

And he had no spells.

With that, he seemed to be done creating his character.

Do you wish to accept the changes made to Charles “Chuck” Dorval? Yes/No?

He considered it. He still had ten minutes to play with it. Maybe he could adjust the class a little? Get the modifier to an even three and enjoy more points? That was just him being greedy. Best to stop there and not lost track of time.

Yes, he thought, and didn’t feel any different.