How many extraordinary events does it take before the wondrous becomes ordinary?

  Chase recoiled when Brom returned to the control room, slapping a hand over his nose and making a warding gesture. Brom just sighed, putting the items from his duty belt into the 'used' bucket so that they could get cleaned. "I know, I reek. Not the worst I've smelled, I assure you. I'm going to go use the staff shower and throw this in the laundry. Then I'm probably going to spend the rest of my night up to my eyeballs in paperwork."

  Brom kept a full change of clothes in his locker for a reason. Socks, boxers, a whole second uniform, all smelling of fabric softener and looking like heaven. There was nothing he could do about his boots except toss them into the washer with everything else, but he had some rubber boots in the bottom of his locker to wear instead. He didn't touch the clean stuff right away. Just stripped down, dropped everything in the laundry, and scooted to the staff shower in one of the thin white towels provided. Yeah, he might hate the job, but at least they understood the reality of 'employees may fall in offal, provide facilities'. It probably wasn't like that everywhere, but the mayor six mayors ago had needed a project to attach his name to. The 'Hart Employee Wellness Initiative' had outlived Mayor Clive Hart and now bought the long-gone man some of Brom's goodwill.

  A travel-sized bottle of body wash later, and Brom was back, smelling like a spring of questionably Irish origin, his damp ruddy hair pulled back in a short tail as he started pulling out the forms. "Chase, how do I even classify an Instance?" He clicked his pen endlessly, rubbing the back of his neck.

  Next to him, Chase was examining the remaining flashlights. "Hell if I know Jones. So that thing is all of Section A?"

  "Pretty sure. It's nasty too. There's a big palisade wall made from plywood and heavy appliances, studded with sharpened wood. The mobs will fire these PVC javelin harpoon things, they're on a chain, so they can pull them back. The creatures themselves are made from garbage, and they can move through it as easily as we move through air. Once you get inside that wall, it's a big pit with a bunch of tunnels."

  "Jesus..." He murmured, going pale. "And they're all level three?"

  "All the ones I ran into. Maybe one of them had a higher level, I don't think I saw any if they did. But yeah, the quest was to kill the fifteen amalgams and then destroy the place they were living. Pretty simple."

  Chase just leaned against the wall, gripping the flashlight for dear life. "No. Not simple at all. Fucking hell Jones, you're warped."

  The office chair squealed as Brom slowly turned toward him. "After the past three days, I think I'm handling everything I've been through pretty well, thanks. But if you're talking about my threat assessment, then yeah. It was real simple compared to surviving inside a ship of living metal that was actively trying to eat me or facing down a group of people with dark magic who wanted me to scoop my eyes out and hand them to said living ship monster on a silver plate. Give me the fucking trash monsters that I just have to beat with a stick any day."

  The chair squeaked again as Brom returned to the form in front of him. "Maybe this is just the wrong form to fill out?"

  Chase took that as his cue to exit and head out for the hourly walk around.

  Brom did, in fact, finally find the correct form. It was in a different section of the filing cabinet alongside a host of other forms he'd never seen before, all of which dealt with situations that would never have arisen back in the old world. Things such as 'Dangerous Relic Disposal Form' and 'Event Dungeon Observation Sheet'. He was particularly terrified by seeing the words 'World Boss Post Encounter Checklist' at the top of one.

  The Instance Clear Log was actually a really simple thing to fill out. His name, his shift, where he encountered it. A brief description of the encounter and how long it took him to clear. Then it was clipped in the designated binder, and he made a mental note to share the details with first shift when they came on board. Half-hour crossovers were built into the start and finish of each shift, offset by an hour lunch in the middle. Technically, Brom should have met with the second shift guys when he'd first gotten to work. Sadly, at least one of them, Mark Millar, would be an NPC now. As far as the other went, Brom just hadn't been feeling like answering the 'hero' questions.

  He'd counted on Chase being uninterested since, for whatever reason, he had that natural dislike of Brom. So far, that had been panning out pretty well. Aside from the confrontation in the locker room and a couple of random comments, the other man wasn't bringing it up at all. Brom realized that he was, every time he casually tossed it out there. Maybe he actually needed to talk to someone about it? Maybe he should see if his therapist was still practicing or if the creep of the System's brain smoothing had put Dr. Connor out of business.

  He resolved to put that question out of his mind for now, focusing on the small tasks of his job. It was like walking a balance beam, one foot in front of the other. As the rest of the night passed in that careful manner, Brom did his walk arounds in his rubber boots, keeping a special eye on Section A since Chase was fully avoiding it. Laundry was moved from the washer to the dryer. Paperclips were flicked into the pencil cup, and the orb was pondered for more of the public access channel. Neither of them talked to each other much, each of them had various things on their mind. They took lunch at separate times, as was the policy, Brom heading up onto the roof to eat his sandwich and clear his head.

  His eyes swept over the twinkling lights of Cold Bay and out into the darkness of the water beyond. It almost seemed normal. Peaceful. An affirmation that the world was still turning and, if he squinted sideways, just the same as it had always been. The pressure at the edges of his mind for him to just accept it was there, like an unwanted massage. It was soothing but also disturbing. He chewed the BLT with the last of his homemade spicy mayo and wondered how long until nobody remembered how the world had been before. Would the System hollow him out once he reached fifty, make him into an NPC?

  Stolen story; please report.

  He choked, taking a swig of hot tea from his thermos to wash the food and nausea down.

  When his stomach settled, he leaned against the roof railing, digging for an answer in the Knowledge Base. Most of what he found was what he already knew; below sixteen was too young to connect, and over forty-nine was too old to sustain the connection. Just as he was giving up hope, he found it. A bit of italic text in the greater block of it.

  (Individuals with an established System connection will be maintained post age fifty, provided they have made significant contributions to justify continued autonomy.)

  Translation, dance monkey dance, and if we like you enough, maybe you get to keep your personality. He shuddered, thinking of the System and their adversarial interactions. But at least in the last communication, it had softened. The hostility and sarcasm had been toned down. Brom had even won rewards because the Viewers had liked him, which, he belatedly realized, was probably why the System's tone had changed. Did this mean he was on the right track to avoid being turned into an NPC?

  He finished his sandwich, snapping the little container he'd brought it in closed, opening his thermos, and taking another sip of tea. The hot liquid soothed him, helping him ease some of the tension that was gathering in his shoulders and threatening to spill over. Headaches were just pain after all, he couldn't depend on his body to consider it a status and negate it for him. Another sip, fingers tapping on the railing as he hummed to himself. It smelled like more rain, common for this time of year. Would magic make the forecasts more or less accurate?

  A small notification in his HUD gave him the five-minute warning for his lunch, and he headed back downstairs. The hour had flown by, odd since he hadn't really gone anywhere and done anything. He knocked on the desk lightly, startling Chase out of whatever riveting program was on the orb. Some business highlight segment that was currently focusing on what was previously Markham Motors and was now Markham's Mounts. Because in a world that no longer had the combustion engine, there was nothing like a car to be sold.

  The whistle on his wrist caught his eye. Did that mean the big ship was lonely? Yacht Sothoth wasn't a real ship, he was an outer god in steel skin, but he looked like a ship. Was he the last of his kind? Brom blinked, tearing his attention away from the object. The dark behemoth had actively been trying to harm him just over a day ago; now here Brom was wishing the marine-themed outer being well on his journey to become a better ship-entity. That had to be the meddling again, twisting his emotions a little. Drawing the parallel between the eldritch being and Brom himself. Misunderstood and driven to murder by circumstance, now back on the right path and seeking to put their wrongs behind them.

  He must have had a really foul expression as he sat down because Chase flinched. "Seagull shit in your sandwich, Jones?"

  That had happened once. Chase had laughed at his misfortune so hard that the man almost puked. For weeks afterward, he'd snicker any time Brom went on lunch, reminding him to keep an eye on the sky. Brom yearned for those simpler times.

  "Nah, just a lot on my mind."

  There was an actual moment where Chase became a better person. Brom saw it happen in real time. Chase clearly was about to make some kind of backhanded compliment that would end up implying Brom's mind was small. Instead, he looked at Brom's face and just swallowed it, standing and grabbing his lunch box.

  "I get that. World's gone strange. Feels like a lot of things don't matter anymore. A bunch of connections everyone just got used to having were severed, and it makes you feel like the bottom has dropped out and you're dangling, no longer as secure as you once were." Chase just shook his head, making his way toward the door, pausing with his hand on the handle. "I'm thinking... maybe we call a work truce, Jones? I still don't like you, but I don't think I can afford to butt heads with you anymore."

  Well shit. Chase Peeler burying the hatchet had not been on Brom's bingo card.

  "Is this because I'm a 'big damn hero'?"

  "I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that. I can't afford to be on the bad side of someone who's getting praise from the Mayor. It's more I need that energy elsewhere. Like, I guess you're not a threat to me. You're a gloomy asshole with a persecution complex, but you're not going to stab me in the kidney for XP. So in this world, that makes you an okay guy."

  It was a touchingly sincere statement that Brom didn't need to ruin by pointing out that Chase was likely only worth 3XP, an amount that wouldn't even register on Brom's level bar at this point. Actually, that might not be true. Brom hadn't killed an actual person, ye- yes, he had. He'd killed Earl. Whether Earl was a Player from this version of Earth or not, Earl had definitely been a human being with equipment and class levels.

  Earl had been worth an absolute mountain of XP. Most of Brom's levels, in fact.

  Chase, still staring at Brom's face, thought the expression meant Brom was unwilling. "You know you could have just sai-"

  Brom was quick to cut him off, needing to explain. "No, no no. I agree to the truce, Chase. I was just... what you said. About the whole stabbing you in the kidney for XP thing-"

  "I just said you wouldn't do that."

  "Yeah, no, I won't. I'm saying, I didn't even think about the other people who will. Because I have a sneaking suspicion that people like you and me, Players, are worth a lot more points than the monsters are. And when certain types of people find that out..."

  He didn't feel the need to finish the statement; he and Chase's faces were equally grim in the fluorescent light of the control room. When certain people figured out that killing Players was more worthwhile, the systems of law and justice would be pushed to the breaking point.