8 May 2021 - Day 1

  Musing over my ‘status’ sheet felt surreal. It captured the basic parts about me, the newest parts about me, but it didn’t really give much explanation. It didn’t list height or weight, or metabolic speed, or even general IQ. From what I could see, this floating screen was just a snapshot of the magical pieces fused to or overlaying my soul.

  But enough of the useless thought pattern. To me, two-thirds of my power set is pretty damn basic. Super strength in terms of magic and body, that’s easy to understand. I’ll be able to lift heavy shit, have greater than normal endurance to support said super strength, and jumping around like a damn cricket is not off the table. It also goes without saying that the earth magic I got is also very basic, being able to easily shape all the elements of earth and mold it into whatever I need or desire. Considering the long term issue of surviving, I’m not that worried. It’s only limited by my imagination. My simple abilities make me a living fortress maker, a veritable walking tank, and a bunker buster all rolled up into one. The synergy between the super strength and the earth magic was also indicated by one of my traits ‘Grounded’.

  My status screen said that being in contact with the ground gives me even greater stability and strength, which means that climbing trees or being inside would put me at a disadvantage as opposed to being underground or just generally outside. The ‘Mana-Forged’ trait, that in and of itself makes me a magical tank alongside of my other abilities. That gives me increased resistance and absorption of magical energies, which makes me more durable and grants higher endurance, but I suspect that it is somewhat more specifically linked to my strangest ability, Alchemy.

  I stopped myself from chewing on a fingernail. It’s a habit when I’m thinking hard. Shaking my head, I perused my status. “Alchemy, huh?” I muttered, reading it over and over. Now, I have zero concrete knowledge about Alchemy. I mainly chose it for two reasons, because of its high compatibility and its ‘rarity’ rating was Fundamental. That had to be damn good, it stood to reason that it was more unique and rare than my other abilities. Not that I knew the rarity scale according to the mystical message thing.

  But parsing out the actual capabilities of Alchemy would be harder as I had nothing to go off of except for whatever was determined by the interaction between my subconscious and the Great Collective . . . whatever bullshit that actually is. Due to video games, reading, and the classic myth of being able to turn lead into gold, I always thought Alchemy was related to potions and stuff, like being able to make magical bombs out of mixed together plants or miracle cures.

  But that’s not what the initial status screen said. It said, “Equivalent exchange for guiding matter manipulation. Symbological function possible”. This in and of itself is wildly different from my own thoughts but just the basic meaning of the words put together as they were hold enormous potential.

  Memories full of extra-reality-energy-induced-pain flooded me as I thought back to the initial outpour of new abilities. My chest erupted with heat and my brain spasmed at the same time. Each foreign memory had come with ideas, visions and actions that accompanied them like a bad acid trip, and alchemy was the strangest.

  Shooting pains radiated up the back of my neck into my hindbrain before turning into a dull throb right above my ears. Rubbing my head didn’t actually but I kept on in the hopes that it would.

  I reread my status screen. The part about ‘symbological’, did that mean symbols are important or that the intrinsic meaning of an item could be used in Alchemy? The only concrete example was the woman binding the broken edges of the children’s toys back together. There was no glue or tape there, only a circle drawn on the ground accompanied by the feeling of will and the flash of light yielding the once again wholeness of the wooden swords. The sweat on her brow afterwards probably meant that there was a cost of energy associated with the working.

  Or it could have been hot that day. Who knows?

  But the images before it, the seesaw and Lady Justice with her scales, equivalent exchange, how does one determine equivalent exchange? As I pondered the thoughts, I picked up my broken phone and grabbed Sandra’s while I was at it. Gathering myself, I stood up and walked to the kitchen table. The cheap black round table from Wal-Mart was exactly what I needed to get started. It had a basic wooden top, was fairly sturdy and there was currently nothing on it.

  Sandra walked in with a plate piled high with fat turkey sandwiches and a bottle of water. She set it down on the table messing up my initial plan and then cracked her neck. “What are you doing with those?” She asked, grabbing a sandwich for herself as she raised one eyebrow.

  I sighed with pleasure as I snagged a sandwich. “I’m going to see if I can figure out this ‘Alchemy’ thing. It’s one of my abilities but it’s not as obvious to me what it is exactly. I mean, earth magic and super strength are just plain straightforward. This one isn’t.”

  “Do you think you can fix our phones?” Her eyes were alight with hope as she saw me holding them.

  “Only in the barest sense of the word,” I answered grimly. “The screens might be fixed but the electrical systems probably won't work. We’d have to find a newer source of power and then that might do something. I’m bettin’ that this world probably won’t run off normal electricity anymore.”

  My beautiful wife frowned for a moment before taking a sip of water. “What kind of power? What would an electrical device run off of if not electricity?”

  “That’s a damn good question. In fact, that question might be what pulls humanity out of the new mire that we find ourselves in. Actually, I do wonder what happened to all of the nuclear power plants? I know they were designed to shut down safely, at least the newer ones were, but does nuclear power still work? And what about the electrical systems that governed nuclear power? What about the classic middle school experiment of rotating a magnet within a coil? Does that still make electricity?”

  Again, my response didn’t bring anyone comfort but it did bring a thoughtful silence. “Can I see your status screen again?” Sandra asked.

  “Sure . . . here, show status.”

  “Do you know or can you explain what these numbers are?” My wife cutely furrowed her brow. “Like, what does ‘2’ in Intellect mean, and what does it mean with ‘base scale’?”

  I took a deep breath. “Gonna use that word ‘theoretically’ again.” She groaned. “I’ll start with the more obvious one, Dexterity. I have a bit of extra padding round’ the midsection and I’m horrible at stretching because I’m not flexible at all. Dexterity is the score that shows where you fall on the scale between fat and clumsy and flexible and olympic level fine motor skills. It’ll probably change as I lose that last ten pounds and limber up. The Energy one relates directly to how much magical and physical ‘energy’ I have. My guess is that I can lift for a long time and use my magic a lot before I need to take a break.”

  “Well how come my Intellect score is so much higher than yours? Yours is at a ‘2’ while mine is at a ‘6’?”

  “Ok, this is the part that I’m really not sure about,” I grunted, wolfing down another sandwich. “I’m willing to bet that you don’t suddenly have a ‘600’ point IQ now, because then you’d be the smartest thing in existence and have already solved all of our problems while figuring out the secrets of the universe.” She huffed a little at my joke but motioned for me to continue on.

  I took a deep breath and organized my thoughts. “This is probably where the ‘Base Scale’ comment comes into play as well as the nature of your powers. Your psychokinesis is directly a product of your mind, meaning you need a high ‘Intellect’ score to use them properly, but Base Scale of ‘1’ means that was probably the normal limit of what humans generally would have. This would either put you at six times smarter than the normal human OR it would mean your brain has six times the magical horsepower thanks to the psychokinesis. I’m inclined towards the latter due to the note of the word ‘variable’ in there, some of those stats I guess go up or down based on how you use your powers. Like your strength for instance, you’ve never lifted a weight in your life but if you reinforce your body with your mind, it’s as if you have ‘more’ strength than what it shows.”

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  “So this is something that is a reflection of what we can do, but not something we can change? It looks like it came from a game.” Sandra’s supposition wasn’t wrong. It did look like a game, like a basic tabletop game with an easy spreadsheet that kept track of everything related to characteristics.

  “Sure, well, let’s go with the theory here. If I’m wrong, then you should be able to will a change, like bump up your Vitality, your weakest stat. That’s probably related to how durable your physical body is. Mine has the ‘variable’ term next to it, so it might go up while reinforcing my body with earth magic or super strength. Damn these sandwiches are good!”

  After downing the water bottle and putting the empty plate in the kitchen, Sandra sat in one of the chairs and reviewed her status and mine while I got a can of paint from the basement. “And what’s that for?”

  I shrugged. “For my experiment. For Alchemy, I remember images of how other people used it that were channeled into me when I picked it. It’s kinda fragmented due to the insane amounts of pain from our acid-trip-vision but I remember a ritual circle. So, I’m going to paint a white border around the edge of this black table and see if I can make this work.”

  Sandra snapped at me with her finger pointed at the stairwell. “Like hell you’re going to paint my table! Experiment in the basement, use the concrete floor or something. We’re not going to be savages just because magic is real now.”

  I grumbled my way downstairs. The world had ended but the ‘wifery’ had not. One corner of the nice part of the basement had a bunch of crafty supplies for when Sandra had her flashes of artistic inspiration. Her awesome landscape paintings decorated several walls bringing a bit of flavor to the drab basement.

  “Perfect circle, need a perfect circle,” I muttered, rummaging through the plastic boxes full of crap. Grabbing a ball of twine, a black marker, and a brush, I went to the ugly side of the basement. Using the brush, I swept a rough four square foot section clean and then snipped a foot and a half length of twine. At one end, I tied a thick knot and put it in the center of the clean floor and at the other end I tied it to the marker. Holding the knot still to the floor with one hand, I uncapped the marker and pulled it taut on the string, the twine firmly keeping the marker at the end of it. Using the knot as the center point, I drew a perfect circle on the floor and took a step back. After doing it a few times to make sure the line was thick, I capped the marker and shoved it in my pocket.

  “Ha, step one complete.” Now I needed something simple that was broken. The phones didn’t count because they would be the real test of my ability if it ended up being what it was all cracked up to bein’. Grabbing one of Sandra’s old paintbrushes that hadn’t been cleaned in years, I snapped the wooden handle in half and placed both pieces in the circle. I took a minute to blow on the black border to make sure that it was perfectly dry. “Here goes nothing!” Placing my thumbs and pointer fingers just barely on the ritual circle, I pushed with that little muscle inside my soul. Nothing.

  Taking my hands off, I rearranged the broken pieces so that they were less than a half inch away from their other half. “And again . . .” No matter how I flexed my new magical muscle . . . or is it my soul? Not sure . . . nothing happened. I sat back as I reviewed my memories. What did that woman do? I experienced that vision as an outside party, not as if I were in her place. There’s got to be something more, a mental component I’m missing. Changing up my own visualization, I put my hands back on the circle.

  The circle itself has to be important, otherwise it wouldn’t have been in the memory at all. And if the circle is important, it’s because it has a purpose. Circles are meant for boundaries, borders, the space between two things or ideas. But circles are also meant to define, they’re meant to bind or contain, as in ‘color inside the lines’ or ‘fill in the circle’.

  Trying something different, I pushed at that spot in my chest that heats up when I use my abilities. At once, a trickle of power began to lightly flow down my arms.

  “Yes!” I hissed, almost losing my focus. Starting again, I channeled my mana, gently letting it flow down my hands and follow the lines of the circle creating a circular boundary of mana. I kept waiting for something to happen but all I could feel was the pressure within the circle started increasing. The moment it was full, I acted on a new instinct that came from that new place inside my soul and let the boundary of mana flood inwards towards the broken paintbrush. As the mana overflowed the space between the borders, I envisioned the broken ends binding back together, the mana acting as the catalyst to allow what once was whole to be whole again.

  A flash of light blinded me for a moment.

  Sitting in the center of the circle in front of me was an untouched, perfectly whole paintbrush without one sign of crack or blemish. The odd detail I noticed is that there was a neat pile of dust next to the paintbrush that wasn’t there before and the paintbrush was also clean of dried, old paint, exactly how I envisioned it. In fact, it was newer than what it was a moment ago.

  “Holy cow! This is beyond detail work.” I said, taking a deep breath and trying not to let my excitement get the best of me. Grabbing a notebook off a nearby shelf, I started jotting down a few notes.“I have to perfectly picture how it's fixed and how it looks and everything as well as supply the energy to fix it. Equivalent exchange! I produce and sacrifice energy to bond the material, the broken matter, back together again.”

  I had to do it again, but this time on something different. I ran up the stairs into the kitchen and started grabbing some old plates that were chipped and a couple glasses from the cabinet. “What are you doing now?” Sandra yelled from the living room, noting the series of bangs and clatters.

  “It worked!” I yelled back, excited that I figured it out. “Gotta run a few more tests!” And it did work! Well beyond what I expected. I provided the energy for the alchemic process, the vision of the result, and the materials for the foundation and BOOM! ALCHEMY!

  One of the smaller porcelain plates was sacrificed to fix all the other chipped ones which proved the fixing process. The total amount of matter didn’t change, I could just change its form or its placement. Material didn’t get conjured or created out of nowhere, it was transmuted. What I discovered during my experimentation is that I had the ability to mold the shape of the things as well.

  The whole process was absolutely fascinating. Within the circle filled with energy, it was like my mind could fundamentally alter what was in that ritual circle AND it also felt like I had invisible hands helping to guide and shape the final product.

  My eyes went dry as I stared with naked anticipation, experimenting with my new ability. I combined two drinking glasses to form a bigger drinking glass and then I did it again, adding a third glass and then shaping the whole thing to form a large glass stein with a lion’s face on the side. The fundamental idea of the process is that all of the materials for the end product have to be there. I could even use Alchemy to make the end product more intricate, like shaping the glass to look like fancy hand-blown glass or give it a spout or extra handles.

  The upfront energy cost wasn’t actually that bad, it’s like I was able to supply the energy to fill the ritual border and then the ritual space itself, and then when the alchemical process was over, the remainder flowed back along the border and into me. The total amount of course was a bit less than I’d spent but that turned out to be the other purpose of the ritual circle. It channeled and contained the energy, circulated it for the alchemical process, and then saved all the leftover power for myself so I wouldn't be completely drained every time I fixed a plate or a cup. The size of the circle also had a direct impact on how much energy was required for the initial working.

  For shits and giggles, I did this with anything I could find that would easily fit in the circle. Books got some extra pages, old magazines were broken down into paper squares, silverware was turned into blocks of metal and back again, torn shirts were repaired, and even full water bottles were changed into empty water bottles next to blocks of ice. If I could picture it and I had the base materials, I could shape it!

  “Now that’s freaky!” I turned to see Sandra at the top of the basement stairs looking down. “That looks more like magic than the magic we’ve already tried.”

  “Cool right?” I gestured to the plates next to me, holding up a couple. “Remember how beat up these used to be, the cracked edges that were chipped? All better.”

  She gasped. “You fixed’em? I loved these plates! They were from Granny Johnson!”

  “And you know how we had too many glasses cluttering up the cabinet? Well, here’s a nice stein, hahaha.”

  Sandra scoffed a bit at my childish idea.

  “And we need a stein for . .”

  “We don’t, but we did need the proof of concept.” My words were coming out rapid fire, my excitement almost making me unintelligible. “With glass, I can fix windows, make nice glass, anything. If I can figure out how to stick this ritual circle on other things then I can fix or shape them wherever they are. And if that works, I can fix that shitty door to the side of the house with the crappy ass doorknob. I just gotta figure out the ‘Symbol’ part of Alchemy. I don’t know what that means. There really needs to be a damn instruction manual for this shit.”

  I gathered up the stuff I’d been shaping and put it back to where it belonged. “Hey, you look a lot better than you did twenty minutes ago.” Sandra lightly grabbed my chin and turned my face back and forth. “Your color is better and you don’t look like you ran a marathon. What’s up with that?”

  “I feel a lot better,” I agreed, stretching out and cracking a few joints. Sitting down at the dining room table, I pointed at the seat next to me. Sandra sat down and her vine plant grew a bit towards her. I picked up the big stone and placed it in my lap, using my Terrastria to shape it into a square. “So, I think food will become an issue. Using too much magic will knock us out. Shaping the stone is real easy but conjuring it, uh, making it appear out of nowhere, that really took it out of me. And after eating, I feel much better. Alchemy seems to take a decent amount of energy when I start but I can get some of it back at the end. However, I’ve only tested it out on small things so far.”

  Sandra nodded. “Knock us out, huh? Like when I hulked out in the basement taking out the humongous spiders. It seriously took me down.” She closed her eyes and shivered as she said that. “Uuugg, creepy ass bugs.”

  “Yeah, just like that.” I agreed, putting my hands on hers. “We’re going to have to be careful not to overdo it until we figure out where our limits are. We also need to wargame out our next move. I have an idea that’s poking around at the edge of my mind but I can’t seem to grab ahold of it, it’s like Alchemy is the answer for what we’re searching for but I don’t know how or why yet.”

  “We could do a lot more, get more stuff done, if we just had a working car,” Sandra complained. “Can Alchemy fix that? Can it make a car work? You said something about a new source of power, can Alchemy make one of those?”

  “Again, I really don’t know,” I said, resting my chin in my hands. “Maybe . . . but I just don’t know where to start. Wish I had been a mechanic in my spare time or even as a hobby. It would really help me to know or figure out exactly why motors don’t run or why phones blew up or if batteries work.”

  “Oh! Oh! I know! I know a good test!” Sandra jumped up and ran to the kitchen, opening and closing various drawers and running back. She placed a package of AA batteries, a bit of aluminum foil, and scissors on the stone square in my lap. “I saw this on Youtube when I was thinking of cool ways to start a fire for camping!”

  Taking out a battery, Sandra had me hold that as she tore out a small rectangular strip of foil. Using the scissors, she cut it diagonally twice so that the ends narrowed towards the center. The foil was shaped like an elongated hourglass. “If you do this-” she said, putting the fat edges of the foil individually on the positive and negative side of the battery. “It makes the tiny connection part get hot and start a fire!” But as she connected the foil to the battery, the skinny center part of the foil didn’t heat up. “Shit.” She tried with every battery in the pack. We tried with AAA and DD batteries but none of them worked.

  “Ok, so batteries don’t hold electrical power of any kind, or enough to spark a flame with that . . . then that means that car batteries won’t do anything either,” I noted. “So we’re going to have to figure this part out later. I think our main focus right now is getting used to our powers and working on a functional kind of armor. Maybe my Alchemy will help me in getting us to the point where we’re a little less breakable. If the dogs and cats are getting primal and feral, we’re going to need protection when they start getting hungry. Just imagine what the birds, fish, amphibians, and squirrels are gonna do.”

  “Thank God we don’t live near a zoo!” Sandra said, holding her head in her hands. “D.C. and Richmond are going to be screwed! All majors cities ”

  “Yeah, projectile weaponry is what really separated us from the rest of the animal kingdom, well, that plus armor, group tactics, and metal-working,” I mused. “With your powers, I shouldn’t really have to worry-”

  WHAM!

  Sandra and I both jumped in surprise as we looked around. Without even speaking, we both ran down the hall barging into the scene of our neighbors standing inside our living room barely holding the front door shut.

  “Sorry!” Mike yelled, shoving the door closed as a claw forced it open. “Giant possums from under our house broke through the floor and almost got Isabella!”

  “They’re hungry and angry!” Isabella screamed, her hands pushing against the door as Mike’s hands began to glow.

  “A little help?” He grunted, as two claws slipped into the crack before getting pushed back out.