Chương 100: 97: Alternative Integration Enhancement

Not only a party, a street party. Because there were now streets and buildings inside the enclave. Whereas before it was tarps on the ground, camping tents, a couple bigger tents for healing and meals, and the one core building, now it was… not a city. But a village. Maybe even a small town.

"This wasn't what I expected." Missy spoke first.

"It's not what I expected either," I said, looking around and trying to take it all in. Had we wound up in the wrong place somehow? But I searched for familiar faces and found a few. Those kids over there, they'd been playing by the gate before. That woman had smiled when Emma was lying on the ground laughing. Yeah, this was the place. But what the hell had happened in the past two days?

"Emma! She's back!" The woman I'd recognized had recognized me, too. She ran over, grabbed my hand, and started tugging me down the biggest street toward the core building. I do not react well to people touching me unexpectedly, much less people dragging me, but I didn't resist. I let her pull me along the street, head swiveling as I tried to take it all in, dogs and the Francis family following me with equal amounts of staring and surprise.

The World of Warcraft look was obviously a System thing, because I felt like I'd seen this village before. My vague memories of the game suggested it ought to be crawling with the undead, though. Instead, it was crawling with children. Most of the doors stood open and kids were running in and out like the entire place was a giant playground. The adults were gathered in a crowd at the entrance to the core building, talking excitedly and smiling.

The healing tent was gone, replaced with a two-story white building with the stylistic flourishes and domed towers of an elf building. The sign over the door read Healing Center. Next to it was another two-story building, longer, unembellished, and lacking windows. It looked like a white plaster shoebox, giant size. The sign over its door read Rest Center. Maybe it was a dormitory? A place for people to sleep? That could explain the lack of windows.

On the other side of the street was a row of what looked like crafting centers. I wanted to peek inside some of them, but I let the stranger pull me to the door of the core building instead. Inside, it was jam-packed with people watching television. Or the System-equivalent, I supposed, but you know, same thing. I glanced at the dogs and stopped moving, tugging my hand free. Three dogs plus crowd of people equalled absolutely not. We'd stay outside.

"Olivia!" Emma slipped through the crowd and emerged. She spotted Jack and said, "You found him!" Hugs, introductions, the business of Jack and his family all joining the enclave followed, but I had my eyes fixed on the screens. I couldn't hear what the announcer — a blue guy with feathers — was saying, but the window behind him was showing a pitched battle between the military and some monsters that looked like scorpions, if somehow scorpions stood upright and were armor-plated.

The battle was taking place on the streets of an unfamiliar city. The military looked like they were holding their own, but I winced when a gun exploded, taking parts of the soldier holding it with it. Missy, David, and Megan were as enthralled as everyone else, squeezing into the room and gazing at the screens, but I turned away from the door.

"What is this?" I asked Emma, gesturing toward… well, everything. She laughed. In the single night that I'd been gone, she looked like she'd slept for a week. Refreshed, cheerful, optimistic. Wasn't that forty-eight hour deadline up soon? Shouldn't she be worrying?

"All you," she said.

"Me?" I pointed at my chest.

"Not me, haven't done a thing. Haven't even been here."

"Right. But you're a registered member of the enclave, which means what you do out there—" she tilted her head in the direction of the gate, "—rewards those of us who live in here." She glanced around at the crowd, then said, "Come on, we'll go to a quieter place and talk." She beckoned to Jack and then led the way down a side street. It looked unfinished. There were a couple of smaller buildings on the corner, but after that, it was just plots of land marked with colored lights in lines.

"We'll be able to add more buildings when we earn more System credits," Emma said, indicating the plots.

"These will be houses, mostly. Right now we've got a communal kitchen in the food court, and beds in the dorm, but no one wants to live in a youth hostel for long."

"The food court?" Jack asked.

"Yeah. Looks just like a mall. Right now, it's pretty much the same cafeteria-style communal scavenged stuff as before, but we're trying to organize people to cook some real food. Ingredients are the issue, of course, but the System store has a lot more than those ration bars now. Plus… well, you'll see," she added cryptically.

"So what exactly happened?" I asked, as the street sort of faded away into bare ground.

"Wait, did the System pave the ground even though there's no dirt or vehicles or—I don't get it. Why do we need paved roads?" Emma laughed again.

"I know, right? It's optimistic, planning for the future. Turns out enclaves tier up, which doubles the size and population limits. We don't just have buildings, we're twice as big as we were yesterday." Ahead of us, a wall blocked our way. It looked as if it had been built hundreds of years ago with mortar and native rocks. Of course, the rocks couldn't possibly be native, given that they hadn't existed yesterday. Emma headed straight for a metal gate and swung it open with a grin. We walked through and into…

nature. I gaped. I know, idiotic response, but it was what happened. There were plants. And dirt. And trees. It was a garden, with raised beds and rows of half-grown green things and the beginnings of an orchard off to one side. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"We can grow things?" I asked, dumbfounded.

"Tier 2, basic food production. Magic plants, yep." Emma beamed.

"We planted mostly basic stuff. Potatoes, lots of potatoes. Nutrition plus calories, what's not to love? But also beans, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, and strawberries. And then the orchard is ninety percent apples, because they store well, but ten percent peaches, because I love a good peach."

"How—how—" I stumbled, then stopped. Plants needed soil, but the ground in the enclave was not real dirt. Plants also needed sunlight and the enclave sky definitely did not include a real sun.

"Magic." Emma sighed, but it was happy.

"We should get our first crop—potatoes, obviously—in three days. It's like Stardew Valley, only better."

"Stardew Valley is—?"

"A game, yeah." Emma patted my arm, clearly sympathetic for my sad ignorance.

"Right." I stared out over the fields. Well, fields was probably an exaggeration. More than a garden, less than a farm?

"Olivia, hello!" Pen waved at me from a few rows away and I waved back. Should I be annoyed that my…well, whatever she was, was working as a farmhand? I was surprised, definitely, but I was fairly sure that Pen would only be here if she wanted to be. But she hurried up to us, the General trailing behind her.

"Hello," she said to me, slightly formal, and then, "Hello, hello, lovelies, oh, yes, I see, oh, how exciting," to the dogs. Clearly her new class was giving her some animal communication abilities. She was rubbing Bear's cheeks when Jack said, "Hello," the word a question.

"Hello." She beamed at him. For me, inwardly, it was a cross between an eye roll, a groan, and a completely pained mental collapse. Did she have to be so…? But yeah, of course she did. It wasn't her fault she was so… yeah. Jack, to give him credit, did not melt into a puddle on the ground. Just, you know, the non-physical equivalent.

"I'm Jack," he said.

"You—" More credit, his voice was pitched only about two degrees higher than usual. I know you've heard this before but on the scale of ordinary teenage girls to movie stars, Pen hit somewhere slightly above uncanny, sold-her-soul-to-the-devil levels of unrealistic beauty. Nobody really had hair that blonde, skin that perfect, eyes that bright.

"Pen." She nodded, dipped an almost curtsey, and dropped her eyes to the ground. Jack—more credit due him—immediately shot his eyes to me with a "what the fuck?" level of shock. I lifted a finger.

"We'll talk," I said.

"But first I need to find out what's going on. What happened here?" I turned to Emma.

"You did," she said.

"I wasn't even here," I objected. Emma held up her hand and started counting fingers.

"Level 20, yes. Citizen of the Multiverse, Rank 4? Yeah, no idea how you pulled that one off, but yes. System-enforced contract with some other species, ditto on the WTF? But all irrelevant, you got us this alternative integration enhancement thing, so kudos and good job and thank you, thank you, thank you."

"Wait, what?" How did she know all that? But buried in the middle of her rant were words I recognized.

"This alternative integration enhancement thing?"

"Yes. We got—the world got—television. Information. The Multiversal Information Network. Aquila and Rodi who are just so—" Emma rolled her eyes.

"Television? That—" I pointed back at the core building.

"What everyone was watching?"

"Yes. You should watch the announcement for all the details, but the short version is that enclaves get three channels of multiversal television now. Informational, not entertainment. News, public access, education. And we—our enclave—got our own television studio, and tiered up because of it. Aquila and Rodi are so eager to meet you."

"And who are they?" The eye roll hadn't actually told me much.

"The television people. The blue guy on the screen and his producer. They set up a studio on the third floor of the core building, and registering them as permitted visitors pushed us into Tier 2. That's why we have the garden. And the buildings, and the extra space."

"And they want to meet me?" I did not hyperventilate. I wanted to, though.

"Why?" Emma splayed her hands.

"Level 20, Citizen of the Multiverse, you know, stuff. You're news."

"I'm not news." I shook my head.

"I am definitely not news."

"Oh, hon." Emma bit her lip, then pressed her mouth closed.

"You're very famous," Pen said.

"Everyone knows who you are. It's sort of interesting, really. People treat me so differently when they know you brought me here."

"Differently how?" I turned my attention to her immediately. She wasn't being harassed, was she? Nat had promised to keep an eye on her.

"When they ask me who I am, they're very worried that I'm all alone here. They want to know where my family is and who's taking care of me. And then when they find out that I know you, they decide I can take care of myself and leave me alone." Her smile was pleased.

"I like it."

"The enclave is still almost all women and kids," Emma said.

"Our population cap has doubled, so we'll be letting more people in, but I haven't jumped on that." She turned to Jack.

"You'll help me figure it out, right? We can be, like, co-owners, since Olivia won't take it?"

"I'll help you figure it out, but you get to stay the owner," Jack replied easily.

"Why—why—" I wanted to be polite, to let Jack and Emma talk about running the enclave, to not make this conversation all about me, but I also wanted answers. Urgently. Zelda pawed at my leg. Need kiss? I took a deep breath. Riley nudged the back of my knee, and when I looked down at him, he leaned against my thigh. Here. All good. Automatically, I glanced at Bear. She turned her head, an ostentatious, I don't see this and no, I'm not going to reassure you.

And then she turned her gaze back with a little flip of her head that said, Want me to kill something? I'll do that if you want. I didn't laugh, but I relaxed a little. It was going to be fine. Of course, it was. And that wasn't me dissociating for once, it was just realistic.

"Why am I famous, please?" I asked.

"You were on TV," Pen volunteered.

"What?" I squeaked. And then I swallowed and repeated myself, "What?"

"Well, not you. Not your picture or anything. But your name. And then your name again. And then some other people's names and then you again."

"Earth wasn't supposed to get the information network so soon. It usually takes months for it to be activated, and then the trigger is 20% mana density worldwide," Emma explained.

"So the alternative enhancement is a good thing," Jack said.

"Early access to information."

"Mostly good," Emma corrected him.

"It's apparently going to take longer to get tech functioning again, but we won't have much mana weather, which sounded good. And information—just knowing what's going on is so incredible." Okay, so at least my supposed fame was unlikely to result in lynch mobs. At least not yet.

"They showed my name on a screen. But no pictures, so no one's going to recognize me. This is okay, better than I was afraid of." I shrugged.

"Maybe I can change my name." Three confused faces looked at me.

"You're the highest level person on the planet," Jack said.

"People are going to know who you are."

"Rodi and Aquila are really looking forward to meeting you," Emma said cautiously.

"And we… we really need them to keep their studio here. At least until more people can level up."

"Don't you want to be famous?" Pen asked.

"Fame, fortune, and glory, isn't that what everyone is supposed to want? My daddy always said sinners only cared about… I mean, not that you're a sinner, Olivia. I don't, that is, Daddy…" She stopped, flustered and dropped her gaze to the ground again.

"I'm sorry. I meant no offense."

"Knowing that your daddy thought I was a sinner does not offend me. Don't worry about it." I stopped myself from saying anything more, because I knew the next thing that came out of my mouth would be sarcastic, and Pen didn't need to hear it. Her father had just died, I still hadn't told her about her brother, and recovering from her upbringing would probably take her a lifetime.

"Whether you want it or not, Olivia, I think that ship has sailed. Your name was in the System's directory. You've got like a million messages waiting. Everybody in the world wants to get in touch with you." Emma wrapped her arms around herself. I stared at her. I'd known about the directory. Chelsea had told me. That was how I'd found Emma. And how the fuck had I not remembered that if I registered for the enclave, my name would appear in the directory, too? Everybody in the world had my number. Oh, hell.