"You've got to be kidding me! We've finally found the System Admin, except that they aren't actually here?" His voice echoed in the large empty room. He was annoyed that he had thought he was about to find some answers regarding what was actually going on, but nope, just another dead end. He walked up to the desk and looked over to where he could see a screen. "Hmm, this might be something, it's actually on."
Moving around the desk, the screen came into view and Erik sighed.
Please enter your username and password.
He didn't even see a keyboard or a mouse to try to enter the information, however when he looked at the username field, it lit up and magnified in front of his eyes. He thought the word System and was delighted when it filled in. Looking at the password field, he thought Admin and watched as the word appeared. Nothing happened unfortunately and he knew that guessing the username and password on the first try was beyond reasonable expectation. It would just be nice if something worked and led to more information.
"Want to try this door?" Leah asked, pointing at a door off to the side on the wall behind the desk.
"May as well, no sense spending who knows how long trying to break into this. Although it's probably locked or something, with our luck so far." He couldn't help but feel disappointed in what they had found.
Leah turned the door handle, which looked like a normal one that you could find all over Earth. They still didn't know if they were on Earth somewhere, in some pocket dimension or somewhere else entirely. The buildings looked like something you could find at home, with normal windows and normal doors, so it led to them thinking it was somewhere local. The architecture didn't pop out as being from any particular culture, they were basic square buildings with no real adornments.
"These all look like the bases you always make in Minecraft." Leah had said when she first saw them.
"Hey, sometimes I build into the mountains!"
"Yeah, and what shape are the rooms in the mountain bases?" She retorted.
She opened the door, and they looked inside. There was an office/meeting room inside, with a desk and chair at the back and a conference table with chairs in the middle. There were doors on either side of the room and no windows. A square, waist-high pedestal stood off to the side of the desk and they could see something glowing blue on the top.
"Glowing is good!" Erik couldn't help but to be hopeful. "Glowing things have led to answers, and of course more questions, but at least answers first! Wonder what a blue-tinted glow signifies?" He almost ran up to the pedestal and his eyes widened at what he saw. It was a hand scanner, with an outline of a perfectly normal human hand.
"Well, if it was aliens that started this whole thing, at least they might resemble us. But it's probably just humans after all. But which humans? How did they do all this and where are they?" Erik lifted his gaze from the scanner and looked at Leah. "What do you think, should I do it?" he asked, knowing full well that he was absolutely going to anyway.
Leah gave him a flat look, she already knew that answering was pointless. Besides, she was curious as well and what harm could a simple hand-scan do? Other than possibly setting off alarms, maybe a serious burn from a trap, that kind of stuff. They hadn't come here to just turn around and go home though, so she nodded and braced herself for the result.
Erik grinned and took a breath, before pressing his hand down.
CONTINUE SYSTEM INITIALIZATION?
The words appeared in front of him the same way his character sheet popped up. Leah asked him what he saw. It hadn't occurred to him to try with the character sheet, but he wondered if he could think a request to have the information visible to other people. As he tried it, Leah advised him that she could see it.
"Continue huh? I wonder if the first instance of those monsters appearing was the start? But that doesn't even really make sense. Who starts something like that with no explanations and just throws mobs out randomly? I think something must have glitched. Unless maybe the system was already in place with our character sheets and everything and somehow the tutorial was missed?"
"One way to hopefully find out!" Erik replied and mentally said yes to the prompt, before suddenly wondering if he was about to inflict another round of monster chaos upon the world. He was really going to have to stop being so impulsive, but it was too late now. Humans were ridiculously bad at not touching big buttons that read "Do not touch!", although to be fair, this one was absolutely indicating that he should.
They watched as three blinking lights appeared, one after another before disappearing and starting over again. This lasted several minutes before new words popped up. Erik and Leah both read them with trepidation:
ERROR, SYSTEM INITIALIZATION FAILED. SYSTEM ADMIN ROLE VACANT. ASSUME ROLE?
"Well, that's not good. Why is the position vacant? And I wonder why the initialization failed? Did something happen to the previous admin during the start-up?" Erik was usually willing to take chances and deal with the consequences as they came, but this was a bigger decision than normal. Should he accept the role? Would he be in danger like the previous admin might have been? More importantly, would Leah and the others be in danger as well?
"What do you think? Should I go for it?" he asked her. "Could be risky, but maybe we can figure out what's going on if we're in charge of whatever all this is."
Leah thought about it for a bit. Erik was very good at getting himself into situations, but equally good at getting out of them. She was fairly confident that they could face whatever challenges lay in store for them and if it became too much, she was also confident that Erik could find a way out.
"I think we have to. To walk away from this now just doesn't feel right. I want to know more."
Erik smiled and nodded. "Alright, here goes nothing!" He thought his willingness to accept the role and was briefly lit up in a blue glow.
SYSTEM ADMIN LEVEL 1 ROLE ASSUMED, PLEASE DESIGNATE ALTERNATES AT THIS TIME
"Alternates? Looks like we can maybe be a team with this admin stuff!" Erik added Leah and then after a bit of thought, added Josie and his mother Susan.
SYSTEM ADMIN ROLE LEADER: ERIK, ALTERNATES: LEAH, JOSEPHINE, SUSAN
USERNAME FOR CONSOLE ACCESS: ADMIN
PASSWORD FOR CONSOLE ACCESS: ADMIN
"That's definitely the first thing that's changing. And I can't believe I didn't guess that, I was so close!"
Erik walked over to the desk and saw that it too had a few screens like the desk out in front, one of which had the login boxes. Upon entering the information, the screen went to a very basic text-based interface.
Welcome to your system setup, please take the time to familiarize yourself with the tools at your disposal:
CLASS DUNGEONS
CLASS SKILL DUNGEONS
GENERAL SKILL DUNGEONS
CRAFTING AND GATHERING DUNGEONS
WORLD PORTALS
ENTITY CREATION
FACILITIES
LEVEL 2+ OPTIONS (LOCKED)
Erik sat back and sighed happily. Finally, they were getting somewhere. He mentally clicked into the Class Dungeon section and his eyes practically bugged out of his head when he saw the size of the list that appeared. He could see pretty much every class he had ever played in MMOs and RPGs, and plenty of classes he hadn't. It appeared that most of them were greyed out, however. Judging from what he saw, it looked like as per game logic, only basic classes were selectable.
"I wonder if that's because we're only level 1 System Admins or if there's other criteria involved?" Erik mused out loud.
Leah had been following along and figured out what he meant, "My bet is that it's the level 1 thing. If the other classes were dependent on someone running a basic dungeon first, it still shouldn't be greyed out for us. Unless we also have to run them to unlock them? Any FAQs in there anywhere?"
"Not that I can see, it seems to jump right into the setup, maybe its assuming that we've already had training in order to be at this console in the first place? I didn't see any other screens, or a manual lying around anywhere. It's very frustrating, but we'll figure it out as we go." Erik's phone rang at that moment, startling them both. "Oh, it's my mother! Maybe I should have warned her before adding her as an admin! Your turn at the console!"
Erik answered the call and Leah sat down to peruse the menus. She browsed a bit while Erik explained the situation to his mother. After he hung up, he said "Well, I guess that answers one burning question, we're almost certainly on Earth! Unless magic is somehow extending my phone signal through a portal or something! Guess I should have checked my phone when we got here." Then something occurred to him. "Uh, we should probably leave our phones at home or take disposable phones with us when we go through the portal. I'm definitely checking my location history when we get back! Not sure where it'll say we are now, but hopefully the trips to Toronto just look like a glitch!"
Leah frowned, "Do you think someone would be tracking us?"
"No idea, but it doesn't hurt to be careful. I have no idea how we'd explain this if someone nasty-looking in a black suit and sunglasses asked and I want to learn a lot more about this place before we have to deal with anything like that! So, speaking of which, did you find out anything new?"
"Yeah, check this out! The Class Skill Dungeons have a crazy list as well, but every single one is greyed out. However, the General Skill Dungeons have a lot that are available! But it makes me wonder what they're actually for, or how they work. Take Swimming for example. Why is there a dungeon for that? I can already swim. Or Breathing. There's actually a dungeon for breathing. Wtf? World Portals just seems to be a list of all the cities and some other locations, like there's one for the Amundsen-Scott South Pole base in Antarctica. You can try that one, I'm going somewhere warm thanks! But there's a bunch in there that are all question marks. Some are greyed out but there are a lot that aren't. Not sure if I want to risk those. Crafting and Gathering have a ridiculous number of options as well, although mostly for the crafting side. There's a lot in there that I've never heard of, but you've got all sorts of options for everything from Basic Weapon crafting, to Gunsmithing and even Energy Weapon crafting. That last one is of course, greyed out. Want to run a dungeon about crafting go-karts? It's there. There's so much and a lot of it seems ridiculous, but who knows, maybe it's a 'something-for-everyone' situation."
"What about the entity creation option?" Erik's mind was reeling from the possibilities that had been presented.
"It looks like you can create monsters in there? It's got options for different anatomy parts and each option opens up into a gigantic interface with different types to choose from. Like you select 'eyes' and it brings you to a customization interface with different types of eyes to add and adjust. Honestly it looks like it was ripped right out of a modern MMO with a good character creation, except that it's for monsters. There's a lot of premade ones in there as well, some I even recognized, like centaurs and a cyclops, stuff like that. And something that looks like a Xenomorph. If you somehow manage to add those to a dungeon, I am blowing up the portal." She looked like she was joking, but it wasn't something that Erik was even going to contemplate at this time regardless. He had seen all the movies, and he wasn't about to pull a Weyland Yutani!
"Facilities seems to involve the area outside of here, with market and administrative zoning, along with options for the teleport panels. There are even options for taverns and inns. And there's one last option at the bottom that seems to be able to add more hallways. I'd like to see how that would work. Does the whole main area expand magically to make room for the new hallway? Or does it have to literally be excavated out in behind one of the market areas?" Leah pondered for a moment before continuing. "Well, what do you want to do? It's getting pretty late and I can't miss work tomorrow."
Erik thought for a bit and said "Since I don't work tonight, I want to stay and try to figure some stuff out, but I'll go home with you first just to make sure you're safe on the way back, or as safe as I can make you! Then I'm going to come back. With food, I'm hungry and the goblins haven't bothered to open up one of those taverns yet!"
The trip back was mostly uneventful, with only a small issue with trying to figure out how to configure the central teleportation plate to go back to C5. There were dials on the floor surrounding the plate and many of them were in characters from alphabets in other languages. Each dial had a small button that could be pressed to lock in the choice and then there was a main button that lit up the destination characters to show that it was ready for transport.
"Wonder why the teleportation plates aren't done with telepathy? Kind of seems like an unusually clunky system compared to everything else so far. Maybe other creatures use them that can't communicate that way? Add it to the mystery pile I guess."
After Erik dropped Leah off at home, he made lunch and walked Ella. He then drove over to the coffee shop to grab some coffee and some Timbits. The Timbits were what other places called "donut holes", small round donut balls. Then he headed back to the Hub. As he was walking to the teleport plate, he saw a goblin raise its head and sniff the air. It turned to look at the food he was carrying and started timidly walking towards him. It was scrawny and he couldn't really tell if it was male or female. Its hands were empty of weapons, and it didn't look dangerous enough to worry him too much. As it got closer, he could see that it was sniffing repeatedly, and a bit of drool was starting to form.
"I guess you don't have much to eat in here huh?" Erik crouched down and opened the box of Timbits. Taking a couple out, he put them on the ground and then walked away towards the teleportation plate. He heard the creature grab the food and shove it into its mouth. He glanced back to see that the goblins eyes had grown wide, and it plunked down on the spot. Erik was concerned at first that he had accidentally poisoned the creature but then noticed that it was actually smiling. It didn't have a great smile, jagged teeth with various gaps, but it was definitely a smile, nonetheless.
After stepping on the plate, he headed back to the admin building and sat down.
Time to figure out how to create a dungeon!