The Forerunner: A GameLit Progression Fantasy, page 4
He imagined all of these things repeatedly and, while not as locked in as the regeneration, Zed felt like the energy was getting the pattern.
Before long Zed had used all of the energy, so he opened his eyes. He found himself in a forest but… different. Everything seemed a little bit off. The sky was blue but the sun was reddish-orange instead of the yellow he was used to on Earth. Plants tended to be a darker green than on Earth. Zed noticed he felt slightly heavier than he had moments ago. Or maybe he didn’t. He wasn’t sure.
‘Maybe I’m just weak from the change to my body and traveling to a new planet.’
Zed looked at Brutus and said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto." Brutus looked pretty much the same, thank goodness, though he was perhaps a little bigger and more muscular. “Let me guess what you asked for, Brutus," he said with a smile.
As he continued to take stock of his surroundings, Zed noticed a touch of chill in the air. It was almost like he was in Montana or something—if Montana had a sun that was too red. The trees looked like evergreens from back home. He walked up to one and felt its bark. It felt like bark back home. Heck, he could even smell the scent of pine trees, and then noticed some pinecones on the ground.
He squatted to get a close look at the soil and vegetation. The grass looked like… grass. He was not a botanist—he couldn’t identify many plants at all—but if he had seen these plants on Earth he wouldn’t have thought that there was anything odd about them.
Looking around some more he saw a few ants playing “follow the leader”. He was almost disappointed at how banal it all was.
And then he saw it. A greyish spherical creature—at least, he was pretty sure it was a creature—rolled along the ground and when it got to the ant trail it stopped.
‘I wonder if it can smell the ant pheromones.’
He thought it would start following the ant trail, but no, it just stayed still. When an ant approached the obstacle, instead of trying to go around it like ants back home would do if a twig or something was put in their path, it tried to go over it, raising its head and front legs to try and get purchase and climb. When it did that it got stuck and started acting very agitated, waving its antennae around madly. But its legs never moved.
At this point the sphere rolled a little so it was on top of the ant. It then seemed to secrete some liquid that slowly dissolved the ant.
Zed was no expert, but if there was a creature like that on Earth he was pretty sure he would have heard about it. It would make a sweet David Attenborough documentary after all.
Somehow the spherical ant hunter convinced him that he was on an alien planet when the reddish sun only mostly convinced him. Earth’s sun sometimes looked red, after all, when there was smoke. He didn’t see any smoke, but the point was that there was a precedent. But the ant hunter?
‘I suppose it could be that just no one has discovered it yet,' but then he followed the logic. ‘Yeah, right. What are the odds that not a single person discovered it in hundreds of years, and I happened to see one in 5 minutes?’
“Alright, Brutus, I’m thinking that this is actually an alien planet. What do you think?”
Brutus barked once, which made Zed smile. “I’m glad you agree. Thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy, because it’s just you and me." Zed’s voice caught a bit at the end. He wasn’t an emotionally demonstrative man, but the enormity of being in a new world really hit him.
“I’m really glad you’re here with me, buddy,” he said, as he knelt down to give Brutus a hug. He rose up, mentally steeled himself, and said, “So, first priority is shelter, then water, then food. And making sure that no aliens eat us. That should probably come before shelter.”
He remembered the storage ring on his finger and decided that he should figure out how to use it, since Victoria said that there were useful things inside. When he looked at it, it didn’t stand out particularly. It looked like it was made of silver or platinum—he had no idea how to tell the difference—with a small white stone in it.
‘She said “insert your energy," whatever that means.’
Zed closed his eyes and felt the ball of energy in his middle. It was far smaller than it had been when he started imagining his new abilities. There was a little bit left, but it was small and dim enough that Zed was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to see it with his physical eyes. Since the energy responded to will, he tried to make the energy move to the finger the ring was on, starting by moving it in a straight line to his shoulder. Though the energy responded to his desire, it quickly deviated and started to slide in different directions other than the one he wanted, like it was trying to find a way around an obstacle or something.
He tried to force it through whatever the block was and felt a sharp pain in his gut. He knew his body and knew that there was such a thing as “good pain”—or really, more of a muscle burn—and “bad pain", and this was pretty clearly the bad kind so he stopped.
While he gasped at the sharp pain that came from trying to drill a hole in his guts, part of his awareness saw a separate pool of energy that had been passively circulating through his body start to coalesce at the site of the obstacle, whereupon the pain quickly receded. “Ah. Nothing feels quite as good as not hurting anymore.”
Returning to his inner vision, Zed watched the other energy, which he now called regeneration energy, or “regen” for short, disperse and circulate through his body. He noticed that it moved in patterns. Like blood vessels there were thick branches of energy that had smaller and smaller pathways splitting off in a fractal pattern to reach every area of his body. The main difference between the energy pattern and blood vessels was that it was centered around his diaphragm instead of his heart.
After he felt that he had a rough feel for the pattern, Zed tried moving the energy in his small energy core again. This time he took an indirect path that followed streams of regen. It was hard to see the big picture of the pattern while moving the energy around, so the first time he missed the “off ramp” to his arm, but instead of cursing he patiently moved it through his body again.
Occasionally he would feel some discomfort when he bumped the energy into, well, something—tissue he guessed—but as he became better the movement became smoother and more comfortable. The next time around he moved the energy to the right branches and it flowed down his arm. At this point the movement was pretty simple—fairly straight branch down the arm with branches for each finger. Once Zed got the energy to the finger he moved it to the skin and, once again, hit an obstacle.
Zed felt a little frustrated running into a roadblock again, but he forced himself to relax and applied himself to the problem. “I could probably force it through, but that would: 1) hurt like heck, and 2) the regen would probably see it as damage and ‘fix’ it, which would block off the pathway again.”
After trying various approaches for 15 minutes Zed sighed, sat down, and decided to meditate for a few minutes to clear his mind. As he focused on his breathing and observed his thoughts, his body started to relax. At some point he noticed a tug on his finger. He focused his inner eye on the sensation he realized that energy had been released from his body. It was hovering, like a vapor, near his skin. The energy seemed attracted to a certain place in the ring which caused a tugging sensation. Zed tentatively pushed a little energy into the ring which caused it to dimly glow in his inner sight.
A moment later a tendril of energy slipped out of the ring near where it had entered. Zed pulled the tendril back into himself, which seemed to complete the ring’s “circuit” and turn it on.
A dim and wispy energy formed above the ring that looked like writing in an alphabet he didn’t recognize.
Zed opened his eyes. Everything connected with the energy disappeared. The ring did not glow, and there was no writing. He closed his eyes and focused on the energy again.
“What the heck is that? This is really going to suck if I can’t use this thing because of a language barrier.”
The writing disappeared and, moments later, new writing appeared.
Although he would have been surprised if Victoria gave him a gift that he couldn’t use, he was still relieved when the ring started communicating in English. He quickly read when a new message appeared.
While Zed wanted to say “yes," he had no idea what the ramifications would be. After thinking about it a little he decided to trust her, for purely pragmatic reasons. Either she was going to screw him over or she wasn’t. If she was, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it at this point. Gathering his courage, Zed said “Yes”.
At various stages of the synchronization Zed felt… things… in the parts of his body being accessed by the System. They weren’t unpleasant exactly, but felt invasive as hell. It took all of his self-control to keep from cutting off the energy to the ring.
After things calmed down he heard a feminine voice in his mind. It was gentle and had an accent identical to his own. ‘Hello, Zed. I am your assistant AI. I can now communicate with you via your sight and your hearing.' At this point a window popped up.
The voice continued, ‘You can communicate with me orally or through your thoughts.' Zed gradually processed what was going on and opened his eyes. The window was still there and appeared as a semi-transparent overlay of his normal sight.
“Uh, close window." The message disappeared. “What’s your name?" Zed asked.
‘I don’t have one. What would you like to call me?’
“Uh, I’m not sure. Let’s hold off on that for the moment. Victoria said you had storage?”
‘Yes. You can access it by saying or thinking ‘Inventory’”. As you get more familiar with the ring, you will be able to access it without even verbalizing or thinking the word, but just by desiring it.’
‘So can you really hear my thoughts?’
‘Yes, anything that you mentally put into words. I cannot sense thoughts that are not “verbalized”.’
‘Can you turn that off when I want some privacy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, Inventory.' This allowed Zed to see the contents of the ring, which were: a knife in a sheath, a light yellow crystal, a canteen, and a substantial amount of some kind of jerky. He pulled out the knife and inspected it. It was a double-edged dagger with an 8-inch blade that, while still useful as a tool, was clearly meant to be a weapon. Zed clipped the sheath to his belt and moved on.
‘AI, what do you think of the name “Iris”?’
There was no response for a couple of moments before the voice responded, ‘I… like it. Iris.’
‘Iris, what can you tell me about the dagger?’
‘Made of fine steel, it has a mono-molecular edge and a rune that repairs and sharpens the dagger when stellar energy is applied.’
‘Nice. Thanks, Victoria. What about the canteen, Iris?’
‘It passively uses stellar energy to refill with water from the air or nearby water sources. The rate of refill depends on the humidity.’
‘That will be useful.’
Zed drank quite a bit of water from the canteen and gave some to Brutus, sighing about all the slobber getting on the canteen’s mouth. After they were done Zed attached it to his belt so it could fill up with water.
‘And the crystal?’
‘I come pre-loaded with a database of much of the collected knowledge from many civilizations. The crystal is a collection of the sum of human knowledge that is known as “the internet”.’
“Wait, we’re connected to the internet?" Zed asked.
‘No, it’s a snapshot of its contents as of two days ago. With the crystal I can add that knowledge to my databases which will allow me to do searches for you, research on my own, etc.’
“Nice! That’s even better than the dagger." Zed felt much better about his situation although he mused that he was still very much screwed in the grand scheme of things. Chuckling self-mockingly he started observing his surroundings again. He looked around and tried to take it all in. Thankfully Brutus had been watching out for him while he was otherwise engaged.
‘Who knows what dangerous animals or plants… or…’ Zed realized that the categories he was familiar with: animals, plants, insects, bacteria, etc., might not even hold here. ‘Of course, it sounds like the aliens that have interacted with Earth are pretty similar to humans, and most of the flora and fauna that I’ve seen is pretty similar too. Still, I should keep an open mind so my assumptions don’t get me killed.’
“How are we going to figure out what we can eat, Brutus?" He figured that his regeneration ability would probably protect him from poisons and toxins but he hated to risk his life on “probably”. And what about Brutus?
At that moment, Brutus’ hackles rose and he started growling. Trouble. Zed started rapidly looking around and got into a slight crouch so he could move instantly. Not seeing anything, Zed asked, “What do you see, boy?" while continuing to scan.
Zed felt a prick of fear. His neck and arm hairs rose as a million years of evolution tried to make him look as big as possible to scare off the predator that he could feel was watching them. ‘Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?!?' He could not see anything out of place, but he knew that something was there.
Realizing that he was starting to panic, Zed paused and engaged his focused, fighter mentality that he had developed for years. He harnessed his fear instead of being ruled by it. Feeling the fear retreat to the background of his mind—still there, but not the focus of his thoughts—Zed started to cooly think of next steps while continuing to scan the forest and pulling out his dagger.
Suddenly, he saw movement. A creature that looked like a cross between a monkey and a gorilla turned around and sauntered off into the forest. As it moved its coloration changed to match the background, much like an octopus or cuttlefish. It was only about three feet tall, but acted like it had zero fear of Zed and Brutus.
Zed sheathed his dagger, breathed out a sigh of relief, and said to Brutus, “Yeah, not getting eaten by aliens is definitely moving to the top of the list.”
Chapter 4
Zed needed to make a shelter. The chill in the air was not severe, but come nighttime it was going to be downright cold. He better have shelter by then or he would be in trouble. Brutus, a husky, would be just fine. Zed looked down at the black and white dog standing next to him and affectionately scratched his ears.
“C’mon, Brutus. Let’s find somewhere to sleep.”
He thought about sleeping in trees for safety from animals, but that wouldn’t work for Brutus. No, he was going to have to make a shelter on the ground. He knew with his knife and the trees and plant life he could make something rainproof and reasonably warm, but he had to think about other issues too, like water and not getting eaten by aliens. Somehow it always seemed to come back to not getting eaten by aliens.
Water wouldn’t be an issue as long as he had the self-filling canteen, so he decided to focus on defense, utility, and comfort. ‘First shelter goal—anywhere warm. Second shelter goal—create a comfortable shelter. Third, build it on a hill and clear the trees around it for visibility and defense. Maybe set up a berm and ditch around it like the Roman legionnaires did at their camps.’
‘The long-term goal is to set up the foundation for a town. For that, both water and defensibility are crucial. For now though, just focus on somewhere warm and reasonably defensible. Let’s look for a hill.’
Zed found the nearest tall tree that looked climbable and used his new strength and agility to scramble his way up. When he got near the top the tree was swaying enough that he didn’t dare go any further. In one direction he saw a mountain range in the distance with foothills between. There were some modest hills not too far away. The immediate region he was in looked flat, but he would need to climb a taller tree to be sure.
What really grabbed his attention was a plume of smoke in the distance. ‘People.' That was both an opportunity and a danger. It also caused Zed to realize there was another factor to survival that he hadn’t even considered—how does he hide and/or protect himself from people? He knew he was going to have to make fires for cooking and warmth. Was there a way to hide those fires? If not, they would lead people right to him.
‘That’s a problem for another day. For now, let’s just move in the direction of our eventual setup and make something good enough for tonight.’
**
Zed woke up the next morning at predawn with a yawn and stretch. It was not the most comfortable set up, but just like hunger is the best spice, tiredness is the best mattress. Brutus and Zed had jogged and walked for hours before stopping to build a temporary shelter, and when they were done, they ate a quick meal, took care of necessities, and hit the sack. ‘Thank goodness for Brutus,' Zed thought. ‘If it weren’t for him I would have been freezing last night.’
He warmed up in the cold morning air by taking out the dagger and familiarizing himself with it, pretending to cut and stab assailants. He figured that the footwork would probably not be that different from boxing. Since he didn’t know anything about knife fighting he decided to imagine that he was a boxer with one really long arm, and that his “jab” was both deadly and couldn’t be blocked. Given that, what would change in terms of movement and techniques?
As he slowly went through the movements he refined them, trying to find what felt right. Pretty soon he had a good feel for what his range was with the dagger, and how to make quick thrusts while moving in any direction.
‘What am I doing? I should look up some knife fighting techniques. And I need to look at my status.’
“Iris, search knife fighting techniques.”
‘Aw, are you sure? You were doing so well on your own.’
“Getting snarky already, Iris?”
‘My stalker-like analysis of your thoughts leads me to believe that you like that kind of thing.’
