The monitors were dark.
For the first time since the power went out, it felt like, Chris Day sat in his command center and wasn't playing, watching, or scrolling. The three screens were blank, their glossy black surfaces reflecting a dark version of his messy bedroom. He had turned them off an hour ago, an act of self-preservation. The encounter with the overwhelming, and frankly insulting [CLASSES] menu had left him in a state of anxious paralysis.
He was a player who had reached the Classes screen and found it so terrifyingly vast that he had simply logged out. The golden-bordered [WORLD QUEST] still hung in the corner of his vision, a nagging reminder of his responsibilities, but he couldn't even begin to tackle it until he chose a path. And the path was a sprawling, full of mediocrity and locked, god-tier options he was currently unworthy of.
He was trying to distract himself by scrolling through a gaming forum on his phone, reading an angry, multi-page debate about the latest nerf to the Riftwarden class in Vexlorn. It was a familiar, comforting kind of drama. It was a problem that wasn't his. He was just about to dive into a particularly pedantic argument about DPS scaling when a soft knock came at his bedroom door.
Knock, knock.
He instinctively minimized the forum on his phone and sat up straighter, a conditioned response to parental entry.
The door creaked open, and his mother, Misty Woody, poked her head in. She had a worried expression on her face, a familiar, gentle creasing around her eyes that immediately put Chris on the defensive. That was her "we need to talk about your future" face. It was a look that usually preceded a chore assignment, a gentle inquiry about his job search, or a suggestion that he might consider going outside and absorbing some Vitamin D.
"Chris? You have a minute?"
"Uh, yeah, sure. What's up?" he said, trying to sound casual, as if he had been in the middle of something very important and not just reading about why a fictional riftwarden's rift bolt did 2% less damage than it used to.
Misty stepped into the room, wiping her hands on the dish towel she had tucked into the waistband of her jeans. She looked around the dimly lit room, at the dark monitors and the piles of laundry, her expression a carefully neutral visage that Chris knew was hiding a deep, maternal sigh.
"I just got off the phone with Mrs. Gable," she began, her voice soft and hesitant.
Chris's brain did a quick search. Mrs. Gable. The elderly neighbor from the house next door. He barely knew her. She was a quiet, almost invisible presence in the neighborhood, a woman he occasionally saw tending to her immaculate garden of roses and hydrangeas.
"Okay?" he said, a note of caution in his voice.
"Well," Misty continued, twisting a corner of the dish towel in her hands, "she's in a bit of a panic. Her computer—you know, that old desktop she has—it's 'gone dark,' as she put it. It won't turn on at all."
Chris's internal alarms began to blare. He knew where this was going.
Misty took a step closer, her voice dropping to a hopeful, pleading tone. "She uses it to video chat with her grandchildren in California. It's her only way to see them. And with you being so... you know... good with computers..." She left the sentence hanging in the air, a fragile bridge of expectation built between them. "...I was just hoping you could possibly go over and take a look? For me?"
The request was framed as a huge favor, a simple, neighborly act of kindness. But to Chris, it was a trap. It was the worst kind of quest imaginable. Real-world tech support for a non-tech-savvy person was a special kind of hell, a circle of Dante's Inferno reserved for people who had been mean to IT professionals in a past life. It was a classic "escort quest," the most despised quest type in all of gaming. You had to slowly, patiently guide a helpless NPC through a dangerous area, and if anything went wrong, it was always, always your fault.
His mind immediately began to formulate a list of plausible excuses. He had a server-side update for Vexlorn that required his immediate attention. He was defragmenting his hard drive, an hours-long process. He was pretty sure he was coming down with a case of carpal tunnel and needed to rest his hands.
Just as he was about to deploy his most convincing-sounding excuse, a new notification popped into his HUD. It was a clean, simple window, the kind the System used for quests.
[Quest: Help a Neighbor!]
[Objective: Assist Mrs. Gable with her technical difficulties.]
[Reward: 100 XP, +10 Community Standing, ???]
Chris's brain stalled. His carefully constructed excuse about server-side updates evaporated. He stared at the quest notification, his mind shifting.
One hundred experience points. That was a decent chunk, almost a quarter of what he needed to get to Level 8. And +10 Community Standing. That was a direct boost to one of the main stats he needed to raise for his World Quest. The System was offering him a way to grind reputation with his own neighborhood.
But it was the final part of the reward that truly snagged his attention.
[???]
The three question marks. The mystery reward. In every game he had ever played, the mystery reward was always the most tantalizing. It could be anything. It could be a useless piece of vendor trash, or it could be a legendary, game-changing item. It was a loot box, a cosmic scratch-off ticket. The lure of the unknown, the irresistible pull of potential loot, was the only thing that could consistently override his deep-seated desire to do nothing.
His internal debate was over before it had even truly begun. His social anxiety was a powerful debuff, but his gamer's greed was a core stat.
He let out a long, theatrical sigh, a sound carefully calibrated to signal the immense burden of this request. He ran a hand through his messy hair, affecting a weary look.
"Yeah, I guess I can take a look," he said.
Misty's face lit up with a look of relief. "Oh, Chris, thank you! Thank you so much. She was so worried. You're a lifesaver."
"It's probably just a loose cable," he mumbled.
He got up and began the arduous process of getting dressed in actual daytime clothes. He pulled on a pair of jeans that were only slightly wrinkled and a black t-shirt that was, to his knowledge, clean. He slipped on his worn-out sneakers. He felt like a player equipping his gear for a quest he had absolutely no enthusiasm for, a low-level, fetch-quest that was beneath his station but offered just enough reward to be worth the trouble.
He walked the fifty yards from the Woody family's slightly unkempt yard to Mrs. Gable's property. The difference was stark. His yard showed benign neglect, the grass a little too long, the hedges a little too shaggy. Mrs. Gable's property was a postcard. Her small, neat cottage, painted a cheerful shade of pale yellow, was surrounded by a perfectly manicured garden bursting with vibrant, colorful flowers. Roses, hydrangeas, and a dozen other species he couldn't name grew in neat, orderly beds. A small, whimsical garden gnome, this one holding a tiny watering can, stood by the pristine concrete walkway. It was not, he was relieved to see, staring at his house.
He walked up the two steps to her front porch and rang the doorbell. The chime was a soft, pleasant, two-note sound. He stood there, his hands shoved awkwardly in his pockets, feeling the familiar, unwelcome spike of social anxiety that came with interacting with strangers. He was out of his element, a dungeon-crawler forced to engage in a dialogue-heavy social quest.
The door opened to reveal a woman in her late eighties. Mrs. Gable was small and tidy, her silver hair cut in a neat, stylish bob. She wore a simple, pressed blouse and a pair of dark slacks. Her eyes, behind a pair of delicate, wire-rimmed glasses, were bright, intelligent, and clear. There was a wry, amused smile playing on her lips, as if she were perpetually enjoying a private joke at the world's expense.
Before Chris could even stammer out an introduction, she looked him up and down, her gaze sharp and appraising.
"Ah, Christopher," she said, her voice a surprise. It was sharp and clear, devoid of any of the frailty he might have expected. It was the voice of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted. "I've been told by your mother that you are a wizard with these machines."
Chris felt a flush of awkwardness creep up his neck. "Uh, I wouldn't say a wizard..."
She waved a dismissive, perfectly manicured hand. "Nonsense. In my experience, anyone under the age of forty who can operate one of these infernal things without swearing at it qualifies as a wizard. My machine appears to have stopped working, and I'm hoping you can perform the necessary repairs before I'm forced to use the device as a doorstop. It would be a shame. It's quite heavy."
Chris found himself taken aback by her sharp, dry wit. A small, involuntary smile touched his own lips. This wasn't the helpless, confused NPC he had been expecting. This was something else entirely. This "escort quest" might be more interesting than he originally thought.