I was enjoying the last hours of my days off at my parents' house when it all began.
Around nine at night, the violent storm outside caused a blackout. It was a sign I wasn't able to interpret at the time. With nothing to do in the dark, we skipped dinner and went to bed early.
Still, it took me a while to fall asleep.
With the sound of heavy rain and howling wind as background noise, I began counting the seconds between the lightning flashes that seeped through the slats of my bedroom blinds and the thunderclaps, trying to calculate how far away each bolt struck. That was my version of counting sheep.
The truth was, I was in a bad mood about my days off ending and the prospect of having to leave the comfort of my family's home—where it was still possible to breathe at least a little fresh air—and return to the hustle and bustle of the big city.
Back to the tedious routine of a salaried worker and an intellectual slave to academia, having to labor over a master's thesis I never seemed to finish. That research had lost its appeal a while ago.
After some time counting lightning flashes and trying to ignore the return to routine awaiting me the next day, I finally fell asleep.
Sometime during the night, a flash of light so bright that it lit up my entire room as if it were daytime ended up waking me. No thunder was heard afterward, and no other lightning struck after that. Even the sound of the wind and the torrential rain from earlier had disappeared.
Although I found it strange that silence had become absolute after such a violent storm, I didn't think much of it and forced myself to go back to sleep.
Shortly before seven in the morning, I was awakened again. This time, by knocks on my bedroom door.
"Lilia! Lilia, wake up!" It was my mother's voice.
"Just ten more minutes" I mumbled sleepily, groping under my pillow for my phone to check the time. "It's still so early!" I complained upon seeing the hour.
"No, Lília! Now! Get up now!"
The urgency in her voice woke me up a bit. I rolled out of bed and opened the door.
"Why did you wake me so early? I could still sleep a little longer…" I stopped talking when I noticed the expression on her face. "Did something happen?"
"Come here" she said, her voice tense, her expression nervous. I followed her to the living room, where my father was opening the front door.
"What is it? What happened?" I stopped as soon as I looked out the door. For some reason, inexplicable by logic, the landscape I knew so well was unrecognizable. I blinked for a few seconds and stared at the horizon.
My parents' house was in an area considered rural, but it was a neighborhood composed of several houses and even roadside commercial establishments, like a grocery store, pharmacy, and an auto repair shop. We lived in the last house on the street, but we had neighbors across the road and to our left, just a few meters away.
However, at that moment, I could see neither the road, nor the fence around the house, let alone the neighbors' houses or the grocery store. In front of us was a vast open field that seemed to have no end, and around us, in a crescent shape, what appeared to be a dense forest.
I stepped outside and walked around the house. Beyond the vegetable garden and the greenhouse in the backyard, all that could be seen were tall trees. I blinked a few times and pinched my arm. "But what…?"
My parents soon appeared beside me.
"When we woke up and opened the window, it was already like this" my mother told me.
I passed through the vegetable garden and the greenhouse and kept walking toward the forest.
"Lilia!" my mother called me.
"I'm just going to take a look further ahead. Just a peek, I won't go into the woods" I replied, and that's what I did. I walked about half a kilometer until I got closer to the edge of the forest.
The trees were close enough that it was dimly lit, but not so much that it was impossible to walk inside. After a quick inspection, I returned to where my parents were.
"I'm going in there" I said. "I'll just change clothes, grab some water, and put on a pair of sneakers." I gestured to the flip-flops on my feet.
"I'll go too. I'll bring a flashlight so we can better see the path ahead. The woods look kinda dark" my father said.
"I'm coming along" my mother uttered. "It would be a good idea to take the machete; there might be snakes or other animals."
I went back inside and got ready for the exploration. I still wasn't fully convinced that I was actually awake and that all of this was nothing more than part of a dream.
When I came out again, my mother and father were already waiting for me, each with a small water bottle.
I took my phone with me, more out of habit than thinking of usefulness. It was almost out of battery since I hadn't been able to charge it overnight, and there wasn't a single bar of signal.
We walked half a kilometer in silence, but when I entered the forest, my father warned me to be careful and go slowly.
I tried to walk as quietly as possible to avoid attracting the attention of any possible animals in the area, but it was a difficult task considering the dry leaves and small twigs on the ground.
We walked for about fifteen minutes in as straight a line as the roots and branches allowed. My mother was already suggesting we head back to the house when the trees ahead opened up into a clearer, cleaner path.
"Let's walk just five more minutes this way and see if we find anything" I said.
It took exactly that long for us to see what appeared to be a small white structure in a clearing ahead, practically hidden by the surrounding trees.
"Let's go!" I said and kept walking without waiting for my parents' response. The sound of footsteps behind me indicated they were following me though.
It didn't take long for us to reach what looked like the ruins of an ancient temple, hidden within a large open area of the forest. I stopped, and then my mother stayed behind with me, but my father kept walking toward the collapsed structure.
"Wait!" I said. "We don't know what this is; let's circle around the outside."
The temple resembled Greco-Roman styles of antiquity and didn't seem very large. The entire roof was destroyed, rendering the surrounding columns completely useless.
Its interior was well-lit in that part of the forest where the tree canopies didn't block the sunlight. Most of its walls had collapsed, and green and brown vines climbed the few parts still standing.
Something seemed strange about the appearance of the ruins, but I couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. As we circled them, it was almost as if they were much larger than they seemed at first glance.
"How did this end up here?" my father asked.
"More than how this ended up here, it seems like we're the ones who ended up in this place. It feels like we were teleported here, with our house and everything" I replied, stopping to examine a temple column closely.
"That doesn't make sense!" my mother said.
"Nothing has made sense since we woke up" my father commented.
"This isn't a dream, is it?" I asked, still observing the column in front of me. Something seemed off about it, as if it slightly distorted at the edges, like the air near hot asphalt on a summer day. I reached out to touch it, and the sensation felt wrong somehow. "Don't you think this is strange?" I asked.
"What exactly in this situation is strange, Lilia?" my father asked sarcastically.
"That's not what I'm talking about, but about the… image of these ruins. There's something… wrong" I replied, stepping away from the column and retracing my steps to the front of what was probably once a temple. "I'm going to take a look inside."
Then, I passed through the columns and headed to the front of the ruins, climbed the stairs, and examined the collapsed structure more closely, especially the distorted edges.
Gradually, the distorted area grew larger. As I focused my attention and vision, what lay behind the distortion became visible. Until I realized:
"This isn't a ruin!" My parents seemed confused by what I was saying, but the vision beneath the illusion was becoming clearer, and soon the ruins before me transformed into a majestic—and intact—white temple, filled with impeccable columns, a giant and beautiful stone door, and towering windows that were impossible to see through.
It was just an illusion!
"Shall we see inside?" I asked, and then the door before me opened, and I passed through it. However, my parents, who seemed to be struggling to see through the illusion, did not follow me.
"What… where did she go?!" my mother asked with a shocked expression. I waved to her from a few meters away, but she didn't seem able to see me. My father had a tense expression.
"Here!" I shouted just as the doors that had opened on their own also closed by themselves, separating us.
I turned to face the interior of the temple. The hall was about 300 square meters, with ceilings over ten meters high, and everything inside was well-lit and clean. In the center stood a classical-style statue of an androgynous figure with vague facial features.
The sides of the hall were not closed, as they appeared from the outside, but instead opened onto green, well-maintained gardens, each with a huge and beautiful fountain of crystal-clear water.
"Excuse me…" I began, taking a step forward, but I was interrupted by a short, high-pitched sound resembling my phone's notification tone.
At that same moment, an image of a notification window appeared to me. Not on my phone, but in my mind.
[Congratulations! You have acquired a new skill!]
[By breaking a level 3 illusion charm through raw observational ability, you have developed the skill "Peer Beyond." This rare skill allows you to gather more information about objects and beings around you and also enables you to learn any knowledge more easily. It comes with additional features that will be unlocked with use.]
"What is this?" I wondered mentally about the message that I could only describe as having appeared in my mind.
[Activating skill "Peer Beyond." New features unlocked.
Answering the player's question…
Answer: A window with messages from the Player System. The Player System was successfully installed in individual Lilia Costa at 00:30 today.]
I gently patted my cheeks. "Player System?" Was this a game? Was I really just dreaming?
[Activating skill "Peer Beyond."
Answering the player's question…
Answer: You are conscious, meaning you are not in a state of sleep. The Player System was randomly installed in some individuals of the New World, according to pre-programming, during the early hours of today.]
"What is the Player System, how does it work, and what is the New World?" I asked in my thoughts.
[Activating skill "Peer Beyond."
Answering the player's question…
Too much information!
Summarizing the information…
Answer: The Player System is part of a programmed intelligence, randomly installed in a predetermined number of individuals in the New World. The Player System is responsible for notifying the player of certain information in pre-programmed situations and granting access to their information profile. The newly acquired skill "Peer Beyond" has unlocked additional features of the Player System, such as: Information collection and absorption, Access to third-party profiles, and Database and query.
The New World is the world resulting from the fusion of two other worlds, previously known as Earth and Mundus. The size of the New World is the combined size of these two worlds, with regions from each attached or overlapping one another. The fusion between Earth and Mundus occurred at 00:00 today, resulting in the creation of the New World.]
It took me some time to process the information presented to me.
I still wasn't fully convinced that this wasn't a dream.
Earth had merged with another world called Mundus.
Systems had been "installed" in people, just like in a game.
If this wasn't a dream, it meant that the world I knew and had lived in my entire life no longer existed.
And probably meant that my peaceful and boring days were over.