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Currently I have so many ideas for new stories and directions I want my old stories to go, but I don't have enough time to write them all down. Even a buck will help so please help me out with anything you can. That way I can spend some more time bringing a little more joy to both of our lives.
After I released some of my anger by doing some budget water bending, I swam to the side of the pool and hauled myself out of the water. Now that I was off the course I could see the final two obstacles. I was only a little disappointed that I didn't pass the balls as the next obstacle was made of moving platforms. They didn't just move in predictable ways, they tilted or lifted or suddenly dropped out from under you. I wasn't very confident I could actually pass that one but there was no way I would have passed the one after that, the warped wall. So I shrugged and looked down at my arm. I had seven and a half lines now, hopefully that would be good enough. Before I moved on I took off my shirt and rung out the water best I could before putting it back on. After that I walked back to the corridor to see if I earned enough to be given another clue. The walk back to the corridor was much quicker now that I was walking on flat ground instead of going through an obstacle course.
When I made it I saw an arrow pointing to the left so I started walking down the hallway. It only took me a couple minutes to reach the end of the hallway but this time there weren't any corridors branching off, just a wall in front of me. When I got closer to look for clues the wall transformed, if I hadn't been participating in the games for a few years now I probably would have been surprised. But I have seen stuff way stranger than this. The wall stopped shifting a moment later and now there was a message carved into it, "Final test, a test of memory. You will be asked one question about each of your previous tests, you may use a tally and receive a single clue for each question. However, the fewer tallies you have by the end of the game the less valuable your reward will be. You will also receive one tally for each question you answered correctly. If you are unable to answer a question then you will lose a tally, an answer that is close will receive half a tally. Now, are you ready?"
At least I finally knew what the marks on my arm were used for. I took a deep breath before replying before nodding, "I'm ready." The wall changed into a new passage of text after my response, "How long did it take you to pass the first test, The Test of Planning?" Wow, they were really building up the dramatic ambience of this game. I mean it's better than some cheap carnival games with creepy music playing in the background I played a while ago. That one was not fun, I hate horror games so I purposely lost that one as quickly as I could. Horror games only showed up a few times so I didn't lose much in the prize department. Horror games were really only fun when you got to watch someone else freak out while playing them anyway. "Uhh, I don't know. Maybe 7 minutes?" There was a slight pause before the wall changed again and I got my answer, "Do you know how many seconds?" I shook my head, "No." A half tally appeared on my arm and I smiled, eight tallies felt better than 7 and a half.
The wall shifted again and another question appeared, "In the second test, The Test of Patterns, which number appeared in every box first?" I had to think about this one for a minute, before I remembered the answer "Three." This time a whole tally appeared and I got another question right away, "In the third test, The Test of Knowledge, what did the code translate to?" This one was easy as I was actually kind of annoyed by the lack of imagination in the code. "The right way is not always the right way." Working out the code itself wasn't too hard; they used a number substitution followed by scrambling each word separately. It would have been harder if they combined all the letters into a single string then scrambled them all together. Though it did take me a few minutes to figure out that 26 equaled a instead of z, but after that it was laughably easy. But seriously, could the answer get any more cliche?
I was snapped out of my annoyance by the next question, "In the fourth test, The Test of Patience, what was the combination that correctly solved the puzzle?" I paused as I struggled to remember the numbers, "Uhhh…36..17…92? And…11?" This time I only got half a mark, I frowned when I saw the lack of symmetry on my arm. I pushed my OCD out of my mind and looked at the wall, it displayed the correct answer and I had to resist the urge to swear again. "36,17,92,13" I was so close. I rubbed my brow in irritation, after r moving my hand I saw that the wall had already changed again. "The Final Question. During the Test of Coordination, which obstacle did you complete the quickest?" I almost said the one I failed but before I could I noticed that the question said complete. And since I never completed that obstacle it didn't count, "The fifth obstacle, the one with the poles."
The wall changed again and the marks all disappeared, but before I could question what was next my eyes shot open and I was once again laying in my bed. I never could get over how real the games felt, even though I knew that they were not real. I was still annoyed by having to walk in wet shoes after my impromptu swimming lesson. I looked down in my hand and saw that there was a syringe, I didn't know what was in it but I could tell that it wouldn't be harmful if I used it on myself. Somehow whenever I got a prize and I didn't know what it was, I could still tell if it was going to be helpful or harmful, and this one would be helpful. The first horror game I played gave me this really creepy doll that I burned as soon as I could. I didn't even realize it was a horror game until a monster jumped out of the shadows and killed me, ending the game.I thought it was some sort of murder mystery so I was exploring the mansion I appeared in and was looking for clues.
No such luck, the thing that killed me was some sort of grey humanoid monster with incredibly sharp claws. It was really fast too, had me looking over my shoulder for weeks, checking to see if it would suddenly jump out of a dark corner and attack me again. And when the doll screamed bloody murder and threatened me I decided fire was the way to go. When I first woke up from that game with the doll in my hands I could immediately tell it would be harmful to me. It didn't help that it twisted its head 180 degrees like an owl to scream at me either. So I knew that this would be safe and without a further thought I jammed the needle in my shoulder and pressed the plunger. It took a second but the world opened up and I was suddenly reminded of a show I watched in my last life, Limitless. The way Brian described the world in that show made so much sense. I hoped it was more like the permanent version and not the one that caused major addiction and horrible side effects.
Then a thought occurred to me and I pouted a little. If I got this with my score, what would have a perfect score given me, the Super Soldier Serum? No, I didn't go back to complete the other puzzles. If I had, then I could have competed in 31 challenges, each with an unknown amount of points awarded. The Super Soldier Serum was thinking too small. CBH4 from Lucy or the Sentry Serum would be far more likely, the SSS would probably be the prize if I got full points from one or two branches. Depending on how many sources my system could draw from, there were a lot of body enhancers in this world, much less all the other worlds out there. I shook my head and tried to get over the fact I wasn't going to get super powers in a bottle, at least not yet. But with NZT fueling my brain my performance in games would improve by a large margin. Plus who knew what I could make in the future with my enhanced brain. So I stopped reminiscing and started to test my new abilities.
In the show they made a big deal how the drug increased memory and processing power but it wasn't just that. It also increased my senses and body control, I could hear the car that backfired was a mustang from the sound it made. I could still taste each individual spice that went into my breakfast this morning, but I could also smell the garbage bin from the open window right next to me. But as I continued to observe the world around me I realized that my senses hadn't actually improved. It was my brain that could process more information, my senses had always been this powerful, most of it was just filtered out before. I could also remember exactly how I used to meditate, I could reach such a deep trance-like state that my eyes wouldn't take in information. Effectively making me blind, so I applied that same technique to my sense of smell until the smell of garbage was no longer so overwhelming. After that I did some spring cleaning, even though spring had ended a while ago.
I scrubbed my apartment until it looked brand new, not like when I bought it but like it had just been built. Then I did the same thing for the shop downstairs, not only cleaning it but organizing the whole thing as well. It had gotten a little chaotic with all the random stuff I kept adding every day from my games. By going through everything I found a few things I didn't even know were there, turns out my dad may not have drunk himself to death. He might have overdosed from his stash of cocaine, I wasn't actually here when he died and I never really cared enough to find out. I found a few other things that were buried under all the junk he collected over the years. A few really old comic books that were still in good shape and a couple of knick knacks that might have been actually antiques. I would have to do some research in the future, after all, even though NZT put my brain on overdrive I couldn't remember what I never knew. And I was never much of a collector, in this life or my last.
Once my need for order was satisfied and the drugs were handed to the police I grabbed the best computer I had and started to research the items I found. During my cleaning spree I found out a lot of things I won in games were actually more useful than I thought they were. The laptop for instance was way beyond anything I had ever worked with, I was really lucky no one had taken it already. There were probably better ones out there with all the mad scientists in this world but it was better than anything I could get my hands on. And you can't really blame me for not noticing before, I didn't realize you could fit a quantum computer into a laptop. I thought back to the game that I won it from and realized that the computer I got really wasn't that good compared to some of the things I could have gotten. If I had actually won the game instead of wandering around and shooting random things until I died then the other possibilities blew my mind.
After all, the game was sci-fi based and had about the same level of technology as the Halo series, like precursors level stuff. I calmed down after moping about what could have been again and got back to my research, unfortunately none of this stuff was worth very much. There was a wooden sculpture made by a local semi-famous artist that could probably get me a couple hundred bucks if I found the right person to sell it to. The comics on the other hand were not in good enough condition to be worth very much by themselves. But if I could find someone that was looking to complete their collection and needed these specific ones then maybe I could get a hundred dollars all together. So I put the comics and sculpture for sale on ebay and found a few people in under an hour that would be interested, then I moved on. It was time to get started on something much more important, studying some of the tech I found to see if I could try and understand how they worked.
If I could reverse engineer them I would have a constant supply, I should take advantage of this while I still had it. I had noticed some of the tech I won was already missing. When I noticed the first time I panicked a little before I thought back to who had bought it. I was in luck, I knew exactly who had taken it and I was interested in seeing if she would be back again. Plus she wasn't a potential villain so maybe I could make nice the next time she came by, she had already come back more than once after all. In the meantime I needed to decide what to do next. I could focus on making money and open my own company, but I really didn't want the responsibility that comes with all that. On the other hand I could lean into the science aspect and focus on enhancing myself and maybe some other heroic individuals based on the items I could get in games.
With my new insane learning speed, I could make some very big leaps by duplicating and combining everything I could gather. But I didn't really want to get sucked into that life, cause even with my brain running on NZT I still didn't like conflict. NZT didn't change who I was, just like the Super Soldier Serum it just enhanced what was already there. Like now I knew why I didn't like conflict, the fact that my opinion never seemed to matter took the fight out of anyone real quick. After all, why fight if you know it's not going to change the opinions of the people you're fighting with, work smarter not harder, work around obstacles not through them. Knowing the reasons why didn't change the fact I still didn't like it, so I needed to find a different way and it didn't take me long to figure out a way to walk that line.
I was already running a junk shop so why don't I lean into that, most of the games aren't solely focused on the game itself they have more malleability than that. You could explore the world each game was in as long as the game wasn't contained to a specific area or just projected a cribbage board. But I never went beyond the self imposed limits of the game, I just tried to complete the game as quickly as I could. But what if I could figure out how to take things out of the game? If I could figure out how to do it then I could end up with more than what the games awarded me. It wouldn't be easy, every time I entered a world I would enter the game with only what it gave me and I would exit the same way. But I would try anyway, until I won some sort of soul connected hammer space all I could really gather would be knowledge.
What if I could learn medical technology from a world full of bottled superpowers, or learn a magical runic language from dwarven artificers. I'm sure most of it wouldn't work once I wasn't in the game but even if one of them did then I would profit immensely, I wasn't that lucky after all. But first I would need the ability to actually learn in those worlds. For sci-fi games I would need to push my knowledge of science, engineering and programming to the limits. It would really suck if I was standing in front of a computer that had the secrets of intergalactic travel and it was locked behind a password I didn't know. And if I couldn't take things out of the game then I could take them apart and learn how they work so I could recreate them out in the real world. I would also need to brush up on my humanities, anything that might help me decipher ancient runes or negotiate with less advanced people.
Of course there was a large chance that I wouldn't even be able to communicate or there would be no one to communicate with. If that happened then I would need other skills to achieve my goals, so I would need to become like Sherlock from Elementary. Only, I couldn't limit myself to learning things that would help me solve crimes. So even though I didn't want the responsibility of running a company and to stay out of the cape game I would be spending the foreseeable future learning everything I could. And there was no time to start like the present so I got straight to work. The first step was to get the most out of my time, I had a lot to do and I didn't want to still be doing this a decade from now. So time management was going to be my new best friend. The rest of the day passed very quickly, there were a few customers that stopped by throughout the day but they left me alone for the most part.
There was one guy that struck up a conversation about a camping stove I had. He wanted me to knock off almost half the price but I knew what it was worth and managed to make a good profit off of it. The rest either just got in and out with what they needed or wandered around for a while before leaving. I made sure to keep an eye on them in case they tried to steal something. By the time lunch rolled around I was happy that I always choose to do my game before I open the store. I probably would have stayed up all night if I did it right before bed but now my day has been extremely productive. Not that I wouldn't have been productive during the night, just that I would have been exhausted the next day. I was still tired but it would have been worse if I pulled an all nighter. I shook my head, since the injection my mind has had the tendency to go off on tangents, I think it has to do with just how fast my mind works. Of course I noticed this earlier and researched appropriate meditation techniques that would help me stay on task in the future.
I was knocked out of my thoughts and looked up as the little bell above the entrance rang, letting me know someone had entered my store. It was an old man that looked through my selection of hangers before choosing a couple and walking up to the counter. After he left I looked at the seven dollars in my hand and sighed, something else I am going to need to work on, finding a new source of income. I was lucky that the bank knew that my shop didn't make a lot of money so I didn't have to pay a lot on my monthly loan payment. It meant that my great grandchildren would be the ones that paid it off but it wasn't something I could do anything about right now. Of course that would change once I find a way to make money fast and shed that excess weight. And thanks to my new brain by the time that thought finished forming I already had a few ideas.
They were cliche but there was a reason for that, they worked. People that had memories of a whole different world could draw from that world in any number of ways from different types of media to 'forward' thinking ideas. The real problem was memory, it was kind of ridiculous for them to have a perfect memory unless they had some sort of cheat… like NZT. So while I researched how I was going to fill my days for the foreseeable future with one hand I grabbed another laptop and started to plagiarize some popular media. Typing was a breeze when you could picture a keyboard in your head and you knew every single word you wanted to type before you typed it. At that point it was more like printing. The day continued like this with breaks interspaced every so often with a customer or bodily function break (food/drink/bathroom break). And by the time evening rolled around I finally had my schedule mapped out for the next year, and I finished the first half of 'my' first book.
I stood up from behind the counter and stretched my back until I heard a couple satisfying pops. I looked at the clock and decided to close the store for the day so I walked over to flip the open sign to closed but before I could two customers squeezed in. One was a kid and the other was an older gentleman, I sat back down and watched as they both wandered around the store each one picking up some odds and ends. There was something about them that tickled my senses, I felt like I knew them but when I thought back I didn't recognize either of their faces. The man had an air about him that spoke of hardship but the smile that graced his face told me the world hadn't ground him down one bit. He was more focused on things like hinges and brackets, probably had some maintenance to perform.
The kid on the other hand was much more interesting, usually when a kid comes in here they focus on the toys before they soon become bored and annoy their guardian until they give in and leave as soon as possible. This one was kind of the opposite. The older man finished quickly while the kid looked over the electronics section, and he only glanced at the prices for the fully functioning items for a second before moving onto the individual parts. He was kind of skinny and was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, I had to hold in a wince at the rather thick glasses he wore. If he wasn't already being bullied for them then he would be soon. Once the older man was done with his shopping he walked up to the counter and placed everything down. Then he just watched the younger boy with a fond smile, "Is that your son?" He jumped at my question but his smile didn't falter for a moment. "No, he's my brother's kid. I've been taking care of him for about a year now."
The man turned towards me and held out his hand, "Name's Ben Parker." I just looked at him for a second, I had to keep a grin from breaking out on my face, that was why they looked so familiar. Neither of them looked like any of their movie or comic book counterparts, but they could be mistaken for their relatives. The boy I now knew was Peter looked young so he probably wouldn't take up his mask for hopefully another decade, but it was still really cool that he was here. Iron Man had been around for a couple years now and don't get me wrong he was a big deal, but Spider-Man was the common man Tony Stark. Friendly Neighborhood and all. Iron Man and Batman really drove it home what a human could do with basically unlimited money and sheer grit and ingenuity but Peter Parker was a different kind of hero.
In pretty much every reality, except the ones he turns evil because of all the shit that happens to him, Spider-Man would do whatever he could to help. It didn't matter if that was putting his life on the line to stop a speeding train or helping an old lady get her groceries home. He was the kind of hero All-Might would have loved to pass his quirk onto. If you didn't notice I was kind of a big fan, but I played it cool and kept talking with Ben, and man was he a good dad. Even if Peter didn't call him that, Ben was everything a dad should be. I could see it when he talked about Peter's accomplishments, he had that mix of pride and exacerbation that told me he thought Peter could do anything he put his mind to. If he kept his head out of the clouds long enough to notice the world around him. Ben had me clutching my sides in laughter when he told me about just this morning when Peter had run into a wall while trying to walk and explain some sort of engineering problem… again.
It was then that Peter finally finished with his shopping and dropped his choices on the counter next to Ben's knick knacks. He seemed nervous but still plucked up the courage to voice his curiosity. "What are you guys talking about?" I got my laughter under control and wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. "Nothing kid, your uncle was just regaling me with tales of your exploits." The kid got a look on his face like he wasn't sure whether he should be worried or not so while he got his thoughts in order I rang up their items. Making sure to give a hefty discount too and when Ben went to argue I stopped him, "Think of it as payment for your story making my day. And if you want more odds and ends come by anytime. I have a feeling you'll have many more stories to tell keeping up with this one." Ben shook his head and gave me a wry smile, "Thanks, we'll keep that in mind." I looked at Peter and he tried to look me in the eye even though I could tell it made him uncomfortable.
So I broke eye contact and gave him a smile before reaching out to ruffle his hair, "Your uncle told me how smart you are. The way he was going on about you I have no doubt you can do anything you put your mind to, just don't forget to have some fun along the way. Life is meant to be lived, not just going from one day to the next." Peter gave me a weird look and uncle Ben had a glint in his eye that told me he thought my words told him something about me. I doubt it was as strange as being reborn, but he probably thought I had been through a lot, which wasn't exactly incorrect. With their items now tucked away they left the store and once they left I closed up for the day before heading to bed. If I wanted to get everything I had planned done I would need to keep my body and mind healthy and one part of that was going to bed early to start my day as the sun rose. My last thought before falling asleep after laying in bed for an hour was that not being a night owl anymore was going to take some getting used to.
The current advanced chapters are:
Millennium Ch1
Haven Ch1
Who is a Zoo? Ch1
God of Games Ch6
Breathe Ch1
Another Wayne Ch1
Salvation Ch1
Guide Ch1
Growth Ch1
I Wanted a Real Gamer System Ch6-8
Ark Ch2-5
A Real Gamer System Ch3-5
Tinker Ch1
Further Ch2
Puzzle Maker Ch3
A Thousand Words Ch1-2
Free Range Ch1