I looked at their badges. Big Mike, Level 2, HP62; Consuelo, Level 2, HP48; Amada Level 0, HP25; Baila Level 0, HP49. It was sad, but with those numbers, I wasn’t surprised they were having a hard time. Without blaming him at all, I wasn’t surprised that he’d lost two daughters. Given the numbers and the levels of the monsters we’d faced, I was more surprised that he’d kept two alive. I was surprised that he was alive.

Then I really tried to identify him and was even more surprised. He had not selected a class. When I identified the others, they hadn’t either. Since the benefits of having a class were so great, I wondered if they even knew about the status screens. I wondered if my mother had made sure to broadcast that information, just that bit of information could keep people alive. But how would my mom broadcast the information? I hoped she’d told people and they’d told people. Amada’s hit points were so low, I figured her constitution must be low, single digit low. I remembered hearing from Big Mike that one of his daughters could catch a cold when the wind blew, I’m guessing that was her.

“Hey Tanya!” he said. “I’m glad to see you made it.”

“Hey Big Mike!” she said. “Hi Consuelo!” and she broke away from Janet and went over and hugged Consuelo. I remembered that the day her step-father showed up and was escorted off the property by Big Mike seeing her and Consuelo talking. Well, Tanya crying and Consuelo holding her and comforting her. I guess you don’t get over something like that very fast, it leaves an impression.

Big Mike and I stood there, doing our best impression of a post while Tanya and Janet and Consuelo talked to each other and to the girls, getting reacquainted or in the case of Janet, introduced. After a while, we did the man drift thing and pulled away about five feet and started to talk.

“It’s been tough,” I said. “I’m kind of surprised to see you here. I thought you’d be heading into town. It’s not particularly safe out here, we’ve been attacked by rats, squirrels and a vulture, all of them supersized, like that one there,” gesturing toward the big dead squirrel.

“I know,” he said. “We’ve had some problems too. Giant Rat. We were staying in our house, kind of hiding, wondering what we should do, when this giant rat broke in yesterday morning, into little Corazòn and Dominica’s room. Mama and I were talking in our bedroom at the time, we’d sent the girls to their rooms so we could have some private conversations. It’s not good to let them see how scared we were. By the time I got back there with my softball bat, they were done for. I killed it, we killed it, but it was too late.”

“I’m sorry!” I said. “Do you need me to go back with you and retrieve them? We could place them here, make a nice space for them.”

“No,” he said. “We buried them both yesterday, under their favorite tree, the one with the swing on it in the backyard. Doesn’t sound like the government is going to bother us about it, anyway. Bastards. I think that rat or something like it had been making the rounds because when I knocked on my neighbors’ doors, I didn’t hear anything back. I left them in peace.”

I reached out and grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. I didn’t know what else to do, except respect his pain and give him something else to focus on. “Do me a favor,” I said. “Say status.”

His face went blank and turned really pale. “Oh, crap. How in the hell did I, did we miss this?”

I said, “It was in the first set of notifications you received from the system. Did you not read it?”

“No, I read the first one, the welcome one, and then I was trying to get my little Dominica to stop crying. She was frightened of the blue boxes and I kind of wished that all those annoying screens would close and they did and I never thought about them again. Is this me?” he said.

“Well,” I said, “it’s you ‘til you choose your class, gain some skills, assign your free points. You were never a gamer were you?”

** 6/03

“Nope,” he said. “Never had time. In the Corps for 20 years, just out of high school, met Consuelo and decided to retire, get married, have kids. I worked at a bunch of places all over the country, then came here to be close to her mother and brothers, and wound up managing Maxes. In the Corps , I didn’t have time, and then with the kids and the job, still had no time.”

“You are now,” I said, meaning a gamer. “We all are. And if we don’t play well, we’re probably not going to make it. But anyway, ‘say Inventory.’” I waited until I saw his face change, then said, “say Spells.” This continued on until I’d walked him through all of the screens that we’d discovered. By this time Consuelo and the girls had gathered around and were participating in the conversation and the screens. I answered his and Consuelo’s, even Amada’s and Baila’s questions as completely as I could. Janet and Tanya pitched in to help as well. We talked money, we talked levels, we talked about skills and spells and abilities and stats. How we got them and how we trained them. We told them what we’d been through, the giant rats and the squirrels and finally, the giant vulture. About our plans and about our training. It was a massive brain dump and took us close to three hours.

In the midst of it, we hung the squirrel, drained it, skinned it and then butchered it. The little girls were fascinated by the process. The little ones hung onto their mommy's legs but watched intently. They were a product of this new world. They needed to learn how to survive, just like we did. Big Mike knew how to do it and took over the process. Said it was about like field dressing a deer. About the only thing that was different was finding the core. It turned out to be a little, irregularly shaped green stone, that had two darker green rings around it. It looked like a crystal that had been polished; however, it had an aura around it that said it was different, special. I grabbed it and tossed it into my inventory to study it later. Afterward, we threw the meat into Big Mike’s inventory and moved back around front to the rickshaw and the teepee.

Of course, when we got around front, the girls discovered Roxie, who reveled in their attention. I couldn’t help but notice that I was still in her black book judging by the looks she cast at me whenever I came near her.

I’d passed over classes in my discussions with Mike and family, but it was finally to get down to the meat and potatoes of this new world. “OK, Big Mike,” I said. “We need to figure out your class or classes. I’m not sure if this will work, but ask to see your classes available.”

“Ask who?” he asked.

“Ask the System, the Gods, Them, just ask. What can it hurt?” I replied. Stupid I know, but I’d already begun forgetting the lesson I should have learned from the God Box. But in this case, it didn’t matter.

I saw that he had his cell phone face on, so I said, “Share it with us.” Since we hadn’t covered that he looked puzzled, so I explained what I meant and how to do it. Shortly thereafter, we received a blue screen:

Current Classes Available

Plumber Cleric Fighter Merchant Builder Cook

I looked at it and then had a thought. “Oh My God!” I said. “We talked about Qi and Mana, but we didn’t talk about how to get them, did we? I bet you don’t have them yet. Do you?” Judging by the puzzled looks on their faces, I thought they didn’t, but I had them check their status sheets and sure enough, the mana and the Qi points were listed as zero.

So we sat there, under the tree by the teepee, while Janet and Tanya gave a class in meditation and how to feel their mana and Qi. I decided to let them handle it, they would probably do a better job than me. After about 25 minutes both Consuelo and Big Mike had gotten notifications that they’d discovered mana and Qi as well as the skill of meditation. No titles which was a bummer, but they still got access to the energy which was a win. Surprisingly, both of their daughters had received the same notifications faster. I guess they had less to unlearn. Less doubt. More belief.

“OK,” I said. “Try and request the list of your classes again.”

He did and this time, without prompting, shortly thereafter a new list appeared where we could see it.

Current Classes Available

Plumber Cleric Fighter Merchant Builder Cook Soldier Knight Spellblade Ranger Mage Alchemist

“That’s more like it,” I said upon seeing the new classes that were added to the list. “Now you’ve got some magic in you! I guess you weren’t into martial arts?” I asked.

“Not really my thing,” he said. “Bunch of guys I served with were totally into it, but I stopped after my grey belt. How’d you know that?”

“There’s no monk or martial artist or ninja class offered to you. I’m thinking that it takes a fair bit of knowledge and training in a former martial arts system to get it. Since the System didn’t offer it, I guessed that you hadn’t really been that interested. Not that I’m dissing your Marine Corps Martial Arts Program training, I’m just saying that for whatever reason your training didn’t trigger the System to offer it. I think it has to do with both prior skills and interest. If you have both, then the system will offer you a class.”

“I’m gonna be a ninja when I’m older,” announced Baila. “I’m going to kill monsters. Like that rat that killed my sisters. I’ll stab it in the head.” Big Mike and Consuelo looked at her and then each other. Consuelo didn’t say anything, but she grabbed her daughter up in a hug.

“Hey, sweetie!” I said to Baila, “can you see classes yet?”

“Nope,” she announced, “the screen says I have to be thirteen to select my class.”

I looked at her and then her parents. “That’s good,” I said.

Her parents looked at me and so I explained, “I guess the System decided that you needed a certain amount of experience to get and make choices. If you let babies choose their classes, you’d have a lot of fighters, barbarians, nurses, and dancers and probably not much else. Holding the choice back until they are old enough to have tried some things out will give them a greater choice in their classes. I’m thinking that we need to allow the kids to try various professions out. Help them get a big selection of choices. We should also probably try to figure out what skills or training corresponds to granting various classes. But that’s for the future. One other thing is that when you select a class, you get all of the stats that come with your levels. Do you want a kid that has been called ugly to suddenly have twenty points that they can use to make themselves beautiful?”

I couldn’t help but regret the examples I’d chosen when I noticed the helpless look that Big Mike and Consuelo exchanged before darting a glance at their eldest daughter. Or the look that appeared on her face. She was definitely not a pretty child. But now that was fixable. Maybe there were some good points to the Event. It gives you a chance to fix the errors of genetics. No ugly men, only beautiful women. I was shallow enough to get behind a world like that. I also resolved to make sure that I had a private conversation with Big Mike and Consuelo about the God Box. I had no idea if the thing was age restricted, so I needed to make sure that her parents were aware of what it could do. No Refunds seemed like a disaster waiting to happen with a bullied child!

“So which one should I choose?” he asked.