Swan Lake, Clayton State University, Morrow, Clayton County, Georgia. Monday, October 21th, 2019. 13:00.

With a loaded backpack, Sara slipped out of the classroom and dodged survivors. She wanted some time for herself and decided to have a stroll around Swan Lake, CSU's landscaping postcard. The southeastern shore of the lake was hidden under a moderately forested area, and she decided to have a solo picnic away from other people. The lake didn't have any swans, though. If they never existed, to begin with, or if they died in Armageddon, or even if they became survivor food, Sara had no idea.

She was suspicious of both Kelly and Keynes' overly friendly stance. It was too good to be true. She suspected this group of survivors might have some intention to use her for something. Maybe clearing more interstate intersections. Something she wasn't ready to do.

Climbing on her Silverado and leaving the campus went past her mind but she wouldn't be able to do that stealthily. They moved all her stuff to the classroom and she would have to load the truck again. That would be noticed by someone and then she would need to have the talk.

While she was suspicious of the friendly survivors, another part of her wished to make connections. She was only human, after all. Therefore she ran away without running away and had her picnic.

"Let's talk about the System, Abby," Sara asked. "Not mine, but how it will be for everyone else."

"How will people grow stronger? How will they gain Experience Points, Karma, Essence, straight Skill upgrades, what about that?"

"I don't kill the ghosts," Sara protested.

"Gotcha. Kill ghouls, wraiths, monsters, mutated animals, the likes."

Sara nodded and moved to her next question. "What Classes are available?"

"That's a tall order," the girl said as she bit on a ham sandwich. The bread was stale, hard, and she had to cut the greenish mold out. Nevertheless, it was bread. She had no idea when she would eat bread again. If ever. "I'm totally going to fuck it up. What are these structural features that are set in stone?"

"Are there any Attributes, like Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma?"

"Cool. And people will have to spend their Class picks to get these, while I get them basically for free."

"I don't."

"What Classes are available?"

"Medieval ones? [Knight], [Ranger], [Mage], [Wizard], [Barbarian], and so on?"

"Something working with guns? Like a [Gunslinger] or [Sharpshooter]?"

"[Technomancer]?" She suggested with a skeptical stance.

"Dunno. Isn't magic and technology opposites?"

The fairy interjected astonished.

"Because... fiction said so?" Sara replied with a bit of self-doubt.

The fairy was getting dark and skeptical and sarcastic.

"Sorta?" Sara said with a lot of doubt.

"The same way the System messages in those novels we read always sound like an asshole?" She teased.

"Yeah, you never sounded like an asshole."

Abby drawled the last word.

"Nah, I'm good. I call dibs on being an asshole. You should be nice and friendly and polite, please."

"Now you're just fucking with me."

Sara rolled on the picnic cloth with fits of giggles.

"So, back to work. Let's butcher the System. Humanity is so fucked up because Verachiel left stuff in my hands."

More laughter. "Touché. Take notes, Abby. I'll show you what a real bitch can do to butcher Heaven's work." Sara punched toward the sky.

"What? Can you do that?"

A floating blue screen with a text input appeared two feet in front of Sara.

"Don't block my vision."

The background became transparent, just the frame and a blinking prompt.

"Okay. Better. Know what, just take notes. Show them to me when I ask if that's okay by you."

Abby chuckled.

"Wait, what else can you put in my sight? Can you display pictures?" Abby showed Sara the photo of her mom. Sara mellowed and melted at the sight of the lovely woman. Someone so adorable that... "Thanks."

Sara looked up and she saw the image of her mom cast against the blue background. "It's blurring at the edges of the clouds," she commented. "But it is lovely. Thanks."

"It's fine as it is. Thanks, Abby."

"Just don't distract me during a fight or something. And frame it with a distinctive outline, so I know which is the real one."

"Where was I?"

"Right. First thing. No special species. Everyone who's human remains human. No elves, dwarfs, goblins, gnomes, or any other shit like that."

"No, they won't, because we'll never tell them it was a choice. Seriously, people can do so much shit over racial stuff, can you believe how fucked up the world would be if we add species to that?"

Silence.

"I mean, more fucked up that it is already is? Besides, we have so little people remaining that if we split them in species, they'll have an even harder time breeding and repopulating the world."

Sara pretended to retch, "Eww. Just, eww."

"Second, no criminal Classes. Or Skills that can only aid in committing a crime. Only, mind you. No [Thug], [Burglar], [Thief] or [Assassin], much less bullshit like [Assassinate] to aid in killing people. The list I gave is not exhaustive."

"We should also not lend aid to human on human aggression. You said we can shut down Skills, can we do that if a user tries to strike another person?"

"No System aid to assault and battery on other people. I'm not helping them murder each other. Defensive Skills remain on, though." Sara grumbled as she thought of something, then snapped her finger. "In fact, we should punish users for murder. Like, take a murderer's main Skill, the highest leveled one, and make it a minus fifteen. Can we do that?"

"I see no downsides."

Sara creased her eyebrows. "When is killing a person justified?"

"If the mass murderer was a System user, he will have so many Skills at minus fifteen he will be basically a cripple. Make it minus thirty, then. I doubt someone whose physical Strength is reduced to forty percent of the normal will be able to do much harm to society anymore. Minus a hundred!"

"You do that."

"If the System can detect who committed murder, the System can tell who forced the murderer's hand. They should be punished equally."

"Which also makes for a painless experience, right? People will be able to give mental commands, and do shit without saying it out loud like an idiot." Silence followed. Sara could swear Abby smirked. The girl frowned, "I walked into that one."

"Pfft. My rules do not apply to me. I'm the boss."

"Good. That'll show those mob bosses we mean business. The next thing is, whenever people gain enough energy to go up in a skill level, they'll only earn half of the skill level. The other half will be converted into System Dollars. A currency we're going to create and control entirely in the System. This means people will gain one Skill point and... a hundred System Dollars whenever they should've gained two Skill points. And their System Dollars will be tracked in their Status Window."

"Yes, but you got the ratio wrong. A Skill point is worth twice as much System Dollars. The energy of the Skill point the user didn't get will be collected in the System Core to use later. Maybe we should obfuscate that better. Award them three hundred System Dollars whenever they should've gained a Skill point... Or not. We factor the base cost of a Skill point as four hundred dollars, twenty-five percent of all awards are taken by the System, I get my cut, and we give incremental awards in cash. Then people can spend the cash to buy the Skills. So, don't give people Skill points directly. Just System cash."

"I am. But chill your panties, fairy dude. I won't take everything. Just... Zero point one percent of all earnings shall go to my account. That's one in a thousand, my fee. The rest of the cash will not go to me. It will be in the System Core main account."

"Production Classes. We are going to incentivize people to take non-combat Classes by fueling that energy into their growth. You see, non-combatants will need to use System Dollars to do their trade with System aid. That will generate a need for System Dollars and a way to remove currency from the market, keeping the economy afloat. But when a non-combatant burns System Dollars to craft, they earn Skill points without needing to go out and grind these points. We'll make it somewhat random, let's say, an eighty percent chance of getting a point."

The girl snapped her finger. "Oh. And everyone's secondary Class must be a non-combat one. So everyone has a side gig that doesn't involve fighting. People can double-dip into production Classes all they want if that's their thing. But I'm not going to create warrior societies where martial prowess is the rule."

"They're selling the stuff they craft back to the combat Classes. People will need swords, food, ammo, cars, repairs, armor, gadgets, and so on."

"Yes. It can only be done if both users are not under duress or influence and within five yards of each other. Someone at gunpoint will not be able to give their aggressors cash, period."

"Everyone will know cash can't be transferred under duress. That must be an absolute truth. If the kidnappers know they won't get the cash and they'll get in trouble if they hurt the blacksmith's daughter, they won't kidnap in the first place."

"Yeah, but never cash. It's way harder to get away with a hundred swords than a wire transfer. We can also add a locator for trusted people. If the System knows where everyone is, the blacksmith can track her daughter if the daughter allows her father to."

"People will do that. We'll give helicopter parenting a whole new coat of paint. And System Dollars cannot be stolen by anyone. Or used to pay taxes or government fees. Keep it separate."

"Can the System determine the base cost and awards for crafting on its own?"

"We?" Sara asked, suspicious.

"Right...."

"How high can a System Skill reach?"

"That's fine, you set the costs however you like. We should cap Skills at twenty-five. That's how many levels each Class will have."

"Yeah. You adjust the parameters if adding more Classes and Skills is something too hard. Or they just reach the cap and they're done with it."

"That sounds perfect."

"No problem with that."

Abby showed the notebook, and they made some corrections to the text. After Sara was satisfied with everything they set down, she asked, "You talked about other dimensions, can we store stuff in a parallel dimension, like in the novels?"

"Teleport things around?" She tried.

"Like a wormhole? You can probe my mind for the info." She felt a spike of headache, then it was over.

"Yeah, physicists might be crazy, but they are sure smart."

*

*

Swan Lake, Clayton State University, Morrow, Clayton County, Georgia. Monday, October 21th, 2019. 14:30.

She ate the last three sandwiches and washed them down with stale bitter orange juice. To compensate for the sweets in the morning, Sara fooled herself. "How's it looking so far?" She asked between bites.

"We need to have a bulletin board, forum, and personal timelines they can share with trusted partners. Charge a monthly or weekly fee to use these services out of the users' accounts. Not everyone will want to use the social features, and that's fine. Basic messaging should be free but not translation."

"Nah. Why?"

Sara looked around, trying not to chase the hallucination of a map hovering at the edge of her vision. It showed a section of the maps she took from the visitor center a few days ago, with a red dot in the center showing her location on the map. As she spun around, the map rotated, to show which cardinal direction she was facing. It also doubled as a compass.

"We can bundle them with some half of a Skill, then. But not give stuff for free. This is not communism."

"And it will. But this is a business, Abby. If people want nice features, they ought to pay. Bundle the map with some spatial awareness or the ability to measure distances. Or a half-Alertness Skill, which will improve their reaction."

Sadly, dimensional storage or item teleportation was out. Not because it was impossible but because it was too expensive to be feasible.

The girl packed away the food portion of the picnic, leaving only the juice and a water bottle out. Then she took out some booklets and a Kindle.

"Now, we need to discuss the End User License Agreement. We'll start with the one for Microsoft Windows, and copy what we find useful. There are others I found, here's the one for Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and the one for Amazon and Kindle services."

Sara shook her head. "No way. People need to opt-in to the System. Yes, I know the System will help everyone grow stronger and someone needed to be stupid to reject it. Anyhow, this is America. People have the right to do the wrong choice and screw their lives."

"Believe me on that. People can opt-in and opt-out of the System. They'll close their accounts and lose the cash, though. But they need to have a choice. The freedom. Also, governments will spring up back again. That's inevitable. Death and Taxes, they say. I want to shield the System from government influence as much as I can."

"Exactly. Do System stuff, earn System credits. But to pay taxes, go earn government fiat money. They won't even pay fines in System Dollars. Don't mix them up. I don't mind if this weakens the value of System cash."

She rubbed her temples, "Dismiss the mini-map. We need to work on this sensory overload stuff. The HUD data will also need to wait."

"Right. Another reason people need to opt-in."

"Is it harmful if we keep it at a minimum?"

"Then just keep it dormant. And if the System has a presence in everyone, we can siphon energy that would otherwise go to waste from non-users."

"Now, let's read these agreements."

Sara and Abby worked for hours creating their EULA out of the legal documents she procured.

*

*

Swan Lake, Clayton State University, Morrow, Clayton County, Georgia. Monday, October 21th, 2019. 18:55.

The System EULA ended up with about 100,000 words of butchered legalese. Sara gathered her stuff and packed everything either in her very deflated backpack or in a trash bag.

"No, and that's the beauty of it," Sara chuckled. "Some will. I don't care. It's just a smoke screen anyway. It will always be available to them with but a thought. You'll even add a text search feature, right?"

She stretched and walked to the lake shore to watch the sunset. "That's a win for everyone. People will gain the power to fight back, we might save humanity after all. And I'm going to get my due capital returns as the founder, owner, and CEO of Armageddon Systems INC."

"The most American thing one could do if they had the means to," Sara cut in. "I'm not exploiting anyone, or forcing them to stamp six, six, six on their foreheads. That's why it is not mandatory. That's why we have the contract, detailing everything we are doing. People will get fucking superpowers! Uber used to charge drivers twenty-five percent, a lot other business did the same. It's only fair."

She took a pebble from the shore and tossed it on the sky's reflection. It skipped ten times before sinking. A new record.

"Don't blindly trust me. Question me and my motives. Keep me walking on eggs. Otherwise, who knows how greedy I'll get. Power corrupts. I need a straight man with me on this comedy act. Or fairy."