8 Chapter Eight. A Noob To End All Noobs

"The meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things."

Carl Gustav Jung

AGILITY HAD ALWAYS been my characteristic of choice, even in the old text-based browser games. It was probably because in real life I was anything but agile even if you pointed a crossbow at me. Klutz was my middle name. Or could it be my inner shrink telling me that I simply loved frequent crits and high dodge numbers? Whatever the reason, I'd never for one moment hesitated over my character choice. A Rogue. A thief. All stealth-stun-combo-vanish, rinse and repeat. And if by some chance my enemy had survived, I'd dart for my dear life.

No wonder nobody likes the rogue. It's a mean class who likes playing dirty, its trickster nature far removed from the noble chivalry of the paladin or the dignified integrity of the warrior.

I opened the character window. Uh oh. So much for my playing a rogue in this game.

The window's modest layout matched the austere design of the rest of the interface. I couldn't see my picture anywhere. The 3D figure of my character was missing, as were the gear slots.

All I could see were a few lines of text against a translucent gray background,

Philip "Phil" Panfilov

Age: 32

Current status: gamer

Social status level: 6

Class: Unclassified

Married

Wife: Yannina "Yanna" Orlova

Children: none

Main Characteristics:

Strength: 6

Agility: 4

Intellect: 18

Stamina: 4

Perception: 7

Charisma: 12

Luck: 6

Secondary Characteristics:

Vitality: 74%

Satisfaction: 48%

Vigor: 97%

Metabolism: 83%

In order to access more data, you need to level up Insight.

Unclassified? Status, gamer?

My already plummeting megalomania took a further dive. Judging by my stats, I'd been leveling as a wizard, clumsy and charismatic.

Big mistake. This world didn't have any magic, did it?

I tried to click on the stats to see the meaning of each of them and hopefully work out how they were supposed to interact.

Nothing. Either the interface designers were some cack-handed hack artists or the interface owner — the game's user? — was supposed to know it all.

At 18, my Intellect wasn't that bad, at least compared to all the other stats. Then again, it could be average — or low even — compared to other people. I was no Nobel prize winner, that's for sure, but I can't have been that dumb, either. So if we assumed that my Intellect reading was a tad above average, then all the other characteristics should have been in the 12 to 15 range.

Which meant that they were way below par.

Then again, what did I expect? Was I fit? Hardly. So these stats seemed to reflect the current state of affairs.

What was their effect on my life? This, too, was pretty self-explanatory. If the elevator in our apartment block broke down, I'd never be able to climb the stairs all the way to my apartment on the tenth floor. Could I swim a few laps? Yeah right, I just might drown halfway. And if I tried to perform a little juggling act, I might just get killed in the process.

I was quite surprised at my high Charisma reading. Then again, it might only mean that I didn't make other people puke on seeing me.

I spent some more time staring at the stats window before finally closing it.

No idea what I did wrong. Maybe I sent a wrong mental command or just blinked unintentionally, but the window simply disappeared. If I'd expected it to disintegrate into a gazillion glittering fragments, or fold into a swirling vortex and be sucked back into the icon, I'd been wrong. No pretty animation, no visual effects. It was just gone.

"Miaow!" a demanding howl disrupted the silence.

It was Boris, apparently suffering from nighttime munchies. She rubbed against my leg expectantly. I heaved a sigh, rose, gave her a pat on the neck and headed for the kitchen. As I poured a generous helping of cat food into her bowl, she purred like a tractor, polishing my legs with her fluffy flank.

I left her in the kitchen and returned to the room. This time I sat on the couch, just in case I zoned out again.

I clicked on the icon with the book.

A huge field of text opened up before me.

It was a complete list of everything I'd learned in my lifetime since day one: from learning to walk to my recently-acquired dart-playing skill.

Skills:

Playing World of Warcraft: 8

Russian speaking skills: 7

Russian reading skills: 7

PC skills: 7

Russian writing skills: 6

Empathy: 6

Online search: 5

MS Word: 5

MS Excel: 4

Vending: 4

Social skills: 4

Intuition: 4

Deception: 3

Creative writing: 3

Manners: 3

Photography: 3

Decision-making: 3

Learning new skills: 3

English: 3

Seduction: 3

Cooking: 3

Self-discipline: 3

Driving: 2

Self-control: 2

Plan-making: 2

Marketing: 2

Leadership: 2

Perseverance: 2

Pushbike riding: 2

Public speaking: 2

Map reading: 2

Walking: 2

DIY skills: 1

First aid skills: 1

Singing: 1

Insight: 1

I spent some quality time going through the list which unfolded in the best-to-worst order. I had so many skills still at level 1! I kept scrolling through them but the list seemed interminable.

It looked like the system took meticulous stock of everything I'd ever tried in my life. For instance, I even had a "knife handling" skill. That must have had something to do with our childhood games of throwing knives at the shed wall. Couldn't be anything else: the only thing I'd ever used a knife for was to cut myself a slice of bread.

I also had a level-1 Agriculture skill. Of course. Hadn't I helped my parents with their cottage garden? I used to weed it and dig it up, I'd even planted some potatoes for them at some point.

Running, swimming, skiing, skating... all level 1. Plus playing soccer, poker and chess, and dozens of half-forgotten computer games which I used to passionately play in the past. Most likely, a skill's level dropped when it fell out of use.

I even had level 1 in Poetry — I had indeed dabbled in it once — and Sewing (probably from my college attempts to fix a hole in a T-shirt). Also, Wrestling. Back at school, my father had signed me up for a judo class where I'd lasted all of two months.

That wasn't what pissed me off. According to the list, the area of my biggest expertise was game playing! Logical, of course. I'd spent at least a hundred and fifty thousand hours mastering the wretched thing. No wonder its level was comparatively so high.

So that's who I was, then. I wasn't an author at all. I was a deceptive WoW user with decent Googling skills and a good working knowledge of Microsoft Word.

In everything else in life, I was a total noob. A useless noob who could only get through life by trailing in Yanna's powerful slipstream.

My reading and writing skills were worse than my game playing. That was all you needed to know about my life over the past twelve years. Twelve years! I only had another thirty left till my retirement!

How very nice of you, Blizzard guys, thanks a bunch.

Oh. My vision blurred again. I felt weak.

A new debuff message appeared before me,

Apathy

Duration: 18 hours

You're emotionally drained. Your central nervous system needs some rest. We recommend that you get some quality sleep, a balanced diet and some exercise.

Warning! The state of Apathy can easily escalate to Depression!

-5% to Satisfaction every 6 hrs.

-1% to Vitality every 5 hrs.

-6% to Vigor every 6 hrs.

-2% to Metabolism every 6 hrs.

-5% to Confidence every 6 hrs.

-2% to Willpower every 6 hrs.

What a nasty debuff. As if the nicotine withdrawal wasn't enough. This way, I might not live to see the weekend. I'd just drop on my back on the floor like a beetle and expire.

Which was something I couldn't do. My old parents needed help. My sister was a single mother who could use my support too. I had to fight to win Yanna back, dammit! Plus I had so many projects.

Apathy, they said? I didn't give a damn.

What did they want me to do? I couldn't get quality sleep at the moment, not until I was finished with that wretched interface. A healthy diet? The only healthy foods I had in the house were an onion and a box of green tea. The remaining half-bucket of KFC wings hardly counted as a balanced meal, let alone a healthy one.

That left exercise.

I cast a doubtful glance at the clock. It was past two in the morning. Chuckling, I peeled myself off the couch, started my favorite playlist and began warming up like they'd taught us to in that long-forgotten judo class. All the bending, stretching and rotating: wrists, arms, knees and hips... Now ten sit-ups.

My head went round. I had to stop to catch my breath, then did ten more. I was lightheaded again. I walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Should I do another ten?

My legs were rubbery, my knees weak. My hands were shaking. My teeth began to ache.

I poured some boiling water over a teabag, leaned against a stool and did five... six... come on, just one more... seven pushups.

I hurried to peel and slice the remaining onion and made myself a quick cheese and onion sandwich with some dry rye bread. I left it on the table next to my tea and walked out onto the balcony to catch my breath. Then I returned, dropped to the floor, hooked my feet under the edge of the couch and tried to do a few crunches.

These proved to be the trickiest. I couldn't do a single one. In the end, I just lifted my feet off the floor and tried to keep my legs up for as long as I could.

Which wasn't for very long. I tried again. And again. My abs were killing me. I was sweating buckets.

Enough. Shower time.

I lingered under its hot-and-cold jets, getting rid of all the sweat and grime. Finally, I received a new buff: my Metabolism was on the rise, both Vigor and Satisfaction were in the black.

A new message arrived, informing me that my Apathy debuff had been reduced to 12 hrs.

Excellent. I ate my sandwich, making sure I chewed properly, washed it down with some tea, then returned to the couch and continued my research.

Strange that my creative writing skills were so high though. 3 points! Could it have been all the countless blog posts I'd written?

Wait a sec. Where was my Finance? I'd spent five years in college studying that. I had a degree, for crissakes! And it wasn't even level 2? I'd studied hard enough; I'd taken all the exams and had very decent grades throughout. Admittedly, my professional experience had been limited to a one-month internship at a major engineering plant where I'd registered the incoming email and helped the bookkeeper girls replace printer cartridges and create user profiles at various dating sites. That had been the extent of it. Whatever experience I'd had afterward was limited to online buying and selling. No wonder my Vending skills were so high. If you applied RPG rules to real life, I was entitled to a 15% discount everywhere I went.

What a shame this wasn't virtual reality.

My high Empathy levels weren't a surprise to me though. I'd always had this ability to divine what other people were feeling. The moment Yanna walked through the front door, I knew what kind of day she'd had. I could tell my Dad's mood just by the way he was breathing and knew what Mom was feeling just by looking into her eyes. I didn't even need to see the person: show me a text message, and I'll tell you what the person was feeling while writing it. Most of the time, anyway. The emoji culture has a lot to answer for.

The fact that the mysterious game system so effortlessly listed the names of certain programs — like MS Word and Excel, for instance — made me think that the generation of those system messages actually took place in the user's head. It was as if someone had scanned my character's brain — my brain, — then analyzed and classified its entire database.

I yawned. I needed some sleep. I clicked through some of the skills without much effect, then closed the window and went back into the kitchen to get some coffee. As the kettle was boiling, I opened the next icon: the one with the globe.

A map opened.

It was surprisingly clear, too. No dark spots; no unavailable areas concealed in the "mist of war". It looked rather like an aerial view taken from a satellite or something.

A golden dot shimmered at its center. That just had to be me. I recognized my apartment block and the area around it.

I zoomed in on the scene. Now I was looking at our courtyard from a height of about a hundred feet. I could even make out a few human figures still lounging about in the playground.

Heh! Fancy seeing you here, guys!

This was crazy. I could even tell precisely who they were thanks to the name tags which hovered over their heads. Yagoza, my friend Alik, and all the others: Sprat, Vasily, Fatso... Alik was marked with a green dot and all the others, with yellow ones.

I zoomed out to see the entire city. It was flooded with hundreds of shimmering dots: red, green, orange, emerald, blue and turquoise. Some of them were bigger than the rest, others considerably smaller.

I focused on two especially large blue dots.

A prompt popped up,

Mom and Dad

Aha. So the system indeed used my brain as a starting point. I was the only person in the world who referred to my Dad as "Dad". To all the others, he was either Oleg Igorevich Panfilov, or simply Oleg.

Wow, just wow. How's that for an app? Compared to this, the Marauder's Map was child's play. Harry Potter, eat your heart out!

I scanned all the other dots. These weren't just my friends and acquaintances — no, they were actually all the people I'd ever come into contact with. That amber dot over there was Lola — or should I say Dr. Shvedova — whom I'd consulted at the clinic earlier today. And one of the red ones turned out to be Kostya, my ex co-trainee at an advertising agency a few years back. He used to hate me with a vengeance; you could cut the office air with a knife.

And that orange dot over there...

That was Yanna.

I zoomed in. She was at her parents'.

Relief flooded over me. Only now had I realized how much tension, bred from jealousy and the feeling of loss, I'd suffered over the last twenty-four hours. No matter how hard I'd been trying to blank them out, these thoughts kept growing like cancer cells, multiplying and assaulting my brain with vivid pictures of Yanna's supposed infidelity.

I zoomed out again until the map shrank back to the size of a globe. I was now looking at a view of planet Earth from space, with me still at its center. The continents' outlines were dimmed as it was nighttime in our hemisphere.

I could see more dots scattered all over the planet's surface. I discovered one of my school dates, the popular Maya Abramovich, in Australia, no less. Another dot shimmered in the South of Africa, and this one was my sixth-grade pal Pashka Pashkovsky. I was surprised I still remembered his name. We used to go to the chess class together.

Memories flooded over me. My school friends, fellow college students, my ex co-workers... What a shame I couldn't access any more information about them, only their names, and some of the names didn't even say anything to me anymore. It looked like I certainly needed the Insight skill in order to do that.

I began to experiment. I turned the virtual globe around, trying various commands. Finally, I managed to sort the dots by their Reputation with me, removing all those whose status was below Amicability.

I kept fiddling with the globe until I could find certain locations — countries, cities or objects — by merely willing to see them. Had the real Earth been able to rotate that fast, it would have long shaken everything off its surface, trees included.

I kept traveling across the map. London, Hollywood, the legendary Lake Baikal, the Kremlin, my primary-school love Veronica, the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, Phuket Island, the Niagara Falls, Beijing, my parents, Yanna, the President of the United States...

Warning! The current level of your Insight skill is insufficient to access the information you've requested!

Okay, so Mr. Trump was off limits for me, then. Never mind. Did that mean that once I'd leveled up Insight, I could find any person on planet Earth? Anyone at all?

My breathing seized. The possibilities it opened were mind-boggling. I could search for missing people. I could locate terrorists. I could track down every movement of every millionaire and top politician I wanted. Ready or not, here I come, you can't hide!

And what if I could locate objects, as well? All the secret stashes, the hidden treasures, the Aztec gold...

Cool down, man. Get a grip.

I closed the map and walked out onto the balcony for a breath of fresh air.

I stared into the night sky. Somewhere up there coursed the super powerful satellite built by whoever had created my new abilities. The satellite which could rush to any location at my slightest whim just to show it to me.

But what if the satellite didn't even exist? What if I'd been accessing the information from — what was it called now — the universal infospace?

I gulped in the fresh air of May, unable to get enough of it.

Leaning against the railing, I opened my interface and clicked the icon with the exclamation mark.

Just as I expected, it was a quest list. But contrary to my expectations, it wasn't empty.

Tasks available:

- make up with Yanna and move back in with her;

- master the augmented reality control interface;

- work out how to level up skills and other stats and come up with a leveling strategy;

- find a stable job;

- check emails;

- check the freelance sites for any new jobs and apply for them;

- call parents and ask if they need anything;

- update the blog;

- apologize to clanmates for my silence;

- buy groceries;

- give Boris a brush

They had to be kidding me. These were all snippets of various to-do lists which I'd occasionally made on either my phone or computer. Nothing was clickable. I couldn't open the tasks to read their descriptions or see the rewards.

Then again, what kinds of rewards did I expect? Quest name: Find a stable job. Reward: A regular paycheck.

Yeah right. Quest name: Update the blog. Reward: A new blog post.

How stupid was that?

Having said that... admittedly, it was quite convenient. This was every time-management freak's dream: an automated logging in and prioritizing system.

Wait a sec. What was that now?

The window I was looking at was entitled Tasks available. I hadn't even noticed that it indeed had another empty tab, marked Quests.

And? How was I supposed to get them? Was I supposed to walk around town looking for any quest givers?

Never mind. That could wait. I'd deal with it some other time.

The only remaining icon was the one with the question mark. I had a funny feeling this was some kind of Wiki.

I was right.

Dawn was breaking.

It didn't look as if I was going to get any sleep tonight.