Homegrown System

Alice watched Titus carefully as he checked the mirror behind them to make sure they were in the clear. He deftly wove the sports car through the many stalled vehicles on the road, often having to ding it a little bit to shove it through gaps or go on the shoulders. Still, they had made good time, definitely faster than walking.

After a moment, he continued his story. "I had just moved into my new place, so I didn't have a generator yet. But I knew my neighbor did. Mrs. Johnson had been nice and brought me a cake when I moved in. A bit of an older lady. I think she was lonely as her kids had all moved away to have families of their own, and her husband died a couple of years back."

Titus paused his story to concentrate on getting around a particularly nasty crash. Alice was worried they would have to get out and push some cars around when he found a way to nudge one out of the way. She winced at the sound of grinding metal. This was such a nice car too.

"So, I missed my alarm. My phone was dead, and the power went out early enough that it didn't have time to charge it," Titus said as he shifted gears.

Alice was curious but didn't interrupt, letting him tell the story at his own pace.

"So I went over to her place and let myself in," he said, his voice harbored the tiniest bit of hesitation in it, making it sound like he might not have had a key. "She wasn't around, and that was odd. As far as I knew, she didn't have anywhere to go. The neighborhood was eerily quiet, so I knew something was wrong. It wasn't just that her power was out as well. From its looks, the whole street was out of power. So, I started the generator, and while my phone was charging, I checked the news."

Alice looked Titus up and down, getting a moment to actually take in his appearance in full light instead of the cabin's dimness. He was a well-built man, a bit over average height, maybe six feet, solidly muscled, deeply tanned, or slightly brown-skinned, with short-cropped black hair. He wore sweatpants and a white tank top, which made sense for visiting a neighbor early in the morning to borrow a generator so he could charge his phone.

"I nearly fell backward over the couch when a screen popped up in front of me," Titus said with a chuckle. " It was a backlog of messages telling me that we had been integrated into a System but that I was unable to be teleported."

Alice asked, "Why did this screen take so long to show up? It should have shown up right as everyone disappeared."

Titus shrugged. "Not sure. Something about my teleport retries ending. Also, something about being unable to do that while monsters are spawning or something along those lines. I don't remember exactly what it was," Titus said.

Alice frowned, now thoroughly confused. "That doesn't entirely make sense."

Titus looked at her through the corner of his eye before returning his attention to the surroundings of the car. "Well, it did ask about my age. It seemed that it delayed teleportation until I confirmed it. Though even once I did confirm, it gave me those errors."

Alice grumbled. Now she had some idea what her fellow graduate students were complaining about. Those who had worked in the industry insisted dealing with customers was the worst. They never gave you all the information you needed to figure things out. But she let it go. It wasn't that important.

A moment of silence stretched, and Alice considered how to prod Titus along with his story. Before she decided how, he continued.

"I was surprised to see that the System used some human programming language. I kinda assumed that it was an alien invasion at first. But that made me doubt it. It didn't seem likely that an alien invasion would be programmed in Java," Titus said with a smile.

Alice snickered at the idea of aliens using Java. "Why would you assume it's aliens?"

Titus shrugged. "I don't know. I read a few pieces of fiction about aliens coming to Earth and making us live in a video game System. It's a common trope, you know."

"Really? I had never heard of that," Alice said tiredly.

"Well, if we ever have a lot of downtime, I have a few things you might enjoy reading." He paused for a second. "Though it's less funny now than it seemed at the time."

Alice nodded. "Yeah, well, after we get all cleaned up and have a little bit of time to rest and we've stopped this whole thing, I'd be happy to read some fiction."

Titus looked over at her. His evaluating gaze swept over her quickly and efficiently. Then he frowned. Alice felt the slightest bit uncomfortable. Did she have a stick in her hair or something?

"Ah, that reminds me," he said, and he drove for a moment before finding a place to pull over. He popped open the trunk and got out of the car. Walking to the back of the car, he rummaged through for a moment before pulling out a bag.

"Not sure if this will be useful, but I had to check," he said as he tossed the duffle bag on her lap and got back in the car.

As he started driving, she curiously opened what turned out to be a gym bag. Inside, she found a pair of black yoga pants and a white crop top that seemed to be clean. Maybe it was intended for exercise that evening. She looked over at Titus. "How did you know that was there?"

He shrugged. "Well, I mean, it was mostly a guess, but this appears to be someone's work car, and sometimes people keep exercise bags in the trunk if they go to the gym at all. Someone who drives a car like this," he said, gesturing at the pristine white BMW, "Seems like someone who is a little bit meticulous about their appearance. And that means gym."

"Also," he said, tapping the pair of dangling air fresheners from the rearview mirror. Paisley flowers emblazoned on either side popped out against a dark background. "I don't know a single guy that would have these. That and the faint smell of perfume painted a pretty clear picture. So, I felt it was worth checking. And, well, you're missing a shirt."

Alice looked down and frowned. She didn't feel that awkward, as the few times her roommates had dragged her along to the gym she'd just gone in a sports bra. But she supposed it made sense. If they were about to go fight through a bunch of monsters on campus, she would like to have a little more protection.

She undid her seatbelt and slipped into the shirt. It came down just above her navel and was slightly warmer. Still, it wasn't a perfect fit.

"Wish it was like a hoodie or something," she grumbled.

Titus rolled his eyes. "I would prefer a leather jacket for myself. Better defense. But you do you," he said.

"So after the System showed up, you got everything sorted out... Do you have regular access now?" Alice asked, picking up the earlier conversation.

Titus nodded. "If you mean I can work with the menus and stuff, yeah. I can do that. But the massive dinosaur walking down the street made me worry about that a little bit less at first."

"Massive dinosaur?" Alice asked, fumbling over her words. That was surprising. She had not programmed any dinosaurs into it. "I mean, the pterodactyls were one thing.... But I don't know why. I'm surprised there were more dinosaurs used as monsters."

Titus nodded. "Yeah. For the most part, all I've seen is dinosaurs. The bike monsters you described to me were the first ones that that weren't some sort of dinosaur. I kind of figured it was drawing beasts from Earth's past as monsters. Maybe it's just the local area's theme?"

Alice shrugged. "Maybe, I don't know."

Titus raised an eyebrow. "You don't know?"

"Well, it's evolved long past what I had designed. It barely resembles the game I made in the first place."

Titus shrugged. "Well, yeah, that makes sense. Doesn't sound like you intended any of this."

"...So how'd you get away from the dinosaur? What was it?"

"It was a Proto-cera-tops or something," he said. "I'm not sure I'm saying that right."

"Proceratosaurus?" Alice repeated.

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Titus said. "Anyways, there was no real way to get away from it at the time. It was about to break into another house when it smelled me."

Alice frowned, remembering some of her facts from her dinosaur phase when she was six years old. "Isn't that thing, like, 15 feet tall?"

Titus nodded.

"And you killed it?"

"That's where the shovel came in—"

Before Titus could continue, a massive roar shook the windshield.

Alice swiveled around to look behind them, and coming out of the woods along the side of the road was something that she guessed was a T-Rex. Her identification confirmed it moments later. It was level 35.

"Titus!" she yelled.

"I see it," he said calmly as he started weaving through the cars faster. He pulled off to the side and drove along the shoulder, the rumble strip sending the car vibrating. The massive stomps of the dinosaur kicking aside cars as it chased after their moving vehicle shook the car even further.

Soon, they were cruising at a decent speed. Still, the jarring nature of the chase threatened to crack Alice's teeth as she hurriedly buckled herself back in. She'd forgotten the seatbelt after putting on her new shirt. Frantically, she racked her mind for anything they could do to this monster. It was far too high level for her to fight.

She looked around and into the back seat, looking for anything. We have no guns, no ranged weapons. All we have is the damn shovel.

Titus accelerated faster. They were going at nearly 45 miles an hour, which was as much as the car could handle with the rough terrain, as the suspension was clearly struggling.

We should have picked the Range Rover, Alice cursed internally as Titus swerved through a pile-up.

Past the road blockage, a stretch of road opened up in front of them. He punched the gas. The acceleration of the pristine sports car was finally of use as Alice was flung back into her seat. The weight of the acceleration pulled at her face, making it hard to talk.

The dinosaur was left behind, but they only managed to get a small lead before they had to slow down and resume weaving and driving on the rumble strip. The next few moments were unbelievably tense. The dinosaur was catching up again, and Alice could do nothing but watch.

"Almost there," Titus muttered. "Almost there."

"Almost where?" Alice thought but didn't say anything, not wanting to distract the man from his driving. She opened the glove box, hoping maybe this lady going to the gym in her fancy sports car had been a concealed carry permit holder and had a gun or something. But no luck. She did find a small pocket knife, which she slipped into the back pocket of her jeans, but there was nothing else but a car manual. She resisted the urge to roll down the window and throw it at the dinosaur behind them.

A flash of darkness went over them as they zipped through an underpass, Titus swerving to go up on the incline slightly so that they were able to dodge around the traffic. An 18-wheeler had jackknifed, blocking off the path out of the overpass. Once they were passed, it was a blessing as it left a decent amount of space for them to keep going.